Purpose – Over the past decade, studies of school leadership effects have increasingly aimed at identifying and validating the paths through which principal leadership impacts key teaching and learning processes in schools. A recent meta-analysis by Robinson and colleagues identified principal practices that shape teacher professional development experiences in schools as the highest impact path used by instructional leaders. The purpose of this paper is to examine relationships between principal leadership, dimensions of school capacity, and teacher professional learning in 32 Hong Kong primary schools. Design/methodology/approach – The study employed a cross-sectional research design and quantitative methods to analyze teacher perceptions of principal leadership and key school conditions. The research employed hierarchical linear regression analysis to explore survey data collected from a sample of 970 teachers. The surveys covered a range of principal leadership and school capacity dimensions, as well as a measure of teacher professional learning. Findings – Results indicated that multiple dimensions of principal leadership made significant contributions to both school capacity and teacher professional learning. The presence of cooperation, trust, communication, support for students, and alignment, coherence, and structure in schools also affected teacher professional learning. Research limitations/implications – These findings contribute to the global discourse on leadership for learning. The study addresses the need established by multiple scholars (e.g. Leithwood, Hallinger, Heck, Robinson, Witziers) for research that further illuminates “paths” and “intermediate targets” through which leadership impacts teaching and learning. The findings elaborate on the means by which leadership can enhance school capacities that directly impact teacher classroom practice and student learning. Consistent with other scholarly research (e.g. Bryk and Schneider, Louis and colleagues

The civic education policy at the school level in Hong Kong had emerged before the Second World War, but the Hong Kong Education Department did not really implement this civic education policy. From the statist and colonial perspectives, this phenomenon was due to several factors, such as: (1) how the Hong Kong Government coped with the whole historical period and scenarios; (2) how it implemented the related policy; (3) whether civic education policy really became part of the government agendas; and (4) whether education did clarify some crucial historical questions. This paper wants to make certain about these questions. In fact, the Republic of China adopted modern schooling system which civic education was one of school subject. But it was not the education policy of the colonial Hong Kong Government. Historical reasons about this issue require reconstructive explanation. Under this study, the understanding of misinterpreted history can be amended correctly.
[Coryright © 2014 David Publishing Company.]

大中華地區﹝包括中國香港、澳門、台灣及內地的上海和南京等地﹞都有開展小班化教學的政策或經驗。要分析大中華地區教育改革中開展小班化教學的意義，我們需要了解大中華地區所處的教育改革脈絡、小班化教學的發展階段以及小班化教學所呈現的形式。至於具體如何開展小班化教學，我們要進一步分析政府、學校和課堂等不同層面的狀況，包括政府和學校推行和開展小班化教學的策略，在資源、專業發展以及課程和教學發展上的具體運作。至於意義方面，我們要探討小班化教學所蘊含的教育意涵和所產生的效果。

Following the international trend in education towards democracy and decentralization, the Hong Kong government introduced a school-based management (SBM) system about two decades ago. It is widely recognized in the literature that decentralization, empowering school level management and marginalizing the influence of the intermediate level of governance, can result in better deployment of school resources and better meet the demands of various stakeholders. However, in the unique historical and cultural context of Hong Kong, the advantages of decentralization claimed in the literature have yet to be fully realized. This paper discusses the contextual factors affecting the implementation of SBM in Hong Kong, and examines their impact on four major stakeholders, namely the government, the principals, the teachers, and the parents in the wake of reform.
[Copyright of Asia Pacific Journal of Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02188791.2015.1056592]

The Catholic Church, the largest school-sponsoring body in Hong Kong, is a major provider of religious schools and educational programmes. In 2006, the Catholic Diocese released its first centralised and comprehensive curricular document concerning religious and moral education (RME) in Catholic schools. Taking this programme as a reflection of the Church's response to the challenges of a changing social milieu, severed church–state relations and shortcomings in Catholic education in post-1997 Hong Kong, this article reviews the framework and principles of the new curriculum. While retaining strong religious elements in its curriculum, the Catholic Church has widened and re-oriented its programme, and re-designed the contents and pedagogical methods. The new programme is characterised by adjustment and differentiation, upholding Christian faith, and selective absorption of Chinese culture. This article also discusses problems in the implementation of the new programme, including organisational compartmentalisation and an underdeveloped political dimension in the content.
[Copyright of Journal of Beliefs & Values: Studies in Religion & Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13617672.2015.1099940]

Similar to other places in Asia, Hong Kong is deeply rooted in a typical hierarchical structure of Chinese society that power distance between the teachers (lower position) and principals (higher position) exists in schools. Practice of teacher leadership seems to be a distant future for beginning teachers. This paper examines the development of beginning teacher leadership through teacher-principal interactions. What effects of the interactions have on beginning teachers’ leadership development? How do principals’ leadership practices infuse beginning teacher leadership in the interactions? The findings are derived from interviews and collected documentary evidence of twelve beginning teachers teaching in primary, secondary and special schools. The teachers provided detailed accounts of their interactions with school principals over the past two years through which the teachers’ leadership development was directed and situated in specific school cultures. Results unveil that different school cultures could affect the teachers’ aspiration for and development of leadership in curriculum and instruction. Influences of principal-teacher interactions on development of teacher leadership are identified in four types of school cultures. The effects of the influences are then contextualized as “higher-power distance”, “policy-driven”, “hierarchical” and “individualistic”. Implications for development of teacher leadership are discussed.

The forms and dynamics of school leadership team remain a “blank spot” in literature. Our study investigated school leadership teams at 14 local schools in Hong Kong and 10 local schools in Shanghai. The interview results suggested that most important decisions at schools at both places go through a stepwise consultation process. School principals at both places tend to present important decisions as a result of collective decision rather than a decision made by the principal alone. The extent to which SLT members participate in initiating agenda and contributing to the discussion at regular SLT meetings is closely related with the extent to which their respective responsibility domain. The mobility of school leadership membership is low in schools at both places, which are perceived by some schools as an important hindrance to school innovation. A notable difference was found that the team composition in terms of size, position, and expertise domain of members is more diverse in Hong Kong than that in Shanghai, we argue that distinct educational administration systems at the two place may be accounted for the divergence.