香港教育政策的擬訂及執行，長久以來都是由政府主導、學校執行。從行政的角度來說，這是追求效率的一個做法；但從另一個角度來看，政策制訂的過程却忽略了基層﹝或可說是學校層面﹞的參與，甚至一俟政策制成，便匆匆按既定的時間表推出，導致政策的執行遇上不少的障礙，罔顧政策執行結果的質素和實際執行的效能。本文就上述問題作了一個綜合分析，並引用英國一些教育改革運動的經驗，與香港現行教育政策推行的成效作出比較，從而對如何有效執行教育改革提出一些啟示。
[Copyright © 1998 Hong Kong Policy Research Institute.]

This article addresses the issue of preparing teachers as curriculum leaders to support the wide-ranging curriculum reforms that characterize societies in the Asian Pacific region. It draws on social cognitive theory and, in particular, on what has come to be called teachers’ sense of efficacy. The study sought to extend that research in a Chinese context.
[Copyright © 2006 Rowman & Littlefield Education.]

Hong Kong has introduced new school evaluation and assessment policies since 1997 which need to be implemented by school leaders. This context creates the possibility that policy intentions are not understood, accepted, or implemented. Using discrepancy evaluation analysis, this study reports interviews from 23 Hong Kong school principals about their perceptions and experiences of new policies to do with school evaluation and assessment for learning. The discrepancies fell into five major categories: one size does not fit all; a matter of school survival; workload for teachers; time pressures on those who manage and teach; and learning environment at the schools. The school principals were not convinced that the intended outcomes of helping schools to improve learning were achieved, rather they believed the policies were being implemented to control and close schools unfairly.
[Copyright © 2010 Philippine Society for Educational Research and Evaluation.]

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the progress of the curriculum reform in Hong Kong in the implementation phase from 2001-2006, with the agreement and support of heads and teachers on the reform. Design/methodology/approach – Survey questionnaires and focus group interviews were used to collect data from various stakeholders. A stratified random sampling method was employed to select 150 primary schools and 120 secondary schools to participate in the study. Findings – It is found that with the agreement and support of school heads and teachers, there is good progress in the reform items on teaching and learning. Findings of this paper also suggest that teachers who agreed with the reform items made changes with their practices in terms of learning and teaching strategies, catering to learner diversity, assessment for learning, developing students' language proficiency, cross-curricula learning, playing multiple teachers' roles and preparation for the new senior secondary curriculum. This study thus supports most findings from the change literature with its empirical data that educational changes and innovations with the agreement and support of school heads and teachers tend to have a greater chance of succeeding. Originality/value – The paper contributes by examining to what extent findings and views established in change literature elsewhere can be justified and enriched with the case of Hong Kong.
[Copyright © 2011, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.]

In schools in Hong Kong, a, team of teachers are assigned the specific responsibilities of enforcing school rules and regulations and handling individual students' serious conduct problems. They are called discipline teachers. Government statistics show that there is an increasing rate of students' unruly and delinquent behaviour in the recent years. This study aimed at examining the management style of a group of discipline teachers as a means of exploring effective intervention strategies for schools to cope with problem situations. The subjects (27 males and 15 females) were administered the Pupil Control Ideology Form. They were also asked about their perceived roles as discipline teachers and to evaluate the usefulness of some commonly used discipline measures. Findings indicated that majority of the subjects were custodial in their management style and they evaluated those discipline measures which had immediate effects to deter students' disruptive behaviour as most useful. Implications for effective intervention strategies were discussed.
[Copyright © 1997 Psychologia Society.]

As a form of school-based management (SBM), the School Management Initiative (SMI) reform in Hong Kong provides a framework for more teacher participation in decision making. This exploratory study aimed to provide a preliminary investigation of the characteristics of participative decision making in schools after implementing the SMI scheme by using a 3-dimensional model and both quantitative and qualitative methods. There were two SMI schools, two principals, and 105 teachers involved in the study. The findings revealed a deprivation state in decision making regarding issues of managerial and technical domains at individual, group and school levels in the sampled schools, but teachers in general had shown a positive attitude towards the opportunities for more participation provided with the implementation of the SMI scheme. Also there were strong interactions between decision domains and levels of decision issues in predicting teacherparticipation discrepancies. The characteristics of participation patterns revealed are interesting and can provide useful information for facilitating implementation of the SMI scheme and teacher participation in decision making. The findings support the usefulness of the 3-dimensional model in studying the patterns of participation in a larger sample of SBM schools, if not all, in both local and international contexts.
[Copyright © 1997 The Chinese University of Hong Kong.]

This paper starts with a broad historical overview of educational reforms and then focuses on those specific to civic education. Lastly we look at the implementation of policy, and examine the effect of the current political climate in the Special Administrative Region (SAR) on civic education.
[Copyright © 2002 Pacific Circle Consortium for Education.]

This paper aims to identify the characteristics of principal leadership in Hong Kong. More specifically, it analyzes and integrates a number of studies to identify the consistency of principal leadership across the years and samples using a number of different leadership conceptions. These conceptions include both traditional and alternate approaches to educational leadership. The paper shows how societal culture and context combine with the principals’ personal attributes to shape their school leadership. Findings indicate considerable diversity among Hong Kong principals even through they operate within the same social system. The paper stresses the importance of understanding culture and context if worthwhile leadership development programmes are to be developed.
[Copyright © 2000 Routledge.]

This paper reports on the assessment of readiness and receptivity of school principals, English panel chairpersons and English teachers for the implementation of the new senior secondary curriculum (NSSC) in English Key Learning Area (KLA) in Hong Kong. Recent research ahs probed into the dilemmas and challenges faced by school administrators and frontline teachers when facing curriculum change. Such challenges exist in the management of change, the teachers’ readiness for change, and in problems with collaboration among the stakeholders. Drawing on these research findings the analysis of this paper focuses on whether such problems are also re-occurring in the implementation of change in the NSSC, and if so, considers how they can be resolved. Using qualitative research procedures four key questions were addressed: how far the school personnel understood the changes in the NSSC; the extent to which they felt they could implement the new curriculum; which factors encouraged/constrained implementation; and the possible effects of change on schools. The findings showed that schools with students of high or medium ability seemed to be more positive in terms of perceptions and receptivity at the initial stage of change, while schools dominated by cohorts of medium or low academic ability students appeared to be resistant to the shift in pedagogic arrangements. Yet all the school principals interviewed expressed their unreserved agreement with the spirit of the new curriculum.
[Copyright © 2009 The Asian Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language.]