Education values and beliefs in whole child development underpin the aims of education in the 21st century. Literature shows that teacher's belief in humanistic approach in bringing out the holistic development of a child plays a significant part in fulfilling the education ideology. The study of a group of 35 in-service primary school teachers in Hong Kong in 1999/2000 revealed that although a considerable number of them believed in the affective approach, they had technical difficulties in the implementation owing to the constraint of time and resources, whilst teacher development in understanding humanistic education is essential to facilitate the change.

Recent literature has revealed that middle leaders play an important role in school reforms. School middle leaders are the backbone of the school organization. Without their assistance, it is difficult for principals to face the challenges of the reforms and run their schools efficiently and effectively. The implementation of school-based management in Hong Kong, however, has increased the workload of middle leaders. They need to lead groups of teachers to achieve tasks assigned by principals or decided by school-based councils. There is an increasing need of their leadership in schools. A great demand for providing leadership training for middle leaders has emerged. Since 2002, a group of scholars and principals have initiated and tried out different leadership training projects for primary school middle leaders in Hong Kong. Over 500 middle leaders from about 200 primary schools have been trained. The projects can be categorized into mainly three modes of training, namely, short-term mode, long-term mode and mixed mode. Each mode has its strengths and limitations. The short-term mode (five days) delivered theories and skills in management and leadership through talks and workshops. The long-term mode (12 months) had four stages: preparation, collaborative action learning, try-out and debriefing stages. The mixed mode carried key elements of the short-term mode and the long-term mode. This article reports the initiation and implementation of these projects. The structural and conceptual frameworks of the modes will be highlighted. A comparison of the three modes in terms of aims, contents, learning modes, lengths of time, resources will be provided. Results of the evaluation of the projects will be analyzed. The effectiveness of the three modes of middle leader training will be discussed and suggestions will be made.

Present day education requires professional expertise of teachers in facilitating modern learning, which enables students to cope with life changes brought forth by a learning society in the new era to come. Reform in school, which liberates teachers from bureaucratic practices and creates a new professional work culture is inevitable. Hong Kong schools now undergo quality school education reforms where organisational and school based management innovations are the focus of reform changes. The reform aims, among others, at enhancing professional involvement of teachers in school administration and curriculum for the sake of fostering the lifelong learning among students, a paradigm shift of learning in the learning society in the forthcoming Y2K. Observations however reveal that the profeesional role of Hong Kong school teachers does not change much as expected in recent policy reform papers on school education.

Data collected for accountability purposes often involve nested or hierarchical data structure. For instance, in the development of a value-added indicator system, achievement data are collected at the student-level but inferences are to be made at the school and system levels. Here, students are nested within classes, classes are nested within schools, and schools within regions. Since the late 1980s multilevel modelling has been used as a standard approach to handle such nested data structure. Research has shown that failure to apply multilevel models to nested data structure leads to wrong statistical inferences. Furthermore, much valuable information may be lost if the nested data structure is not modelled explicitly. In the last twenty years, the application of multilevel modelling has been extended to areas other than the handling of nested data structure. Multilevel modelling can now be applied for effective analysis of complicated data structures, including longitudinal data (e.g. growth trajectory), multivariate data (e.g. achievement in the four skills in the learning of English), discrete outcome data (e.g. students’ choice of entry to universities versus work), multiple membership data (e.g. the modelling of students’ mobility across schools in the estimation of the value added by schools to academic achievement), and cross-classified data structure (e.g. secondary schools taking students from a number of ‘feeder’ primary schools). The presentation will provide a non-technical introduction to multilevel modelling. Examples will be drawn from the value-added indicator system of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, and research on self-directed learning using the latest version of the MlwiN software package (Goldstein, 2003). Strengths and weaknesses of multilevel modelling will be discussed in the analyses of these real data.

Since the political handover in 1997, there has been a chain of reform initiatives aiming at enhancing the quality of educational services in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. Such episodes include the issuing of a report on quality school education measures, the promulgation of a new set of education aims and the impending education reform to bring forth life-long learning. Together these would substantially transform the landscape of education in Hong Kong. This paper aims at reviewing the changing lanscape of Hong Kong's education. Particularly, the paper would explore the following: 1) the degree of continuity and change as represented in the current development 2) the paradigm shift in education especially with respect to the meaning of learning, the role of teachers and schools and the sort of personality we want to build up for the future. At the end, the paper will also point out the potential risks we need to guard against in this change period.