Hong Kong went through a complete reform in its higher education curriculum, incorporating opportunities for interdisciplinary learning and holistic competency development. Almost eight years have passed since the reform, yet little is known about the current state of students' holistic competency development across different disciplines. Students' self-evaluation of their capacities in holistic competencies can provide us indirect evidence of student development of these competencies for quality assurance. This study does not only aim to explore how undergraduates in Hong Kong self-assessed their holistic competencies, but also to identify whether there were disciplinary differences. To do so, 2192 undergraduate students from six universities in Hong Kong were surveyed using the validated Students' Perception of Holistic Competencies Questionnaire. Analysis of the quantitative data revealed that students generally rated themselves strongest in Moral Values but weakest in Interpersonal and Leadership Competencies. However, no substantial mean difference across the different disciplines was evident in all six holistic competencies investigated. The overall results indicated that undergraduates in Hong Kong generally believe that they have a moderately high level of capability in holistic competencies. Copyright © 2022 Elsevier.

Developing and maintaining good family relationships is associated with higher levels of wellbeing in children. This may be particularly the case in Hong Kong, where the state of children's mental health is poor, community services are limited, and help-seeking is stigmatized. School counselors, however, are well placed to facilitate parenting programs. Five Hong Kong Chinese parents who had completed a parenting course based on humanistic counseling principles in a school setting were interviewed. The data were analyzed using an interpretive phenomenological approach. Participants developed a repertoire of new skills and experienced a change in perception of their parental role, which they associated with improved child-parent relationships. A small, cohesive, and culturally validating group enabled them to develop and sustain new behaviors consistent with this new conceptualization of parenting. Offering parenting programs in a school setting with Asian parents may be an effective way for school counselors to work with parents. Copyright © 2022 Korean Counseling Association.

Internationalisation has become a worldwide trend in Higher Education in the rapidly changing globalised competitive market. Universities are pressurised to develop internationalised strategy to build legitimacy and reputation within the knowledge-based economy. An isomorphic tendency has been identified of universities mimicking successful models. Among a wide range of strategic tools, the organisational legitimacy theory allows universities to focus on exploiting their resources and capability to position idiosyncratically against competitors. This study applies Stensaker et al.'s legitimacy framework on cognitive, moral and pragmatic perspectives, to investigate how a university adopts an internationalisation strategy as one of the approaches to achieve the overall institutional objectives. Drawing on a case study of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU), the paper explores how the university internationalises in a differentiated position to acquire legitimacy in specific local, regional and global contexts. PolyU strategically emphasises its pragmatic value to connect with its stakeholders in a globalised dimension. The finding broadly supports the notion of comprehensive internationalisation; that internationalisation strategy should be incorporated into other functional strategies to enhance a 'global' experience. The analysis of the strength and weaknesses of PolyU's internationalisation strategies illustrates the challenges non-western universities are facing. This finding, while preliminary, raises the significance of local elements in internationalisation strategies, under the influence of soft power and constraints of organisational capabilities. Copyright © 2022 Springer.

Background: The current study investigates school contextual effects on students' academic self-concept and achievement, that is, peer socioeconomic effect and big-fish-little-pond effect (BFLPE), in four Nordic education systems (i.e., Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden) and selected Chinese education systems (Hong Kong and Beijing-Shanghai-Jiangsu-Zhejiang). The two school contextual effects are studied simultaneously to negate the confounding effects of student and school socioeconomic status (SES), academic self-concept and academic achievement. The study focuses on the following research questions: (1) Are there differences in the between-school variation in school SES composition, academic self-concept and reading literacy across the Nordic and selected Chinese education systems? (2) What are the sizes of peer SES and BFLPE in the Nordic and Chinese education systems? and (3) Are there any differences that can be observed between the 2000 and 2018 data for the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) in the first two questions for Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden and Hong Kong? Methods: Using PISA 2000 and 2018 data from Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Hong Kong and Beijing-Shanghai-Jiangsu-Zhejiang (in 2018 only), a multiple-group two-level structural equation modelling was applied to estimate the school contextual effect. Results: The current study indicated that school academic and socioeconomic segregation intensified over the two decades in most of the studied countries. This finding lays the groundwork for understanding the two schools' contextual effects. School SES compositions positively affected students' academic achievement, while average school achievement negatively affected students' academic self-concept. Given that students' academic and socioeconomic composition has become more homogeneous within schools, the contextual effects were more pronounced. However, variations across diverse education systems were also notable. Conclusions

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to understand the dilemmas facing Hong Kong vice-principals in discharging their roles and to further explore their engagement in informal mentoring as a coping mechanism in the absence of a structured professional development program. Design/methodology/approach – The qualitative study was conducted in the form of in-depth face-to-face, loosely structured individual interviews with ten informants from a variety of personal and school backgrounds, contributing to a set of data that unveiled the basic themes. Findings – Three dilemmas facing Hong Kong vice-principals were identified: juggling administrative work with teaching, standing by management or siding with peer teachers, and forced innovation vs omnipresent conservatism. The findings also suggested that the informants tended toward external resources intentionally with a view to gaining emotional support as well as professional stimulation. They also engaged in informal mentoring, which took the form of observing principals’ behaviors, joining support groups organized by school governing bodies, and enrolling in academic programs offered by universities and/or professional bodies, as a way to resolve the dilemmas. Research limitations/implications – Informal mentoring has been identified as an effective approach for Hong Kong vice-principals to acquire the skills and knowledge needed to overcome workplace challenges and the feelings of loneliness experienced upon changing their role. The findings point to the importance of formalizing mentoring in vice-principal development programs. Originality/value – This study is the first of its kind to explore the impact of informal mentoring on vice-principals in Hong Kong where both dual-career track systems and a structured mentoring programs are missing. Copyright © 2016 Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

The global trend of decentralisation in education empowers schools and teachers to have more autonomy in making instructional decisions. Influenced by the implementation of the new curriculum reform (NCR) and the three-level curriculum management policy in China, teachers supposedly have more authority in curriculum decision-making. Although many studies on curriculum leadership (CL) have been conducted, there is still a scant amount of studies focusing on understanding of teachers’ engagement in CL. This is especially the case in the Chinese setting. This research thus aims to explore principals’ and Teaching Research Group (TRG) leaders’ perceptions of TRG leaders’ engagement in CL and compare their perceptions to explore similarities and differences. TRG leaders are the backbone teachers chosen from the corpus of front-line teachers, therefore, it is critical to investigate their engagement in CL.A qualitative research approach was deployed using interviews, observations, documents and field notes. Interviews were adopted as the main source of data to investigate how 10 principals and 20 TRG leaders understand TRG leaders’ engagement in CL in secondary schools in Taiyuan City, Shanxi Province, China. Content analysis was employed to analyse the data in Nvivo 10.The findings are grouped into five major categories, namely, general understanding of CL; enacting CL at the organisational level; at the classroom level; at the social relationship level; and at the personal level. The study identified that the term CL is rather new to some principals and to most of the TRG leaders. In particular, findings show that TRG leaders’ autonomy in taking initiatives for curriculum matters is limited at all levels although they have been assumed to be taking the role of TRG leader. Importantly, this research developed a conceptual model of TRG leaders’ engagement in CL in the Chinese context which consisted of four dimensions: (1) framing/planning goals at the organisational level

Exploring middle leaders’ attitudes toward religious faith is an important subject for educational researchers. This is the first study to explore the relationships between religious faith, leadership styles, and duties of middle leaders in Catholic Hong Kong primary schools. Although local Catholic school leaders may consider that servant leadership is more compatible with their faith, instructional and servant leadership styles are not mutually exclusive. Leadership practices, roles, and duties are intertwined. Leaders, with or without religious faith, may have a similar impact on their leadership practices, as well as the academic versus non-academic aspects of student outcomes. Therefore, this study examined the tentative variations through the lens of religious faith, the role of leadership, and leadership practices (i.e., servant leadership and instructional leadership). The researcher adopted a case study approach using qualitative data collected from semi-structured interviews of two principals, fourteen middle leaders, and four groups of regular teachers (half novice teachers and half experienced teachers) with or without religious faith in two Catholic primary schools. The results indicated that the words of God had a considerable effect on the middle leaders in Catholic primary schools. They could feel the power of faith, hope, and love in their souls and be thus eager to take the lead to serve others. This study contributes to the literature in clarifying the effect of religion on educational leadership styles and practices. Religious faith acts as a chain to connect the inner serving heart and the outer instructional leadership practices. A synergy of the two leadership styles showed empirically more profound effects and practically more admirable than either leadership styles theoretically implied. However, further investigation on such a synergy is warranted for a sustainable school development for all Catholic or religious schools in Hong Kong. All rights