Search

This article is one of a series of papers generated from the Curriculum Reform study in Hong Kong with the purpose of understanding the impact of government’s role in the change process of the reform. This paper specifically examines the 17 government initiatives in the Curriculum Reform in terms of their adoption percentages of schools from before 2000 to 2006–7. These initiatives can be regarded as ‘soft’ measures of the Government, supplementing the hard policies on the Curriculum Reform. The adoption of these initiatives in schools reflects the extent of implementation of reform items and therefore should be crucial to the success of the Curriculum Reform. The study illustrates the impact of the government on the phase of adoption in the change process. The findings suggested that whereas the government initially played an important role in adoption of these initiatives it was not able to raise the adoption percentages further towards the end of the study. Other features of adoption and their impacts on policy and change are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to identify leadership practices and qualities of school teachers as they engaged in effecting change initiated by a curriculum reform in Hong Kong. Based on interview data of teachers from nine schools, this paper shows how teacher leadership manifested itself in schools. Three approaches to teacher leadership were identified, each delineating how teacher leaders approached the implementation task – as a compliance exercise, an adaptive exercise, or as a capacity building exercise. This paper confirms that different levels of teacher–leader engagement in professional enquiries constitute different teacher leadership practices, which have differential impacts on teaching and learning practices and the effectiveness of school improvement efforts. Implications for developing teacher leadership in schools are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies on school leadership in Hong Kong have mainly focused on primary and secondary schools, with only a handful of studies looking at leadership in early childhood education. This paper aims to report the findings of a study on strategic leadership in Hong Kong's kindergartens. It discusses the challenges that Hong Kong kindergarten leaders are facing and the need for practising strategic leadership. It then reports the findings of practices valued by the leaders of Hong Kong kindergartens. The findings of this study reveal, that apart from the abilities to exercise sound planning and management in school, leaders' reflective, flexible and systems thinking and their willingness in continuous professional and network development are crucial to leading today's kindergartens. This study also indicates that leaders' contextual intelligence is important for exercising strategic leadership. The significance of this study lies in its contribution to the investigation of leadership practices in early childhood education, the need to further explore how well kindergarten leaders are practising strategic leadership and the implications for the development of principal preparation programmes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study highlights the role of educators in the resistance to Hong Kong's National Security Education (NSE) amidst waves of political repression in the wake of the anti-extradition movement of 2019–2020. Education reforms, teacher training and student assessment used to cultivate students' creativity, critical thinking and independent thinking skills. NSE, which emphasises China's perspective of knowledge construction, has contradicted long-standing pedagogies of teaching and learning. The research questions are: How do politically liberal educators navigate these changes? Do they conform and/or resist? Based on the study of social media and interviews with 22 politically liberal former and current teachers, school librarians, educators in public organisations and professors of teacher training programmes, I find that beneath the public transcripts of compliance in schools, there is a repertoire of 'winning quietly' among educators in Hong Kong by training students' 'civil society competence' using less politically sensitive issues, working perfunctorily on NSE-related tasks, using metaphors, jokes and prayers to convey hidden messages, and allowing students to engage in resistance. Classrooms and private online groups remain the third space for atomised resistance. Outside Hong Kong, educators openly counter the ideological influence under NSE both individually and collectively, enabling an alternative to NSE that can reach students in Hong Kong. This study illuminates that authoritarian governments never fully control the stage, and it is too soon to tell whether their attempts to create obedient citizens will prevail. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hong Kong's distinct system, as a Special Administrative Region within the People's Republic of China, makes it an interesting case when examining the notion of citizenship, and how it shapes and is shaped by the education system. This article examines the existing literature at this important point in the territory's development. This review contains important lessons not only for the study of citizenship in Hong Kong, but also for how regional identity and citizenship can be shaped by the historical, social, and political forces. Finally, this article will present some of the gaps, which have been identified by scholars in the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

THE TRANSITION FROM HOME to early childhood education can be stressful for both children and parents. How parents cope with this potentially stressful event affects both the children’s adaptation and the parents’ lives during the preschooler stage of the family lifecycle. This paper examines how parents respond to their children’s adjustment difficulties, particularly a reluctance to attend school, by examining the coping strategies of 29 Hong Kong parents. The parents expressed different kinds of negative emotions regarding their children’s reluctance to go to school due to various adjustment difficulties. Parents’ coping strategies can be classified as planful coping, seeking social support, accepting responsibilities, distancing, self-controlling and positive reappraisal according to Folkman and Lazarus’s Ways of Coping (WOC) framework. The implications of these strategies for how early childhood professionals can support parents are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an effort to enhance the quality of teachers and teaching, and to lead internal curriculum development in primary schools, the Hong Kong Education Bureau created a new curriculum leader post entitled primary school master/mistress (curriculum development) or PSMCD for short. The main purpose of the study was to examine the perceptions of these curriculum leaders on their competence in leading the primary school reform. Using a stratified random sampling technique, 125 curriculum leaders were chosen to participate in the current study. Survey questionnaire and semi-structured interviews were conducted. The findings of the study suggest that PSMCDs in general supported the goals and the rationale of the reform. In addition, they also agreed that moderate progress had been made in implementing the curriculum reform in their school. Though progress had been made in many areas, our findings have highlighted several key challenges that these PSMCDs faced in performing their roles. These challenges include heavy workload, learner diversity in the classrooms, the use of diversified modes for assessment, and having too many reforms at the same time. Implications and recommendations are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Hong Kong education system is at a crucial point in its trajectory, and changes to public education also reflect broader social, economic and political changes within Hong Kong and globally. Since the 1997 handover of Hong Kong from British control to China, Hong Kong has struggled to develop its own identity under the One Country, Two Systems premise. One of the compulsory courses in the Hong Kong curriculum known as liberal studies, introduced in 2009, provided a useful departure point for exploring many social tensions occurring in Hong Kong. Exploring education reform through liberal studies explains how these social tensions manifest within education, and how these educational tensions manifest within the broader society. Contemporary trends in Hong Kong's education were examined, including the public exams, the proliferation of shadow education and the expansion of self-financed tertiary education options for Hong Kong students. Tensions in Hong Kong are further explained through the notions of post-colonialism. The liberal studies debate mirror aspects of the broader economic, political, and social tensions as they relate to Hong Kong youth, and Hong Kong society at-large, and this article endeavors to explore these tensions through the lens of liberal studies as it relates to education discourse in Hong Kong. Through a combination of literature review from academic and mainstream sources, the article establishes the groundwork for further empirical work in order to gain a more in-depth understanding of the issues and tensions in Hong Kong. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study aims to map the life satisfaction of adolescents from ethnic minority/immigrant backgrounds in schools with high concentrations of co-ethnic peers by comparing them with their mainstream counterparts in Hong Kong. The life satisfaction of 1,522 students was measured by the validated Multidimensional Students’ Life Satisfaction Scale. Tests of invariance were conducted followed by latent mean analysis. In contrast to the public debates on the undesirability of co-ethnic education, the findings do not suggest negative associations between the ethnic minority or immigrant status of these students and their self-appraised global and specific life satisfaction in school and with friends. This study confirms that a school factor exists and that there are significant differences in the life satisfaction of the student groups under review. Educating students in schools with high concentrations of co-ethnic peers appears to benefit South Asians but not mainland Chinese immigrant students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The majority of Western psychotherapies are known and practiced in Hong Kong, while psychoanalysis still has little resonance. A recent study finds that psychoanalysis is perceived neither as ineffective nor as necessarily in conflict with Hong Kong Chinese values. Nevertheless, Hong Kong Chinese culture influences how psychoanalysis is received and understood, when compared to Mainland China and Taiwan. It is argued that a better reception in the latter two was possible because of different social and historical backgrounds, different clinical backgrounds of those who receive training, and the more active role of Western psychoanalysts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a principal’s story of social justice practice in a Hong Kong primary school. The narration accounts for the notion of social justice through his practice in various ways. Studying in a ‘rooftop’ primary school located in a public housing area in Hong Kong was the principal’s salient memory of his first year of schooling in times of limited resources. Perhaps because of a change in education policy, he was subsequently transferred to a better school sponsored by a charitable organization under the subsidy scheme of the then colonial government. As a recipient, he found a great contrast between the two schools in terms of teaching and learning resources and school environments. The principal’s personal educational experiences and teachers’ educational ideology sowed the seeds of social justice in his mind. Thirty-six years later, he returned to serve his old primary school as a contributor to social justice for the students and the community in which the school is located. The story suggests how the principal made sense of social justice through his practice. It reflects the values of social justice which benefit not only students and teachers but also the community with equity and equality in education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses a study which evaluated the efficacy of a FamilyLink Education Programme (FLEP) in Hong Kong, China, Taipei, Taiwan and Bangkok, Thailand in reducing subjective burdens and empowering the participants. A significant programme impact over time intervals for all sites used in the study was shown in the mixed analysis of variance procedures. It also found that FLEP was effective in reducing worry and displeasure, as well as in improving intra-psychic strain.

Premised on the conception of teacher knowledge as situated and the agency of the teacher in perceiving and exploiting “situated possibilities” in the classroom, this article argues that it is important for teachers to construct local understanding of their work embedded in the local cultural traditions and to explore possibilities for student learning in the context of constraints. The authors report on an investigation of the pedagogical strategies developed by two L2 writing teachers in Hong Kong, which showed that these strategies emerged as the teachers perceived and responded to situated possibilities for learning and that the strategies were rooted in the cultural traditions of the learners as well as the micro-cultures of the classroom. The authors suggest that teacher education programs should provide ample opportunities for teachers to gain a deep understanding of local cultures and to explore opportunities for student learning that build on such cultural traditions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines the economic effect of education in terms of its impact on the earnings of workers in an information technology (IT)-diffusing economy, based on data from Hong Kong's 2006 by- census and survey on the usage and penetration of IT in industries. Education enhances the productivity of workers and increases their lifetime incomes. However, technological advances, if deskilling, may exert an adverse effect on workers' earnings. The analysis of the economic effect of education is complicated by the increasing application of technologies in the workplace. This study shows that the earnings effect of education and the interaction between education and IT penetration in the workplace are positive and significant, whereas IT by itself brings about a significant negative earnings effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents something of the experience of teaching and studying web-based Language and Style at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, concentrating mainly on the 2004-5 running of the course, which was taught in a blended traditional + web format. It concentrates on this experience and only briefly presents some degree of the socio-linguistic and cultural context to make the experience accessible for those not familiar with Hong Kong. Some quantitative data are given and are supplemented by qualitative discussion of student comments. A particularly important qualitative resource was the weekly journals kept by the students. The main conclusion to be drawn is that the students want to retain the major features of the traditional lecture and tutorial approach to teaching, but value having this supplemented with the interactive dimension of the web-based approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a study that examined the epistemological beliefs and study approaches adopted by a group of teacher education students in Hong Kong, China. Characteristics of the epistemological beliefs and study approaches of the students; Differences in the epistemological beliefs and study approaches of the students in terms of age, gender and elective groups; Relationship of the epistemological beliefs and study approaches of the students.

Focuses on the changes in the management initiatives in educational system of Hong Kong, China between 1990 and 1995. Difficulties in reforming education policy in the region; Quality issues emerging from the history and culture of the school systems; Effects of public accountability and impending transition from British to Chinese sovereignty on the educational system.