School–Family–Community Partnership in Hong Kong – Perspectives and Challenges

This paper reviews the school–family partnership in Hong Kong in the past decade. The typology of Epsteins six types of partnership is adopted as the analytical framework. The results show that there has been an increase in shared experience in school education among various stakeholders. Schools have become more convinced that they have a role to play in various types of partnership. Home–school contacts have become more informal and two-way. Teachers have been changing their views of how capable are parents in supporting the school. However, the increase in communication does not seem to focus on childrens learning. The relationship of the school-sponsoring bodies and the Government was hampered in the exercise of widening the governance structure. Hong Kong parents mainly serve as supporters of their children at home in the past. They have now also become customers, and to some extent learners, volunteers and managers in school education.     

School leadership and teachers’ pedagogical orientations in Hong Kong: A comparative perspective

As a secondary analysis of SITES 2006, this paper aims to explore the school leadership factors that potentially affect teachers’ pedagogical orientations. The exploration is guided by four questions: (1) How do we describe school leadership factors? (2) What are the principals’ perceptions about pedagogy and ICT use? (3) What are the teachers’ perceptions about pedagogical orientations? and (4) How does the school leadership associate with teachers’ pedagogical orientations? Eight school leadership constructs were identified, which cover four areas: learning goals, priority for resource allocation, types of assessment, and priority of competencies for school leadership to acquire. The findings also indicate a gap between principals’ and teachers’ perceptions on pedagogy and ICT use in Hong Kong.     

Advancing Equity-Based School Leadership: The Importance of Family–School Relationships

The Urban Review - This narrative inquiry study presents the stories of five urban public school principals who continually enact and engage in praxis around school/family engagement as their...     

School‐based curriculum development: the Hong Kong experience

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this article is to analyse the nature of the School‐based Curriculum Project Scheme (SBCPS), which was introduced into the Hong Kong education system in 1988. The aims of the scheme were to promote school‐based curriculum development (SBCD) designed to meet the learning needs of pupils and to encourage teachers to solve curriculum problems. Overall, the article provides insights into the characteristics of the SBCPS which was introduced into a highly centralized context and was initiated through a highly centralized mechanism, and describes how it was implemented into Hong Kong schools. This underlines the need both to view curriculum policies critically and to recognize the impact that the prevailing culture in schools has on attempts at curriculum innovations.     

Lessons learned? School leadership and curriculum reform in Hong Kong

This paper examines the processes of implementing curriculum reform in schools. Specifically, it investigates how schools learn lessons from previous experiences of reform and apply them when challenged by new reforms. The context for this study is Hong Kong's New Secondary School Curriculum (NSSC), with particular reference to the subject of English Language. Research into the enactment of change over the last decade tells a story of weak leadership and management by policy makers, schools leaders and teachers. Key areas of weakness – poor management of change by school leaders, teachers' lack of understanding of the changes, and weak teacher collaboration – were pinpointed as reasons for the dismal results of curriculum change. This study investigates whether these areas of weakness were also in the implementation of the NSSC. Data collection comprised semi-structured interviews in nine secondary schools. The study reveals that lessons had been learnt from the previous experiences of implementing reform, and suggests that the capacity of schools to learn from a historical perspective should be taken into account in curriculum planning.     

The pentagonal implicit theory of giftedness revisited: A cross‐validation in Hong Kong

This article addresses the cross‐cultural generalization of the pentagonal implicit theory of giftedness (Sternberg & Zhang, 1995) as well as differential expectations regarding excellence for girls versus boys. First, we used an instrument based on the pentagonal theory with a sample of in‐service and pre‐service teachers at the University of Hong Kong. Second, we administered a questionnaire designed to assess conceptions of “excellence,” one of the attributes for giftedness described in the pentagonal model, to a different sample of in‐service and pre‐service teachers at the same university. We found a good fit of the pentagonal model to the data collected, paralleling results obtained in the U.S. We also found, however, that in Hong Kong, however, unlike in the U.S., participants had higher expectations of excellence for boys than for girls. These outcomes have implications for identification, instruction, and programming for the gifted.     

The NEST–NNEST Divide and Teacher Identity Construction in Hong Kong Schools

Despite widespread acknowledgement of the contribution of nonnative English-speaking teachers (NNESTs) to teaching English as an international language, the privileging of native English-speaking teachers (NESTs) and native-speaker competency, and concomitant marginalization of NNESTs, continues in many countries. To investigate and problematize the role the NEST-NNEST dichotomy plays in teachers’ professional identity construction, this article explores the ways in which multiple discourses interact to enable and constrain opportunities for such construction through in-depth interviews with teachers in Hong Kong. It raises questions about the failure of previous investigations to adequately problematize discourses that establish and support divisions between Hong Kong teachers and also questions the assumption that such divisions are necessarily associated with perceptions of marginalization among those positioned as NNESTs. This article presents suggestions for contesting discourses that establish and support hierarchical relations between teachers and discusses the implications for future research.     

A shift in Hong Kong principals ’ leadership conceptions

Schools in Hong Kong are now undergoing many educational reforms. With so many ideas and demanding tasks ahead, principals have been expected to bear the responsibility for implementing change. In 1991, the leadership of Hong Kong principals was described as “dictatorial” in a government document, which painted a bleak picture of the leadership being offered by Hong Kong principals at that time. However, this recent study showed that teachers perceived that principals as exerting some degree of transformational leadership in schools. All the eight dimensions of the leadership were above the mid-point on the rating scale. It seems that there is a shift in Hong Kong primary school principals leadership conceptions. This paper describes the extent to which teachers perceived their principal ’s to be exercising transformational leadership. Issues concerning principal development are discussed.     

The China‐Hong Kong Connection: A Key to Internationalising Chinese Universities

Hong Kong has always served as an undisputed gateway to China. As one of the world's best established centres of information and a well‐reputed bridge between the East and the West, it has helped mainland universities to have access to first class scholars and their academic work, and therefore, has been one of the most prominent geographical foci of the internationalisation of Chinese universities. This article demonstrates that by playing the role as the “beach‐head” of China's higher education internationalisation, Hong Kong universities will provide crucial benefits to their counterparts in the Chinese mainland, as well as maintaining their own continued vigour.

This article reports findings from a survey at 17 universities in Guangzhou in 1998, involving data from interviews and questionnaires. It is also based on long‐standing personal working experience at a university in Guangdong, and on primary as well as secondary sources of information about the current situation in China. At the end, it discusses some strategies that might be employed to effectively facilitate further improvement of internationalisation of higher education in Hong Kong and the mainland.     

Empowerment or impediment? School governance in the school-based management era in Hong Kong

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.     

The measurement of teacher efficacy: Hong Kong primary in‐service teachers

This study sought to measure general teacher efficacy levels of in‐service primary teachers in Hong Kong. Participants included 725 Hong Kong in‐service teachers, who were invited to take part in the study. These in‐service teachers came from 28 different primary schools ranging from government, aided, private and direct subsidy schools. The Chinese version of the 12‐item Teachers' Sense of Efficacy (C‐TSE) Scale was applied to investigate the efficacy of the teachers. A factor analysis of these 12 items when male and female datasets were combined led to the extraction of only one factor. But separation of the two datasets led to the extraction of different factor analysis models. This could reflect the different perceptions that male and female teachers had about the formation of teacher efficacy. Overall, this study showed that female teachers were significantly more efficacious than male teachers. Moreover, years of teaching experience showed a weak but significant correlation to levels of general teacher efficacy. Interestingly, educational levels did not have a significant effect on the efficacy of this group of in‐service primary teachers. Overall, the C‐TSE was found to be a valid and reliable scale for measuring the efficacy levels of this particular group of in‐service primary teachers in Hong Kong.     

Modelling the Sociocultural Contexts of Science Education: The Teachers’ Perspective

A growing body of research argues that teachers’ beliefs and practices should be studied within the sociocultural contexts of their work because the relationship between their beliefs and practices is both complex and context-dependent. There is a need for further research in this area in understudied contexts such as developing countries, in order to promote effective education in schools and the professional development of teachers. This paper argues that if this ‘black box’ of sociocultural contexts in which science teachers are embedded is better understood, it may be possible to identify specific aspects of these contexts related to educational organizations that act as either supports or barriers to pedagogical reform or to implementing innovations in science education. Consequently, the main purpose of this study is to explore the sociocultural contexts of ten Egyptian science teachers and to what extent these sociocultural contexts help in understanding teachers’ pedagogical beliefs and practices. This paper, by utilizing a multi-grounded theory approach and qualitative methods, reveals a variety of sociocultural contexts that are related to teachers’ pedagogical beliefs and practices.     

The politics of collaboration: discourse,identities, and power in a school–university partnership in Hong Kong

This article reports on how teacher educators from a university, acting as facilitators, supported teachers in conducting a school-based action research project as a practice of professional development in the context of reform in language assessment in Hong Kong. In particular, the article problematises how the facilitators and teachers negotiated and managed identities whilst being engaged in a collaborative action research project. Data were collected from semi-structured interviews. Critical discourse analysis was used to examine the textual data. A key finding was that identities were neither fixed nor finite in the context of collaboration, but were negotiated within and against a range of contextually salient discourses. A major contribution of the article lies in its examination of the complexities of negotiating identities when educators from two different institutional cultures collaborate. The article suggests that collaboration has to be understood within broader sociocultural contexts to identify the interplay of forces that shape relations, identities, and practices constructed.     

The Introduction of English‐language Education in Early Colonial Hong Kong

This article examines the attitudes of the colonial and metropolitan governments towards the promotion of English‐language education on Hong Kong Island between 1842 and 1860. The study, which draws on a range of unpublished primary sources, was conducted in response to Whitehead’s recent call for detailed case studies of colonial education policies. This article explores, within the context of Hong Kong, a centrally important aspect of education in the Empire, and one that has been the subject of surprisingly little archival research: British policies towards the teaching and learning of English as a second language. The article begins by analysing the political, economic and demographic forces that influenced the study and use of English in Hong Kong during the 1840s and 1850s, and then moves on to examine language policies and practices in the colony’s mission schools, with a particular focus on the Morrison Education Society School, the first Western school to be established on the Island after the British occupation. The final section analyses the introduction of English teaching in the government vernacular schools in the early 1850s.     

Education Reform in Hong Kong: The “Through-Road” Model and its Societal Consequences

Although Hong Kong’s education system has long been criticized as lacking in creativity and over-emphasising rote learning, on the whole it has served Hong Kong well in the past years, breeding outstanding business, academic and political leaders who continue to maintain Hong Kong’s competitive edge. The traditional elite schools have played a crucial role in the process. The education reform, which is still on-going, aims to overhaul the entire system by introducing the “through-road” model. To accomplish this, some mechanisms need to be changed. J.P. Farrell’s concepts of equality and equity, C.W. Mills’ concept of elitism, and P. Bourdieu and J. Coleman’s concepts of cultural and social capital will be applied to analyse the consequences of the reform. The paper argues that the education reform may be well-intentioned in eliminating some elements of inequality and inequity in education, but that this comes at the expense of Hong Kong’s cultural and social capital and leads to the development of new forms of inequality.     

Education Reform in Hong Kong: The “Through-Road” Model and its Societal Consequences

Although Hong Kong’s education system has long been criticized as lacking in creativity and over-emphasising rote learning, on the whole it has served Hong Kong well in the past years, breeding outstanding business, academic and political leaders who continue to maintain Hong Kong’s competitive edge. The traditional elite schools have played a crucial role in the process. The education reform, which is still on-going, aims to overhaul the entire system by introducing the “through-road” model. To accomplish this, some mechanisms need to be changed. J.P. Farrell’s concepts of equality and equity, C.W. Mills’ concept of elitism, and P. Bourdieu and J. Coleman’s concepts of cultural and social capital will be applied to analyse the consequences of the reform. The paper argues that the education reform may be well-intentioned in eliminating some elements of inequality and inequity in education, but that this comes at the expense of Hong Kong’s cultural and social capital and leads to the development of new forms of inequality.     

The effectiveness of private tutoring: students’ perceptions in comparison with mainstream schooling in Hong Kong

This paper examines Hong Kong students’ perceptions on the effectiveness of private supplementary tutoring relative to mainstream schooling. Drawing on survey and interview data, it shows that large proportions of secondary school students receive private tutoring. Students generally perceive private tutoring and private tutors to be more effective in the provision of examination support compared with mainstream schooling and teachers. However, perceptions vary according to students’ self-reported academic levels and motives for taking private tutoring. The operations of the parallel sector of private tutoring have significant implications for the nature of schooling and therefore need to be considered by teachers and school administrators. The Hong Kong data contribute to the international analysis of private tutoring and add a significant component to the wider conceptual literature.