Dr James KO (高裕安)

EdUHK aims to strengthen its GBA position and influence to promote a stronger two-way understanding of education developments in Hong Kong and Mainland China both for policy makers and schools themselves. It therefore seeks worthwhile partnerships which can inform policy and benefit school leaders and groups of schools across the GBA. As Hong Kong’s premier education provider, EdUHK has considerable potential to initiate and contribute to policy and school improvement projects in the area and nurture greater mutual understanding between systems. This study proposes to support these intentions.

The primary aim of this study is to investigate the status quo of exchange and collaboration structures across schools in GBA and collect insights and recommendations from key stakeholders about how to grow and enhance successful cross-school partnerships, particularly between Hong Kong and Shenzhen schools. It is designed essentially as a policy study that will provide evidence-informed policy recommendations and bottom-up improvement strategies worthy of scaling up. Evidence and data collected through the project will be analysed and used as a policy, theoretical and empirical foundation for a large-scale research project focusing on building a symbiotic school improvement and leadership model in GBA.

Objectives

The study has five objectives:
1. To build a foundational understanding of the status quo of exchange and collaborative activities across schools in GBA.
2. To solicit ideas and opinions from key stakeholders in Hong Kong and Shenzhen about the purpose, shape and structure the future school learning partnerships should take. With an emphasis on nurturing cross-school improvement and leadership structures the partnerships can increase cross-system understanding and professionally benefit all parties.
3. To form a network and working team comprised of a range of influential partners to involve in bids for large-scale research projects based on the findings of this project. Partners include international and Mainland researchers, HKEDB policymakers, Shenzhen Education Bureau officials, and outstanding, connected school principals from both sides of the border. This team will be utilised to intentionally (directly and indirectly) influence the policy making process in Hong Kong and Shenzhen.
4. To construct a platform that gathers scholars, policymakers, and school leaders to exchange their views on initiatives and models needed to promote and actualise real collaboration and networked learning communities between schools and school leaders in GBA.
5. To synthesise effective strategies based on feedback about how to facilitate integration and collaboration of schools across the border and investigate the structural, political, and school conditions and leadership capacity necessary for cross-border schools to form into a learning community. Based on these findings, a policy report, including recommendations, will be compiled and shared with policymakers. The policy report will include criteria for forming cross-school learning clusters across the GBA clusters, a process for groups to follow, the purpose and aims of the learning clusters, their possible learning foci, required resources, an evaluation framework, principals’ responsibilities, and educational (schools and school system) benefits.

Project Start Year: 2022, Principal Investigator(s): WALKER, Allan David 汪雅量, QIAN, Haiyan 錢海燕 (KO, Yue On James 高裕安 as Co-Investigator)

This study seeks to characterise how teachers and schools manage to tackle contextual challenges professionally by examining a novel theoretical model with nine propositions:

1) Exceptional teachers and schools succeed in their approach to overcome contextual complexity.
2) Quality leadership, teacher trust and commitment reduce goal conflicts in school governance and the uncertainty in professional learning.
3) Teacher learning networks and distributed leadership promote collective capacities in enacting school policies and initiatives.
4) When teachers and schools minimise risk aversions, they will exploit existing strengths and explore opportunities to innovate.
5) Resilience fluctuates when teachers and the school have incompatible goal-conflicts, but hybrid teacher leadership increases the chances of outstanding professional growth.
6) Resilience is a collective professional quality of teachers in schools succeeded in challenging contexts.
7) Professional growth rises robustly if personal and organisational drivers are compatible.
8) Gradual school changes rely on factors applicable to all schools, but profound and radical changes require charismatic figures and critical incidents to make things happen.
9) Wiser individual and collective professional choices result in vigorous professional identities.
This study will employ a mixed-method, two-part design to understand professional growth and trajectories. General teacher/principal profiles will be developed first by latent class analysis from an online territory-wide survey of 400-500 teachers and 80- 100 principals. Sixty case studies will be created from semi-structured interviews of teachers/principals purposively selected from the online survey, recipients of the annual Chief Executive Teaching Excellence Award, and recommendations of professional associations of practitioners. Additional case studies of four schools with recognised
exceptional professional capacities in overcoming adversities will be b

Project Start Year: 2021, Principal Investigator(s): KO, Yue On James 高裕安

This pilot project is intended to test a new developmental model of reflective teaching and provide rare empirical evidence on the conducive effects of reflective practice training and collaborative learning of preservice teachers on their efficacy to teaching, growing depth of reflection, and micro teaching performance. We have designed a quasi experiment that will develop non-subject-based pedagogical knowledge and reflective training as well as conditions that require participants to collaborate and share prior knowledge with their local and foreign peers in lesson planning and peer observation of their micro teaching skills. We trust that our designed online training programme will address the need for teacher education institutes to offer self-accessed training to enhance reflection, collaborative learning, and micro teaching skills. The measures we will include both qualitative and quantitative evidence to evaluate the effects of the training programme and the collaborations of preservice teachers. Cultural influences on Chinese and Korean participants are anticipated, but their specific influences are to be explored.

Project Start Year: 2021, Principal Investigator(s): KO, Yue On James 高裕安

This pilot project is intended to test a new developmental model of reflective teaching and provide rare empirical evidence on the conducive effects of reflective practice training and collaborative learning of preservice teachers on their efficacy to teaching, growing depth of reflection, and micro teaching performance. We have designed a quasi experiment that will develop non-subject-based pedagogical knowledge and reflective training as well as conditions that require participants to collaborate and share prior knowledge with their local and foreign peers in lesson planning and peer observation of their micro teaching skills. We trust that our designed online training programme will address the need for teacher education institutes to offer self-accessed training to enhance reflection, collaborative learning, and micro teaching skills. The measures we will include both qualitative and quantitative evidence to evaluate the effects of the training programme and the collaborations of preservice teachers. Cultural influences on Chinese and Korean participants are anticipated, but their specific influences are to be explored.
Project Start Year: 2021, Principal Investigator(s): KO, Yue On James 高裕安

Using a two-phase research design, the project team attempts to address three questions: (1) what are the prevalent types of teacher innovation in Hong Kong? (2) how does teacher innovation emerge in schools, and (3) under which conditions are schools more conductive to teacher innovation?

This project is expected to generate at least two contributions. First, this project will enable a timely documentation of teacher innovative practices in Hong Kong, which facilitates a more nuanced understanding of the educational achievements as well as challenges in the society. Second, establishing a theoretical model that predicts teacher innovation will lay a useful foundation for future studies on teacher innovation in Hong Kong and elsewhere.

Project Start Year: 2020, Principal Investigator(s): LU, Jiafang 陸佳芳 (KO, Yue On James 高裕安 as Co-Investigator)

This knowledge transfer project have three objectives:
1) To develop an online platform to collect classroom observation data from our developed mobile
applications and provide teachers and schools immediate feedback
2) To provide online forums for practitioners to share their experiences in classroom observation to
promote virtual communities of practice.
3) To facilitate self-evaluation and peer observation in schools

We will upgrade two existing mobile applications developed in previous projects for classroom observation and develop an online platform that can collect classroom observation data from the clients and provide immediate feedback.
We will conduct introductory seminars. In these seminars, we will introduce the background, ethics, implementation and feedback mechanism of effective classroom observation to leaders of learning of primary and secondary schools. We will discuss the research findings on teacher effectiveness in local and international research and demonstrate how they can use our existing mobile applications and input lesson observation data to a to-be-developed e-platform to obtain immediate feedback on the teacher effectiveness of their inputted data. Schools participating in these seminars will have the priority to join subsequent onsite workshops.
We will provide on-site support on lesson observations to schools which are interested in a half-day professional development workshop to all their teachers at their schools. The subject teachers will be trained to use our mobile applications to facilitate their lesson observations.

Project Start Year: 2019, Principal Investigator(s): KO, Yue On James 高裕安

In this project, we explore the phenomena of the emergence of the use of artificial intelligence in teaching and learning in teacher education. It investigates the educational implications of emerging technologies on the way students learn and how teacher-education institutions teach and develop new pedagogies for future digital technologies. Recent technological advancements and the increasing speed of adopting new technologies in higher teacher education are explored in order to predict the future nature of higher teacher education in a world where artificial intelligence is part of the fabric of our universities. We pinpoint some challenges for institutions of higher teacher education and student learning in the adoption of these technologies for teaching, learning, student support, and administration and explore further directions for research.
The rise of AI makes it impossible to ignore a serious debate about its future role of teaching and learning in higher education and what type of choices universities will make in regard to this issue. The current use of technological solutions such as ‘learning management systems’ or effective or inspiring teacher behaviours for teaching and promoting student engagement and self-directed learning: corporate ventures or institutions of higher education? The rise of tech lords and the quasi-monopoly of few tech giants also come with questions regarding the importance of privacy and the possibility of an expert system that can provide feedback to teachers and learners regarding teaching and learning in future. These issues deserve special attention as universities should include this set of risks when thinking about a sustainable future. In this study, we intend to apply cutting edge AI techniques to video data of K-12 classes, and derive valuable information for educational purposes.
After completing this project, we expect to compare algorithms to evaluate effective and inspiring teaching in teachers that exerts different

Project Start Year: 2019, Principal Investigator(s): KO, Yue On James 高裕安

Despite abundant research on early childhood education, the features and results of effective teaching in early childhood education are inconclusive. This study will adopt an educational effectiveness framework to explore factors at the classroom, school and system levels, but with a focus on the classroom. Situating the research in two very different social and cultural contexts, Hong Kong with a common teacher-directed, academic-focused pedagogy and Finland with a standard child-initiated, play-based pedagogy, this study aims to examine the impact of effective teaching of contrastive pedagogical practices on children’s different learning outcomes (e.g., pre-academic learning vs self-regulation). As teaching effects on children are gradual, without the knowledge of children learning from their entry to exit at kindergartens, understanding how different varied teaching qualities and paths can affect learning outcomes is impossible.
We theorise that teacher-child interaction quality, rather than specific pedagogy, benefits children more. Pedagogies have differential benefits on different specific learning outcomes. Thus, in Finland, there will be more plays than instructions to support socialisation with peers, freer than teacher-guided plays to promote self-exploration and more one-to-one than one-to-many teacher-child interactions to obtain individualised feedback from teachers. All these might help Finnish children to develop stronger self-regulation, self-awareness and better self-care. In contrast, if Hong Kong teachers are supportive and able to make reading and counting activities more closely connected to the primary school curriculum with unambiguous seatwork set with a cognitive challenge that children find interesting, then children are prepared better for primary education.
This mixed-method study will characterise the impact of effective teaching on 808 children and 444 teachers from 74 kindergartens in Hong Kong and Finland.

Project Start Year: 2019, Principal Investigator(s): KO, Yue On James 高裕安

This project a strategic collaboration with a UN Global Participant serving Africa and India to tackle the global education crisis in a sustainable and scalable way. As a data and evidence-driven enterprise, Bridge is launching an early evaluation of the initial effects on English language learning in an inland province of China. This will be a preliminary estimate, following a very brief instructional period. The data is expected to help Bridge better understand how well their methods are working in the disadvantaged inland Chinese province as they have succeeded to improve learning for other underserved communities in Africa and South Asia. The investigators also expect to learn whether their proprietary instructional impact is consistent across grades and schools.

Project Start Year: 2018, Principal Investigator(s): KO, Yue On James 高裕安

Situated in a context with competitive pre-university programmes in China, this action research project aims to investigate the potential contributions of professional learning community (PLC), defined as teachers who teach different curricula in the same school grouped together to learn from each other through regular professional dialogues, resource exchanges, and collaborative work (Hord, 1997). PLC is expected to promote collegiality, teaching performance, and student learning outcome. “Developing professional learning communities appears to hold considerable promise for capacity building for sustainable improvement” (Stoll, Bolam, McMahon, Wallace & Thomas, 2006, p.221).
Reflective teaching is another valued emphasis in this project because teachers are expected to develop the “ability to facilitate learning and talk meaningfully about [their] practice” (Tyrrell et al., 2013, p.15). An appreciative inquiry (AI) approach, one of the five action research approaches identified by Dick (2009), is to be adopted. The research objectives are outlined as below:
1) To build teachers’ capacity in EMI teaching through a variety of activities promoting reflective teaching and teaching collaboration in respective PLCs.
2) To enhance teachers’ agency believes in applying formative assessment.
3) To understand the organizational conditions for promoting PLCs in IB schools.
4) To advance the existing practices of IB teachers in EMI in China.

Project Start Year: 2018, Principal Investigator(s): KO, Yue On James 高裕安

The proposed study will adopt two theoretical perspectives, professional capital and ambidexterity, to explain schools’ change efforts and related policies to promote Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education (Curriculum Development Council, 2015). By synthesising the two perspectives, we will examine how successful STEM education requires both investment in professionalising teachers and developing ambidextrous strategies for achieving both excellence and innovation. The proposed study will adopt a mixed-method approach, with qualitative data collected from systematic observations inside and outside classrooms, documents of team/school meetings and principal/teacher interviews, and quantitative data collected from classroom observations and student/teacher surveys.

Project Start Year: 2017, Principal Investigator(s): KO, Yue On James 高裕安

Reflection is defined as “deliberate thinking about action with a view to its improvement” (Hatton & Smith, 1995, p.40). Reflection is a valued emphasis in the current field experience requirements of the EDUHK. We will explore whether preservice teachers can develop a global perspective of teaching through regular reflections and weekly experience sharing with other non-local preservice teachers. Student teachers are expected to take full advantage of multimedia and technologies in sharing.

For developing reflective competence in preservice teachers, the objectives are threefold:
1) Develop reflective teaching through knowledge and teaching practice sharing with non-local preservice teachers (African and European) as critical friends;
2) Enhance pedagogical awareness through lesson observation and micro-teaching activities in a self-accessed program at Moodle designed to support block practice;
3) Support adoptions of flipped classrooms in diverse classroom contexts.

We will collaborate with the Department of Teacher Education, University of Groningen, the Netherlands, and the National Teacher Colleges in Uganda. These overseas institutes will recruit Dutch and African preservice teachers to join the project in the Netherlands and Uganda. These non-local pre-service teachers will have a weekly discussion with EDUHK students as their critical friends regarding their teaching experience and learning activities in the PEERS program.

Project Start Year: 2017, Principal Investigator(s): KO, Yue On James 高裕安

The study aims to examine and theorize the practice of state-funded outsourcing of English language education (ELE) focusing on its quality and equity, with reference to the Hong Kong context. Many governments have turned to state-funded outsourcing of education (Ed-outsourcing) to enhance the quality and economic efficiency of Education, and ultimately, the competitiveness of their societies (Barrera-Osorio, Guaqueta & Patrinos, 2012). The quality of state-funded Ed-outsourcing, what Burch (2009) termed new education privatisation, however, is disputed in the international literature (Ball and Youdell, 2008). It has also been documented that new privatization techniques have reproduced or even increased disparity in learning opportunities in many contexts (ibid.). Although some concerns related to quality and equity in Ed-outsourcing have been echoed in HK (e.g. the need for quality-control systems) (Chan & Ng, 2015), few, if any, attempts have been made to investigate changes and impacts at the school and government-regulation levels. Thus, this project intends to explore and theorize the emerging phenomenon of providing schools with state funds to buy and integrate third-party services into their delivery of education, focusing on its quality and equity.

Project Start Year: 2017, Principal Investigator(s): CHOI, Tae Hee 崔太僖 (KO, Yue On James 高裕安 as Collaborator)

With an international perspective and a particular focus on secondary education, we aim to:

1) Investigate and improve the cross-cultural validity of instruments (observations and student questionnaires) measuring teaching practices
2) Enable the possibility of building comparable teaching quality profiles and identifying stages of teacher development worldwide
3) Better understand the precursors of complex teaching practices (such as differentiated teaching adapted to diverse learners etc.)
4) Document the contexts in which teaching and learning take place in various countries
5) Gain insight into the relationship between teaching practices and student academic engagement (and achievement) in an international context
6) Identify suggestions for effective teacher training and professional development at national at international level.

Project Start Year: 2016, Principal Investigator(s): MAULANA, Ridwan (KO, Yue On James 高裕安 as Co-Investigator)

This pilot study will test and validate an instrument developed to measure teachers’ perceptions of inspiring teaching. This instrument is adapted from a classroom observation instrument we have developed to measure observed classroom practices assumed to be associated with inspiring teaching. A sample of 300 teachers, half in Hong Kong and half in Guangzhou, will be invited to give their opinions. Descriptive and advanced statistics will be conducted to test the reliability and validity of the instrument. Gender, teaching background, and region effect (Hong Kong vs Guangzhou) will also be explored.

Project Start Year: 2016, Principal Investigator(s): KO, Yue On James 高裕安

Though about twenty publications in the literature have discussed the roles and functions of SSBs since 2000, none of them studied SSBs exclusively. Therefore, the accounts of these studies regarding the views of SSBs are not grounded on empirical findings, nor reflect their voices. This proposed study is intended to fill the knowledge gap on this important, but least understood stakeholder of Hong Kong education system.

This study will adopt a qualitative approach to explore the research questions proposed above. The EDB will be contacted to collect data on SSBs and the schools they operate. Available records and documents on the development of the SSBs will be collected for a content analysis. Interviews will be conducted after SSBs, religious and non-religious, large (over 30 schools), medium (about 5-10 schools) and small (2-5 schools), are contacted and approached through personal contacts and referrals. Interviews will be transcribed and analysed individually. Following the design suggested for individual in-depth interviews (e.g., Legard et al., 2003), all interviewees will be informed the research objectives. The interview protocol will generate “an undiluted focus” (Ritchie, 2004, p.36) on roles and functions of SSBs, their mission and school allocation, education agenda and priorities, organizational practice, as well as future prospect in school development. Using a grounded approach to the coding (e.g. Corbin & Strauss, 2015), an iterative process will be established to generate further categories and matrices to account for the individual case and cross-case findings. Coding and subsequent modifications will be achieved and managed by using NVivo (Bazeley & Jackson, 2007).

Project Start Year: 2016, Principal Investigator(s): KO, Yue On James 高裕安

The project aims at exploring the perceptions of principals and teachers on leadership practices and leadership development programmes in Hong Kong. The research will adopt a qualitative design, incorporating multi-site qualitative case studies, and involving semi-structured interviews, focus groups and documentary analysis. The study is investigating the way in which Hong Kong education system has been developing school leaders and the gathering results will provide comparative empirical evidence collected in the larger study about the relationship between leadership development and leadership practice in different education systems.

Project Start Year: 2016, Principal Investigator(s): KO, Yue On James 高裕安

This pilot study will draw on findings of previous research on effective and inspiring teaching. Recent qualitative research findings on English teachers showed that characteristics of the teaching practices of inspiring teachers shared many similarities with those of effective teachers. However, inspiring teachers seemed to those who showed strong commitment and care beyond the classroom as well. This study will address the existing research limitation that we lack a reliable classroom observation instrument for observing inspiring teaching and an interview protocol for understanding the contextual effects on inspiring teaching in Chinese contexts.
In this study, the research team will develop a quantitative classroom observation instrument using Delphi Method with both researcher and teacher expert panels. Then the instrument will be trailed on 300 video-recorded lessons randomly selected from a sample pool of 500+ lessons in the principal investigator’ previous study. The results will be validated and then triangulated with data collected on effective teaching. The expected outcomes will inform us the relationships between effective and inspiring teaching. For investigating the contextual effects on inspiring teaching in Chinese contexts, an interview protocol will be modified from a recent English study on inspiring teachers and a doctoral study on Chinese instructional leadership.

Project Start Year: 2015, Principal Investigator(s): KO, Yue On James 高裕安

Governments in different parts of the world promote private participation in public education by delegating functions traditionally conducted by the state to third-party organizations. However, research has shown that the planning, implementation and outcome of public-private partnerships including outsourcing of teaching in particular are largely unmonitored. This research aims to look into the issue by trialling an analytical framework which functions as a gauging tool evaluating aspects related to quality and equity in designing and implementing purchased educational programs.

The study will look at an English phonics program as a case of outsourcing teaching, a new form of private participation in public education which has received scant academic attention worldwide. The design, implementation, and outcome of the program in a secondary school in Hong Kong will be investigated through analyzing program-related documents (e.g., meeting logs, teaching resources, lesson and program plans), interviews with staff members and students, observation notes, and pre and post-test results. Findings of the study will provide insights for understanding and evaluating outsourcing of teaching.]

Project Start Year: 2014, Principal Investigator(s): CHOI, Tae Hee 崔太僖 (KO, Yue On James 高裕安 as Co-Investigator)

This research is the Hong Kong part of an international and comparative study of school autonomy, leadership and learning involving 7 education systems functioning in Australia, Canada (Alberta), England, Finland, Hong Kong, Israel and Singapore. The international teams launched the research project in May 2014 in Jerusalem. In response to challenges from globalization in the last two decades, numerous education reforms have been initiated worldwide. The changes towards school autonomy are often assumed as an important approach to improving school practices to meet changing expectations of stakeholders and high demands for new education in the 21st century. Unfortunately, this assumption still lacks strong international evidence with comprehensive empirical findings to support its validity across different cultural backgrounds. In particular, (a) both within-country and cross-country quantitative research at a broader level showed that the direct gain in school performance produced by increasing autonomy is relatively small and (b) the results of a large number of studies on the impact of varying levels of school autonomy within countries differed quite widely and it was difficult to generalize from them (Grattan Institute Report, 2013). Further evidence showed that contingent with the nature and level of school autonomy, accountability structures, and development stages of school, the impact of autonomy on school performance was found to be inconsistent (PISA in Focus, 2011). In particular, how the role of principals and teachers in association with the use of increased school autonomy to enhance learning needs in-depth study locally and internationally. The research gaps hinder further development of school autonomy, leadership and other learning initiatives in Hong Kong and beyond. Through case studies, interviews, sample surveys, and international comparisons, this project aims to fill the research gaps with the following objectives in Hong Kong in particular and the other 6 education systems in general:
(1) To develop a theoretical base for understanding how school autonomy – in terms of both structures and cultures - influences leadership practices in relation to curriculum and learning in the 21st Century; and
(2) To investigate empirically (a) what aspects of structural autonomy are the most influential on leadership practices in relation to professional learning and student learning; (b) how school leaders consistently utilize their autonomy to enhance student outcomes and develop staff capacity; (c) how the school system builds cultures of autonomy; and (d) how accountability structures support or constrain development of cultures of autonomy.

Project Start Year: 2014, Principal Investigator(s): CHENG, Yin Cheong 鄭燕祥 (KO, Yue On James 高裕安 as Co-Investigator)

The present study is aimed to enhance sense of agency and pedagogical awareness and subsequent lesson quality during teaching practicum. A digital course on classroom observation training with e-learning activities that require reflective engagement of learners and professional dialogues with peers will be developed as an intervention tool to promote student teachers’ agency beliefs and pedagogical awareness. Comparing to student teachers who will not enroll in the course, those who will enroll are expected to show better observed lesson quality in their lessons in teaching practicum, and more likely to adopt multiple lenses to positively reflect on their own and others’ lessons.

Agency beliefs will be measured by teachers’ control, agency, and means-ends belief questionnaire (Malmberg et al., 2004), pedagogical awareness by scale to be developed, and lesson quality by the Quality of Teaching Scale (van de Grift, 2007). The effects of personal characteristics and contextual factors on observed lesson quality (e.g., emotional and instructional support, classroom organization, and students’ engagement) will be investigated. Structural equation and multilevel models will be conducted to explore the variability over time, within lessons, and between teachers. Findings will have strong implications on using classroom observation as a reflection tool in teacher education.

Project Start Year: 2014, Principal Investigator(s): KO, Yue On James 高裕安

This project aims to understand the implementation of medium of instruction policy at the institute and identify the ways to support staff and students to enhance students’ learning in courses with English as the medium of instruction.

Project Start Year: 2014, Principal Investigator(s): CHOI, Tae Hee 崔太僖 (KO, Yue On James 高裕安 as Co-Investigator)

This pilot has three broad aims. First, we will test the ecological validity of various instruments in Hing Kong and Shenzhen settings as most of them are developed for overseas contexts. Second, we will explore the individual differences of children between Hong KOng and Shenzhen. Third, we would explore the extent of variations of ECE practices between Hong Kong and Shenzhen. Although the ethnic and national background of Hong Kong is similar to that of its neighbouring cities, its colonial history and metropolitan characteristics affect the pedagogy and practices in ECE settings. The comparison of ECE in competing cities in China will reveal their diversities in teaching and learning practices and the implications of such diversities from regional, national and international perspectives.

Project Start Year: 2014, Principal Investigator(s): KO, Yue On James 高裕安

The current study addresses two paradoxes in teaching and learning research. The first paradox is on the inconsistency in teaching effectiveness between and within teachers. Although both inspection and research evidence shows similar sets of characteristics in the instruction of effective teachers, research evidence has also suggested a teacher’s effectiveness as a non-static characteristic that varies throughout his/her career. Further evidence shows that the effective aspects of the same teacher may vary considerably across lessons. The second paradox is on the contradictory goal orientations on learning. Students are expected to achieve the objectives of education set by policymakers that demand a mastery of the learning goal and deep learning. However, the examination-oriented culture prevailing in society actually emphasizes performance in examinations and encourages social comparison by performance.
The current study is framed in the recent findings in foreign contexts that may offer insights to solve these paradoxes. The research on effective teachers and teacher training suggests that a high level of consistency in teaching effectiveness may only be found in a small number of teachers, whereas other teachers may struggle in some areas and their effectiveness may fluctuate even after they have received relevant training.
Moreover, recent research on self-learning finds that students, with teachers’ assistance, can control their learning with sufficient regular and constant feedback. This mode of learning is compatible with deep learning and a mastery goal. However, research on these emerging areas is still inadequate in Hong Kong.
The current research proposes to study consistency and variation in teachers in different classrooms and schools in Hong Kong by measuring teaching effectiveness with classroom observation protocols in the first phase. The results will be used to establish a model of teacher behaviour ranked based on their relative level of difficulty, relating teacher effectiveness with students’ learning goals and processes. The second phase explores the reciprocal relationship between teaching practices and students’ learning processes and goal orientations. The case studies on four teachers selected investigate whether interventions initiated by these teachers would establish students’ self-regulated learning by transforming their goal orientations and whether these changes would, in turn, facilitate teaching over time.
The current research will contribute to the broader literature on classroom research and the Chinese learner with strong implications for both teacher development and learning assessment. This subject is timely, when education reforms in Hong Kong are called calling for greater teacher accountability and a paradigm shift in teaching.

Project Start Year: 2012, Principal Investigator(s): KO, Yue On James 高裕安

Raising standards of teaching and learning in schools is at the forefront of policymakers’ minds internationally. The importance attached to learning outcomes is obvious in the substance of key educational reforms across societies and contexts. However, there is continuing uncertainty about how and to what extent schools implement these reforms and, most importantly, whether they really have a positive impact on student learning outcomes.
This project investigates whether government education reform policies make a real difference in schools, particularly in student outcomes, in Hong Kong and England. In order to build understanding we focus on three main areas – system policy, school leadership and the school community. The first area will detail and then compare systemic government reform models which seek to raise standards of pupil outcomes by changing teaching and learning, in school and classroom structures and cultures. This will involve an analysis of recent government reform documentation and interviews.
The second area focuses on the roles and qualities school leaders need to lead and manage change successfully. This will involve an examination of how school leaders at all levels mediate reforms to make them work in their school contexts. Information will be sought about the skills, knowledge and capacities they need to build and sustain a strategic and operational focus, on the leadership of learning and teaching. The third area looks at outcomes at the grassroots level. This will involve identifying the challenges school leaders, teachers and pupils face as they respond to systemic government reforms.
Drawing on existing and newly-collected data the project will compare and contrast the similarities and differences between schools both within and between Hong Kong and England. This comparative analysis will provide new insights into the nature of the leadership and management of change in educational practice. This will involve identifying similarities and differences in the social, cultural and societal values of the two countries as they reverse similar policy trajectories.

Project Start Year: 2012, Principal Investigator(s): WALKER, Allan David 汪雅量 (KO, Yue On James 高裕安 as Co-Investigator)

The proposed systematic review of literature will attempt to track changes in knowledge production on educational leadership in non-East Asian regions in the last two decades.
This review will share three common concerns found in the recent literature reviews and meta-analyses on educational leadership (e.g., Day & Sammons, 2011; Hallinger & Heck, 2010; Leithwood, Day, Sammons, Hopkins, &Harris, 2008; Robinson et al., 2009; Waters & McNulty, 2005; and Hendriks & Steen, 2012): 1) the importance of mediating factors in conceptualizing and understanding the indirect impact of school principals on student performance, 2) the epistemologies of research and the quality of empirical evidence thus generated, and 3) the wider implications of research for educational practice and policy.
Regarding the conceptual development of educational leadership, the PI expects that it involves a considerable overlap between the two main concepts, extended instructional leadership and transformational leadership (Krüger & Scheerens, 2012; Robinson, Hohepa & Lloyd, 2009). Thus, two objectives (namely, to track changes in the changes in knowledge production on educational leadership in non-East Asia areas over the last two decades; and 2)to illuminate the patterns of conceptualizations and development of educational leadership in the selected publications) will address tracking the knowledge production with respect to factors concerning the internal logic and conceptual development (e.g., variables, constructs, research methods, instruments, and cited references) as well as the external contexts where the publications originated (e.g., researchers’ affiliations, funding sources, journal profiles).
This study will share the key features of a systematic review or systematic research synthesis (see Gough, 2004; Harden, 2001, 2005):
1. the methods adopted are explicit and transparent
2. the stages of research development are explicated
3. it is accountable, replicable and updateable
4. the report addresses the central problems of end-users such that it can be relevant and useful
This systematic review will employ data visualization tools to achieve the objectives. Data visualization is considered not only as a strategy to map the changes and development in knowledge production but also as a strategy to promote theorization, offering explanations and predictions of successful and unsuccessful leadership impacts on student outcomes.

Project Start Year: 2012, Principal Investigator(s): KO, Yue On James 高裕安