Bilateral (Hong Kong): Reshaping Educational Practice for Improvement in Hong Kong and England: How Schools Mediate Government Reforms

Raising standards of teaching and learning in schools is an issue of global concern and a key focus of recent educational reforms. However, there are continuing debates within policy, academic and practice communities about how and to what extent schools implement such reforms in ways which ensure that their intentions are achieved. The purpose of this research is, therefore, to contribute new knowledge of the complex interface between policy intentions and educational practices and outcomes through a comparative analysis of the ways in which the intended outcomes of such reforms are mediated by school leaders and teachers in a diverse range of effective and improving secondary schools in England and Hong Kong.

The research will begin with a mapping exercise of perceived challenges of current government reforms in Hong Kong and England and a secondary analysis of two existing national surveys on senior and middle leaders' perceptions of their principals' contribution to change and improvement in their schools. These were part of two parallel three-year research projects, led by the research teams, which investigated the impact of school leadership on pupils' academic and social outcomes in the wider educational reform contexts in Hong Kong and England respectively (Gu et al., 2008; Day et al., 2009 & 2011; Walker, 2011). By merging the datasets of the two surveys and taking into account contextual differences, this secondary analysis will seek to develop a framework to analyse the influence of leadership at all levels on the implementation of mandated reform on the structures, processes and outcomes of school and classroom improvement.

These analyses will form the basis for detailed case studies of 8 successful secondary schools (4 from the parallel study in each country) across diversified school populations in different socio-economic contexts. The main methodological advantage of studying these schools is that we will be able to build rich, longitudinal accounts of their actions and practices and thus ensure an in-depth investigation of how systemic reform intentions are mediated in different ways and with different effects by schools in different contexts.

The case studies will focus upon the ways in which reforms are mediated by principals, senior and middle leaders and teachers in order to assess the extent to which their primary intentions have been translated into practice and whether their focus on improving the leadership of learning and teaching in schools and classrooms has been effectively realised and sustained. Interviews with principals, senior and middle leaders and full-time teachers will be the main method of data collection. Pupil surveys will also be conducted in order to explore their views on the changes (or no change) in educational practices in their schools and classrooms and their impact on their motivation to learn and achieve.

Thus, by exploring perceptions of change at different levels and from different perspectives, the research will help us better understand the continuities , discontinuities and relative impact on schools serving different communities of reform led changes which seek improvements in educational practices and in pupil outcomes. This comparative analysis between schools in England and Hong Kong will provide new insights on the nature of the leadership and management of change in educational practice in the context of similarities and differences in the social, cultural and societal values between the two countries and similarities in the reform objectives. Moreover, by using longitudinal, mixed methods to investigate the interface of reform at macro (country), meso (school) and micro (classroom) levels, the research will make a distinctive contribution to knowledge of how mandated reforms are mediated in their contexts of use by school leaders and classroom teachers.

The research will generate new understandings about how schools mediate mandated models of systemic change, and through these, have potentially positive benefits for end users in policy and practice communities in the following ways:

i) For government officials and non-government public bodies, quangos and schools in England and Hong Kong in terms of evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of current models of and strategies for systemic change at school level;

ii) For school leaders in terms of increasing their knowledge of new strategies and skills through which they can mediate reforms and reform intentions in ways which result in context sensitive sustained successful change;

iii) For classroom teachers in terms of support for acquiring new skills in teaching and learning which will improve pupil achievement;

iv) Given both the distinctive focus of the research and the use of a mixed methods methodology that entails in-depth complementary qualitative and quantitative analyses, it will have the ability to have a direct impact on academic communities in education and other disciplines, particularly in adding a new dimension to current understandings of and ways of designing research into the ways schools mediate centrally driven reforms;

v) We anticipate, also, that the research findings will be of value to international NGOs such as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) which may use the outcomes of our research to inform their cross country evaluation work on the design and evaluation of the ways in which systemic reform intentions are realised in practice.


To ensure access and increase the likelihood of beneficial impacts we plan to disseminate the research widely to different educational stakeholders:

i) to the academic community via publications in internationally recognised and widely read journals (as detailed above in the section on Academic Beneficiaries);
ii) through a series of workshops specifically designed to attract interdisciplinary participants from within academia along with professionals from local and national government, non-government quangos, think-tanks, and where possible international institutions.
iii) by a web based 'School Forum'. This will not only permit ease of interaction with researchers based in different parts of the world, but also attract members of the policy community, interested members of the school community and public, and media to access and discuss the progress of our research. The forum will be available for open access through the websites of the respective universities. Each participant in the research will be invited to upload comments and contribute actively to the research process.