Recently there has been an increasing recognition of the need to investigate how different contexts influence the nature and character of school leadership and to demonstrate how leaders in schools located within different environments shape their leadership accordingly. This has led to a growing body of work that has emerged from investigations…

This commentary looks at the contributions and future research implications of the four articles in this Special Issue of "Thinking Skills and Creativity" to the fields of creativity and creativity education, both in culture-specific and culture-general terms. The articles included in this Special Issue draw attention to issues of…

This paper views seeking the optimal balance between state strengths and the scope of state functions for "good governance" as the formation of a homogenization-heterogenization matrix of policy initiatives in different social settings. Homogenization refers to a global tendency for institutional changes and governance framework to…

Education in Hong Kong increasingly needs to change to reflect a growing movement toward providing more equitable educational opportunities by initiating inclusive educational practices. In recent years a number of very important educational reforms have moved the whole-school approach to integrated education forward and have attracted major…

This paper relates the experiences of an early childhood professor from the Freie University of Berlin on a trip through East Asia to provide advice and assistance on the situational approach to preschool education. Impressions of the sociopolitical and educational environment and needs of Thailand, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, and…

Hong Kong styles itself as "the city that never sleeps", "the ever changing city". The dynamism and pace of change in teacher education, however, has to be seen as laggardly in comparison. This is not to say there has been no experiment but changes have been piecemeal and "add-ons". Teacher education in Hong Kong has…

Addresses the gap that has developed in Hong Kong between the Guidelines on Environmental Education in Schools and the actual implementation of those guidelines into practice. Environmental emphasis has been primarily subject-based, and institutional commitment to environmental education has been unsatisfactory. Calls for curriculum reforms and…

This paper contends that classrooms should be safe places for students and their teachers to be wrong, suggesting that this concept should provide the mainspring for educational reform in Hong Kong and in other places in the world. It notes that education in Hong Kong is harsh and has a tendency to label students; for the majority of students,…

In both Hong Kong and the United States, educational practices, especially those in the early stages of development, often do not lay an adequate foundation for lifelong learning. Using an approach rooted in developmental psychology, however, can help educators understand how individuals, groups, and societies develop or fail to develop an…

Education in Hong Kong has been developed along a British model that uses examination results to determine students' academic futures: to be allowed to go on to a university to study or to go into the workplace with a tenth-grade education. The system has been described by likening students to Peking ducks who are forced to eat, fattened up for…

We are living in a fast-changing, technology-driven world, where technology affects the daily lives of every person, directly or indirectly. While the importance of providing young children with technological knowledge and experience has been well-recognized, how the curriculum should be developed deserves greater study. Using early childhood…