Asia's High Performing Education Systems: The Case of Hong Kong: 05 (Routledge Series on Schools and Schooling in Asia) - Hardcover

One of the great strengths of this volume, as with other volumes in the Schools and Schooling in Asia series, lies in that fact that in examining how Hong Kong’s education system has sought to navigate tradition, modernity and globalisation, it also addresses Hong Kong’s culturally embedded practices and distinctive contexts for schools and schooling. In doing so, the chapters in this volume challenge some persistent stereotypes and homogenising assumptions about education. ... Asia’s High Performing Education Systems: The Case of Hong Kong commences with a dedication by co-editor John Chi-Kin Lee to Colin Marsh. Sadly, Colin died mid-way through the book’s genesis on 6 August 2012. By way of honouring Colin’s longstanding commitment, scholarship and dedication to curriculum matters, Chi-Kin Lee, the series editor Kerry Kennedy, and other colleagues completed the book. No doubt Colin would be delighted to see this volume in print. Its scholarly and comprehensive approach to encapsulating the ways in which Hong Kong’s education system has managed to attain and thus far, maintain high performance levels make it an excellent and essential reference. -- Deborah Henderson, Queensland University of Technology, Australia, in Curriculum Perspectives, 35(1), pp. 73-74

Education officials, specialist leaders and teachers have all been involved in different ways to bring about school reform in Hong Kong. This book is a very current and relevant analysis of this reform, highlighting the way in which agencies have cooperated in bringing about change over the last several decades. Through a process of wide-ranging decision-making, collaboration and consensus among key bodies and agencies of change, some important developments have occurred. The reforms collectively have had, and are continuing to have, a major impact upon schooling in Hong Kong.

This volume represents a range of authors and specialists involved in a number of different reforms, covering themes such as historical policy contexts, new curriculum approaches, changing pedagogies, school leadership, implementation and change, and assessment and evaluation. This is a very topical book which provides a probing analysis of how an Asian education system has been able to reach and maintain a very high performing level.