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Introduction
In its ideal form, school-based management refers to the empowerment of principals with autonomy over fiscal control, curriculum, and professional development (Agasisti et al., 2013). In reality, school-based management takes on a variety of interpretations. Inspired by the decentralized education model of the USA, East Asian education systems are recent adopters of school-based management (Hawkins, 2000; Muta, 2000). State agencies were inspired by economic rationales to decentralize schools for the enhancement of their labor forces. Under the leadership of “developmental states,” autonomy is cautiously assigned with the aim of stimulating economic growth, while ensuring centralized control is not curtailed (Lee, 2017). Within this context, the majority of East Asian school-based management is characterized by fiscal decentralization, which prevails over the extremely limited school influence over curriculum matters, such as in China (Hawkins, 2000). In Japan, Muta (2000) reports school influence over the curriculum is restricted to approximately 10 percent. Through the comparison of decentralization efforts in Japan, Hong Kong, and South Korea, Ho (2006) concludes that Hong Kong schools enjoy significant school autonomy. Within this centralized-decentralized East Asian educational context, sustainable school autonomy will depend on the principal’s ability to contextualize school-based management reforms. This ability is crucial to effective school improvement, as the agreement of both school leaders and teachers is needed for reforms to impact student learning (Cheung and Wong, 2011). One of the key domains through which this agreement can be forged is through principal instructional leadership of teacher professional development. While schools have much less influence over curriculum matters, principals are given more flexibility over teacher professional development. This paper aims to examine the variety of leadership approaches to teacher professional development in this era of school-based management in the Hong Kong education context.
School-based management in Hong Kong
As the locale where principals assert stronger autonomy relative to their peers in the regional East Asian education systems, Hong Kong makes an excellent site for this study. School-based management reform was a centralized initiative by the Education Bureau (EDB) that commenced shortly after Hong Kong became a Special Administrative Region of China. Under school-based management, principals are empowered to redefine teacher professional development to suit their school’s needs for curriculum and instructional change. Two decades after the implementation of...