Developing Curriculum Leadership Among Teachers for School-Based Curriculum Innovations in Hong Kong: A Distributed and Problem-Solving Approach

Abstract

Hong Kong has been considered as one of the world’s best performing school systems. Among the six factors attributing to the success of the educational system, three are related to decentralization of pedagogical decision-making and empowerment of school leadership and teachers. Teachers’ voices and their wisdom in decision-making processes in schools has become a prominent topic among policy makers and educators. In the last 40 years, international literature suggests that teacher leadership practices in school-based curriculum development (SBCD) as a form of school capacity building enhances teachers’ empowerment and their professional capabilities, which in turn may result in more effective student learning. This chapter reports a portion of the findings based on the interview data of a case study of school-based curriculum leadership in an elementary school in Hong Kong in 2007. The study adopted a design-based approach. Participating teachers engaged in cycles of planning the objectives of learning, experimenting on redesigning the lesson plans, and reflecting on practice lessons. Multiple data collection methods were adopted. Our findings show that a systematic approach in organizing curriculum development activities based on problem-solving approaches and a distributed leadership style among teachers can be effective in enhancing teacher learning in both curriculum leadership skills and powerful learning.