Educational Reform and Policy Implementation in Hong Kong

Research on implementation around the world indicates that many educational reforms designed to improve the quality of schooling have been more rhetorical than substantive in their impact on the organisation of schools and classrooms (Weiler, 1998; Fullan, 1991; Snyder, Bolin and Zumwalt, 1992). Schools and classrooms do change, but the extent and direction of change is not always consistent with the intentions of policy initiatives. The same applies in Hong Kong, where a substantial body of literature (see Morris 1996, Adamson et al, 2000) has documented the gap between the intentions of policy makers and their implementation in schools. The gap has been especially pronounced in those reforms attempting to change the prevailing styles of teaching and learning (Morris & Morris, 2000). The reasons for this gap correspond to those described in the burgeoning international literature on policy implementation, which has attempted to identify the factors that serve as barriers to change. However, the traditional focus on the gap between educational policy and its implementation often results in what Goodson (2000) terms a form of ‘implementationist myopia.’ This is characterized by research which views policy as unproblematic and schools (and teachers) are evaluated from a technical perspective to assess how faithfully they implement the wisdom of the policy makers. The corollary of such a perspective is that teachers and schools are portrayed as the major impediments to change. Our initial premise is that the impact of educational reforms is influenced by a range of contextual factors and that, in the case of Hong Kong, it is the political context that has served as a powerful influence on both the nature of policy and its impact in schools.