Developing Teacher Leaders to Facilitate Hong Kong's Curriculum Reforms: Self-Efficacy as a Measure of Teacher Growth

Abstract

leaders to support the wide-ranging curriculum reforms that characterize societies in the Asian Pacific region. It draws on social cognitive theory and, in particular, on what has come to be called teachers’ sense of efficacy. The study sought to extend that research in a Chinese context. The results indicate a positive relationship between professional development and the growth of self-efficacy in curriculum leaders. It was recognized, however, that individual curriculum leaders also need a supportive professional community, including specific roles for the principals, if their leadership is to be effective. Across the Asian Pacific region, the reform of the school curriculum is a major priority (Kennedy, in press). The driving force in this reform movement is primarily economic: New approaches to understanding human capital formation have led governments to focus on the development of workers and citizens who are creative, innovative, entrepreneurial, and problem solving. Curriculum structures that promote an elitist, academic, examination-dominated, competitive curriculum are seen as an impediment to this objective. Thus, the changes required are much more significant than previous attempts to bring about curriculum reform—they require structural change to education systems and deep cultural change for schools, teachers, and parents. Add to this economic imperative the social and political dilemmas created by terrorism, wars, ethnic conflicts, and new international health issues, and the pressures on the need for a relevant and meaningful school curriculum are even more significant. Economic, social, and political issues combined to make school curriculum reform a strategic issue for the Asian Pacific region. Although the rationale for curriculum reform is not difficult to articulate, the identification of strategies capable of bringing about curriculum change is more problematic. Curriculum policy is an example of what has been called soft policy (Torenvlied & Ackerman, 2004). In general—and this is certainly true in Hong Kong—there are no laws, no compliance mechanisms, and no regulatory frameworks that govern the implementation of any new