Jiafang Lu
The Leadership Challenges of Learning from Another System: Observations from Hong Kong
Thursday 13th February 4:15pm
Cross-system interactions have grown exponentially for schools, largely because of their potential for leadership and school improvement. From social capital theory, cross-system interactions offer significant resources and growth opportunities for partnership activities (Burr, 2008; Bryk, et al., 2015; Greany, 2023; Hargreaves, et al., 2015). According to constructivist organizational theory, cross-system partnerships can help schools overcome myopic thinking by cooperating with other schools or organizations to access complementary cognition (Muijs et al., 2011). Additionally, in light of the institutional complexity perspective, partnership with key external partners may help to balance competing goals and re-orient school members for change and improvement (Yurkofsky, 2021). However, costly, carefully designed cross-system leadership and school improvement schemes do not always lead to desirable outcomes.
Hong Kong is also actively participating in the worldwide exploration and experimentation of cross-system interactions for leadership and school improvement. In this presentation, we drew on three cross-system leader learning programs, which encompass three different layers of systems, namely, organizational systems (school-to-school interaction in Hong Kong funded by a donation project), industrial systems (school to non-school organization in Hong Kong, a leadership enhancement programme commissioned by the Education Bureau), and governance systems (school in Hong Kong to school in Mainland China, a strategic R&D project funded by the university), and attempted to delineate the leadership challenges. Our immersion in these programs reveals several problems that preclude the programmes from unleashing their potential. These challenges include overt emphasis on differences rather than commonalities, failure to develop complementary improvement goals, and lack of influential mediation figure(s) who know about the transferable strengths and challenges in both systems. In sequence, we try to provide plausible solutions that may address these challenges, and implications that could be considered in other contexts in the pursuit of cross-system learning.
Jiafang LU is Associate Professor and Acting Head in Department of Education Policy and Leadership, The Education University of Hong Kong (EdUHK). She prides herself on serving as an Associate Director in the Joseph Lau Luen Hung Charitable Trust Asia Pacific Centre for Leadership and Change, a university-level strategic research and development centre established in 2010 at EdUHK.
She received her doctoral degree in Applied Psychology from the Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. She is committed to applying organizational psychology and behavioral sciences into studying leadership development, school leadership teams, and innovation in educational settings. She shares her interest with similar enthusiasm for translating knowledge in these areas into leadership development and school improvement in Hong Kong and beyond.
Her expertise has provided constructive insights and guidance for fostering effective teamwork and cultivating innovative practices within educational institutions. From 2020 to 2024, she contributed to the local implementation of the new policy on Enhanced Training Requirements for Promotion in Hong Kong by co-coordinating related training programmes or engaging in direct training for 6000+ teacher leaders. Recently, under the supervision of Prof Allan Walker, she and her colleagues have secured a 51-month donation project from The Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust to design and implement a comprehensive programme to support the sustainable development of school leaders to lead future-ready, inclusive schools.
She also produces documentary videos about school leaders and their members to showcase the good work that is happening in Hong Kong education. (Email: [email protected])