Asia's High Performing Education Systems

One of the great strengths of this volume, as with other volumes in the Schools and Schooling in Asia series, lies in that fact that in examining how Hong Kong’s education system has sought to navigate tradition, modernity and globalisation, it also addresses Hong Kong’s culturally embedded practices and distinctive contexts for schools and schooling. In doing so, the chapters in this volume challenge some persistent stereotypes and homogenising assumptions about education. ... Asia’s High Performing Education Systems: The Case of Hong Kong commences with a dedication by co-editor John Chi-Kin Lee to Colin Marsh. Sadly, Colin died mid-way through the book’s genesis on 6 August 2012. By way of honouring Colin’s longstanding commitment, scholarship and dedication to curriculum matters, Chi-Kin Lee, the series editor Kerry Kennedy, and other colleagues completed the book. No doubt Colin would be delighted to see this volume in print. Its scholarly and comprehensive approach to encapsulating the ways in which Hong Kong’s education system has managed to attain and thus far, maintain high performance levels make it an excellent and essential reference. -- Deborah Henderson, Queensland University of Technology, Australia, in Curriculum Perspectives, 35(1), pp. 73-74