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The kindergarten curriculum in mainland China has evolved through four periods and the current reform began in the end of 1980s. The reform aimed to transform kindergarten practice by shaping ideologies including respect for individual child, active learning, and play-based integrated curriculum. This review of research literatures shows that compared with the practice before the reform, many kindergarten teachers organize classrooms in learning centers, provide more play materials, pay time, and freedom for free play, and pay more attention to individuals. But indoor space organized in rice-seedling-bed model, teacher-led group instruction and teacher-controlled interactions are still often observed after three decades of reform efforts; there still exist great variations among kindergartens of different sponsoring bodies and in different regions. The problems resulted from the innate deficiencies of the top-down and value-priority reform, the conflicts between the advocated value and the traditional Chinese culture with emphasis on Ming-Fen, testing, and the value of children for the whole family and nation, and the unequal distribution of public resources decided by the educational institutions. Therefore, the curriculum reform is not a separate endeavor from other social changes, but a comprehensive and systematic change. To guarantee the success of the curriculum reform, the Chinese society needs cultural transformation and institutional reconstruction.

This chapter provides a synthesis of the research project which investigated whether or not the most recent mathematics curriculum reform has reached the classroom and influenced classroom practice and student learning in the mainland China. Three types of evidence for change as a result of the curriculum reform were examined. These included the beliefs and perceptions of teachers about learning and teaching mathematics, the cognitive features of learning tasks and of classroom interaction that were implemented in classroom, and student learning outcomes. Two groups of elementary math teachers and their students participated in the study. One group had participated in the reform implementation in classroom for several years, and the other group had used the conventional curriculum when the project was conducted in 2005. About 150 videotaped class sessions were analyzed from 58 classrooms of the two groups. Survey methods were used to probe the changes in the beliefs and perceptions of teachers about teaching and learning mathematics. The student learning outcomes were assessed for three times with multiple measures of mathematics achievement. Findings of the project provide the converging evidence that the curriculum reform has resulted in some of the expected changes. Reform teachers were more likely to hold a dynamic view of mathematics and to indicate the importance to provide students the learning opportunity to hypothesize, to proof, and to communicate in learning mathematics. The reform classrooms used more learning tasks with higher cognitive demands. The teachers in the reform classrooms asked more questions that required students to describe procedures leading to their answers and the students in the reform classrooms raised more questions in learning mathematics. Students of the reform classrooms showed to have achieved a relatively more balanced development in different cognitive areas of mathematics achievement.

The national core curriculum is renewed in Finland approximately every ten years, the most recent one being 2016. The core curriculum sets the general goals, providing the foundation for district- and school level curriculum development work (Finnish National Board of Education, 2016). The messages from transnational educational policy (e.g. OECD) are apparent in the core curriculum. However, districts, schools and teachers are highly autonomous in upholding, resourcing and deciding about the curriculum making at the local sites of activity. Accordingly, the curriculum making relies heavily on shared sense-making as a tool for cultivating transformative learning throughout the educational system. The chapter draws on the results of the national “School Matters” research project (2014-2018), to provide the meta-analysis of the sense-making in national curriculum making. Results suggested that the shared sense-making focused on engaging educational practitioners in learning at all layers of the system. However, the means for facilitating shared sense-making between the different layers of the system and curriculum was perceived to be less coherent by the stakeholders at the district and school level, than at the state level. This implies that the educational providers should not only be involved in co-creation of the aims, contents and values of the curriculum document, but also in designing novel and ecologically valid ways for orchestrating the complex and dynamic curriculum making.

To prepare Hong Kong students to face a rapidly changing twenty‐first century, the Hong Kong Government implemented a major curriculum reform entitled Learning to Learn – The Way Forward in Curriculum Development. This reform has shaped the direction of Hong Kong's school education since 2001. The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of the reform from the perspectives of the major stakeholders, namely principals, teachers, and students.

The paper was written based on the data obtained from a large‐scale study that covered over 250 primary and secondary schools, or about 20 per cent of the total population in Hong Kong. Both qualitative (focus group interviews) and quantitative methods (questionnaire survey) were employed in the study.

The findings indicated that moderate progress has been made in students’ overall performance in generic skills, positive values and attitudes, language proficiency, and over the key learning areas. On the other hand, the progress made in secondary schools was perceived to be less than that made in primary schools. The views of frontline teachers could also be different from senior teachers and principals as to the degree of achievement. There also existed a gap as the progress reported for critical thinking and self learning abilities might be less favourable when compared to those reported for IT, reading habits and healthy lifestyle.

The original findings and policy suggestions of the paper are of reference value to curriculum policy planners, researchers and educators.

Shared understandings of curriculum reform within and between the levels of the educational system are suggested to be crucial for the reform to take root. The purpose of this paper is to explore variation in perceived curriculum coherence and school impact among state- and district-level stakeholders.

The participants (n=666) included state- and district-level stakeholders involved in a national curriculum reform in Finland. Latent profile analysis was employed to identify profiles based on participants’ perceptions of the core curriculum’s coherence and the reform’s impact on school development.

Two profiles were identified: high coherence and impact, and lower consistency of the intended direction and impact. State-level stakeholders had higher odds of belonging to the high coherence and impact profile than their district-level counterparts.

The results imply that more attention needs to be paid in developing a shared and coherent understanding particularly of the intended direction of the core curriculum as well as the reform’s effects on school-level development among state- and district-level stakeholders.

The study contributes to the literature on curriculum reform by shedding light on the variation in perceived curriculum coherence and school impact of those responsible for a large-scale national curriculum reform process at different levels of the educational system.

The objective of this paper was to examine key hindering and facilitating factors in schools during the first stage of the curriculum reform (2001‐2006) in Hong Kong and to identify key strategies to address these challenges.

A total of 150 primary and 120 secondary schools with 7,869 key stakeholders including principals, curriculum leaders, teachers, and students participated in the study. The data for this study was collected from the following two major methods: survey questionnaire and in‐depth interviews. The response rate was 95 percent.

In spite of the different roles played by each stakeholder in the curriculum reform, the perceptions of school principals, curriculum leaders, and teachers were very similar with regards to the factors that facilitated and hindered their successful implementation of the reform. Consistent with the current literature, the findings clearly indicated that the recent curriculum reform in Hong Kong was still facing several key obstacles and challenges that were common in many other countries, in the implementation stage, such as teachers' heavy workloads, learning diversity in class, and teachers' inadequate understanding of the reform.

The study is important in that this was the first large‐scale study ever conducted to examine the progress of the recent curriculum reform in Hong Kong. The findings of the results generate important policy recommendations that may improve the implementation of the curriculum reform in the next phase and contribute to the related literature in the areas of curriculum reform not only in Hong Kong but also other parts of the world.

To cope with the challenges of the twenty‐first century, the Hong Kong SAR government initiated the Curriculum Reform in 2001. In 2006, a research team from a tertiary institution was commissioned to review the progress of change for smooth implementation of the reform in its next phase. This paper aims to examine this issue.

The nature of the review is basically a survey, applying questionnaires and follow‐up focus‐group interviews to collect data from different groups of subjects. The sample was around 20 per cent of the population, i.e. a total of 252 primary (n=138) and secondary (n=114) schools.

The paper reports findings on the support for the Reform by primary and secondary schools. Five areas of agreement among school heads are examined, which include challenges to be met, guiding principles of the reform, learning goals, reform framework and the overall agreement with the rationale of the reform. It is found that, while the curriculum reform was supported among school heads, senior teachers and teachers, there was a gap between the views of senior management team and frontier teachers.

This is a very comprehensive research project with a limited timeframe. The paper can only report and discuss findings mainly on the support for curriculum reform by school heads. Other aspects of the study will be discussed and reported separately in subsequent papers.

The gap between the views of senior management team and frontier teachers is worth probing as this is the most obstructive factor to the implementation of the reform. Identifying the cause would be the first step in formulating strategies to address and, hopefully, to facilitate the smooth transition from the phase of implementation to the continuation phase of the change process.

The study has suggested the development of a two‐dimensional framework of agreement areas and stakeholders which will contribute to a better understanding of the change process in general, and achievements of a curriculum reform in particular. Other issues are also discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to gain a better understanding of how national board administrators, more precisely, officials at the Finnish National Board of Education (FNBE) have perceived the primary influencing factors, or “regulators”, of the national core curriculum reform and the success of the implementation. The alignment between the identified regulators was also explored.

Altogether, 23 FNBE officials participated in this mixed methods study.

The results showed that the officials perceived the core curriculum reform as a systemic entity: the reform was implemented using a top-down and bottom-up strategy, and several regulators were identified at different levels of the education system. The officials also viewed the implementation as successful, and identified more promoting than hindering factors in it. However, they emphasised regulators at the administrative level, whereas regulators at the district or national levels were less often identified. They also highlighted the importance of orchestrating collaboration in comparison with the other regulators.

The results imply that in addition to considering separate determinants of reform success, it is important to pay attention to sufficient alignment between the regulators at different levels of the education system in order to better understand and promote the implementation of a large-scale reform.

This study provides new knowledge on national board administrators’ perspectives on what regulates the implementation of a large-scale curriculum reform.

Lesson study (LS) is generally regarded as a pathway for teachers' professional development and a method for teachers' instructional research. LS has been regarded as having the potential to drive large-scale reform but little is known about how it does so from a district level. Therefore, this paper aims to reveal how lesson study promote district education reform.

This study offers an in-depth case study of how District Y of Shanghai, China, took LS as the primary method in promoting its District Project of Building Curriculum Leadership in Schools. By analyzing the key project documents and achievements in project promotion, and interviews with the major Project leaders at District and school levels, this study explored the practice and impact of LS as a tool to promote district reform.

In the District Project, LS has been a medium to address each individual school's real problems of practice and turn them into reform vision and reform will in alignment with District goals. Five levels of school curriculum texts have been planned, designed, translated, implemented, reflected on, updated and mutually adjusted systematically through LS to ensure consistency in transforming District reform vision into classroom practice. Different models of teaching-research community building were found in sampled project schools and professional expertise was built with district support to promote reform. The curriculum leadership development through LS has shaped reform leader schools and formed a collection of LS exemplars circulated in schools as high-quality curriculum packages, which laid the foundation for district-wide reform.

The innovative practice of LS in China's education reform has expanded its reach from within one classroom to the entire district curriculum system and made it an important tool to drive large-school district-based education reform.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the progress of the curriculum reform in Hong Kong in the implementation phase from 2001‐2006, with the agreement and support of heads and teachers on the reform.

Survey questionnaires and focus group interviews were used to collect data from various stakeholders. A stratified random sampling method was employed to select 150 primary schools and 120 secondary schools to participate in the study.

It is found that with the agreement and support of school heads and teachers, there is good progress in the reform items on teaching and learning. Findings of this paper also suggest that teachers who agreed with the reform items made changes with their practices in terms of learning and teaching strategies, catering to learner diversity, assessment for learning, developing students' language proficiency, cross‐curricula learning, playing multiple teachers' roles and preparation for the new senior secondary curriculum. This study thus supports most findings from the change literature with its empirical data that educational changes and innovations with the agreement and support of school heads and teachers tend to have a greater chance of succeeding.

The paper contributes by examining to what extent findings and views established in change literature elsewhere can be justified and enriched with the case of Hong Kong.