ABSTRACT
Leadership studies in school-based curriculum development have focused mainly on a managerial and hierarchical basis to the extent that schoolteachers have been considered peripheral in making pedagogical decisions. Distributed leadership is frequently used to label all kinds of shared and collaborative leadership activities. Two curriculum development teams were formed on a key subject basis, namely, Chinese language and mathematics, which comprise over one-third of the curriculum time in Hong Kong primary schools. Focusing solely on teacher leadership development, without a concurrent suitable program of leadership education based on research findings for both middle management and school management, can diminish the effectiveness of teacher education programs and initiatives of innovative teachers in creating and expanding spaces for development work in schools. The analysis of the communication pattern of the reflection meeting time confirmed the consistency of the leadership style and the domination of the discourse of the two hierarchical leaders of the meeting.
