Despite the above, the book offers many new ideas on learning communities andthe learning paradigm in general. It will prove a valuable resource for teachers, aca-demics and administrators.

School of Education, St Patrick’s Campus JOSEPH ZAJDAAustralian Catholic University, Melbourne

ADAMSON, B., KWAN, T. and CHAN, K. K. (eds.). 2000. Changing the Curriculum:The Impact of Reform on Primary Schooling in Hong Kong. Hong Kong: Hong KongUniversity Press. 315 pp. ISBN 962 209 522 4.

This collection of papers discusses the topic of educational reform in Hong Kong byanalysing a major curriculum renewal initiative for primary schools, namely the Target-Oriented Curriculum (TOC). The book is divided into four sections, the policy level,schools and teachers, teaching and learning followed by a concluding section. Thereis also a brief foreword by Ivor Goodson and a more substantial afterword by FerenceMarton. The audience for the book is not explicitly stated but it appears to be aimedprincipally at researchers, teacher educators, curriculum theorists and policy-makers;principals and teachers would also find much of interest, particularly in the papers onteaching and learning.

The authors are mainly scholars at the University of Hong Kong, reporting on alarge-scale longitudinal study of the TOC innovation. As such the book is a companionvolume to two other research reports (Morris et al. 1996 and Morris et al. 1999)produced by the same team. Many of the authors contribute to a number of differentchapters, Paul Morris being involved in five papers, Lo Mun-Ling in four and BobAdamson in three. Both this multiple presence of authors and the thematic unity ofthe collection enables the work to achieve greater coherence than is often the casewith edited selections of papers. Continuity is also enhanced by skilful cross-refer-encing between chapters.

The publisher’s blurb suggests that, “this book offers lessons for future curriculumchange in Hong Kong and elsewhere”. Potential lessons come through most forcefullyin chapters 2 and 11 where a number of highly pertinent themes are addressed, forexample:

• the paradox of an innovation which was based on a critique of existing standardsof teacher professionalism, yet a high degree of professionalism was required toimplement it;

• the lack of continuity in curriculum reform, particularly when a change of gov-ernment takes place, associated with the risk of teachers becoming alienated bythe ebbs and flows of the educational reform tide;

• a lack of coherence in educational reform, a factor particularly exacerbated by inno-vation overload;

• and a failure to tackle assessment practices which were in conflict with the proposedpedagogy.

A further lesson which resonates throughout much of the volume is the unintendedbi-products of reform. For example, TOC was used by some principals to furthertheir own agenda for school improvement or by individual teachers to legitimiseexisting practices. Chapter 6, for example, provides an inspiring account of how TOCenabled one teacher to move from the margins to the centre of his school’s reformefforts.

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47(5): 505–506, 2001. 2001 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

In my view, the main limitation of the book is the failure to engage more criti-cally with the qualitative research methods reported in many of the chapters. Findingsare generally reported unproblematically without providing an audit trail (Goetz andLe Compte 1984) or an explicit discussion of how data analysis was conducted. Thereis also little acknowledgment of potential limitations in interpreting case study data.As Silverman (1985) puts it, “the critical reader is forced to ponder whether theresearcher has selected only those fragments of data which support his argument”(p. 140). References to qualitative literature are also few and far between.

For example, in chapter 8 which contains an interesting contrastive analysis ofwhole-class and small-group activities, three classroom vignettes are discussed. It isnot apparent to the reader the extent to which these classroom extracts represent typicalor atypical practice i.e. there is no indication of the rationale for the choice of vignettes.Reference is also made in this chapter to a corpus of classroom observation data.However, the classroom observation tools used in the study are not appended and theissue of how inter-rater reliability was achieved is not discussed.

The final chapter by K.K. Chan does allude to a number of methodological issuesand identifies a number of limitations e.g. changes in personnel affecting the validityof case study data analysis; the challenges of maintaining rapport with case studyschools; and the wider issue of subjectivity. I would have preferred to see this chapterplaced near the beginning of the collection and refocused to discuss in more detailthe processes and challenges of interpreting qualitative data.

Overall, the volume is of a high standard, with a balance between papers with anarrow focus and more wide-ranging papers with implications for other contexts. Thecollection is highly recommended for those interested in educational reform, partic-ularly within Hong Kong, and it would also provide food for thought for scholarsand practitioners in other countries.

Hong Kong Institute of Education DAVID CARLESS

BRAY, Mark. 2000. Double-Shift Schooling: Design and Operation for Cost-Effectiveness. London and Paris: Commonwealth Secretariat/UNESCO. 92 pp.

A book that explores ways of broadening access to education while minimising unitcosts is always welcome, especially under prevailing economic conditions whereWorld Bank-driven initiatives are forcing many developing countries to liberalise thepublic sector in order to increase efficiency and cut back on government expenditure.Education reforms that are developed within a context of fiscal restraint should, there-fore, seek out innovative ways that make better use of scarce resources such asteachers, equipment, school buildings, libraries, and other facilities. It is out of thisconsideration that governments which actively seek alternative ways of increasingschool places without straining their national budgets will find Mark Bray’s book,Double-Shift Schooling: Design and Operation for Cost-Effectiveness, a most usefulguide for policy makers, planners, school managers and all those interested in edu-cational planning and management.

The second edition of Professor Bray’s book, which comes nearly ten years afterthe publication of the 1st edition in 1989, reflects extensive research and revisionsthat make it a most worthwhile handbook for policy makers, planners, and school-level managers. The book is particularly useful and interesting in its wide coverageof double-shift practices in Africa, Asia, America (South and North), Australasia,India, and the Caribbean. Since the book contains international experiences from a

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International Review of Education – Internationale Zeitschrift für Erziehungswissenschaft– Revue Internationale de l’Education 47(5): 506–507, 2001. 2001 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.