Instrumentation for studying school self management

School systems world-wide are currently facing a huge volume of challenges and reforms (Caldwell, 1994; Cheng & Cheung, 1995, 1997). In order to meet the megatrends in education (Caldwell & Spinks, 1992; Caldwell, 1994), schools should be sensitive, responsive and flexible to its ever changing internal and external work environment. To achieve this, the school should be effective in implementing strategic development plans by maximizing its strengths and minimizing its weakness; and be able to engage in continuous self learning and renewal while self managing its site-based business. Despite the above, there is exceptionally few studies addressing the operationalization of the above concepts on school self management. This paper, based on Cheung & Cheng (1996) conception first elaborates the framework for understanding and school self management. Following this, the authors attempt further to operationalize the proposed concepts of school self management by developing an instrument to measure the school self management strength.