Singapore's ‘global assemblage’: digging into the culture of education policy making

Abstract

As a meta-concept, 'globalization' has the tendency to create master categories such as an emergent global/izing education policy. This paper critiques the thinking and assumptions that underpin a global education policy. The paper proposes that 'global assemblage' is a more helpful conceptual thinking about the way education policy works in globalizing circumstances. Conceptually, the notion of an assemblage helps us to re-conceive global forms not as a totalizing external force but as an element that works in combination with other heterogeneous elements in local situations and contexts. Aspects of Singapore's education policy landscape are analyzed as part of Singapore's 'global assemblage' to reveal a culture of education policy making that is constituted by heterogeneous elements such as global techniques, situated politics and ethics.

The discursive construction of lower-tracked students: Ideologies of meritocracy and the politics of education

“…cleanliness, and a renowned educational system with high ranks on international academic measures (e.g., the Program for International Student Assessment [PISA] and the Trends in International Math and Science Study [TIMMS]) help to secure its attractiveness as a trading partner and location for multi-national corporations. Singapore's high performance on these international educational assessments not only promotes ideals of meritocracy but, in so doing, also perpetuates social disparity and lack of educational equity in ways that align with technocratic discourses of the global knowledge economy and fear of not keeping pace globally (Koh, 2011;L. Lim, 2013b;K.…”

“…In part, tracking is meant to accommodate differentiated learning. In the most crass sense, however, tracking is about the management of resources⎯of which Singapore's most precious is its people (Koh, 2011).…”

“…In this system, high-stakes examinations provide "an efficient means of assessing talent and effort" with top scoring students held to be "more disciplined, more driven to excel, and more deserving of reward" (Wong, 2013, p. 190, citing Chua, 2006. Koh (2011) highlighted how education and economy are linked in Singapore's discourses of anxiety and fear of economic unraveling if education falls short in preparing a globally competitive workforce. Similar to other nations seeking to contribute to the new global knowledge economy, a push towards addressing globalization as a problem space has been partially addressed in Singapore through various educational reform movements (e.g., Thinking Schools, Learning Nation, MOE, 1997), which Koh (2011, p. 273) characterized as "a technocratic reading of the global economy, and of globalization."…”

“…This study contributes to ongoing discussions in this journal and elsewhere about how ideologies shape discourse through which education policies, systems, and practices affect students' opportunities and futures in complex, multi-layered ways (e.g., Bertrand, Perez, & Rogers, 2015;Dorn & Ydesen, 2014;Oakes, Wells, Jones, & Datnow, 1997;Spillane, 2012). It also offers theoretical and practical implications beyond the Singaporean context, in part, due to the neo-liberal and meritocratic ideologies driving education and political systems worldwide (Apple, 2006;Hursh, 2007;Koh, 2011) in which market-based discourses frame education in terms of maximizing resources toward greatest economic growth and competition. In the following sections, I outline the theoretical framework informing the analysis and provide background on Singapore's educational context before detailing methods and presenting findings.…”

Changing conditions for teachers’ knowledge work: new actor constellations and responsibilities

“…To discern how the various actor constellations emerge and affect teachers’ knowledge work, I draw on AT (Müller, 2015) and, more specifically, the concept of ‘knowledge assemblage’ (Markuskaite & Goodyear, 2017, p. 117). Put simply, an assemblage is a conglomerate of ideas, tactics and practices assembled to deal with a problem at a historical and contextual moment (Koh, 2011, p. 271). AT offers a dynamic and processual perspective on how change emerges from the interaction of countless components in which work is situated.…”