Education Policies in Singapore

In extension and scaling, deliberate efforts should be made towards seeding for a research-practice com-munity as a structure to engage the participants with the various context-instantiations. We have found that effective strategies to enculturate people include: • Involving stakeholders in co-analysis and co-design from the start • Establishing shared language and understandings through boundary objects (design artefacts) • Seeding and incubating a community of researchers, practitioners and brokers to augment translation

This chapter critically discusses the key characteristics and ideological assumptions of neo-liberal education policy, and its impact on curriculum reform in China. To illustrate the adoption and consequences of neo-liberal education policy in China, this chapter focuses on recent curriculum reform in Shanghai. It is argued that there is a shift, through the implementation of neo-liberal education policy, from a “one-size-fits-all” educational model to one that focuses on individual interests and needs in China. However, the neo-liberal education policy in China faces two main challenges. First, although the educational changes attempt to promote more student- centred curriculum, pedagogy and assessment, key educational stakeholders in China still value traditional forms of teaching and learning that lead to academic success in high-stakes examinations. The second challenge is the de-professionalisation of school personnel where centralised control by the state through the school appraisal system and standardised exams threatens to undermine the professionalism and autonomy of the educators.

This book explores the role of education in the formation of the Singapore developmental state, through a study of education for citizenship in Singapore from 1955 to present day. The book provides a historical study of citizenship education in Singapore, whereby a comparative study of history, civics and social studies curricula, and the politics and policies that underpin them are examined. The book demonstrates how the state maintained its hegemony and legitimacy through the culture of crisis management through education. It is essentially the history of how Singapore's developmental state managed crises (imagined, real or engineered), and how changes in history, civics and social studies curricula, served to legitimize the state, through educating and moulding the desired 'good citizen' in the interest of nation building. Underpinning these changes has been the state's use of cultural constructs such as Confucianism and Asian values to shore up its legitimacy.

This book examines gendered allocations of meaning and social practices concerning educational migration paths from Malaysia to Singapore. The study is embedded in the disciplinary debates on migration and gender. The complexity of the issues of education, migration and gender as they operate along and across other axes of inequality and differentiation such as ethnicity and religion get analyzed by focusing the perspective of the social actors. The central questions that have guided the research are: Why do Chinese Malaysian women migrate to Singapore for further education? How do the social actors negotiate the education path in a gendered manner? Which strategies do the female educational migrants pursue through appropriation and allocation of certain gendered ideals and norms in transnational space?
The most important finding of the study points out that against the background of an ethnically segregated and patrilineal Malaysian society, educational migration to Singapore is the key for a transformation of femininity for Chinese Malaysian women as it implies extended scopes of action and relative independence.
In multicultural Malaysia, the Malay Malaysian population profits most from national politics.
Despite cultural diversity in Malaysia, the government legitimates a cultural Malay supremacy. This is also linked to religion, as Islam has been established as the compulsory religion for the Malay Malaysians. These developments of in- and exclusion are based on colonial categorizations of ‘race’ and ‘culture’ and the concept of multiculturalism. The ethnic segregation was introduced during British colonial times mainly through the establishment of a formal education system.
Due to the social emphasis on ethnic boundaries, broad, supra-ethnic political action regarding women’s and gender issues has so far been difficult to organize. The Chinese Malaysian women have been denied equal access to education and equal participation in national gender politics for the last four decades. But not only do multicultural politics hamper women-related issues, but also patrilineal Confucian elements of the Chinese population group itself contribute to the poor implementation of gender-related claims.
Singapore with its multiethnic meritocratic society is the destination for the educational migration of Chinese Malaysian women who seek more equal opportunities. Its ‚modern‘ neoliberal education system opens up more possibilities for the migrants. The young Chinese Malaysian women do not only migrate to the ‘modern’, but also to the Chinese-dominated Singapore. Therewith, the migration process is also a means of ethnic distinction. Through appropriations of ‘modern’, Chinese-focused discourses on femininity, the social actors distance themselves from the Muslim Malay norms concerning family constellations, sexuality and romantic love as well as the body.
By means of change in perspective, the book not only analyzes the stories and topics of young Chinese Malaysian women, but also of female Malay Malaysian students with their perspectives on the similar issues. Through this complex picture, the transnational space between Singapore and Malaysia gets analyzed as a place of social order.