Singapore’s educational policy through the prism of student voice: recasting students as co-agents of educational change and ‘disrupting’ the status quo?

This paper examines the implementation of Singapore’s landmark policy, ‘Thinking Schools, learning Nation’ (TSLN), in developing ‘thinking students’ through the prism of student voice. In the context of twenty-first century education and the growing importance of student voice in education, this paper argues that the time might be right to ‘disrupt’ Singapore’s education status quo and incorporate meaningful student voice in education policies. Instead of perceiving students as mere subjects of educational policy enactment, and seeing policy as something that is done to them, it should be reconceptualised as something which is done with them; importantly, students should be recast as key co-agents of educational change, consistent with TSLN’s reconceptualization of learners as ‘thinking students’. Basing its arguments on findings from a qualitative case study of students’ perceptions and schooling experiences of critical thinking in TSLN, this paper considers the case for the inclusion of significant student voice in Singapore’s educational policy reforms. It fills gaps in research on student voices in Singapore’s educational reforms and TSLN’s research from students’ perspective. The paper suggests that the inclusion of student voice in educational reform might be the next landmark step in ‘disrupting’ its educational landscape after the ‘big bang’ of TSLN.     

The reform of post‐16 education and training and the lessons from Europe

Abstract

With the future shape of Britain's post‐16 education and training still undecided policy makers are increasingly looking abroad for new models to follow. The educational debate has become internationalized. As in the late 19th century it is the pressure of economic competition from Europe which has galvanized British interest in the relative ‘success’ of training in countries such as France and Germany.

This paper examines the current use and misuse of comparative examples in British debates over reform. It analyses the systems of vocational education and training (VET) in France, Germany, and Sweden and assesses what lessons, if any, we can draw from them for the reform of British VET.     

The Workers’ Movement and Popular Education in Contemporary Spain (1868–1939)

The Spanish workers’ movement came into existence towards the middle of the 19th century, and even in the initial stages of its formation, it supported a number of educational initiatives in association with democratic and republican sectors from the bourgeoisie. But it was really from the September Revolution (1868) onwards that popular education began to appear explicitly on its political agenda. The Spanish section of the First International developed the first specifically workers’ education programme in the country, the so‐called “enseñanza integral” (integral education).     

ERASME ET LE CHAPITRE VIII DU PREMIER PANTAGRUEL (NOVEMBRE 1532)

The author compares the social biography of members of the Protestant and Catholic clergy in Germany from the end of the 17th century until the first decades of the 19th century. Her results can be summarized in three major theses, which modify the prevailing research tendencies:

1) Both groups were tied up in comparable social and educational structures. In both cases their approach towards modernity was marked by retarding moments which means that any attempt to characterize it as ‘professionalisation’ should be made with the utmost care. 2) It was not before the beginning of the 19th century that both groups developed education courses with special emphasis on efficiency. Only in the case of the protestant group, however, the social opening incident thereto led to a ‘period of profusion’. So any assumption of a connection between social opening and an intensification of access to academic education has to be modified. 3) Neither the catholic nor the protestant understanding, of the ‘ethos of duties’ should be characterized as concurring with the state. Until the beginning of the 19th century both churches favoured an exceptional position of the clergy in society.     

教育科学化的早期探索——欧美教育科学研究运动简析

19世纪后期至20世纪初期,欧美出现的教育科学研究运动是教育研究领域一次具有深远意义的运动它的出现与这个时期欧美社会新的发展和教育的深刻变革,以及人们对科学、科学与教育关系的认识有密切的联系。根据欧美教育科学研究运动中一些突出的事件加以划分,其发展可以分为四个阶段,且每个阶段都有其显著的特点。19世纪末至20世纪初期,欧美出现的教育科学研究运动是现代科学研究思想和方法在教育研究领域里的初次运用和实践,其所关注的领域和所争论的问题值得今天反思与借鉴。     

Seekers after truth? Images of postgraduate research and researchers in the twenty-first century

Western cultural practices contribute to our understanding of the purpose of higher education and how we are to conduct ourselves in educational contexts. In this article, entitled ‘Seekers after truth?’, I analyse recent works of popular fiction which draw on and contribute to the idea that postgraduate research is a process of locating and amassing clues leading to the revelation or discovery of a truth. These novels re-inscribe the metaphor of the postgraduate researcher as detective or ‘seeker after truth’. This article considers the contradictory and productive meanings that arise from the trope of the researcher-detective. In addition, I argue that, although there are challenges in bringing the work of one field to bear on another, analyses of discourses which are not produced within higher educational contexts can nonetheless promote reflection on educational concepts. In this case, fiction enables us to consider ideas about what it is to do postgraduate research and to be a postgraduate researcher.     

An epistemology of one’s own: curricular (re‐)construction of school technology and non‐technology in Sweden, 1975–1995

Obara Kuniyoshi, a leading representative in Japan’s New Education movement in the early twentieth century, founded his own private school, Tamagawa Gakuen, in 1929. Although his educational philosophy owes more to contemporary Western ideas about educational reform than to Japan’s educational heritage, Obara throughout his life invoked the juku, a type of private academy prevalent in Japan until the late nineteenth century, and made ‘juku education’ one of his principles. This case study examines Obara’s ‘juku‐myth’ both in the context of Obara’s educational thought and achievements and in the context of recent discussions about collective memory as a historical reality in its own right.     

Teacher education in France under the Hollande government: reconstructing and reinforcing the republic

Successive republican governments in France have constructed a complex educational context, which is rhetorically committed to a myth of provision of educational equality of opportunity whilst in practical terms it is characterised by a system focused on the production and reproduction of elites. This article aims to consider the political drivers and levers that are transforming French teacher education during the current challenging economic, social and cultural context. It uses a relatively new methodological approach to the analysis of policy evolution and development by applying a critical analysis of discourse, which considers the ways in which teacher education policy is ‘reproduced and reworked’. This is achieved through the discourse analysis of a policy speech made in October 2013 by the then Minister of Education, Vincent Peillon, contextualised by comparisons with reforms enacted by the previous Sarkozy government (masterisation). The article, therefore, utilises a systematic framework that allows analysis at the levels of contextualisation and deconstruction of the text and so highlights developments to date in the arguably unique approach of the Hollande government, driven by the relationship between the republican state and the education system in France. The article also considers how reaction following the Charlie Hebdo attacks of January 2015 afforded opportunities to assert new validity for the teacher education policy espoused within Peillon’s speech.     

英国的大学改革与科学复兴

英国在17世纪成为世界科学活动中心。然而，18世纪以后，英国失去了世界科学活动中心的地位，这一地位先后被法国、德国和美国所取代。从19世纪下半叶开始到20世纪初，英国开展了一场旨在改变古典教育传统，加强科技教育的大学改革运动，大学教育的面貌焕然一新。20世纪以后，古老的英国重振雄风，坐上了世界科学巅峰的第二把交椅。     

Shameful interest in educational research

ABSTRACT

This article considers ontological conceptualizations of shame-interest as experienced in educational research. Shame has frequently been reported in research as a property of the autonomous individual: the shame of the participant to share with the researcher, and the shame of the researcher to reflexively eliminate. Shame-interest is re-theorized here as a generative research event, as intra-action, as one simultaneous movement in the ongoing present. We attempt an ethical shift from a reflexive stance to fluxing movements of response-ability and co-consequence in order to encourage socially responsive educational research, informed through the conceptual resources of psychologist Silvan Tomkins, and feminist philosopher and physicist Karen Barad. Theory is threaded through a series of personal research vignettes to illustrate our thinking through ways shame-interest materialized within research events. Shame is re/conceptualized as a contestable composite feeling entangled with interest that allows an alternate non-reductive and ethical approach to educational research. We amplify our researcher responsibility, and our shame, by placing ourselves as entangled with the research ‘problem’ under investigation.     

Ways of knowing,outcomes and ‘comparative education’: be careful what you pray for

Comparative education as a field of study in universities (and ‘comparative education’ as practised by nineteenth-century administrators of education in Canada, England, France and the USA) has always addressed the theme of ‘transfer’: that is, the movement of educational ideas, principles and practices, and institutions and policies from one place to another. The first very explicit statement of this way of thinking about ‘comparative education’ was offered in the early nineteenth century in France and was expressed in terms of the expectation that if comparative education used carefully collected data, it would become a science. Clearly – about 200 years later – a large number of systems of testing and ranking, based on the careful measurement of educational processes and product, have provided us with hard data and these data are being used within the expectation that successful transfer (of educational principles and policies and practices from one place to another) can now take place. A transferable technology exists. This article argues that this view – that ‘we’ now have a successful science of transfer – ignores almost all of the complex thinking in the field of ‘academic comparative education’ of the last 100 years; and that it is likely to take another couple of hundred years before it can approximate to being a science of successful social and educational predictions. However, what shapes the article is not this argument per se, but trying to see the ways in which the epistemology of the field of study (academic comparative education) is always embedded in the politics of both domestic educational reform and international political relations – to the point where research in the field, manifestly increasingly ‘objective’ is also de facto increasingly ‘political’. The article is about the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of that and what has been forgotten and what has not yet been noticed.     

北欧的民众高等学校教育——非职业化取向的社区高等教育探索

19世纪中期前后北欧各国先后发展的民众高等学校教育运动,是一场民族精神振兴的大众化教育运动。这场来自民间的自发教育力量,创立了社区精神塑造的新模式,也成为了高等教育大众化发展的早期尝试,这对今天发展中国家的社区教育与高等教育大众化的发展,都具有重要的启发意义。     

Activist forest monks,adult learning and the Buddhist environmental movement in Thailand 1

In the tradition of grassroots environmental movements worldwide, activist Buddhist monks in rural Thailand have, since the late 1980s, led a popular movement to protect local forest, water and land resources while at the same time challenging dominant state and corporate ‘economist’ development paradigms. Most famously, these ‘development monks’ (phra nak phathanaa) and ‘ecology monks’ (phra nak anuraksaa) have led local villagers and NGO activists in the symbolic ordaining of large trees and forests (buat paa). They do this in the hope that they will not only protect forests from logging, but also teach local people the value of conserving forest resources. This paper charts the history, philosophy and practice of the activist forest monk movement in Thailand, its contribution to our collective knowledge of adult education in new social movements, and its value to environmental adult education.     

Comparisons of ‘Education Reform’ in Britain and the USA: a new era?

ABSTRACT

This paper compares and contrasts the origins, objectives and outcomes of the New Right education reform movements in Britain and the USA. It considers whether the education reforms will create a new era for schools, in terms of diversity of public and private provision and social, sexual and racial differentiation. This is despite the emphasis on quality or excellence in education as opposed to equality of educational opportunity. The origins of the reform movements are to be found in both the politics and economic developments of the ‘social democratic’ or ‘liberal’ bipartisan political consensus. The objectives of the reforms are to deal with declining international competitiveness and the raising of educational standards through consumer or parental choice. The outcomes are likely not to be a general raising of standards but rather a bifurcation in terms of a complex mix of class, race and gender.     

The influence of teachers on the development of political radicals: a case study of members of the Scottish Socialist Party

While there is a wealth of literature on radical adult ‘popular’ education for change, most of it looks forward and speculates on the educational processes best able to help ‘the oppressed’, ‘excluded’ or ‘disadvantaged’ become critically‐aware ‘subjects’ of social change. Within a critical education framework, recent research looked in the opposite direction, identified adult activists already critically‐aware and worked backwards through their life histories to find the educational experiences seen as most influential in their development. Examining questionnaire responses, this article analyses how members of the Scottish Socialist Party perceived the influence exercised by their teachers, from primary to tertiary education, in the development of their beliefs and identity as activists. Comparisons are made with research in ‘active citizenship’. The research suggests there is more potential for radical education within the formal sector than is often believed and teachers contribute to this process in sometimes contradictory ways. The findings feed into debates in the UK and other countries, particularly in Latin America, about where popular educators should direct their energies, within state structures or outside, in social movements.     

Adult education between the wars: the curious case of the Selborne Lecture Bureau

‘Independent’ lecture agencies are a neglected element in the history of education. Between 1918 and 1939, the Selborne Lecture Bureau was a significant national provider of adult education in Britain, both in its own right and as a supplier of lecture(r)s to Women's Institutes and other bodies, and it pioneered the use of films in schools. For a brief period, it was an ‘educational’ vehicle for the Empire Marketing Board with a programme of over 2400 lectures in 1929. The Bureau originated in the early twentieth century split between the conservative (and male) traditions of natural history and the radical (and female) campaigning (anti‐) plumage movement that produced the RSPB. The interwar history of the Selborne Lecture Bureau provides a counterpoint to conventional accounts of adult education between the two world wars, part of an influential ‘third stream’ alongside the ‘liberal tradition’ and growing state and local authority provision.     

Anarchist Ethics as a Foundation for Educational Alternatives

In this article, the distinctions between anarchism as a political philosophy are outlined and contrasted with that of liberal democratic theory upon which much of educational philosophy is based. The principles upon which the social anarchist position rests are briefly outlined with respect to the state, authority, and human beings’ way of interacting with and relating to one another. Next, some of the anarchist critiques of state-controlled schooling are considered. Following the discussion of traditional anarchism, largely rooted in late 19th and early 20th century European workers’ movements, some of the foundational principles of contemporary anarchism, beginning in the 1960s and continuing up through the present, are considered. Finally, the article conceptualizes what it might look like to utilize anarchist principles as an organizing framework for education and how these principles might be put into action in a real-world educational context.     

Bodies and affect in non-traditional learning spaces

Abstract

This paper considers the ‘knowledge economy’ as it is used in education rhetoric to establish social and educational consent for significant changes both to the spatial organisation of classrooms and their affective economies. We draw on ethnographic data from a study of ‘non-traditional classroom spaces’, where the spatial organisation of schooling emerged as a potential fulcrum through which the imaginary of the conventional primary classroom was being reconceptualised. Traditionally configured classroom spaces and the learning that takes place within them were being challenged and replaced by notions of twenty-first century learning in ‘agile’ learning environments. In the context of this reform agenda, these open-plan spaces were seen as offering new prospects for participation in a globally connected and competitive economic world that requires students to continuously adapt, innovate and respond creatively to a range of different problems. We consider how these everyday moments function as conceptual encounters between affective, embodied experiences and educational reform discourses that rationalise the implementation of non-traditional classroom spaces in ways that have very little to do with children and their futures. This cultural approach takes a step aside from numerous, and necessary, critiques of recent educational policies per se, in order to consider what might be learned from the uncanny spectres of child bodies that haunt them. The paper draws attention to examples of children’s affect in non-traditional classrooms and what that may tell us about current educational reform when sacrifice forms part of the missing account of educational reorganisation for the knowledge economy.     

人道主义思潮与中国法制近代化

人道主义思潮是近代中国思想启蒙运动的主流,它在19世纪末20世纪初中国法制近代化的发展进程中显示了一定的影响力。从改良运动时期到新文化运动时期,人道主义思潮对中国法制近代化的影响,历经自改良派、革命派到民主派的相继推动,呈现出了阶段性分明的特征。