Master of Arts

Over the last few decades, Singapore’s education system and policies have evolved in response to changes in the socio-political and economic landscapes in Singapore and the world at large. As education policies evolve, the focus on the type and qualities of teachers Singapore needs also changes. In order to recruit teachers, the Ministry of Education (MOE) in Singapore has used teacher recruitment advertisements to communicate and promulgate its ideals of what teaching and the identity of teachers encompass. This research study aims to explicate possible ideological meanings and values embedded in the printed teacher recruitment advertisements produced by MOE from 1997 to 2016, by studying how teaching and teacher identity are constructed in the advertisements. This research study adopts Fairclough’s (1989; 2015) Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) approach and Halliday’s (2013) Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG) in analysing the verbal elements, and Kress and van Leeuwen’s (1996, 2006) Social Semiotics Visual Analysis framework in analysing the visual elements to unpack the meanings and values in the printed teacher recruitment advertisements.

As these advertisements are targeted at teacher recruitment and represent teachers and teaching, focus group discussions (FGD) were also conducted with in-service and pre-service teachers to find out their perceptions and interpretations of the advertisements, their experiences as teachers as well as their perceptions of teaching and teacher identity. Interview data collected were used to triangulate the textual analysis. In addition, this research study also investigated the extent of alignment between MOE’s teacher recruitment efforts, as seen in and through their print advertisements, and the broader educational goals and policies espoused by the government of Singapore.

The findings from the textual analysis of the teacher recruitment advertisements revealed the ideological portrayal of teaching and teachers which evolved alongside the changing demands of Singapore’s education system over the years. A comparison between these findings and the perceptions of in-service and pre-service teachers from the FGD further revealed some mismatch between the idealized portrayal of teaching and teachers in the teacher recruitment advertisements and the reality of teaching and teachers.