Pereira Andrew Joseph

This dissertation investigates teacher and student identities and subjectivities in Singapore through media representations and interviews. With the aim of understanding the social, material and cultural bases for their formation and construction, this study examines the representation of students and teachers in a variety of locally produced media texts including policy statements, print and video advertisements, social media sites, and interviews. Central to the theoretical framework for this study are the concepts of neoliberalism and governmentality. Within the political economy of teacher professionalism, neoliberal principles advocate a spirit of enterprise and capitalist individualism, while the workings of governmentality refer broadly to strategies deployed by the state to compel teachers’ self-regulation of their professional identities. The political rationality stemming from neoliberalism and governmentality that privileges certain teacher subjectivities based on the imperatives of competition, profits, and capital accumulation, which may conflict with the educational goals of democracy, individual agency, and social justice. In Singapore, the routine deployment of diverse discourses ranging from economic pragmatism as well as pastoral caring bolsters neoliberal imaginaries to harness the self-disciplinary and self-enterprising energies of teachers within the educational marketplace. This research study employs a combination of research methods and traditions which include critical discourse analysis, literary criticism, architectural analysis, and cultural studies. The analytic tools and methods allow for an interrogation of the ideological forces at work in media constructions of teacher subjectivities in the Singaporean cultural imaginary. By attending to the discursive workings of media communications in online social networking sites, this interpretive study will further explore the possible forms of citizen resistance against the allegedly hegemonic forces of neoliberal governmentality. It rejects the argument that the State’s power is sovereign and argues instead that ideological hegemony is precarious given the arts of resistance enabled by the advent of online social media.

Building on and consolidating previously completed research at the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, this study investigated how students recruited and used digital media, equipment and software in storytelling to visualise and perform Character and Citizenship (CCE) at a secondary school in Singapore. There were two interconnected reasons for wanting to combine these curriculum areas.
First, using Gardner’s ‘Five Minds for the Future’ framework (the Disciplined Mind, the Synthesizing mind, the Creating Mind, the Respectful mind and the Ethical Mind) we saw some points of resonance with the Ministry of Education’s primary goals for CCE—to develop core values, social and emotional competencies, and civic and moral awareness. Yet, the importance and necessity of exercising the Synthesizing and Creating Minds seemed weak.
Second, in line with 21st Century learning and literacy needs, the project responded to the deepening and widening digital proliferation in society and the noticeable transition from the written word as telling, to screen-borne images as showing. Indeed, recognizing and accounting for contemporary media use in mainstream education has become a priority for educators, policy-makers, teachers and learners who care about communication and expression.

Any progressive curriculum needs to take into account the growth of digital technology and multimedia expression. As such, this research explores the possibility of composing an argument in a digital and multimodal form. The issues surrounding globalisation practices are examined within a General Paper classroom through the use of the pedagogy of multiliteracies framework as established by the New London Group (1996) to enable students to work through a design process based on situated practice, overt instruction, critical framing and transformed practice (New London Group, 1996). Involving the theories of multimodal social semiotics (Stein, 2007) and attention economy rules (Lanham, 2006), this new literacies project examines the possible use of semiotic resources within rhetorical concerns to form a communicative ensemble engaging in multimodal argumentation. Through the belief that the critical engagement in meaningful and therapeutic projects engenders the advancement of notions of democracy and social justice, this research also seeks to investigate elements of criticality that may inform on educational and pedagogical practices for the language classroom.

Through a qualitative research framework that involved the analysis of a digital artefact, interviews and reflection worksheets, the research indicated possible affordances in advancing multimodal expression and democratic ideals. One area might be the cultivation of orchestrated multimodal thinking bearing evidence of “multimodal synaesthesia” (Kress, 2003). There are grounds to suggest that through design, there might be the possibility to develop cognitive capabilities to not only think in multimodal terms, but to do so rhetorically. Another area might be to cultivate new multimodal rhetorical features that employ elements of topology, emotion and non- hegemonic communication. In terms of democratic ideals and social justice, aspects of digital argumentation can be harnessed as new available designs to examine strands of discourse to discern between multiple points of views and to provide for further platforms for political questioning and scrutiny. This research also recognises areas of concerns in terms of “ambivalence and confusion” (Haas, 1999) over new technological use. Finally, in asserting digital compositions like multimodal argumentation to be legitimate and feasible forms of expression, there is thus the call to develop assessment rubrics for multimodality in classroom application.

This paper aims to review the research paradigms of action research, narrative inquiry, and teacher research, mainly through the writings of John Elliott; F. Michael Connelly and D. Jean Clandinin; and Marilyn Cochran-Smith and Susan Landy Lytle respectively, for conceptual possibilities for fruitful schoolteacher and University researcher partnerships. This study seeks to survey the focal points relevant for the concerns of practice, theory and partnership to give the reader an introduction with an intention to further develop these practitioner research with the possibility of encouraging more fruitful School and University partnerships. This is with a view that teachers need to engage in educational research and that researchers’ perspectives can also contribute especially within partnerships. The literature review aims to survey the current stances of the research paradigms along with their features, research foci, methods, outcomes and others. These are then conceptualized for possible research--practice partnerships (RPP) within educational research in terms of definitions, conceptualizations, organizations, practice and enactment. The review also investigates possible partnership issues, problems and tensions of the research paradigms to suggest resolutions, guiding questions and recommendations for researchers and practitioners.

This study examines teachers' professional development (PD) decisions through the lens of governmental neoliberalism. Situated in the neoliberal paradigm of advancing free market ideals and principles, the study examines the paradox of teachers' constrained decisions in PD activities within the sociocultural context of Singapore. The findings help to illuminate some of the issues teachers face in PD decision-making. Recommendations are also discussed to enhance teachers’ autonomy for a governmentality to broaden education horizons.