Lim, Leonel

Over the past two decades, the notion of culturally relevant pedagogy has gained attention as a student-centered approach to helping low progress learners achieve academic success. First articulated in the US by Ladson-Billings (1994) in her study of the pedagogic practices of exceptional teachers of African American students, culturally relevant pedagogy identifies students’ unique cultural backgrounds as strengths and these are nurtured to promote academic achievement (Brown-Jeffy & Cooper, 2011; Ladson-Billings, 1995a; Morrison, Robbins & Rose, 2008). This approach has since been adopted in countless schools and classrooms across North America under various names – culturally responsive teaching, culturally congruent teaching, culturally appropriate pedagogy, etc. (Ferger, 2006; Hastie, Martin, & Buchanan, 2006). As many of these studies have shown, by having teachers draw upon students’ “cultural reference points” (Ladson-Billings, 1994), schools can create bridges between students’ home and classroom experiences, while still maintaining the high expectations of state/national curricular mandates (Gay, 2000; Gutierrez, 2000; Lambeth, 2014; Paulk, Martinez). Indeed, as Gay (2000, p.29) explains, culturally relevant pedagogy is especially important in classrooms of low progress learners because it uses “the cultural knowledge, prior experiences, frames of reference, and performance styles of ethnically diverse students to make learning more relevant and effective… It teaches to and through the strengths of these students. It is culturally validating and affirming.”

Following Professor Michael W. Apple’s keynote address at “Cultural Legacy and Educational Institutions: An International Symposium on Chinese Schools in Southeast Asia” on 17 August 2018, he was interviewed by a former student Associate Professor Leonel Lim from the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. The interview touched on a number of theoretical issues around the ideological and material conditions of schools and the relations between language and power. These insights were used to frame a discussion around the challenges surrounding Singapore’s education system, the role of the public intellectual, and the place of Chinese language and culture in Singapore and the region. This chapter, Culture, Identity, and Education Policy, presents key portions of the interview.

Ideas about merit and the associated notion of a meritocracy have long been drawn upon to frame and understand a range of issues central to education policy. Little attention, however, is given to how in practice and through the workings of policy, meritocracy functions as an ideology that is struggled over by various social groups and pedagogic agents. Focusing on classroom pedagogic practices in Singapore, this article explores the ways in which in an ostensibly meritocratic education system, teachers interpret and negotiate ideas about culture to engage their students in the system’s low-progress tracks. We argue that these teachers are creatively resisting, even challenging official discourses of meritocracy and engaging in what Nancy Fraser calls struggles over recognition and redistribution.

Empirical policy analyses have hitherto largely focused on how formal institutions and agents (such as schools and ministries) formulate and enact policy. Less considered is the role and perspectives of families in mediating education policy. This paper discusses the importance of viewing families as not only policy subjects, but policy actors who play important roles in negotiating education policy reform. In the Singapore context, as in many contexts, there has been a growing policy emphasis on developing higher-order critical and innovative thinking to equip young people for the global knowledge economy. However, it is at the socio-economic margins of society that policy ideals tend not to map out as policymakers expect. We draw on in-depth interviews with low-income families – analysed using a governmentality perspective – to understand how families navigate Singapore’s policy landscape, particularly its growing emphasis on higher-order competencies within a neoliberal, performative, high-stakes education system. The paper concludes by elaborating on equity implications arising from this analysis.

Diversity is a socially constructed idea where differences are assigned values that are in turn shaped by local socio-political exigencies and narratives. Interpretations of diversity in Anglo-Saxon contexts tend to revolve around identity markers, such as race, gender, (dis)abilities and nationalities. Looking beyond Anglo-Saxon contexts, this paper examines how teachers in Singapore understand student diversity through their practices of differentiated instruction and, consequently, how these perceptions and practices engage with issues of equity. Teachers in our study interpreted student diversity primarily as academic readiness – shaped by students’ abilities, attitudes and families. These teachers’ experiences illuminate how analysing practices addressing diversity yields critical insights around dominant narratives and ideologies. In particular, findings point to a contextually situated construction of diversity and understandings of equity that are attuned to the national narratives of meritocracy, multiculturalism and academic excellence in Singapore.