Loh, Chin Ee

This article examines how three Singaporean boys constructed their identities as global literate citizens through their reading practices in and out of school. An invisible network of resources contributed to their construction of a global literate identity relevant for local/global markets. The acquisition of a global literate identity as a form of intercultural capital is an unequal game in a neoliberal education system and social networks must be recognized as key nodes for literacy re-vision.

Dominant visual narratives of reading tend to portray readers as solitary individuals deeply immersed in reading a single text in a quiet, undisturbed spot. Yet reading is both social and solitary, and takes place in different kinds of spaces, not all quiet and not all undisturbed. This visual essay examines how reading as everyday practice is situated in social spaces, and is appropriated by individuals as well as members of a collective for its own uses. In this visual essay, we draw on our ethnographic research of reading to examine the connections between space and reading as social practice. We focus on reading activities in school and particularly on the space of the school library, historically associated as a space for reading, to understand not only the kinds of reading that occur in a space meant for such purposes, but also how students negotiate such spaces and practices for their own purposes.

In this paper, I argue for the deparochialising of the IBDP English A1 curriculum where teachers as curriculum-makers would critically assess text choice and where students have the opportunities to make critical readings and engage in conversations about issues raised by the text. Through the case study of the implementation of one English A1 curriculum in a Singapore school, I demonstrate the possibilities for a cosmopolitan literature curriculum that is attentive to both the global and the local.

Dominant views of reading in educational contexts tend to portray reading as a solitary event, often conducted in silence and over a sustained period of time, popularized in images of reading across different contexts and times. Yet, social perspectives of reading suggest that there are multiple ways to enact reading even within the urban adolescent schooling contexts. This article shows how visual data can reveal new ways of understanding the varied everyday micro-practices of reading that are enacted across different schools. It further argues that visual juxtaposition as critical analytic method can provide new understandings of visual data and generate insights through deliberate comparison. Using the dataset from an ethnographic study of reading in Singapore secondary schools, this paper examines the varied ways that juxtaposition can be applied to the analysis of two forms of visual data, namely documentary photography and time-lapse data to show how concepts of reading, social relations and space are expanded through this form of analysis.

Does print still matter in this digital age? What is the role of technology in reading? Do adolescents who enjoy reading view the reading of print and digital material differently from those who do not enjoy reading? Drawing on survey data from 6,005 students and focus group data with 96 students across six secondary schools, this mixed-methods study examines adolescents’ print and digital reading habits in Singapore. Findings show that adolescents prefer print but move towards more online reading as they get older. Adolescents’ online reading habits are reflective of their print preferences and behavior with physical books. The article explains how both print and technology matter to motivate adolescent reading.

This article takes a comparative socio-spatial approach at the intersection of social class and reading politics to provide a fresh way of examining school reading policies and practices, unearthing previously hidden spaces of inequity for reading intervention. The juxtaposition of two nested case studies in Singapore, one of an elite all-boys’ school and another of a coeducational government school with students in different academic tracks, revealed inequitable practices, specifically in the designs and uses of school library spaces between schools serving different social classes. The study argues that attempts to design reading interventions should move away from the view of student-as-problem to structure-as-problem in order to discover new perspectives for reading intervention. Additionally, this study demonstrates how foregrounding social class in educational research is necessary for effective design of educational strategies that aim to transform education and society by narrowing the gap between students from different social classes.