Yang, Peidong

Existing migration research has framed ‘middling migrants’ mainly in terms of transnational fluidity and flexibility, thus overlooking the issue of integration. This article adds to a burgeoning scholarship advocating a more locally embedded perspective (e.g. Meier, 2015b. Migrant Professionals in the City: Local Encounters, Identities, and Inequalities. New York and London: Routledge) by investigating the integration of immigrant teachers working in mainstream primary and secondary schools in the Asian city–state of Singapore. It is found that these immigrant teachers faced differentiated formal inclusion with respect to legal settlement, whereas their professional integration experiences also diverged between those who embodied certain ‘mainstream’ characteristics and those who did not. In negotiating professional integration, ‘non-mainstream’ immigrant teachers adopted a spectrum of strategies, but on the whole prioritised the pragmatic imperative to ‘fit in’, resulting in what may be termed muted diversification. In terms of broader ethnic and migration scholarship, this account serves to highlight the ways in which locally specific institutional and sociocultural conditions differentially shape middling migrants’ experiences in respect to settlement and work. With regard to the Singaporean context, this article fills an empirical gap in migration research while also reflecting on the accommodation and management of diversity in education.

The global landscape of higher education is an uneven field where players like nation-states are placed in hierarchical and centre-periphery relations. This paper focuses on the global field of international student mobility (ISM) and investigates China’s place in the field using an analytical framework consisting of three key categories of ‘capital’: economic, human, and symbolic. Drawing on existing scholarship and author’s first-hand ethnographic research, the paper examines the case of China as both a source and a destination of ISM, and analyses the flows and accrual of these three forms of capital as consequences of outbound and inbound student mobilities. Analyses show that in a global ISM field characterised by asymmetries and inequalities, China’s place is arguably semi-peripheral economically and symbolically. It is argued that this country-focused macro perspective complements existing ISM scholarship’s emphasis on social reproduction at individual and private levels.

Inquiry-based learning has gained prominence in secondary-school humanities education in Singapore in recent years. In Social Studies (SS), the loci of inquiry learning are “Issue Investigation” as found in the 2016 Express and Normal (Academic) syllabus and “Performance Task” in the 2014/15 Normal (Technical) syllabus, respectively. Due to the relatively short time inquiry has been given explicit emphasis, to date research into this new aspect of SS education remains very limited. This paper focuses on an important yet often neglected step of the SS inquiry process—the development of inquiry questions. To explore how different ways of crafting the SS inquiry question may lead to distinct inquiry approaches and processes, a taxonomy of SS inquiry questions is proposed based on empirical observations. The taxonomy comprises three categories of questions: the “politician’s question”, the “social worker’s question”, and the “social scientist’s question”. The implications and applications of this taxonomy for SS instruction are also discussed with reference to the multifaceted aims of SS education in Singapore.

The upper-secondary Social Studies (SS) syllabus (Express/Normal-Academic) released in Singapore in 2016 introduced an inquiry-based component called “Issue Investigation” (II). Given the relatively recent nature of this introduction, so far there has been little research on II. Drawing on a small qualitative study, this article reports on some of the typical challenges experienced by Singapore SS teachers in implementing and enacting II, as well as the coping strategies they developed. According to these teachers’ accounts, II was from the outset hindered by an exam-driven pragmatic attitude prevalent in Singapore schools; whereas specific enactment challenges included the II’s (perceived) overwhelming scope and depth, time constraints, and deficits of certain skills or preparedness among students and teachers. Faced with these challenges, teachers developed broadly two types of coping strategies—simplification and “piggybacking”—to tame II by making it manageable, both for the students and for themselves.

Research in education has long noted teachers’ role in assisting social and ideological reproduction. Separately, scholarship has also investigated the use of extra-curricular activities in equipping disadvantaged students with social and cultural capital, to embark on social mobility. Positioned at the intersection of these two apparently disparate strands, this paper presents a case in which teachers’ extra-curricular work is seen to simultaneously enact subtle socio-ideological reproduction, and the facilitation of social mobility attainment. Specifically, the paper draws on a study of how teachers in a lower-status junior college in Singapore prepare their students in applying for prestigious state-sponsored scholarships. Through teachers’ extra-curricular work of allying and aligning, social mobility and social reproduction are simultaneously made possible, yet also exist in some tension. Thus, this paper offers a unique sociological perspective on teachers’ extra-curricular work and its significance for broader issues of meritocracy, social mobility, and social reproduction.

Inquiry-based learning is becoming a widely recognized and used pedagogical approach. However, existing research has largely focused on inquiry learning in science education, neglecting fields such as social studies (SS). In Singapore, inquiry learning in SS received an impetus when a component called “Issue Investigation” (II) was introduced into the compulsory secondary school syllabus of 2016. Given the recency of this introduction, there has been a lacuna of empirical research. Addressing both these research gaps, this paper presents qualitative findings from a preliminary study of Singapore secondary school SS teachers’ perspectives and experiences relating to II. Building on a recognition of teacher agency and of the role teachers play in mediating curriculum and teaching/learning, this paper focuses on how teachers interpret the nature of inquiry learning in SS in the Singapore context. Findings suggest that teachers held broadly two conceptions of II: some saw it as aimed towards working out practical solutions to societal issues in the spirit of participative citizenship; others treated it akin to a social science inquiry process that fostered critical and analytical thinking. In addition, the challenges teachers encountered in implementing and enacting II, and their coping strategies are also briefly discussed.

International student mobility (ISM), defined as the movement of students to pursue tertiary education outside their countries of citizenship, has conventionally been understood in terms of micro social actors’ behaviours of cultural capital accumulation and macro-level institutional processes following the logics of neoliberal globalization and knowledge economy. The COVID-19 pandemic has abruptly and severely impacted ISM, plunging the latter into what seems to be a “crisis”. Taking this fluid juncture as an opportunity for reflection and re-thinking, this paper re-examines ISM through the discursive lens of “crisis”. Broadening the “crisis” perspective beyond the pandemic to include a longitudinal view over the twentieth century through to the present, the paper considers the ways in which movement and recruitment of international students may be seen as consequences of as well as responses to “crises” of various natures – geopolitical, economic, and social. The author’s own work on student mobilities in Asia is drawn upon for illustration. The paper ends by briefly considering both the immediate crises confronting ISM, as well as various broader global uncertainties lying ahead.