Options
Rereading teach less, learn more : curriculum policymaking as textual interweaving
Abstract
Singapore’s Teach Less, Learn More (TLLM) initiative was launched in 2005 as part of ongoing efforts to better educate students for life by reducing over-emphasis on teaching for academic achievement in examinations. This study applies Eisner’s (1976) educational connoisseurship and criticism to reread how TLLM has been defined, interpreted and translated in Singapore across the contexts of policy rhetoric, policy programming, and school response. The analysis pursues the question of what is (or could be) educational about curriculum policies like TLLM from the perspective of policymaking as symbolic action and textual interweaving. The focal qualities/forms in what is distinctly educational about education are mapped based on a review of scholarship on the language of/for education and curriculum as practical, semiotically-informed endeavour (Biesta, 2020; Schwab, 1969; Whitson, 2007). This mapping of educational qualities/forms is brought into conversation with local scholarship on the pervasively instrumental nature of Singapore’s education policymaking. Overall, the close textual analysis resulted in two ways of rereading how TLLM has been textualised over time. This is summed up in the hybrid conclusion: Singapore’s (con)version of TLLM. First, Singapore’s version of TLLM actually means Teach (it) Better so that students may Learn (it) Better i.e. TLLM = TBLB. This is based on objectifying curriculum subject matter as quantifiable “learning content” or “load” to be conveyed effectively via teaching as delivery and pedagogy as strategy, so that students may learn “it” better in the sense of acquiring or mastering “it” in demonstrable ways. Second, I show how this textual conversion (TLLM = TBLB) is achieved via policy rhetoric’s re-definition of TLLM to become a vehicle for the previously announced Innovation & Enterprise initiative (I&E). Finally, I complete the task of educational criticism by evaluating Singapore’s (con)version of TLLM against the mapping of focal qualities/forms in what is distinctly educational about education. I argue that there are promising prospects for a noninstrumental and educational approach to policymaking in Singapore even though it is clear that we are thoroughly instrumental in thinking/doing curriculum via objectifying knowledge and human being/s. Beyond the specific analyses, the conceptual contribution advanced by this thesis is the need to supplement the ‘fidelity in policy translation’ lens to analyse both loss and gain in mis- or non-translation of policy potential. I argue for a non-perjorative approach to educational evaluation of problematic policy texts towards a pedagogy (upbringing) of under-worked policy potential. I propose that curriculum policymaking as textual interweaving potentiates a form of educational research activism for policy analysts who are also engaged in education as praxis.
Date Issued
2023
Call Number
LC94.S55 Teo