Using Bernstein's pedagogic device to study an elite Special Assistance Plan (SAP) school's curriculum reform for the 21st century: Tensions and testy issues in the making of a "global" Mandarin

As part of its post-colonial legacy, the strong developmental state of Singapore has maintained stringent control of cultural and knowledge production. This control is extended into the educational field, as exemplified by the creation of Special Assistance Plan (SAP) schools. These schools are charged to reproduce a “bicultural” elite, steeped in Chinese culture and adept at engaging China politically, economically and culturally. Indeed, SAP schools are accorded a significantly higher degree of autonomy from the Ministry of Education to pursue these goals. Yet SAP schools in Singapore are not merely using their autonomy to rearticulate and interpret this state-designated mission; they are also utilising it to navigate the significant ideological and market changes presented by the conditions and pressures of “global educational policy”. Using Bernstein’s Pedagogic Device, this study examines how an SAP school works with and against a strong state’s cultural and social selectivity policies to “globalise” its curriculum so that its students can be equipped with 21st century capacities to thrive and serve across transnational and transcultural spaces. I first document how relational dynamics between state and school, their reciprocal re-shaping of dominant discourses have engendered a school regulative order that is complex and fragmented, invested with a paradoxical mix of prohibitive and transformative capacities. Drawing upon ethnographic data involving classroom observations, interviews with school leaders, teachers and students collected over a 9-month period, I then examine the impact of this regulative order on the trajectory and extent of the curriculum reform, flagging out the tensions and conflicts at the macro-, meso- and micro-political levels of the school and the state. This examination allows for a more nuanced study of one of Bernstein’s most important but understudied conceptual tools – the regulative discourse – and also provides a window from which to delve into the issues and tensions embedded in elite, global curriculum-making and educational change.