Yang, Peidong

Scholarship to-date agrees that the internet has weakened the Chinese party-state’s ideological and discursive hegemony over society. In this paper, we document a recent intervention into public discourse exercised by the Chinese state through appropriating and promoting a popular online catchphrase—“positive energy” (zheng nengliang). Analyzing the “positive energy” phenomena using Laclau and Mouffe’s theory of hegemony and discourse, we argue that the relative effectiveness of this hegemonic intervention rests on the semantic versatility of “positive energy”, which enables “chains of equivalence” to be established between the label’s popular meanings on the one hand and its propagandist meanings on the other.

Today, Inquiry-based Learning (IBL) is a powerful imperative in educational practice and a notable area of educational research. Past research has found IBL to be more effective than traditional/conventional classroom instruction strategies, but most evidence came from research on science instruction. In comparison, IBL in the social science and humanities subjects, particularly Social Studies (SS) education. appears to have been under-studied. This proposed study seeks to address this gap through investigating Singapore secondary school teachers' experiences with Issue Investigation the IBL component in the local SS syllabus. In Singapore, the emphasis on inquiry in SS is relatively new, and thus there is so far little research on this topic. Specifically, this study seeks to reveal how Issue Investigation is currently understood by SS teachers, with regard to its underlying rationale, purpose, and its relation to the rest of the SS syllabus. The study also aims to find out and analyse SS teachers' varied experiences of implementing Issue Investigation in their schools/classrooms, with a view towards identifying the characteristics of and possible contributing factors to successful/positive experiences as well as problematic/negative experiences. Through achieving these research objectives, the study ultimately seeks to use its findings to further support Singapore teachers in making more effective use of Issue Investigation as a powerful pedagogy, and to lay the groundwork for more systematic and in-depth research on inquiry-based SS in Singapore. In line with the stated research objectives, a qualitative research approach is proposed. Qualitative data will be collected chiefly through interviews and focus-group discussions (FGD) with SS teachers, Subject Heads, and Heads of Departments in secondary schools in Singapore, supplemented by collection of relevant documentary data and/or artefacts. It is estimated that up to 15 teachers from up to 5 schools will be involved in this study.

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.

Existing scholarship on international student mobility often draws on Bourdieu to interpret such mobility as a strategy of capital conversion used by privileged classes to reproduce their social advantage. This perspective stems from and also reinforces a rationalistic interpretation of student mobility. A shift of focus to interAsian educational mobilities involving non-elite individuals and institutions can reveal logics of behavior and of social interaction that are at discrepancy with the dominant perspective, thereby advancing the theorization of educational mobilities. This paper examines a case of Indian youths of less affluent backgrounds pursuing English-medium medical degrees (MBBS) at a provincial university in China. Through ethnography, the paper illustrates how various parties – individual, organizational and institutional – to this somewhat ‘unlikely’ project of knowledge mobility follow the discrepant logics of compromise and complicity to seek to realize their educational desires, social aspirations, and organizational objectives amidst realities of class disadvantage and resource inadequacy.

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.

In a globalized world with increasing international migration and encounters of difference, education is presented with new challenges and opportunities regarding diversity, including teacher diversity. This paper focuses on teachers with immigrant backgrounds and explores how they potentially add constructive diversity to the receiving country’s education system. The empirical setting of this paper is Singapore, an Asian city-state seldom featured in teacher diversity research. Drawing from a broader study involving online surveys and qualitative interviews, this article examines the discourses of five immigrant teachers chosen for their insightful perspectives. We found that the teachers consciously engaged their foreigner/outsider identities by drawing on their biographical and educational backgrounds; they sought to add value to aspects of the Singapore school system which they perceived to be lacking, while negotiating with dominant values and teaching practices. Their negotiations, however, remain delimited in significant ways. The paper argues that immigrant teachers represent an undertapped and underappreciated resource for greater educational diversity in Singapore and beyond.

In recent years, the Singapore government’s pro-immigration policy – specifically, its recruitment of so-called ‘foreign talent’ – has caused a palpable rise in anti-immigrant sentiments and discourses among natives of the city-state. Drawing on Lacanian psychoanalysis, a perspective so far marginal in migration research, this article offers a provocative reading of Singapore’s desire for foreign talent and the local society’s reception of these subjects. The article focuses on the ways in which frustrated Singaporeans seem to find foreign talent immigrants, especially those from mainland China, to be lacking and undesirable. Lacan’s theories enable the bold interpretations that: 1) foreign talent is not meant to fill a lack but precisely to produce it and 2) foreign talent stands for Singapore’s and Singaporeans’ unobtainable object of desire, which ultimately signifies the gaps and inconsistencies in the symbolic order confronting them. Moving away from existing conceptual frameworks and theoretical approaches, the article illustrates what a psychoanalytic lens of desire can contribute to migration and mobility research.

The COVID-19 pandemic, by causing disruptions to the temporalities and spatialities of international student mobility on a scale previously unimaginable, triggered heightened emotional reactions from international students. In this chapter, we examine and comment upon the emotional turmoil experienced by four international students amidst the pandemic as witnessed in their “letters to the coronavirus”. By unpacking and analyzing the narratives of these four differently situated international students, we shed light into how they have navigated—each in their own ways—educational desire and despondency, familial and social disconnectedness, and sometimes senses of self-doubt and disillusionment. We also draw attention to their coping strategies, in particular their exercise of emotional labor which involved heroic acts of resilience, hope, and optimism in the face of great adversity. Ultimately, we argue that both the emotional experiences of international students and their ways of emotional coping are topics worthy of greater attention in future research on international student mobility.

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.