Contesting reform: Bernstein’s pedagogic device and madrasah education in Singapore

Abstract

This paper highlights the active role played by various pedagogic agents in contesting the state educational reforms for madrasahs in Singapore. Drawing upon Basil Bernstein’s pedagogic device, the paper identifies tensions and challenges that arise from the attempts by the state to implement curriculum reforms. The paper contends that the stakes are high in the struggle in madrasah education as the group that appropriates and controls the pedagogic device exercises power in relation to the distribution, recontextualization, and evaluation of the knowledge forms in madrasah education. The lesson from the Singapore experience is that policy makers and curriculum planners need to be cognizant of the power and control wielded by the various pedagogic agents.

Keywords:

• Bernstein’s pedagogic device
• common curriculum
• compulsory education
• madrasah education
• reform
• Singapore

Acknowledgements

The author thanks the madrash administrators, teachers, students and a madrasah graduate for their interviews; MS Diwi Binti Abbas for her research assistance; and the Prince Alwaleel Bin Talal Centre of Islamic Studies for additional research materials.

Notes

1. Madrasah means ‘school’ in Arabic but it is commonly translated as ‘Islamic religious school’ or ‘Islamic school’ in Singapore and other parts of the world. However, Douglass and Shaikh (2004) aver that a madrasah should be understood as a ‘Muslim school’ rather than ‘Islamic school’ to indicate ‘the goal of living up to the standards of Islam, rather than implying its achievement’ (p. 8). It should also be pointed out that although the plural form for ‘madrasah’ is ‘madaris’ in Arabic, this paper adopts the English plural ‘madrasahs’.

2. The verse (Qur’an: at‐Taubah: 9: 122) states: ‘it is not desirable that all of the believers take the field (in time of war). From within every group in their midst, some shall devote themselves (instead) to acquiring a deeper knowledge of the Faith [li‐ya‐tafaq‐qahu fid‐deen], and (thus be able to) teach their home‐coming brethren, so that these (too) might guard themselves against evil’ (cited in PERGAS 2004: 358).

3. Persatuan Ulama dan Guru Agama Islam Singapura is an organization of Islamic religious scholars and teachers.

4. See, e.g. Beck (2006), Bonal and Rambla (2003), Sadovnik (2006), Stoer and Magalhaes (2001), and Wong and Apple (2002).

5. This paper only focuses on Bernstein’s rules in the pedagogic device as they are directly relevant to the topic of this paper. However, it should be noted that Bernstein has expounded on other aspects of the pedagogic device. For example, he identifies three main fields of the pedagogic device: of production, recontextualization, and reproduction. The field of production where knowledge is produced takes place mainly in institutions of higher learning and private research organizations. The field of recontextualization involves the selective appropriation of a discourse or part of a discourse from the field of production, and a principle of re‐location of that discourse as a discourse within the recontextualizing field (Bernstein 2000). The field of recontextualization is located largely in state departments of education and training, curriculum authorities, specialist education journals, and teacher education institutions. The field of reproduction usually takes place in primary, secondary, and tertiary schooling institutions. When there is strong insulation within each field, there will be weaker identifications among fields, but specialist identities of agents, agencies, and discourses within each field. For more details, see Bernstein (1990, 2000, 2001).

6. See, e.g. Bonal and Rambla (2003), and Stoer and Magalhaes (2001).

7. The examinations are set internally by the individual madrasahs with the exception of Secondary 4 examinations as MUIS has instituted a common examination since 1995 (Chee 2006). Besides the examinations set by the madrasahs, some madrasah students have been taking the Cambridge Board General Certificate of Education (GCE) examinations for secondary and pre‐university students since the early 1970s (Noor Aisha 2006).