Culture, pedagogy and equity in a meritocratic education system: Teachers’ work and the politics of culture in Singapore

ABSTRACT

Drawing upon insights gained from the extant work on culture and pedagogy, this paper explores the ways in which, in an ostensibly meritocratic education system, ideas about students’ cultural backgrounds and its relevance for teaching are interpreted, negotiated, and ultimately drawn upon to engage students in the low-progress academic tracks. Most prominently articulated in the US by Ladson-Billings in her study of the culturally relevant pedagogic practices of exceptional teachers of African-American students, studies of culture and pedagogy identify students’ unique cultural backgrounds as strengths and these are nurtured to promote academic achievement. In Singapore, however, the state's official discourse of meritocracy has for long remained silent on the role of culture in students’ learning and how it relates to the systemic underachievement of various social groups. Instead, the state has consistently appealed to meritocracy's principle of non-discrimination (especially in terms of ethnic differences) as being fundamental to the establishment of a level-playing field in the education system. Drawing upon qualitative data comprising lesson observations of and interviews with a group of teachers who teach in low-progress classrooms, the paper documents the creative approaches taken by these teachers as they engage their students in ways attuned to the latter's family backgrounds, home conditions, and personal aspirations. The findings suggest that in actively if sometimes unconsciously foregrounding such a cultural dimension in their teaching, the five teachers studied are resisting, even challenging meritocracy's principle of non-discrimination.

KEYWORDS:

• Culture
• pedagogy
• Singapore, politics
• culturally relevant pedagogy
• meritocracy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. See Lai (2004) for a discussion of the riots, its influences and its consequences on issues around social cohesion and population management.

2. Indeed, the government's earliest justification for tracking was that some students should be given “half a loaf of bread when a whole loaf would choke” (Goh, 1979, p. 6).

3. Fraser's (2008) work on “political misframing” becomes quite critical in understanding such struggles over needs and needs recognition.

4. About 20% of ethnic Indians in Singapore identify as Muslims (Singapore Department of Statistics, 2011).

5. Colloquial Singaporean English, comprising vocabulary and syntax drawn from English, Malay and other Mandarin dialects and Indic languages. Singlish is widely spoken in Singapore but commonly regarded as having low prestige.

6. A gesture of greeting commonly practiced among Muslims, typically involving a low bow of the head and body with hands or fingers touching one's forehead.

7. Also known as the Eid al-Fitr.

8. Josepheus Tan is a delinquent turned criminal-defense lawyer in Singapore who in recent years has received public attention for his transformation and the large amount of pro bono cases he picks up.

9. As another teacher (Yeo) from the study shares about the home backgrounds of these students: Quite a number, increasingly, [have families that are] so-called dysfunctional – single parent, or both parents work and [the students are] taken care of by their grandparents, sister/brother or aunt/uncle – so they don't really have much interaction with parents themselves. Some of them may have very complicated family backgrounds, their mothers are re-married or living with their boyfriends rather than the dads and they [the students] may not really have a conducive environment for studying.

10. See, for example, the arguments made by Bernstein (1977) around weaker pedagogic frames for less coveted school subjects.

11. See also the important work of Newman & Associates (1996) around “authentic pedagogies” and the subsequent development of this into “productive pedagogies” by Lingard, Hayes, and Mills (2003) and Mills et al. (2009).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by National Institute of Education, Singapore [grant number OER16/15LTW].

Notes on contributors

Leonel Lim

Leonel Lim is assistant professor of curriculum, teaching and learning at the National Institute of Education, Singapore. His research focuses on curriculum theory and the politics of education, with specific interests in the relations between ideology and curriculum, the socio-political assumptions of critical thinking and rationality, elite schooling and the sociology of curriculum. He is the author of Knowledge, Control and Critical Thinking in Singapore (Routledge, 2016) and an edited volume (with Michael W. Apple) titled The Strong State and Curriculum Reform (Routledge, 2016).

Michael Tan

Michael Tan is research scientist at the National Institute of Education, Singapore. His research interests include sociology of curriculum and theoretical issues in the learning sciences. He is currently working on projects involving embodied cognition in makerspace contexts.