Toward equity innovations: lower tracked students and classroom digital media use in Singapore

ABSTRACT

This article overviews the realities of so-called “low achieving” students in Singapore, efforts to support them better, and the place of educational technology in this support. We undertook a comparative case study of lower tracked Normal Technical (NT) secondary school students and their teachers in two schools in Singapore. We found a diversity of student backgrounds and struggles, with many students facing barriers to academic success and social mobility despite purported government efforts to support them. Findings also revealed a variety of approaches taken by their teachers, influenced by teacher ideologies of student backgrounds and abilities, pedagogy, and learning. Using the lens of selective digital technology integration, we highlight the promises and potentials of these efforts to improve NT student outcomes, along with the corresponding tensions and dilemmas. We conclude by arguing that a focus on innovation should mean pulling away from standard ideas of novel technological innovation and a move to collaborative, expansive, research-based pedagogy and systemic equity innovations.

KEYWORDS:

• Educational equity
• digital media
• Singapore
• urban students
• marginalization
• achievement

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Institute of Education, Singapore under grant numbers OER09/16WLY and OER03/17RDR

Notes on contributors

Roberto S. de Roock

Roberto S. de Roock is an Assistant Professor of Learning Sciences and Technology at University of California, Santa Cruz. His research examines learning, technology, and marginality from an abolitionist perspective.

Darlene Machell de Leon Espeña

Darlene Machell de Leon Espeña is an Assistant Professor of Southeast Asian Studies (Education) at the College of Integrative Studies, Singapore Management University. Her research includes cinema, dance, and politics in postcolonial Southeast Asia, cultural history of the Cold War in Southeast Asia, and cultural discourses on education in Singapore.

Sasha Raj Lawrence

Sasha Raj Lawrence was working as a Research Assistant at the National Institute of Education, Singapore and is currently an independent researcher. Their research areas include social equality in education, critical sociocultural theory, teacher education, and inequality and marginalisation.