Educational reforms, cultural clashes and classroom practices

Abstract

This article presents an ongoing study of educational policy enactment in Singapore lower primary English classrooms. It explores how teachers react to and interpret educational reforms in their classroom practices against a backdrop of traditional cultural values. Using a prescribed coding scheme, the article presents the instructional organisational patterns and participation structures of the lessons. Through a systematic analysis of the enacted curricula, the paper examines classroom practices as well as teaching and learning activities in Primary 1 (7–8 years) and Primary 2 (8–9 years) English lessons in Singapore. The results suggest that there are cultural clashes between major educational reforms which emphasise independent/critical thinking and ‘Asian values’ which promote respect for authority and conformity.

Keywords:

• educational policy
• educational reform
• Asian values
• cultural clash
• classroom practice
• English lessons
• Singapore

Acknowledgements

The research reported here has been funded by Office of Educational Research (OER), National Institute of Education through Grant OER33/09RS. The authors wish to express their gratitude to the participating schools, teachers and pupils.

Notes

1. Schools in Singapore are divided into four zones: North, South, East and West.

2. In the Singapore system, the academic year follows the calendar year (January to December). Children start Primary 1 in the year in which they turn 7.

3. Permission for research with human subjects is required from the Institutional Review Board of the university. Information is available at http://research.ntu.edu.sg/GuidelinesnForms/Pages/default.aspx

4. The coding definitions were refined during training sessions. As is evident from this example, some categories include a mix of quantitative and qualitative features.