The Discursive Construction of Lower-Tracked Students: Ideologies of Ability, Meritocracy, and the Politics of Education in Singapore

• In Event: 16.057 - Roundtable Session 5
  In Roundtable Session: 16.057-1 - Language and Social Processes Within and Across International Contexts

Abstract

This study examines the discursive construction of a “kind” of student in Singapore secondary schools⎯the lowest-tracked, Normal Technical (NT) student, which I consider through analysis of interviews with school leaders at one secondary school. This proposal extends an understanding of NT as a widely-held, deficit construction in Singapore by also considering its use as an ideological label at the local micro-discursive scale. In this way I consider how local commentaries about NT students’ abilities, possibilities, and supposed characteristics provide insights about the ideological nature of the processes through which students are recruited into institutional categories of deficit and risk. Implications include concerns about equity, constructions of ability, and ideologies of language and identity common to late modern society.

Author

• Kate T. Anderson, Arizona State University