Instances of dis/juncture: STEM education and young people's aspirations for development in the Malaysian luar bandar

• In Event: STEM economics, and entrepreneurial education: international reflections

Proposal

Zooming in on the economic promise that dominates the development discourse, Drori’s (1998) model of ‘science for development’ traces the putative link between science education at all levels, the expansion of scientific labour force, and subsequently national economic development. Across the Global South, this model has been internalised and reflected in a national emphasis on science—and recently science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM)—education as a means of development. Such an emphasis influences education policy that subsequently disciplines young people and their futures in service of economic development.

According to McEwan (2019), a postcolonial perspective in studying development pays attention to “the notion of subjectivity—the range of subject positions or identities that an individual human being as agent or subject mobilises or embodies” (p. 191). By utilising a postcolonial lens, this study foregrounds the perspectives of rural young people via the prism of aspiration, in their encounter with STEM education as the government's intermediary for national development. Specifically, I employ the concept of capacity to aspire by Appadurai (2004), who posits that this navigational capacity is developed within a social context, and can be strengthened through continuous practice.

Using a comparative case study approach (Bartlett & Vavrus, 2017) in Malaysia, the aspirations of young people in one school in luar bandar (rural, literally meaning 'out of the city' in Malay) are vertically contrasted against the overarching national discourse and policy emphasising STEM education. Through reflexive thematic analysis of my extensive fieldnotes, interviews with young people, teachers, policy makers and experts, coupled with analysis of relevant documents, I show how young people’s aspirations for development interact with that of the state in complex and contradictory ways.

Emplaced in the marginalised luar bandar, young people's aspirations for development are characterised by dis/juncture with the state’s agenda. Hybridity with modernity and globalisation, are coupled with ambivalence vis-à-vis the utility of STEM education, reflecting such dis/juncture in a specific place. Young people describe aspirations that prioritise expansion of convenience on the local scale—the day to day, quotidian comforts, rather than abstract, “too far to imagine” national development. Additionally, despite their geographical marginality, increasing access to technology enables young people to look outward into the global stage for exemplars of development.

As a manifestation of the science for development model in education, the 60:40 policy that targets 60 per cent upper secondary school enrolment in STEM pathway compared to the arts serve to discipline young people to realise the national development agenda. The narrative around this policy highlights declining number of students pursuing the STEM pathway, thereby compromising national development targets. Even if they do not directly echo national aspirations for more human capital in STEM, some young people in this study accept their fate of being tracked into the STEM pathway. They note the (contingent) broadening of futures accorded by the prestige of this pathway in the national imagination. Here, STEM education enjoys a status of being a “powerful knowledge” (Young & Muller, 2013). Meanwhile, others leave the pathway to pursue different futures, threatening the feasibility of upholding the 60:40 policy in the luar bandar. These perspectives demonstrate instances of imagination and appropriation from the young people’s point of view to secure their own future, at the intersection of the national project of education and development.

Together, such perspectives of dis/juncture highlight how policies developed in service of broad national goals can serve to discipline young people’s lives in the margins—in this case the Malaysian luar bandar—and powerfully influence their future paths. Nevertheless, young people interrupt the work of policy by foregrounding their agency to aspire and choose otherwise. Even if their own aspirations for development may overlap with that of the state, there is no guarantee that they will surrender to the disciplining power of education policies. In its emphasis on the vertical dimension of comparison—placing development as a dialogue between the state and rural young people—this study contributes new empirical material at the intersection of youth studies and development studies (Huijsmans, 2016), as well as STEM education policy.

Reflecting on the conference theme, the above description of this study is aligned with the central concept of “Battling the currents—the influence of politics and economics on education”. In particular, I highlight here the tension related to policy implementation (the 60:40 policy) in a marginalised community in the periphery—the Malaysian luar bandar. A secondary alignment is related to the concept of “Orbits aligned—how place makes the difference”. In this study, the particularity of young people’s experiences in the luar bandar influences their aspiration for development and their navigation of the 60:40 policy in postcolonial Malaysia.

Author

• Aizuddin Mohamed Anuar, University of Oxford