This paper examines the Singapore Ministry of Education's sexuality education curriculum in relat... more This paper examines the Singapore Ministry of Education's sexuality education curriculum in relation to two leading approaches to sex education, namely, abstinenceonly-until-marriage education (AOUME) and comprehensive sexuality education (CSE). Based on competing cultural, political, and religious beliefs, the arguments between the advocates of AOUME and CSE not only echo similar debates in other countries, but also reveal the vicissitudes of Singapore's "global city" ambitions in the face of cultural and economic globalization. In conclusion, this paper suggests that the tensions between the official curriculum, the societal curriculum, and the enacted curriculum provide the grounds on which a politics of curriculum reform can be staged.
This article develops the familiar metaphor of teaching as performance towards a definition of te... more This article develops the familiar metaphor of teaching as performance towards a definition of teaching as performative act, where words and actions aim to effect cognitive, affective, and behavioral changes in learners. To what extent, however, are the consequences of pedagogical actions commensurate with their intended effects? Can a science of "effective teaching" effectively delineate, ascertain, and predict the effects of teachers' pedagogical practices? Through the lens of speech act theory, I argue that teaching consists of pedagogical perlocutions-speech acts whose observed and unobserved effects on learners exceed authorial intention and scientific prediction. Attempts to subdue this excess of effects lend themselves to definitions of teacher effectiveness scripted by the instruments and institutions of scientifically based research. I conclude by considering the ways in which these definitions of effects and effectiveness are themselves the performative effects of performance-based teacher assessment regimes. bs_bs_banner
The Singapore Ministry of Education's Enhanced Performance Management System (EPMS) was institute... more The Singapore Ministry of Education's Enhanced Performance Management System (EPMS) was instituted in 2005 as a system of professional accountability to enhance the standards and stakes of teacher professionalism in schools. This essay explores how the EPMS, with its underlying paradigm of performance management, functions as a “technology of discipline” within the political economy of teacher professionalization in Singapore. The analysis centres on the discursive mechanisms of a standardized appraisal instrument known as the Work Review Form. Applying speech act theory via the insights of J.L. Austin and J. Butler, I argue that teachers' professional qualities are not only described and prescribed but also produced by the appraisal protocols of the EPMS – a process contingent on the discursive performativity of the Work Review Form. Implicated in this notion of performativity are the rhetorical manoeuvres by which teachers perform “on paper” under the pressure to perform. Such performance pressures point to a range of ethical ambiguities surrounding the “enhanced management” of teachers' work under the profit-motive of performance excellence.
This study explores the ways in which blogging as literacy practice can serve as an instrument of... more This study explores the ways in which blogging as literacy practice can serve as an instrument of student resistance. Drawing on interviews with students and teachers, it analyzes the intentions and contentions surrounding a single blog entry authored by a 15-year-old secondary school student in which fictional strategies were artfully deployed in a covert assault on teacher authority. Adapting James C. Scott's (1990) notion of the "hidden transcript," I explore the ways in which students' interests and identities find subversive expression through the underlife of the "digital hidden transcript." The discussion examines how such writing practices constitute acts of dialogic resistance that enable students to negotiate the premises and promises of teacher-student power relations.
This paper examines the Singapore Ministry of Education's sexuality education curriculum in relat... more This paper examines the Singapore Ministry of Education's sexuality education curriculum in relation to two leading approaches to sex education, namely, abstinenceonly-until-marriage education (AOUME) and comprehensive sexuality education (CSE). Based on competing cultural, political, and religious beliefs, the arguments between the advocates of AOUME and CSE not only echo similar debates in other countries, but also reveal the vicissitudes of Singapore's "global city" ambitions in the face of cultural and economic globalization. In conclusion, this paper suggests that the tensions between the official curriculum, the societal curriculum, and the enacted curriculum provide the grounds on which a politics of curriculum reform can be staged.
This article develops the familiar metaphor of teaching as performance towards a definition of te... more This article develops the familiar metaphor of teaching as performance towards a definition of teaching as performative act, where words and actions aim to effect cognitive, affective, and behavioral changes in learners. To what extent, however, are the consequences of pedagogical actions commensurate with their intended effects? Can a science of "effective teaching" effectively delineate, ascertain, and predict the effects of teachers' pedagogical practices? Through the lens of speech act theory, I argue that teaching consists of pedagogical perlocutions-speech acts whose observed and unobserved effects on learners exceed authorial intention and scientific prediction. Attempts to subdue this excess of effects lend themselves to definitions of teacher effectiveness scripted by the instruments and institutions of scientifically based research. I conclude by considering the ways in which these definitions of effects and effectiveness are themselves the performative effects of performance-based teacher assessment regimes. bs_bs_banner
The Singapore Ministry of Education's Enhanced Performance Management System (EPMS) was institute... more The Singapore Ministry of Education's Enhanced Performance Management System (EPMS) was instituted in 2005 as a system of professional accountability to enhance the standards and stakes of teacher professionalism in schools. This essay explores how the EPMS, with its underlying paradigm of performance management, functions as a “technology of discipline” within the political economy of teacher professionalization in Singapore. The analysis centres on the discursive mechanisms of a standardized appraisal instrument known as the Work Review Form. Applying speech act theory via the insights of J.L. Austin and J. Butler, I argue that teachers' professional qualities are not only described and prescribed but also produced by the appraisal protocols of the EPMS – a process contingent on the discursive performativity of the Work Review Form. Implicated in this notion of performativity are the rhetorical manoeuvres by which teachers perform “on paper” under the pressure to perform. Such performance pressures point to a range of ethical ambiguities surrounding the “enhanced management” of teachers' work under the profit-motive of performance excellence.
This study explores the ways in which blogging as literacy practice can serve as an instrument of... more This study explores the ways in which blogging as literacy practice can serve as an instrument of student resistance. Drawing on interviews with students and teachers, it analyzes the intentions and contentions surrounding a single blog entry authored by a 15-year-old secondary school student in which fictional strategies were artfully deployed in a covert assault on teacher authority. Adapting James C. Scott's (1990) notion of the "hidden transcript," I explore the ways in which students' interests and identities find subversive expression through the underlife of the "digital hidden transcript." The discussion examines how such writing practices constitute acts of dialogic resistance that enable students to negotiate the premises and promises of teacher-student power relations.
Uploads
Papers by Warren M Liew