The discursive construction of lower-tracked students: Ideologies of meritocracy and the politics of education

Abstract

This study considers the discursive construction of a particular type of student in Singapore - the lowest-tracked, Normal Technical (NT), secondary school student. Shaped by meritocratic policies, educational practices, and ideologies common to many late-modern societies, students in the NT track are institutionally and individually constructed through the results of high-stakes testing regimes and essentialist views of ability. This article extends an understanding of the NT student as a widely held, deficit construction in Singapore by considering its use as an ideological label in interpersonal and institutional discourse. I consider how school leaders’ and government commentaries about NT students’ abilities, opportunities, and supposed characteristics provide insights about the processes through which students are recruited into institutional categories of deficit and risk¾i.e. differentiated instruction, ascribed ability, and these processes’ translation into educational structures and practice in the name of meritocracy. While the illustration of this phenomenon is uniquely Singaporean, implications include concerns about equity, constructions of ability, and ideologies of merit common to late modern society.

Seeing Academically Marginalized Students’ Multimodal Designs From a Position of Strength

“…Instead, typical practices aligned with the NT syllabus, which identifies "reading and viewing short texts and readers with a suitable high interest content and a controlled vocabulary" for "developing proficiency in English for everyday situations and functional purposes" (MOE 2010b, p. 6). Thus Mr. H's instruction aligned with typical NT course expectations, which is not surprising considering the ubiquitous, deficit characterization of NT students in the national syllabus, media, and elsewhere (Anderson, 2015).…”

“…This article thus illustrates how authoring MTs afforded this cohort of low-tracked Singaporean students a different point of entry and incrementally more ways from which they could represent new forms of interpersonal relations through their authoring using an expanded set of tools and practices as compared to their typical classroom practices. This argument is especially prescient given deficit discourses surrounding NT students in Singapore and the impoverished curriculum they face (Anderson, 2015). Rather than skill-and-drill, cloze passages, tightly scripted topics, and focusing on form over content, this unit represented an unprecedented departure for these students.…”

“…Singapore's significant push for integrative computer technologies (ICT) began in the late 1990s and was in full swing during the time of our project (2007)(2008)(2009)(2010)(2011). Educators and policymakers often evoked the use of digital media with NT students, in part, as an opportunity to develop "life skills" or "IT skills" (Anderson, 2015(Anderson, , 2017. Such discourses of reform and global competition associated with the inclusion of digital media practices arguably recruit digital technology and associated writing practices in the service of meritocratic measures of ability and performance (Talib & Fitzgerald, 2015).…”

Locating and applying critical discourse analysis within education policy

“…More particularly, within discourse analytic traditions, a researcher may study the function of language at a micro (e.g., conversational, see Gabriel & Paulus, 2015), meso (e.g., institutional, see Anderson, 2015), and/or macro (e.g., social or historical, see Peters, 2007) levels. They may accordingly take a more pragmatic view of language (e.g., Gumperz, 1982) or one that it is steeped in a socio-historical perspective of discourse (e.g., Foucault, 1989), among other positions.…”

The impact of labels on relationships and identity for students and teachers in our schools

“…(p. 205) Within such groups, labels such as SES, parents level of education and other factors play significant roles in how students view and group themselves. Similarly, lower tracked students may disassociate with school all together (Anderson, 2015). Other times labels may be seen not as an explanation for but as an excuse for self-destructive behaviors (Black & Grahm-Murray, 2013;Deschenes, Cuban & Tyack, 2001).…”