Elite Rationalities and Curricular Form: "Meritorious" Class Reproduction in the Elite Thinking Curriculum in Singapore

Autor/inn/en	Lim, Leonel; Apple, Michael W.
Titel	Elite Rationalities and Curricular Form: "Meritorious" Class Reproduction in the Elite Thinking Curriculum in Singapore
Quelle	In: Curriculum Inquiry, 45 (2015) 5, S.472-490 (19 Seiten)Infoseite zur Zeitschrift PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	0362-6784
DOI	10.1080/03626784.2015.1095622
Schlagwörter	Foreign Countries; Advantaged; Social Class; Secondary School Curriculum; Critical Thinking; Social Stratification; Secondary School Teachers; Interviews; Observation; Secondary School Students; Singapore + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Ausland; Social classes; Soziale Klasse; Kritisches Denken; Soziale Zusammensetzung; Interviewing; Interviewtechnik; Beobachtung; Sekundarschüler; Singapur
Abstract	While much of the critical scholarship around elite schooling has focused on the students who attend elite institutions, their social class locations, privileged habituses and cultural capital, this paper foregrounds curricular form itself as a central mechanism in the (re)production of elites. Using Basil Bernstein's conceptual framework of pedagogic codes, this paper depicts how one of the most high-status forms of school knowledge--critical thinking--is taught in both an elite as well as a mainstream secondary school in Singapore. It argues that even as, or more accurately, precisely because the Singapore Ministry of Education emphasizes the teaching of critical thinking in all schools and to all students, how such knowledge is presented and performed in the school curriculum becomes crucial in differentiating elites from mainstream students. Findings suggest that whereas the pedagogic codes in the mainstream school remain oriented towards an instrumental rationality and the fulfillment of external and profane market exigencies, in the elite school they invoke a rationality that is inward-looking, personalized and that encourages the development of narcissistic, sacred identities. This paper concludes by considering how curricular form itself functions as a non-neutral mechanism for the transmission of educational knowledge, and the ways in which, in Singapore's highly stratified society where meritocracy functions as a key principle of governance, the elite identities that accrue from such a curricular form further entrench the political legitimacy of a "meritorious" class. (As Provided).
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Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2020/1/01