ABSTRACT

This paper analyses reflections upon the nature of recent educational policymaking in Singapore. Drawing upon the authors’ individual and collective autoethnographic analyses of a series of reflective notes jotted down after discussions with educators from private and public schools in Singapore, the Academy of Singapore Teachers, and FutureSkills Singapore, we argue that what we learned from this Singaporean experience is considerably different from how the ‘success’ of the Singapore model is construed in much national and international policy about educational reform. While the research confirms various key paradoxes [after Ng, Pak Tee. 2017. Learning from Singapore: The Power of Paradoxes. New York: Routledge] that exist in relation to how schooling is construed within the Singapore context, there is also evidence of a form of pragmatism existing alongside a yearning/striving for perfection that is perhaps reflective of more active and directive practices and processes. Through identifying what we describe as ‘pragmatic perfectionism’ in the Singaporean context, we not only substantiate but also seek to extend existing understandings of educational policy learning/borrowing in comparative education literature, identifying the intensity of such processes as one of the ‘real’ lessons that national and international policymakers and researchers should and can learn from the Singaporean case.

摘要

本文分析了对新加坡近期教育政策制定本质的思考。根据作者对一系列反思性笔记的个人和集体人种志分析，这些笔记是在与新加坡私立和公立学校，新加坡教师学院以及新加坡FutureSkills新加坡的教育家讨论后记下的，我们认为，我们从这种新加坡经历中学到了什么与许多国家和国际有关教育改革的政策解释新加坡模式的“成功”有很大不同。尽管研究证实了各种关键的矛盾[在Ng，Pak Tee之后。2017年。向新加坡学习：悖论的力量。[纽约：Routledge]与在新加坡范围内如何解释学校教育有关，也有一种实用主义的形式，同时也表现出对完美的渴望/追求，这可能反映了更积极和有指导意义的实践和过程。通过确定我们在新加坡语境中所描述的“务实的完美主义”，我们不仅证实了事实，而且力图扩大现有比较教育文献中对教育政策学习/借贷的理解，并将这种过程的强度确定为“现实”之一。国家和国际政策制定者和研究人员应该从新加坡案例中汲取的教训。