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Constructing Underachievement: The Discursive Life Of Singapore In Us Federal Education Policy, Roberto Santiago De Roock, Darlene Machell Espena
Constructing Underachievement: The Discursive Life Of Singapore In Us Federal Education Policy, Roberto Santiago De Roock, Darlene Machell Espena
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
This paper offers insights into the referencing of Singapore within the US Obama Administration educational discourse, underscoring the political-material-discursive nexus of international educational benchmarking. Using critical discourse analysis, we find that an objectified Singapore functions as a rhetorical tool of US policymaker agendas, with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD) Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and other international assessments as basis for truth statements. US policy discourses on Singapore’s education system perpetuate, rather than interrogate, PISA’s questionable underlying “truths” around socio-economic development, equity, and excellence, and thus on student achievement and underachievement. Singapore’s status as an “Asian …