In this article I revisit and extend arguments made in 1996 and 1997 about the relationship between globalization, the state and education policy. I was particularly concerned then to see how a small but strong state, Singapore, was responding in the education arena to globalization. I also wished to draw attention to the literature on the high rates of economic growth achieved by the East Asian ‘tigers’ in which education, training and capital–labour accommodation played a large part; in all these countries the state was strong, being in the market as well as managing it. But with globalization and neo-liberal economic policies growing in strength, the havoc caused by the 1997 Asian economic crisis and the new geopolitical and security environment following the September 11, 2001 attacks on the US, there is a need to reconsider some of the arguments and to review the policy responses, especially in education. Is there evidence of the state weakening? Are more pro-market policies changing governance and funding of education thereby altering the nature and purposes of schooling? I begin with a consideration of the broader phenomena of globalization and then review the claims that call into question the continued relevance of the East Asian developmental state model and its education and training infrastructures.

Much of the scholarship around the workings of education policy has focused on the global West and has taken for granted the state's limited abilities in the control of policies as both text and discourse. Drawing upon policy texts from the Singapore Ministry of Education and ethnographic data collected in a Singapore school, this paper explores the enlarged but by no means unproblematic role of strong states and their provision and regulation of education policy in Asia. The paper begins by providing an overview of the major emphases and research trajectories taken up by the field of education policy. This is followed by an elaborated account of the nature and politics of the strong state in Asia in general and particularly in Singapore. These theoretical and contextual remarks then pave the way for a closer look at how the Singapore state functions as a major mediator and recontextualizing agent of education policy. The discussion foregrounds the enlarged role of the state in prescribing, translating, and regulating how a national curriculum policy on critical thinking finds its way into the practice of local schools and classrooms. The paper concludes with a number of remarks on the deparochialization of research and how recent work on 'Asia as method' may provide a fortuitous approach to critiquing hegemonic systems of knowledge production.

Singapore has established a reputation as a top performer in international student assessment tests and rankings, which is usually understood to be the result of a competitive education system and a distinct Asian parenting culture. Drawing on ethnographic data, the aim of the article is to explore the emotional and moral dimensions of Singaporean parents' educational work, and how they cope with complex and sometimes contradictory demands in raising their young children. The article is based on interviews and observations with parents of pre- and primary school-aged children. The reasons for focusing specifically on this category of parents was that previous research indicates that parental involvement in children's education in Singapore is most intense during this period, and that parents everywhere are faced with increasing expectations to attend to their young children's learning and cognitive development. The findings contest simplistic interpretations of intensive parenting in East Asia, especially when considering the role of social class, gender and generational change. © 2022 Policy Press. All rights reserved.

In a bilingual environment such as Singaporean Chinese community, the challenge of maintaining Chinese language and sustaining Chinese culture lies in promoting the daily use of Chinese language in oral and written forms among children. Ample evidence showed the effect of the home language and literacy environment (HLE), on children's language and literacy abilities. This study examined Singaporean Chinese--English bilingual children's HLE and its influence on their Chinese oral and written language ability. Parents of seventy-six Chinese--English bilingual preschoolers completed a HLE survey. Children's Chinese oral and written language abilities were measured with age appropriate tasks. Results of the HLE survey revealed that, on the average, children's Chinese language and literacy related activities, either carried out independently or with parents, were not frequent, but correlated significantly with children's oral and written language ability. A set of regression analyses showed that, after controlling for family socioeconomic status (SES), children's language preference at home made a unique contribution, both to their Chinese language and literacy related activities and to their Chinese oral language ability. Similarly, children's Chinese language and literacy related activities were found to make unique contribution to their Chinese written language ability after the effect of family SES and language preference was accounted for, emphasizing the crucial aspects of home literacy activities for developing children's Chinese written language ability.

This article examines the corporate branding efforts of Singapore's publicly funded higher education institutions within a context of neoliberal marketization. Adopting a discourse-analytic perspective, it examines the kind of branding approaches employed by Singapore's universities and polytechnics, and how these approaches are realized discursively in their brand artefacts. Three main approaches are identified and discussed. Referred to as (i) characterizing the brand; (ii) positioning the brand and (iii) personalizing the brand, they are constituted by a variety of language devices and discursive strategies such as positive evaluation, colloquial language and the use of particular metaphors, and represent a spread of approaches ranging from the more fact/reason-based to the experience/emotion-oriented. While the institutions employ a range of approaches, the findings of the analysis suggest that experience/emotion-oriented approaches are better elaborated in the artefacts, and gaining traction in the sector as a whole.

The following sections are included: introduction; human rights and the right to peace in Singapore; tertiary education and current institutional settings; policy focus on human rights as a national agenda; concluding remarks and recommendations