Tactical Globalization: Learning from the Singapore Experiment

This book is about a small city state's social experiment with globalization. It examines how Singapore conducts its globalization experiment through the state apparatus of schooling and education policy. The author argues that Singapore engages with globalization by anticipating the problem space of globalization with calculated actions and experimentation, termed tactics and tactical globalization in the book. Central to the book is an examination and analysis of the Thinking Schools, Learning Nation education policy and reform. While "Tactical Globalization" contributes to the sociology of globalization by foregrounding new narratives on globalization that are emerging, it also takes a contextual and innovative approach to education policy analysis, which includes a speech-turned-policy document and a nationally televised segment of a documentary called Learning Journeys.

Table of Contents:
Contents: Foreword by Fazal Rizvi - Introduction: new narratives of globalization - Contextualizing discourses on globalization: a view from the East - Tactical globalization: the metapragmatics of globalization in Singapore - Schooling and education for globalization: prescriptive experimentation of education change in Singapore - The texturing work of Thinking schools, Learning Nation speech: a critical discourse analysis - The visualization of education policy: a videological analysis of Learning Journeys - Working against globalization: the role of National Education in Singapore - Global flows of foreign talent: identity anxieties in Singapore's ethnoscapes - Conclusion: living with globalization tactically.

About the Author :
Aaron Koh is Assistant Professor in the Department of English, The Hong Kong Institute of Education. He previously taught at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia, and had also been a school teacher at Anderson Junior College and Anglo-Chinese School (Independent), Singapore. His research and teaching interests are Globalization and Education, Cultural Politics of Education, Literacy and Language Arts and Cultural Studies in Education. He is on the Editorial Board of Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy and Discourse: studies in the cultural politics of education.

Review :
Singapore continues to fascinate, and Koh's analysis is a valuable contribution to the literature on why this is so. Koh argues this powerful city state productively uses narratives around globalisation and crisis to advance agendas for change, and that education is central to this process. (Professor Susan L. Robertson, Centre for Globalisation, Education and Societies, University of Bristol) In 'Tactical Globalization', Aaron Koh provides an instructive analysis of the role of education policy in Singapore in relation to globalization conceived as a 'problem space'. Koh also provides broader methodological, theoretical and empirical insights through focusing on how one small, strong city-state has taken an effective tactical role to produce productive citizens who 'go global' but 'stay local'. As such, this book is must-read for sociologists of education, policy analysts and comparative educators. (Professor Bob Lingard, The University of Queensland) This is a fascinating case study of how the tiny city-state of Singapore has become a global economic hub while also maintaining a strong national identity. Koh argues that Singapore sees globalisation as a 'problem space' and responds to it in shrewd, strategic and enabling ways. He shows that the education of Singapore's 'only natural resource', its people, is pivotal. In this elegantly argued book, Koh develops a theory of 'tactical globalisation' thus contributing significantly to understandings of the shifting and variable phenomenon called globalization. (Professor Jane Kenway, Faculty of Education, Monash University)