This paper examines the specificity of the education-class nexus in an elite independent school in Singapore. It seeks to unravel the puzzle that meritocracy is dogmatically believed in Singapore in spite of evidences that point to the contrary. The paper draws on discursive (analysis of media materials) and institutional (analysis of interview…

Education policy has undergone transformation in many countries over the last decade. In this article, we focus on the effects of the most significant international initiative in secondary education, which is the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's (OECD) Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). We analyse…

This paper identifies three, overlapping, phases of restructuring of New Zealand's system of vocational education and training (VET). These are the meritocratic, the market and the managed. In very different ways, each phase has been designed to increase the propensity of students from all social backgrounds to participate in VET. This paper…

Drawing from the findings of a qualitative study with female refugee high school students from Somalia in the US, this paper attempts to provide a window to understanding the multilayered character of newcomer students' academic identity construction. The students' micro-level processes of creating spaces for belonging at school are linked to…

This article takes the case of international education and Australian state schools to argue that the economic, political and cultural changes associated with globalisation do not automatically give rise to globally oriented and supra-territorial forms of subjectivity. The tendency of educational institutions such as schools to privilege narrowly…