Fazal Rizvi

Johannah Fahey

Jane Kenway

Aaron Koh

Cameron McCarthy

Debbie Epstein

Elite Schools and Globalization

Class Choreographies

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.

Learning from the Singapore Experiment

Tactical Globalization

Awarded Best Book prize by CIES Globalization and Education SIG Awarded 2nd Prize in the Society of Educational Studies Annual Book Prize Elite schools have always been social choreographers par excellence. The world over, they put together highly dexterous performances as they stage and restage changing relations of ruling. They are adept at aligning their social choreographies to shifting historical conditions and cultural tastes. In multiple theatres, they now regularly rehearse the irregular art of being global. Elite schools around the world are positioned at the intersecting pinnacles of various scales, systems and regimes of social, cultural, political and economic power. They have much in common but are also diverse. They illustrate how various modalities of power are enjoyed and put to work and how educational and social inequalities are shaped and shifted. They, thus, speak to the social zeitgeist. This book dissects this intricate choreography.

Geography matters to elite schools — to how they function and flourish, to how they locate themselves and their Others. Like their privileged clientele they use geography as a resource to elevate themselves. They mark, and market, place. This collection, as a whole, reads elite schools through a spatial lens. It offers fresh lines of inquiry to the ‘new sociology of elite schools.’ Collectively the authors examine elite schools and systems in different parts of the world. They highlight the ways that these schools, and their clients, operate within diverse local, national, regional, and global contexts in order to shape their own and their clients’ privilege and prestige. The collection also points to the uses of the transnational as a resource via the International Baccalaureate, study tours, and the discourses of global citizenship. Building on research about social class, meritocracy, privilege, and power in education, it offers inventive critical lenses and insights particularly from the ‘Global South.’ As such it is an intervention in global power/knowledge geographies.

Multiple Geographies of Privilege

Elite Schools

Aaron Koh

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