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Towards a critical pedagogy:Creating 'thinking schools' inSingaporeAaron KohPublished online: 08 Nov 2010.

To cite this article: Aaron Koh (2002) Towards a critical pedagogy: Creating'thinking schools' in Singapore, Journal of Curriculum Studies, 34:3, 255-264

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OP-ED

Towards a critical pedagogy: creating `thinkingschools’ in Singapore

AARON KOH

School reform in Singapore has proceeded at an unprecedented pace in thelast few years. The vision expressed in a new policy, `Thinking schools,Learning nation’ (TSLN), is designed to be the blueprint for Singaporeschools in the 21st century. Several major school initiatives have beenintroduced under this new imperative, of which one is the dissemination ofa curriculum package that mandates the use of information technologies,critical thinking and national education in the school curriculum (Blond1997, Ministry of Education 1998, 2000). The rationale for this curriculumpolicy is informed by a human capital ideology and a competitive nation-alism that sees education as a social investment in preparing `humanresources’ (i.e. students) to participate in a global, competitive economy.

In this `new work order’ (Gee et al. 1996), where globalization and newtechnologies sit at centre stage, workers are required to take on complexduties that require them to think independently and become team players,creative, knowledgeable of information technology and adept at problemsolving. What is valued most in terms of knowledge and skill in the newcapitalism is what Gee (2000: 414) calls `sociotechnical designing’, whichrequires the worker to be able to design niche products that target speci®cconsumer patterns. Creative and critical thinking skills are, therefore,important attributes for the symbolic analysts who design, implementand market pro®table products and services in a globalized economy. Forthese reasons, a critical thinking programme has been implemented inSingapore to encourage the incubation and (re)production of a thinkingwork-force intended to sustain the competitive edge of the economy.

The Singapore example is one instance of how governments attempt tomeet the challenges of a new economy via a change in education policy.Although the TSLN policy with its emphasis on critical thinking is pro-moted as an e� ective strategy to teach school students to be critical andcreative thinkers, I point out the limitations of such a pedagogy. Instead

j. curriculum studies, 2002, vol. 34, no. 3, 255±264

Journal of Curriculum Studies ISSN 0022±0272 print/ISSN 1366±5839 online # 2002 Taylor & Francis Ltdhttp://www.tandf.co.uk/journals

DOI: 10.1080/00220270110092608

Aaron Koh is a doctoral student in the Graduate School of Education, The University ofQueensland, Brisbane, Queensland 4072, Australia; e-mail: a.koh@mailbox.uq.edu.au. Hisresearch interests include critical, media and technological literacy, cultural studies, post-colonial and gothic ®ctions.

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of focusing on problem solvingÐthe core of critical thinkingÐI contendthat teaching critical literacy will provide a broad-based framework todevelop the creativity and critical capacity desired by the TSLN policy. Ialso o � er some practical suggestions that can be tried out in Singaporeclassrooms to promote a culture of thinking, using critical literacies asthinking tools. The juxtaposition of the two approaches of critical pedagogyin this paper will show how critical thinking and critical literacy stem fromvery di � erent ideological standpoints. Such pedagogies might, therefore,produce quite di � erent e � ects. Instead of suggesting that the implementa-tion of a critical thinking programme is in itself a critical pedagogy, and thatcurriculum planners in Singapore have, therefore, arrived at an e � ectivestrategy for teaching thinking, I maintain that teaching critical literacy asthinking tools is more likely to move teachers in Singapore a step closertowards a critical pedagogy, thereby realizing the vision of TSLN.

The blueprint for TSLN in Singapore

The TSLN vision was ®rst conceived by Prime Minister Goh in 1997. Heemphasized that a culture of thinking and continual learning should be highon the education agenda because:

[a] nation’s wealth in the 21st century will depend on the capacity of itspeople to learn . . . It is the capacity to learn that will de®ne excellence in thefuture, not simply what our young people achieve in school . . . We want tohave an environment where workers and students are all the time thinking ofhow to improve. Such a national attitude is a must for Singapore to sustain itsprosperity (Goh 1997).

Although students in Singapore have achieved ®rst place in public andinternational Mathematics and Science Olympiads, the prevalent view isthat they are merely used to `spoon-feeding’ and are only `examination-smart’. Government leaders are, thus, concerned that Singapore runs therisk of losing its competitiveness in a globalized capitalist world economy ifits work-force lacks creativity and the ability to invent and innovate,because the education system is moulding them into passive learners. Tocounter rote learning, critical thinking has been introduced to schools aspart of the launch of TSLN.

A major shift in pedagogy is needed to realize the TSLN mission.Several measures are being adopted to foster the development of thinkingstudents as opposed to acritical students. First, to create the space forcritical thinking in the classroom, the content of all subjects is to be reducedby 30% (Davie 1998a, Ministry of Education 1998). This reduction wasrecommended by a team of external reviewers commissioned by theMinistry of Education. The team concluded that teachers are over-teachingand the syllabuses are too cluttered with unnecessary information. Areduction in content will increase the time available to infuse the teachingof thinking skills in the classroom. Testing and assessment will also beredesigned to encompass critical thinking (Ministry of Education 1998).Instead of only testing students’ ability to recall information, the emphasis

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now is on assessing students’ abilities to learn, apply and process knowl-edge. The external reviewers also suggested that project work, currentlypart of assessment methods (Davie 1998b), would assist students to developqualities such as curiosity, creativity, resourcefulness and teamworkÐhighly valued qualities intended to prepare students for future workdemands.

The value of project work is further given credence by the Ministry’sdecision to include it as part of the admission criteria to local universitiesfrom the year 2004 (Ministry of Education 1999b). Testing will also take adi � erent mode with the introduction of open-book examinations designedto counter the rote-learning mode that students and the system by and largehave emphasized. In addition, to reverse the trend of producing onlyexamination-smart students, students who apply to the local universitieswill also have to sit for a reasoning test that will assess a candidate’sanalytical skills without relying on the recall of information (Ministry ofEducation 1999a).

The promotion of a thinking culture is not con®ned to teaching criticalthinking in schools. The overarching TSLN mission is to ®nd new ways tosolve many problems in pedagogy, administration, student a � airs or sta � -related matters. Within schools, `work improvement teams’ and participa-tion-in-suggestion schemes have been introduced (Ministry of Education1998). Teachers, whether in groups or as individuals, are encouraged tothink of creative ways to solve problems and contribute their suggestions inreturn for a ®nancial incentive. Work improvement team projects are thenpresented to other schools so that they can bene®t from the best teachingand school management. Clusters of schools, formed for this purpose,receive from the Ministry more autonomy and extra resources to furtherencourage the sharing of ideas and, more importantly, experiment withnovel ways of teaching (Nirmal 1997). A `teachers’ network’ was also set upto help exchanges of innovative pedagogy by teachers for teachers (Min-istry of Education 1998). Henceforth, this shift in pedagogy and thepromotion of a culture of thinking in schools have paved the way for thecreation of `thinking schools’ in Singapore.

Nevertheless, controversy surrounds the critical thinking programme.Much talk about the teaching of thinking in schools still exists in a vacuum.Anecdotal evidence suggests that teachers often instruct students to `usetheir creativity’ without explaining how. For example, one perception isthat teachers are not giving explicit instructions on thinking creatively,leaving students to `ponder the abstract meaning of creativity’ and burden-ing them with unwanted stress (Chua 1999: 23). I maintain that the criticalthinking programme is itself a theoretical mine®eld with divergent viewsand acrimonious debates among academics in the ®elds of philosophy andpsychology.

Alternatives in critical thinking

Di � erent views of critical thinking are the product of di � ering philosophi-cal and psychological approaches. The philosophical approach advocates

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the analysis of arguments using logicÐevident in the teaching of logic andinformal logic in formal courses. In contrast, the psychological approachfocuses on the cognitive aspects of problem solving. Another variation seescritical thinking as the mastery of skills, processes, procedures and practice(Bailin et al. 1999). This has led to the development of critical thinkingprogrammes based on a wide range of cognitive processes.

Skill-speci®c critical thinking strategies have been devised. Ennis(1987) described `a taxonomy of critical dispositions and abilities’ inwhich he not only lists skills that critical thinking involves, but also outlinesdispositions that the critical thinker ought to possess. Subsequently, Siegel(1991: 18) pointed out that, in addition to the ability to think, the criticalthinker must have `a critical spirit’. Splitter (1991: 100) developed thisfurther by arguing that there needs to be `a community of inquiry’ for criticalthinking to take place. These di � erent critical thinking theories have threedistinguishable properties in common: that critical thinking involvesspeci®c skills, that inclinations and the desire to think are important, andthat a culture of thinking to promote critical thinking is needed.

The critical thinking programme in Singapore appears to be developedfrom the traditions of critical thinking discussed in the preceding para-graphs. The promotion of critical thinking dispositions among students anda thinking culture in schools, together with a skills-based thinking method-ology in¯uenced by de Bono (1992), are already in place in the schools inSingapore.

There are, however, di� culties with the conception of critical thinkingas skills. Opinions are divided between those who consider thinking skillsas generic (Ennis 1987) and those who consider them speci®c (McPeck1981). Those who belong to the generic school maintain that thinking skillsare transferableÐthat critical thinking involves a mastery of skills, whichare context-free and can be applied in any context and situation. McPeck(1981: 13) contests this view, arguing that thinking always involves `think-ing about X’. His premise is that thinking and the ability to think criticallydo not exist in a vacuum. They always take place in a speci®c context.Thus, in his `alternative disciplines approach’, McPeck (1990: 35) suggeststhat a fundamental acquisition of knowledge is necessary before criticalthinking can take place: `anything worthy of the name ``critical thinking’’cannot exist in a subject-matter vacuum. There must ®rst be some sub-stantive content for students to be critical about’ (p. 43). McPeck (1990: 34)not only argues that thinking is context-determined, but also claims thatthinking must be tied to a speci®c knowledge or, in his own words, be`through the disciplines’.

However, such a view is questionable if critical thinking is ®rst andforemost `a polymorphous or multi-form enterprise’ (Bailin et al. 1999:279) that involves multi-discursive knowledge and practices. To claim thatthinking is discipline-bound is to assume that the problems that peopleencounter in everyday life are neatly categorized. Furthermore, a reduc-tionist view, as exempli®ed by McPeck, may lead to partial and one-sidedresolutions. For instance, the problems that one encounters in the work-place may not necessarily be discipline-bound, but may call for skills andknowledge that cut across discipline boundaries. Therefore, problem solv-

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ing in real life, as Paul (1994: 363) explains, requires `dialectical thoughtwhich crosses and goes beyond any one discipline’ and is inherently `multi-logical’.

A more productive way of understanding critical thinking is to recon-ceptualize it as a form of critical social practice. I suggest that any form ofthinking takes place not only in a discipline-related context but also acrossdiscourses and institutions. Because of the multi-discursive nature ofthinking, an understanding of critical thinking as problem solving is toonarrow a view and will have limited results in a classroom. Thus, theTSLN objective of producing the kinds of learners and workers will be farfrom a reality. Alternatively, I contend that a more successful programmewill require a discursive competence of thinking located in sociocultural,economic and political contexts. This would rely on another dimension ofthinking that encompasses critical reading and writing practices. If criticalthinking is to have any purchase power in the future work-place, it mustencompass a conception of thinking that moves away from problem solvingtowards critical literacy. I suggest that the teaching of critical literacy asthinking tools might produce the kinds of students that TSLN envisages:active, creative and critical learners.

From critical thinking to critical literacy

In contrast to critical thinking that focuses on creative problem solving andcritical thinking, critical literacy approaches are politically very di � erent.Critical literacy encourages students to challenge taken-for-granted mean-ings and `truth’ about a way of thinking, reading and writing the world. Itworks against the notion that meaning is transparent, neutral and unpro-blematic. Critical literacy also questions the neutrality of power relationswithin discourses. In pedagogic terms, students should be encouraged todevelop inquiring minds that question the cultural and ideological assump-tions underwriting any text. They also learn to investigate the politics ofrepresentation in discourses, interrogate the unequal power relationsembedded in texts and become astute readers of the ways texts positionspeakers and readers within discourses (Morgan 1997). Critical literacyapproaches encourage questioning of the way things are.

A critical pedagogy informed by critical literacy is bene®cial for theworker because changing work practices have resulted in a new language ofwork (The New London Group 1996). For example, the worker in the newwork-order should be equipped with the skills to deal with multi-modaltexts (sounds, graphics, images and print) created by new digital tech-nologies. In addition to problem-solving skills, according to Luke (1995a:29), ` ``our new work place’’ requires critical analysis of various forms oftextsÐnot just writtenÐand it requires the verbal and analytic ¯uency toengage in talk around texts’. The texts to which Luke refers for criticalanalysis include multi-modal digitized texts as well as the business con-tracts and policy documents that shape the worker. Faced with a newlanguage of work, the worker in the new work-order should possess literatepractices to deal with such texts and negotiate their language to his or her

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advantage. Hence, a critical thinking approach that exclusively focuses onproblem solving will have limited transference in the new work-place.

To realize the TSLN vision to prepare students as a thinking work-force, changes are required in both the curriculum and teaching practice.Instead of focusing on functional literacyÐto enable students to, e.g. passthe Cambridge Examinations1Ðthe curriculum should teach criticalliteracy. For example, traditional reading practices and resources in theclassroom should now include media texts, hypertexts, CD ROMs, visualtexts, and other forms may soon be invented. Students should be taughthow to construct, control, consume and manipulate the wide repertoire oftexts that will proliferate in the new work-place and everyday discourses(Luke et al. 1996).

A critical pedagogy, which involves critical reading and writing, is farmore powerful and e� cacious than teaching critical thinking as problemsolving, as students study `the operation of textual power in contemporarycultures’ (Luke 1997: 343). This will grant them greater access to `literatepractices and discourse resources’ that will have greater social `exchange inthe social ®elds where text and discourses matter’ (Luke 2000: 449). This isa more purposeful promotion of the thinking culture desired by TSLNbecause students will become active learners as they engage in the criticalreading and writing of texts, rather than being limited to problem solving.Thus, the teaching of critical literacy as a thinking tool is a far moreappropriate and e � ective critical pedagogy for the Singapore school cur-riculum. By exposing students to `public pedagogies’ of cultural texts, theywill be equipped with a new form of literacy that they can transfer to thework-place and more successfully negotiate meaning-constructions and theideological dimensions of power relations inherently embedded in alldiscourses (Luke 1995b).

However, such a critical thinking programme that integrates criticalliteracy in classrooms will also require the reconceptualization of theteaching of literacy as understanding and addressing systems of beliefsabout the social, cultural and political world; it is not a mere acquisition ofthose language skills, genres and competencies in writing and reading basedon traditional practices and ideologies (Luke et al. 1996).

Teaching students to read and write against the grain is, however, notan easy task, as Kramer-Dahl (1997) discovered in her attempt to introducecritical pedagogy classroom practices to a teacher-training programme atthe National Institute of Education, Singapore. While teaching futureteachers how to teach English shaped by a critical pedagogy discourse,her e � orts were resisted because of the entrenched mindset of studentsindoctrinated by a syllabus that trained them in a certain mode of thinkingtied to passing examinations. Kramer-Dahl concluded that even if there isany semblance or evidence of critical practice, students are at most payinglip-service to it. However, despite this constraint, teachers can still createspace for a critical pedagogy consistent with the TSLN mission, given achange of mindset among educators, teachers and students, and moreimportantly, those responsible for writing the curriculum. Moreover, achange in assessment practices is also needed. The Singapore education

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system will be closer to the TSLN vision if critical literacy is introduced tothe classroom.

Critical literacy in the Singapore context

The teaching of critical literacy repositions students as active learners.Instead of learning language as given, students investigate the uses oflanguage. In that way, they become, as Comber (1994: 661) pointed out,`researchers of language’. Citing Singh’s work, Comber described how agroup of high-school students from non-English-speaking and working-class backgrounds investigated the truancy of non-English-speakingstudents in the Australian state of Victoria. This project became theircurriculum as students wrote about themselves and about their position as amarginalized group of students in a predominantly English-speakingschool. As students researched the problem, conducted interviews andsurveyed other similar students, they became engaged in producing newknowledge about problems experienced by disadvantaged non-English-speaking students. Such a project exempli®es a critical literacy approachbecause students investigated a socially signi®cant task about themselvesand, more importantly, because their own views were included andrepresented rather than being imposed by a dominant group.

Singapore teachers could introduce many similar projects. Instead ofassigning often meaningless and undirected holiday projects to students,which they often plagiarize, teachers could ask them to explore morepertinent language or cultural issues related to their school setting. Forinstance, students could explore and investigate whether Singlish2 shouldor should not be permitted in schools, the workplace and the media. Theteacher can provide a framework where students can raise appropriatequestions such as: Why should or should not Singlish be allowed in socialinstitutions? Who speaks Singlish and for what purposes? Whose interestsare served by banning (or attempting to ban) Singlish? Who is advantagedor disadvantaged if Singlish is not permitted? Whose voices and positionsare being expressed or repressed if Singlish is banned? What does acampaign against Singlish do to an individual? How can that campaignbe contested?

Rather than brainstorming for ideas about the issue, or weighing thepros and cons of speaking Singlish, as a critical thinking skill-basedapproach would advocate, a critical literacy approach would encouragestudents to think about the micro-politics surrounding a language they useand take for granted. They also may become more aware of issues related tolanguage, identity and power relations that operate within institutions anddiscourses. Students could present their ®ndings and views by writing tothe press or to the relevant Minister as a form of social action and redress.In doing so, they are learning to read and write against dominant views andchallenge hegemonic power relations.

Critical literacy also has a creative dimension that is consistent with theTSLN objective of promoting critical thinking. One purpose of criticalliteracy is to `problematize classroom and public texts’ (Comber 1994: 664).

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Singapore schools traditionally depended heavily upon speci®c textbooks tosatisfy the requirements of the Cambridge Examination Syndicate. Suchtextbooks represent `an o� cially sanctioned, authorized version of humanknowledge and culture’ (de Castell et al. 1989: vii), particularly whentextbooks come with `teacher-proof’ resources. Because public examina-tions and standard curriculum packages are centrally controlled, a cleardivision between textbook, teachers and students is established, in whichthe teacher is the mediator between sanctioned textual knowledge and thestudent. The student is hence positioned as having `an acquiescent, non-authoritative status in relation to both the text and teacher’ (Luke et al.1989: 252). This has the e � ect of producing passive learners conditioned bya learning environment that accepts textual knowledge via the teacher as theauthorized version of truth and what counts as knowledge.

The teaching of critical literacy can challenge this textual authoritar-ianism that precludes criticism of, and argument and debate about, texts byteachers and students. Students will have to learn a framework for analys-ing texts and at the same time develop a metalanguage to question thepolitics of meanings in texts and representations. Critical literacy will helpstudents to challenge textual authority and come to realize that the textualworld is inherently a constructionÐthat it re¯ects a particular world-viewand a dominant ideology and serves a particular interest group (Luke 1988).

When students problematize classroom texts, they learn to decode andnegotiate possible readings of texts and also the ideologies embedded intexts. In this way, given a critical pedagogy, students will not only becomeaware of what texts can do to them and their world but also learn what to dowith their reading and writing (Kamler and Comber 1996). The teacherplays an encouraging and collaborative role by guiding and asking appro-priate questions that require students to think and to interrogate theconstructedness and meanings of texts: Where have I seen this kind oftext before? Why has it been written? Who is it for? How do we know?What is the text about? What people are in the text? Who is left out? Whatare the other gaps and silences? How does the text want me to feel, thinkand act? Who stands to bene®t from the way this topic is presented? Who isdisadvantaged?3 Such questions can be applied across all levels to all formsof texts, picture books, newspaper articles, and literary or other culturaltexts. They could serve as thinking tools to help students interrogate andexamine the texts they read. As a critical framework, they could helpstudents to become aware of how, why, and in whose interests particulartexts might work. They might also develop alternate reading positions andquestion and critique texts for their cultural assumptions. In doing so,students learn to talk about texts, contest dominant views and rewrite them(Luke and Freebody 1997).

A critical re¯ection

Although I recommend that the teaching of critical literacy be tested inschools, I acknowledge the importance of Luke’s (2000: 449) advice that `itis dangerous to generalize any educational approach from one national/

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regional and cultural context to another’. Therefore, the version of criticalliteracy to be used as a broad-based critical framework in Singaporeclassrooms should be sensitive to the discursive framework and salientdiscourses that structure the political and material conditions of Singapore.That is to say, critical literacy has to be adapted and translated as a thinkingtool and critical framework to serve the instrumentalist ideology of produ-cing a generation of thinking work-force to support the Singapore econ-omy. This pragmatic function of a critical pedagogyÐcontradictory as itmay soundÐdoes not accommodate the critique of political economy andsociety that was originally the agenda developed by Freire (1993). Giventhe pragmatist and instrumentalist education policies Singapore subscribesto, I anticipate that the `space’ for critical literacy pedagogy in Singaporeschools will be a site for contestation and negotiation.

Acknowledgements

I thank Allan Luke and Carmen Luke for their comments on earlier drafts,and the University of Queensland for the award of the InternationalPostgraduate Research Scholarship.

Notes

1. Students in Singapore sit for the GCE `O’ level Cambridge examinations when they arein Secondary 4 (equivalent to Year 10).

2. `Singlish’ is colloquial Singapore English. It is a hybrid language with in¯uence fromlocal dialects and other spoken languages.

3. These questions are derived from Luke et al. (1996).

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