Understanding how Student Diversity is Socially Constructed within the Singapore Context
Diversity is a socially constructed idea where differences are assigned meanings that reflect dominant values in society (Ghosh, 2018; Swartz, 2009). Current conceptions of diversity tend to be embedded within Western contexts, necessitating a broadening of perspectives around how it is conceived beyond the West. Through a qualitative study of ten teachers’ implementation of differentiated instruction in Singapore, we gain insights on how these teachers understand student diversity in ways markedly different from the West. In turn, these teachers’ understandings of student diversity reflect dominant discourses and priorities around meritocracy, multiculturalism, and academic excellence in the Singapore context and underscore the contextually-dependent nature of diversity.
Dr. Heng Tang Tang is an Assistant Professor at the National Institute of Education-Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Having taught and worked in education in Singapore, China and the U.S., Tang has always been interested in how teachers or students experience education or educational ideas across national borders. Her work has been published in journals like Teachers College Record and Journal of Studies in International Education, and she was conferred the Comparative and International Education Society’s Study Abroad and International Students SIG Early Career Award in 2019.
Developing Hong Kong student-teachers social justice pedagogies through youth mentoring: Experiencing recognition
At the core of teacher education for social justice and inclusion are humanizing relations between teachers and students. These pedagogic relations entail working across self-other differences and involve complex, situated struggles for recognition (Bingham, 2006). This study examined how student-teachers in a Hong Kong undergraduate teacher education programme developed relational and inclusive pedagogies as they mentored youth from a high-poverty local secondary school on a one-to-one basis, whilst studying social justice educational theory and practice in a service-learning course. Three mentors’ reflections illuminate how their sociolinguistic identities were shaped by inequalities, economic anxiety and political tensions in Hong Kong society, which magnified the intersubjective and ethical complexities of their relations with their protégés. In (mis)recognising the Other and self, the three student-teachers grappled with the meanings of inclusive and socially just pedagogic relations.
Dr. Margaret M. Lo is an Assistant Professor and teacher educator in the Faculty of Education, University of Hong Kong. Her scholarship, teaching and service seeks to develop critical multiliteracies in teaching English to youth in schools, and to promote teacher education for social justice and inclusion. She is currently researching youth mentoring as critical service-learning in initial teacher education, and participatory, asset-based pedagogies for English language education in Hong Kong schools, funded by the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong.
Developing a harmony-oriented multicultural theory of practice in Taiwan
This study develops a harmony-oriented multicultural framework that emerges from the Taiwanese context, where teachers are responding to the unprecedented population of mixed-race youth from transnational marriage migrations. Problematizing the import of U.S.-based multiculturalism to the Taiwanese context, this study reveals Taiwanese teachers’ pedagogical approach to student diversity centered on harmony. Particularly because most diversity research has been situated in Western contexts, findings contribute cross-cultural understanding on alternative cultural frames of reference in responding to diversity and emerge from a participatory action research project between researcher and Taiwanese teachers.
Dr. Lisa Yiu is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Education, University of Hong Kong. Her research seeks to advance educational equity through investigating diversity and inclusion issues for immigrant-origin youth in mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong. Specifically, she investigates how policy, school organizational and classroom contexts, as well as interactions between these contexts, can develop learning environments that value diversity by equalizing learning opportunities to all students. Current research projects in Taiwan and Hong Kong aim to correct the overly Western bias in multicultural education on student diversity, context of teaching and learning, and teacher education. Her work, which has been recognized by the Taiwanese Ministry of Education and funded by the Fulbright Foundation, is motivated and critically enriched by her experiences as an inner-city teacher in Los Angeles Unified School District and English-as-a-Second-Language teacher in China. Publications include Harvard Educational Review, The China Quarterly, Chinese Education and Society (co-editor), as well as chapters in various handbooks.