This book explores critical pedagogy and issues relating to entrepreneurialism, commodification, and marketization in education, and their deleterious effects on student agency and subjectivity. The central theme of the book is a cross-border critical ethnographic study of the shadow education practices of an overseas Japanese business community in Singapore which ​d​​ra​w​s attention to the elaborate extent to which families are engaged in shadow or cram tutoring practices as part of their children’s education, supported by the strong presence of overseas branches of well-established corporate tutoring businesses headquartered in Japan. The author ultimately critiques a banking approach to education, particularly in terms of its oppressive and dehumanizing outcomes, sustained by the inner workings of neoliberal forces and mercantilist ideologies.

This book analyses how children from transnational Japanese-Singaporean families are educated. The author demonstrates that the negotiated educational pathways of these children have significant bearing on the ways in which individual identities of mixedness may be constructed or contested – where notions of mixedness are necessarily recognised for their inherent fluidity, contextuality and contingency. This interdisciplinary book will be of interest to students and scholars across the fields of education, neoliberalism, globalization, multiculturalism, mobility and cross-border migration.

This volume describes both the history and the contemporary forms, functions, and status of English in Southeast Asia. The chapters provide a comprehensive overview of current research on a wide range of topics, addressing the impact of English as a language of globalization and exploring new approaches to the spread of English in the region.

An outline of some of the major tenets that have been constructed recently around critical educational issues, typically termed critical pedagogy. This primer on critical pedagogy is grounded on personal narrative dealing with understanding schools as part of broader moral and spiritual crisis.

Carefully curated to highlight research from more than twenty countries, the International Critical Pedagogy Reader introduces the ways the educational phenomenon that is critical pedagogy are being reinvented and reframed around the world. A collection of essays from both historical and contemporary thinkers coupled with original essays, introduce this school of thought and approach it from a wide variety of cultural, social, and political perspectives. Academics from South America, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and North America describe critical pedagogy’s political, ideological, and intellectual foundations, tracing its international evolution and unveiling how key scholars address similar educational challenges in diverse national contexts. Each section links theory to critical classroom practices and includes a list of sources for further reading to expand upon the selections offered in this volume. A robust collection, this reader is a crucial text for teaching and understanding critical pedagogy on a truly international level. Winner of the 2016 Alpha Sigma Nu Book Award

This book is based upon research conducted both before and after a visit to Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia in March, 2003. During this time period United States (US) bombs fell on Baghdad, Iraq. An invasion of US and British ground forces in Baghdad and other Iraqi cities followed the initial bombing. Events during the onset of the war became a catalyst for gaining insight on how the US invasion of Iraq impacted the lives of teachers and their students in Malaysia. In June and July of 2003, the researcher returned to interview educators in Sabah, Malaysia. Follow-up electronic communications with educators were conducted through the remainder of 2003. After the research in Malaysia, the researcher conducted studies of educators' perspectives in Mexico, Canada, and the US. The key objective of the investigations in all four countries was to uncover attitudes and pedagogical comparisons of educators and their students regarding US policies, including war and counter-terrorism policies. Studies in the US took place in close proximity to the US/Mexico international border. Studies were analyzed through the lenses of place-based pedagogy, border pedagogy, and issues-centered approaches that provided baseline information for transnational comparisons and cross-comparative case studies. In this manner, the researcher contemplated the intersection of a critical pedagogy of place and border pedagogy. From these studies emerged new understandings and the development of a critical border dialogism . This critical border dialogism is based on following principles: heteroglossia, meliorism, critical cosmopolitanism, nepantla, dialogism feminism, and pragmatic hope. By its nature critical border dialogism engages us in multidirectional discourses that allow us to tackle issues and work toward enduring conflict resolutions. When applied in classroom settings critical border dialogism moves educators, students, and cultural workers in the direction of a critical border praxis.

This book explores the complexity of communication and understanding as a possible asset in formal education rather than a problem that needs to be “fixed”. The authors examine the question and experience as pedagogical tools, challenging readers to play the critic and ask hard questions, beginning with: Why do the ideas discussed within the book matter? The digital information age with expanding ways of thinking, being, communicating, and learning complicates public education. So, what happens as diverse narratives collide in schools? To answer this question, the authors of this book delve into conflicting assumptions within the framework of complexity sciences and education in an attempt to explore space beyond positivist/anti-positivist debates. This involves examining the role of cultural and aesthetic narratives and cautionary tales as means of acknowledging possibilities in human experiences in education. These possibilities can facilitate praxis, as theory, research, and teaching become reflective practices, and as thinking about education broadens to include diverse methods of understanding and presenting complex phenomena.