ABSTRACT
This book focuses on education and power in Southeast Asia and analyses the ways in which education has been instrumentalized by state, non-state, and private actors across this diverse region.
The book looks at how countries in Southeast Asia respond to the endogenous and exogenous influences in shaping their education systems. Chapters observe and study the interplay between education and power in Southeast Asia, which offers varying political, social, cultural, religious, and economic diversities. The political systems in Southeast Asia range from near consolidated democracy in Indonesia to illiberal democracy in Singapore and Thailand to the communist regime in Laos to absolute monarchy in Brunei. Structured in three parts, (i) centralization and decentralization; (ii) privatization and marketization; and (iii) equity and justice, these themes are discussed in single country and/or multi-country studies in the Southeast Asian region.
Bringing together scholars from and focused on Southeast Asia, this book fills a gap in the literature on education in Southeast Asia.
Introduction. Exploring power dynamics in education across Southeast Asia I. Centralization and Decentralization Chapter 1. Mechanisms of disempowerment: interrogating cultural logics producing the "tiny teacher" in Thailand’s education system; Chapter 2. The influence of global education in Indonesia: PISA test, different conceptions of national assessment, and the policymaking process; Chapter 3. Access to higher education in areas of contested authority: The case of Karen students in the KNU-controlled areas in Myanmar; Chapter 4. Equilibrium and conflict paradigms in language for social and educational changes: A case of English as medium of instruction in Indonesia II. Privatization and Marketization Chapter 5. The Corporatization of Vietnam’s Private Universities; Chapter 6. Counting the Costs of Free Education: Shared Household and Government Costs in Cambodian Lower-Secondary Education; Chapter 7. Neoliberalism Meets the Bumiputera Agenda: Student Debt and Higher Education in Malaysia; Chapter 8. Neoliberalism and the Privatization of Higher Education in Myanmar, pre- and post-coup: "A Frame Based on a Fragile Foundation"; Chapter 9. Counterhegemonic Discourses and Responses to Neoliberal Restructuring & Neocolonial Education: A Critical Evaluation of K to 12’s Development and Implementation in the Philippines III. Equity and Justice Chapter 10. The Scholars: Talent management techniques and gender inequality in Singaporean state-sponsored scholarships; Chapter 11. Vocational learning as infrastructure in Vietnam; Chapter 12. Bringing Trans-women "back to Fitrah": Islamic (Re)education/rehabilitation projects and discourses in Malaysia; Chapter 13. Orang Asli Community Learning Centers and Indigenous Resurgence; Chapter 14. Network of Opportunity or Network of Inequality?; Conclusion. Re/thinking Regionally about Power and Education
