ABSTRACT
In recent decades, nations across Asia have gone through – indeed are going through – massive social, economic, and political transitions (Bell & Li, 2013; Chua, 2010; Lim & Apple, 2016). Governed until recently by either staunchly authoritarian and/or military governments, themselves often backed by colonial powers, many of these nations have since moved towards at least nominal forms of democracy and are embarking on “modernization” projects in response to the globalizing pressures of neoliberalism (Koh, 2010; Ong, 2006; Robison, 2012; Rodan & Jayasuriya, 2007). Indeed, undergoing what has been termed “compressed modernization” (Chang, 2010; Sato, 2011), a number of these countries have raised eyebrows by transforming themselves from “third world to first” within a generation (Lee, 2000; Mahbubani, 2008; Zakaria, 1997). Delivering many of these changes has been the work of education systems. In particular, through large-scale curriculum reforms engineered to “retool the productive capacities of the system” (Gopinathan, 2007, p. 59), many of these states have sought to singularly shape decisions over what counts as “official knowledge” (Apple, 2014; Bernstein, 2000), and over what goes into the work of schools and classrooms – all in ways that continue to chart out and legitimize the aspirations of dominant groups in society (Apple, Gandin, Liu, Meshulam, & Schirmer, 2018; Koh & Kenway, 2012; Lim & Apple, 2015).
