1st Edition
Education and Power in Contemporary Southeast Asia
This book focuses on education and power in Southeast Asia and analyzes 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, Rosalie Metro, Will Brehm, and Azmil Tayeb I. Centralization and Decentralization Chapter 1. Mechanisms of disempowerment: interrogating cultural logics producing the "tiny teacher" in Thailand’s education system, Thornchanok Uerpairojkit; Chapter 2. The influence of global education in Indonesia: PISA tests, different conceptions of national assessment, and the policymaking process, Ratih D. Adiputri; Chapter 3. Access to higher education in areas of contested authority: The case of Karen students in the KNU-controlled areas in Myanmar, Saw Than Min Htun and Sofie Mortensen; Chapter 4. Equilibrium and conflict paradigms in language for social and educational changes: A case of English as medium of instruction in Indonesia, Anis Sundusiyah II. Privatization and Marketization Chapter 5. The Corporatization of Vietnam’s Private Universities, Quang Chau and Nguyen Kim Dung; Chapter 6. Counting the Costs of Free Education: Shared Household and Government Costs in Cambodian Lower Secondary Education, Alexander Towne; Chapter 7. Neoliberalism Meets the Bumiputera Agenda: Student Debt and Higher Education in Malaysia, Ooi Kok Hin; Chapter 8. Neoliberalism and the Privatization of Higher Education in Myanmar, pre- and post-coup: "A Frame Based on a Fragile Foundation", Rosalie Metro; Chapter 9. Counter-hegemonic Discourses and Responses to Neoliberal Restructuring and Neocolonial Education: A Critical Evaluation of K-12’s Development and Implementation in the Philippines, Gerry M. Lanuza and David Michael M. San Juan III. Equity and Justice Chapter 10. The Scholars: Talent management techniques and gender inequality in state-sponsored scholarships, Rebecca Ye and Erik Nylander; Chapter 11. Vocational learning as infrastructure in Vietnam, Eva Fuhrmann; Chapter 12. Bringing Trans-women "back to Fitrah": Islamic (Re)education/rehabilitation projects and discourses in Malaysia, Greta Timea Biro; Chapter 13. Orang Asli Community Learning Centers and Indigenous Resurgence, Rusaslina Idrus and Ita Bah Nan; Chapter 14. Network of Opportunity or Network of Inequality? Analiza Liezl Perez-Amurao; Conclusion. Re/thinking Regionally about Power and Education, Azmil Tayeb, Will Brehm, and Rosalie Metro
Biography
Azmil Tayeb is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the School of Social Sciences, Universiti Sains Malaysia in Penang, Malaysia, a Visiting Research Fellow at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore, and an Adjunct Professor at the Universitas Negeri Malang in Indonesia. He is the author of Islamic Education in Indonesia and Malaysia: Shaping Minds, Saving Souls (Routledge, 2018).
Rosalie Metro is an Associate Teaching Professor in the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Missouri-Columbia, USA. She is the author of three textbooks: Histories of Burma, Teaching US History Thematically, and Teaching World History Thematically.
Will Brehm is an Associate Professor in Comparative and International Education at the University of Canberra, Australia. He is the author of Cambodia for Sale (Routledge, 2021) and co-editor, with Yuto Kitamura, of Memory in the Mekong (TC Press, 2022) and Public Policy Innovation for Human Capital Development (APO, 2020).
