‘Please tell us how you can volunteer your contributions to the school’: a social semiotic analysis of school websites

Abstract

The incursion of neoliberalism has impacted many facets of education worldwide. This article focuses on one of these: parent–school partnerships. Using a social semiotic approach, the authors analyse the websites of two primary schools in Singapore and examine how the semantic features of implications and presuppositions on the websites propagate the ideology of a transactional relationship between parents and schools. The social semiotic analysis reveals that parents were positioned as consumers through the multimodal choices on the web pages, with the ultimate message that the way to partner the school in education was to volunteer physically at the school. The authors discuss the implications of such an ideology and propose recommendations towards enabling parents to be partners in education.

Keywords

critical discourse analysis education ideology neoliberalism parent–school partnership website analysis

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Adami

(2015) What’s in a click? A social semiotic framework for the multimodal analysis of website interactivity. Visual Communication 14(2): 133–153.

Adobe (2022) PDF. Three letters that continue to change the world. Available at: https://www.adobe.com/sg/acrobat/about-adobe-pdf.html (accessed 17 July 2022).

Apple

(2006) Educating the Right Way: Markets, Standards, God, and Inequality. New York, NY: Routledge.

Ball

(2004) Education for Sale! The Commodification of Everything? King’s Annual Education Lecture, University of London, UK.

Bateman

(2023) Methodological challenges in the empirical application of semiotically informed multimodality theory to branding research. Advances in brand semiotics & discourse analysis, 1–32.

Breidenstein

Krüger

Roch

(2020) Parents as ‘customers’? The perspective of the ‘providers’ of school education. A case study from Germany. Comparative Education 56(3): 409–422.

Brown

(1990) The ‘third wave’: Education and the ideology of parentocracy. British Journal of Sociology of Education 11(1): 65–86.

Campbell

Dalley-Trim

Cordukes

(2016) ‘You want to get it right’: A regional queensland school’s experience in strengthening parent–school partnerships. Australasian Journal of Early Childhood 41(3): 109–116.

Castro

, et al. (2015) Parental involvement on student academic achievement: A meta-analysis. Educational Research Review 14: 33–46.

10.

Chin

(nd) School teacher exposes ‘night life’ on Facebook. theAsianparent, nd. Available at: https://sg.theasianparent.com/school-teacher-posts-night-life-photos-on-facebook (accessed 13 June 2022).

11.

Chiong

Dimmock

(2020) Building trust: How low-income parents navigate neoliberalism in Singapore’s education system. Comparative Education 56(3): 394–408.

12.

Chua

Sun

(2021) MOE investigates complaint that teacher sought sugar daddy on controversial website Sugarbook. The Straits Times, 5 December. Available at: https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/community/moe-investigates-complaint-that-teacher-sought-sugar-daddy-on-controversial (accessed 13 June 2022).

13.

Clandinin

Connelly

(2000). Narrative Inquiry: Experience and Story in Qualitative Research. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

14.

Costes-Onishi

Baildon

Aghazadeh

(2020) Moving inquiry-based learning forward: A meta-synthesis on inquiry-based classroom practices for pedagogical innovation and school improvement in the humanities and arts. Asia Pacific Journal of Education 40(4): 552–575.

15.

Darling-Hammond

(2010) The Flat World and Education: How America’s Commitment to Equity Will Determine Our Future. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

16.

De Roock

Baildon

(2019) MySkillsFuture for students, STEM learning, and the design of neoliberal citizenship in Singapore. Cognition and Instruction 37(3): 285–305.

17.

Debs

Cheung

(2021) Structure-reinforced privilege: Educational inequality in the Singaporean primary school choice system. Comparative Education 57(3): 398–416.

18.

Deslandes

Barma

Morin

(2015) Understanding complex relationships between teachers and parents. International Journal about Parents in Education 9(1): 131–144.

19.

Dimmock

Tan

(2013) Educational leadership in Singapore: Tight coupling, sustainability, scalability, and succession. Journal of Educational Administration 51(3): 320–340.

20.

Djonov

Knox

(2014) How-to-analyze webpages. In: Norris

Maier

(eds) Interactions, Images and Texts. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, 171–194.

21.

Djonov

Van Leeuwen

(2018) Social media as semiotic technology and social practice: The case of ResearchGate’s design and its potential to transform social practice. Social Semiotics 28(5): 641–664.

22.

Djonov

Knox

Zhao

(2015) Interpreting websites in educational contexts: A social-semiotic, multimodal approach. In: Smeyers

, et al. (eds) International Handbook of Interpretation in Educational research. Dordrecht: Springer, 315–345.

23.

Dodillet

Christensen

(2020) Parents, a Swedish problem: On the marginalisation of democratic parental involvement in Swedish school policy. Comparative Education 56(3): 379–393.

24.

Đurišić

Bunijevac

(2017) Parental involvement as a important factor for successful education. Center for Educational Policy Studies Journal 7(3): 137–153.

25.

Eagleton-Pierce

(2016) Neoliberalism: The Key Concepts. New York, NY: Routledge.

26.

Epstein

(2010) School/family/community partnerships: Caring for the children we share. Phi delta kappa 92(3): 81–96.

27.

Epstein

(2018) School, Family, and Community Partnerships: Preparing Educators and Improving Schools. New York, NY: Routledge.

28.

Gilleece

Eivers

(2018) Primary school websites in Ireland: How are they used to inform and involve parents? Irish Educational Studies 37(4): 411–430.

29.

Halliday

(1985) An Introduction to Functional Grammar, 2nd edn. London: Arnold.

30.

Henderson

Berla

(1994) A New Generation of Evidence: The Family Is Critical to Student Achievement. Columbia, MD: National Committee for Citizens in Education.

31.

Soong

AKF

(2007) Beyond electronic brochures: An analysis of Singapore primary school web sites. Educational Media International 44(1): 33–42.

32.

Jones

(2019) Home school relations in Singaporean primary schools: Teachers’, parents’ and children’s views. Oxford Review of Education 45(1): 32–49.

33.

Kaspersky (2022) QR Code Security: What are QR codes and are they safe to use? Available at: https://www.kaspersky.com/resource-center/definitions/what-is-a-qr-code-how-to-scan (accessed 17 July 2022).

34.

Khong

LYL

(2008) School-stakeholder partnerships: Building school cultures for stronger links. In: Tan

(ed) Thinking Schools, Learning Nation: Contemporary Issues and Challenges. London: Taylor & Francis, 39–50.

35.

Khong

LYL

(2005) School–parent partnerships in Singapore. Educational Research for Policy and Practice 4(1). DOI: 10.1007/s10671-005-5617-6.

36.

Lee

(2022) The Big Read in short: A teacher’s job just keeps getting tougher – no thanks to parents. Today Online, 5 September. Available at: https://www.todayonline.com/big-read/teachers-job-getting-tougher-no-thanks-parents-1983536 (accessed 13 July 2022).

37.

Lemke

(2002) Travels in hypermodality. Visual communication 1(3): 299–325.

38.

Loh

(2013) Inquiry into issues of trustworthiness and quality in narrative studies: A perspective. Qualitative Report 18(33): 1–18.

39.

Loh

(2019) The impact of educational neoliberalism on teachers in Singapore. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education. Oxford: Oxford Universty Press.

40.

Logi

Zappavigna

(2023) A social semiotic perspective on emoji: How emoji and language interact to make meaning in digital messages. New Media & Society 25(12): 3222–3246.

41.

McLachlan

(2021) Neoliberal rules: A critical multimodal analysis of metonymy on high school webpages. Linguistics and Education 65. DOI: 10.1016/j.linged.2021.100957.

42.

McNeal

Jr (2001) Differential effects of parental involvement on cognitive and behavioral outcomes by socioeconomic status. Journal of Socio-Economics 30(2): 171–179.

43.

Ministry of Education (2017) Parent Support Groups: A How-to Guide by Parents for Parents. Available at: https://www.moe.gov.sg/-/media/files/compass/psg-online-guide.pdf?la=en&hash=D5B71CA61109AF0C8A502868608F3F0CDF6C692E (accessed 13 July 2022).

44.

Ministry of Education (2022) Registration Phases and Key Dates. Available at: https://www.moe.gov.sg/primary/p1-registration/registration-phases-key-dates?pt=2A (accessed 30 July 2022).

45.

Nasti

Venuti

Zollom

(2017) UK university websites: A multimodal corpus-based analysis. International Journal of Language Studies 11(4): 131–152.

46.

CJW

(2016) ‘Hottest brand, coolest pedagogy’: Approaches to corporate branding in Singapore’s higher education sector. Journal of Marketing for Higher Education 26(1): 41–63.

47.

CJW

(2018) Skilling the nation, empowering the citizen: Neoliberal instantiations in Singapore’s lifelong learning policy. Journal of Language and Politics 17(1): 118–140.

48.

(2003) The Singapore school and the school excellence model. Educational Research for Policy and Practice 2(1): 27–39.

49.

(2007) Quality assurance in the Singapore education system in an era of diversity and innovation. Educational Research for Policy and Practice 6: 235–247.

50.

(2008) The phases and paradoxes of educational quality assurance: The case of the Singapore education system. Quality Assurance in Education 16(2): 112–125.

51.

(2010) The evolution and nature of school accountability in the Singapore education system. Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability 22(4): 275–292.

52.

(2020) The paradoxes of student well-being in Singapore. ECNU Review of Education 3(3): 437–451.

53.

(2007) Development of parent–school partnerships in times of educational reform in Hong Kong. International Journal of Educational Reform 16(4): 411–435.

54.

Piller

Bruzon

Torsh

(2021) Monolingual school websites as barriers to parent engagement. Language and Education. DOI: 10.1080/09500782.2021.2010744.

55.

Poole

(2017) Developing relationships with school customers: the role of market orientation. International Journal of Educational Management 31(7): 1054–1068.

56.

Poulsen

(2022) The same but different: A social semiotic analysis of website interactivity as discourse. Discourse & Communication 16(2): 249–268. DOI: 10.1177/17504813211043609.

57.

Povey

, et al. (2016) Engaging parents in schools and building parent–school partnerships: The role of school and parent organisation leadership. International Journal of Educational Research 79: 128–141.

58.

Proctor

, et al. (2020) Parents, schools and the twenty-first-century state: Comparative perspectives. Comparative Education 56(3): 317–330.

59.

Rahim

(2023) Why does removal of mid-year exams in Singapore still cause stress? Yahoo News, 7 July. Available at: https://sg.news.yahoo.com/removal-mid-year-exams-singapore-stress-014637253.html?

60.

Tan

(2017) Private supplementary tutoring and parentocracy in Singapore. Interchange 48(4): 315–329.

61.

Tan

Dimmock

(2014) How a ‘top-performing’Asian school system formulates and implements policy: The case of Singapore. Educational Management Administration & Leadership 42(5): 743–763.

62.

Tan

(2020) STEM as an opportunity to get TSLN right: Science education for economically productive creativity. Asia Pacific Journal of Education 40(4): 485–500.

63.

Teo

(2000) Foreword. Home, School and Community Partnerships. Singapore: Compass Secretariat, Psychological and Guidance Service Branch, Ministry of Education.

64.

Thiruselvam

(2013) Singapore has among the world’s best education systems, so what can Australia learn from it? ABC News, 21 October. Available at: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-10-21/how-australia-can-compare-to-singapore-education/101511316 (accessed 23 October 2022).

65.

Van Dijk

(1993) Principles of critical discourse analysis. Discourse & Society 4(2): 249–283.

66.

Van Dijk

(1995) Discourse semantics and ideology. Discourse & Society 6(2): 243–289.

67.

Van Dijk

(2006) Ideology and discourse analysis. Journal of Political Ideologies 11(2): 115–140.

68.

Van Dijk

Atienza

(2011) Knowledge and discourse in secondary school social science textbooks. Discourse Studies 13(1): 93–118.

69.

Gulosino

(2006) How does teacher quality matter? The effect of teacher–parent partnership on early childhood performance in public and private schools. Education Economics 14(3): 345–367.

70.

Yuen

(2019) Adjunct teacher behind viral Facebook post quits after being counselled by school, but stands by her post. The Straits Times, 28 January. Available at: https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/education/adjunct-teacher-behind-viral-facebook-post-quits-after-being-counselled-by (accessed 13 June 2022).

71.

Zhang

O’Halloran

(2013) Toward a global knowledge enterprise: University websites as portals to the ongoing marketization of higher education. Critical Discourse Studies 10(4): 468–485.

72.

Zollo

(2016). Internationalization and globalisation: A multimodal analysis of Italian universities’ websites. Journal of Multimodal Communication Studies 3(1).