Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

In December 2019, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development released the latest results of its triennial Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) testing. What followed was a flurry of media reports in the participant countries about the 2018 PISA results that were interpretive rather than descriptive. Whilst there is a considerable body of literature describing PISA’s impact on education policies, there are fewer studies that examine how PISA data is presented to the public by the media and how this contributes to the construction of policy truths. As part of a broader study of policy landscapes in the Asia Pacific region, this paper provides a critical analysis of the mediatisation of the 2018 PISA results in Australia and Singapore. It will be demonstrated that in Australia, much of the reporting was characterised by panic, whereas in Singapore the reporting was much more measured, exhibiting a stoicism. Drawing on a corpus of articles published in Australian and Singaporean newspapers in December 2019, and informed by the work of Michel Foucault, the analysis will make visible how dominant discourses used by the media operated as regimes of truth to advance neoliberal imperatives.

Keywords

Programme for International Student Assessment media critical analysis policy regimes of truth Australia Singapore

Introduction

The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is an international assessment measuring student performance in reading, mathematical and scientific literacy sponsored and coordinated by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). On 3 December 2019, the 2018 PISA results were released worldwide (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2019a). Also released by the OECD were the Snapshots of Student Performance, a ranked order of student performance from the 79 participant countries in reading, mathematics and science, and an Insights and Interpretation Report which analysed and compared the 79 participant countries performance. Additionally, contextual questions asked of students, teachers and principals via a survey provided a ‘broader and more nuanced picture of student, school and system performance’ to include ‘aspects of learning, students’ interest, motivation and engagement’ (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 2019b: 17). Touted as ‘a powerful tool that countries and economies can use to fine-tune their education policies’ (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 2019a: 2), PISA has become a significant instrument in global educational governance as policy actors use it to legitimate education policy through reference to its robust evidence and often through crisis rhetoric (Steiner-Khamsi and Waldow, 2018).

This paper narrows its focus to the operations of the print media in two countries: Australia and Singapore following the publication of the 2018 PISA results. Australia and Singapore share similar strategic interests and perspectives, are open economies underpinned by similar outlooks and ethos and are both island nations that rely heavily on international trade and global markets (Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, n.d.). However, despite these similarities, Australia and Singapore’s PISA results are disparate. Australia has experienced a pattern of steady decline in the PISA rankings whilst Singapore has consistently remained at the top. Interested by responses of the Singapore and Australian print media to the 2018 PISA results, the paper provides a critical analysis of the dominant discourses that prevailed and examines how these discourses reinforced the neoliberal priorities of each country.

I now map out the direction of my paper. I begin by reviewing the role of media in schooling discourse and examine the mediatisation of PISA. Following this, I explain my approach and methodology after which I outline the Australian and Singaporean context, highlighting the 2018 PISA results of each country. I then explain the data, data collection methods and sources that will inform my analysis and discussion.

The role of the media in schooling and the mediatisation of PISA

The media’s role in interpreting issues, framing discussion around data and cultivating beliefs has long been recognised (Anderson, 2007; Lingard and Rawolle, 2004; Mockler, 2014). As a discursive text, the media creates particular policy narratives such as crises and moral panic (Cohen, 1972) to form regimes of truth that privilege specific points of view (Fenech and Wilkins, 2019). The media’s role in schooling has seen it select, represent, create, promote, debate, privilege and produce information that ‘shapes policy and practice’ and ‘constructs policy narratives’ (Sellar et al., 2017: 4). ‘As a policy actor, the media influences the design, adoption, and implementation of educational policy’ creating discourses that can be accepted by the public (Yemini and Gordon, 2017: 264). This is not to say; however, that consumers of media are unable to form their own independent interpretations as discourse can be a site of both power and resistance and there can be no ‘renunciation of freedom’ (Foucault, 1983: 220).

Of interest for this paper is the ways in which the findings of international large-scale skills assessments such as PISA become part of policy narratives and enter into public discourse through media reporting to shape what the goals of education are, what is valued, and what position teachers and students should occupy. Key scholars who have written about the mediatisation of PISA have noted that ‘it is through the media that audiences come to learn about the apparent successes and failure of the education system’ (Stack, 2007:100). Indeed, narratives of education and the purposes of schooling are reinforced through the translation of the PISA data by the media into dominant discourses and useable forms (Gür et al., 2012; Hamilton, 2017; Hu, 2020; Pizmony-Levy, 2018). In their extensive review of the literature about the mediatisation of PISA, Baroutsis and Lingard (2017) observe that the discourses that dominate show a propensity towards simplistic and often negative media coverage focused mainly on league tables and rankings, instead of on the more detailed reports released 2 years after the test which ‘receive much less media coverage’ (433).

A number of commentators have also suggested the media is merely a vehicle through which governments achieve desired education reforms (Hamilton, 2017; Steiner-Khamsi and Waldow, 2012). Similarly, Pons (2017) proposes in his analysis of cognitive reception of PISA in six European countries between 2001–2008 that conversation surrounding PISA merely echoes ‘long-existing trends and characteristics of each national public debate in education’ (213). Finally, in their examination of what has made PISA so attractive as a policy and political device, Waldow and Steiner-Khamsi (2019) conclude there is little correlation between a country's rank and the media reaction, and that each country, and the reaction of their media, cannot be predicted. What remains is that a country’s performance in PISA will always provoke debate, reform and aspiration.

PISA, dominant discourses and regimes of truth

As a tool of governance and disciplinary power, the PISA data has become increasingly significant to global education policymakers, with changes to policy gaining traction through dominant discourses about education that have become what Foucault (1977) describes as ‘regimes of truth’. Dominant discourses are created when their meanings are understood by people within society and widely accepted as being represented as the truth. It is through the status of those powerful in society and authorised through powerful institutions such as the mechanisms of the education system and the media that dominant discourses are allowed to function as ‘regimes of truth’ (Foucault 1977).

Moreover, those in power often predicate regimes of truth on scientific discourse, in this case the PISA data acts as a regime of truth that insists there is only one way to think, act and be in terms of determining the indicators of success in education systems. I argue that in the construction of dominant discourses and regimes of truth in response to the PISA data, the media assumes the status of perpetuating what counts as the truth to achieve best educational practice. However, as previously stated, discourse can be a site of both power and resistance and there can be no ‘renunciation of freedom’ (Foucault, 1983: 220) meaning that consumers of media can form their own independent interpretations and respond accordingly.

PISA in 2018: Australia and Singapore

As truths are contingent on the culture that produces them, Australia and Singapore’s contexts also legitimated the regimes of truth reinforced in media responses that followed the release of the 2108 PISA data.

Australian context

It has been contended that neoliberalism has been the prevailing narrative that has shaped Australian society and education policy for the past 30 years (e.g. Reid, 2019). It has been promoted at the national level by successive Australian governments who have insisted on certain policy initiatives in education that have been reinforced through policy discourses of accountability (Reid, 2019; Savage, 2017). Tied to the needs of the economy, education policy has been amended using language of markets and competition and has been tethered to Australia’s knowledge economy. In fact, the Australian Education Act (2013) states: ‘If Australia is to be a prosperous nation with a high standard of living in the 21st Century, our schooling system must provide children with the skills needed to participate fully in a knowledge-based economy’ (1).

In the same year, the Gillard government’s Australian Education Bill enshrined the aspiration for Australia to be in the top five schooling countries by 2025 and since PISA is the only way to measure such a goal, since then it has been used to set the benchmark for Australian education and as a referent for education policy development. Successive Australian governments have continued to look to PISA data in the formulation of education policy and the decline in standards in Australian education relative to other countries has provided the focus of policy reform. The result has been an Australian education policy based on dominant discourses of standardising to ensure certainty, uniformity, individualism, competition and quantification which became visible in the Australian media reporting of the 2108 PISA results.

Singaporean context

Described as an illiberal Global City (Lim, 2016; Mutalib, 2000), Singapore is viewed as a place where East meets West and is considered to be an important junction for international trade. The end of colonial rule posed an immediate threat for Singapore’s new ruling People’s Action Party who used a pragmatic political power model/approach, a focus on nation building and an emphasis on economic growth for survival (Alviar-Martin and Baildon, 2017).

Singapore’s story has focused on a narrative of vulnerability and a recognition that the education of its people as its only natural resource. This has ensured that education is viewed instrumentally as human capital needed to cultivate economic growth (Gopinathan, 1999). Education is also viewed as an investment in the future rather than an expenditure in the present (Hirschmann, 2020). With a heavy reliance on trade, progress towards a more innovative economy that is able to compete in the international market has become increasingly important for Singapore (The Straits Times, 2018). In this context, as education is the key to future economic transformation, policy and frameworks such as the 21st Century Competencies (21CC) (Ministry of Education, 2009) emerged. Singapore’s survival is based on an effort to develop its citizens’ innovation and critical thinking skills to reposition Singapore in the larger scheme of capital flows, which became visible in the media reporting in Singapore after the release of the 2018 PISA data.

PISA 2018 results

The 2018 PISA results indicated a continued decline in Australia’s literacy, numeracy and science results. More specifically, Australian students had dropped 18 places since 2003 to 29th among other OECD countries in mathematics, seven places in science to 15th and 12 places in literacy to 16th (Thompson et al., 2019). In Singapore, whilst there was a slight drop from first to second position in their literacy, numeracy and science results, more than 70% of the participating Singaporean students expressed a fear of failure in the ‘contextual’ survey data, which was well above the OECD average of 50%. In addition, on the OECDs measure of ‘growth mindset’ in the 2018 PISA test, only 60% of Singaporean students exhibited a growth mindset which was below the OECD average of 63% (Avvisati et al., 2019).

Policy, educational governance and PISA

Building on recent work by key scholars (Baroutsis and Lingard, 2017; Grey and Morris, 2018; Pizmony-Levy, 2017, 2018; Takayama et al., 2013) the paper will examine the role of the media in PISA reception. To do this, I will examine the relationships of power created in Australia and Singapore after the release of the 2018 PISA data, and discuss how mediatisation of this data in both countries was used to produce and shape knowledge. As regimes of truth, the data contributed to creating discourses which were accepted and functioned as true. Dominant discourses emphasised in the media in Australia and Singapore imposed certain regimes of truth and suggestions for corrective treatment.

Data: Research study informing the discussion

The paper draws on data from newspapers in Australia and Singapore after the release of the 2018 PISA results. Using a Factiva data base focused on the dates of 1 December – 31 December 2019 inclusive of the PISA data release date of 3rd December, the search term ‘PISA’ was used and then further categorised to include newspapers representative of each State and Territory in Australia, including the Australian business and finance newspaper: The Australian Financial Review. The newspapers were also selected on the basis ideological diversity with News Corporation papers (such as The Australian, Daily Telegraph, Herald Sun and Courier Mail) considered as conservative, and the Fairfax papers providing some ideological counterweight (Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Canberra Times) (Ketchell, 2017).

The newspapers included were The Australian; Courier Mail; Daily Telegraph; Daily Mail; The Guardian; The Sydney Morning Herald; The Herald Sun; The Australian; The Australian Financial Review; The Advertiser; The West Australian; The Age; Northern Territory News; Hobart Mercury; and the Canberra Times. Search results were arranged by date – oldest to newest – and to avoid overrepresentation duplicate articles were eliminated with the first published article retained. This search generated 158 newspaper articles in the Australian newspapers.

Employing the same process, the following Singaporean newspapers were examined: The Straits Times; Lianhe Wanbao; TODAY; The New Paper and the business and financial newspaper, the Business Times Singapore. Like Australia, there is a duopolistic media structure in Singapore with the print media largely controlled by Singapore Press Holdings (SPH), publisher of The Straits Times, Lianhe Wanbao and The New Paper and MediaCorp, publisher of TODAY. The role of the press in the eyes of Singapore’s ruling party is to serve an active, participatory, responsible role for contributing to the ideal of nation building. The mission of the press is confined to simple journalism through regulatory measures with the top management positions of the SPH dominated by people affiliated with the government (Tey, 2008). This search yielded 31 articles.

These publications were analysed with the aid of a thematic analysis approach (Braun and Clarke, 2006). The following research question guided my approach: What discourses dominated the reporting of the 2018 PISA data in Australian and Singaporean newspapers? I began by uploading the newspaper articles into NVivo 12 in order to classify, sort and arrange information. These articles were then coded via nodes to look for emerging patterns, ideas and relationships in the data. The main themes that emerged in Australia were fixing the problems of curriculum, teachers and unruly students. In Singapore, the main themes were fostering risk taking, student wellbeing and equity. These themes were then narrowed down to the discourses that dominated the reporting. A discussion of these dominant discourses now follows.

Emerging dominant discourses

It was identified that the Australian newspaper commentary of the OECD 2018 PISA results focused on the dominant discourse that a return to the basics of literacy and numeracy was the necessary response to the decline in PISA rankings in reading, mathematics and science. The dominant discourse in Singapore’s newspaper articles was on encouraging growth mindsets and increasing risk taking in students in response to the PISA data which identified higher levels of anxiety in Singaporean students in comparison to other students in developed OECD countries.

Australia’s Panic: We need to return to the basics

In Australia, declining results were met with a surge of newspaper reports that signalled alarm and panic about the state of education in Australia and produced a script that many argue has remained unchanged for over a decade (Baroutsis and Lingard, 2017; Bonnor, 2019). Newspaper articles indicated that in light of the deteriorating literacy and numeracy results ‘alarm bells should be ringing’ with the Federal Education Minister Dan Tehan suggesting in The Canberra Times that “the ‘very disappointing’ results called for a de-cluttering of the curriculum in favour of the basics – literacy and numeracy” (Groch, 2019). The Courier Mail’s article ‘Going back to basics for better education’ was one of a number of newspapers (see also Baker, 2019; Hunter, 2019) suggesting the ‘back the basics [approach to] literacy and numeracy [would] stop Australia’s shocking slide of schooling standards’ (Penberthy, 2019). The media rhetoric of panic and ‘alarm’ peddled the back to basic discourse as the panacea to improve future PISA results and meet the needs of a knowledge economy. It soon became clear that the back to basics discourse privileged what counted as important knowledge, what classroom work was understood to be, what the child and teacher’s place in the classroom was and how teachers and children were to be assessed. As a result, education was positioned merely as an asset-base (Jardine et al., 2001). In this discourse, teachers as professional practitioners were reduced through reductionist views of their practice that was limited to the ‘basics’ and students were disciplined and surveilled as human capital. (Jardine et al., 2001).

An editorial ‘Take schools back to basics’ called for a ‘fundamental reform of teaching and the curriculum’, suggesting this would take the form of ‘[r]eading books, reciting spelling words and learning the times tables off by heart … to give kids the tools they need to excel’ (Weir, 2019). The back to basics discourse, reminiscent of the industrial era of education with its reference to ‘tools’, served to regulate the conduct of teachers and students in the disciplining of practice. In the Sydney Morning Herald (Hunter, 2019), Education minister Dan Tehan called for a quick rollout of Learning Progressions (ACARA, n.d.), the government’s standardised tracking tool to monitor students’ literacy and numeracy progress. Here, tracking and monitoring literacy and numeracy become part of the policy narrative reported in the media. Education goals were shaped, and students and teachers disciplined in the process.

Continuing a focus on narrowing the curriculum, Simon Cowan (2019), Research Director at the Centre for Independent Studies reported in The Canberra Times that the poor 2018 PISA results were also due to a national school curriculum that had become overcrowded. The media circulated the policy narrative of the overcrowded curriculum as a reason for the poor PISA results, further reinforcing the need to return to the basics as a regime of truth. Research Fellow Cowan enhanced the back to basics messaging from his position as ‘expert’ author who was qualified to comment as someone who had the authority to speak and keep what was said to ‘indefinitely, remain said’ (Foucault, 1981: 57) contributing to the construction of policy truths.

Cowan’s message was reiterated a day later by the Courier Mail’s Associate Editor Natasha Bita (2019) who suggested the curriculum had become ‘cluttered with non-core subjects such as gender issues and road safety’ which stemmed from ‘a romantic idea that puts children at the centre of learning, that they are all innately creative and if left alone they will create their own paths to knowledge … seductive but dangerous nonsense’. Extraneous knowledge was blamed for leading to unacceptable PISA results with any learning external to the basics regarded as irrelevant. The use of the word ‘seductive’ with its connotations of ‘being tricked’ by the allure of something for its ‘mere attractiveness’ suggested that teachers were unable to discern what was best calling into question their professionalism and implying risk, or ‘danger’ to children who were constructed as ‘other’.

Putting children at the centre of learning was blamed for the declining results undermining the ideals of a student-centred curriculum in a pluralistic society. In this discourse, children become objects of control and framed as ‘docile bodies’, seemingly invisible as education is acted upon them (Foucault, 1977:138–139). That is, children as docile bodies make improvement possible through dictated standards and knowledge. As Hattam et al. (2009) note, these types of discourses create a sense of educational panic, or ‘pedological backlash’, which is followed quickly by blame on the ‘liberal pedagogies’ of teachers and the inevitable call for corrective treatment (163). In this case, the treatment was to strip back the overcrowded curriculum and for literacy and numeracy, and their subsequent careful ‘tracking’ to be the focus.

The back-to-basics discourse was similarly reported in government media releases (see for example, Tehan, 2019), in which it was recommended that Australia’s states and territories must refocus on the basics of literacy and numeracy. The call to return to the basics as a solution to declining PISA results framed the problem as one of skill acquisition ‘urging education to go back to a tradition that has been lost’ (Wiklund, 2018: 118). Here, knowledge was selectively positioned as fundamental in securing success and stability, and children were shaped through the disciplinary mechanisms of set pedagogies. That is, children were to be taught skills, knowledge and attitudes decided for them, subjecting them to the disciplinary ‘gaze’.

Advocated through the media, the back to the basics discourse maintained neoliberal discourses of citizen/learners as potential knowledge workers by focussing on the basic marketable skills of literacy and numeracy and economic conceptions of student development. Knowledge was envisioned as finite and fixed, deliverable and transmissive. Government regulation was easily facilitated, and education remained confined. The Australian media interpreted the 2018 PISA results in ways that resonated with its political and economic context.

Singapore’s Stoicism: We need to build growth mindsets and encourage risk taking

In contrast to the Australian media’s response of alarm at the Australian results, Singapore’s media response was mostly positive to Singapore’s drop in rankings in mathematics, reading and science, albeit to second place. The acceptance of, and measured response to, the slight decline in results was highlighted in an article in The Straits Times declaring: ‘Pisa results; It's OK to be No. 2 in academics but aim to top student well-being’ (Davie, 2019) and was a reaction to PISA data showing Singaporean students reported a heightened fear of failure. The Singapore media exhibited stoicism and a focus on discourses of growth and wellbeing.

In an article in The Straits Times, the Deputy Director-General of education Wei Li Liew was reported as recommending the use of a growth mindset to combat excessive fear of failure, and as vehicle to ensure academic gains, saying ‘we can help more students to view such setbacks as a natural part of learning and growing, and to view them constructively … we can encourage more students to have a growth mindset' (Teng, 2019c). The Deputy Director-General’s comments requesting students broaden their thinking, with his consistent use of the inclusive word ‘we’ peppered throughout, reinforced Singapore’s highly valued educational aims of cohesion and group solidarity underpinned by a focus on productive growth.

Newspaper commentary problematised Singaporean students as hesitant to take risks, and calls were made for an overhaul of the highly pressured exam-based system that was blamed for the failure to produce students who were innovative (Tan, 2019; Teng, 2019a, 2019b; Teng and Ang, 2019). No longer was giving the correct responses in exams prized as the only important educational goal. Regarded as problematic and potentially damaging, Education economist Kelvin Seah, from the National University of Singapore, was reported in The Straits Times as saying ‘a fear of failure may prevent students from taking risks’. In the article, Seah explains further: ‘Thinking out of the box and giving creative answers, especially in exams, rather than sticking to established answers might be too risky for high performers because it could cost them their As … which means that students do not have a “certain risk appetite” that is required for innovation and entrepreneurship’ (Teng and Ang, 2019).

As an expert who evaluates practice and recommends interventions, Seah cast students as entrepreneurial subjects ‘who invest in themselves and in their future’ (Bacchi, 2009: 204). Here, Singaporeans were asked to recognise the wider objectives of education as they were disciplined as enterprising to improve through what Foucault (1977) labels as an ‘unremitting capitalisation of the self’ using ‘models that are proposed, suggested, imposed upon him by … his society’ (291). Moreover, from his position as ‘expert’ author who is qualified to comment as someone who had the authority to speak and keep what is said to ‘indefinitely, remain said’ (Foucault, 1981: 57), Seah contributed to the construction of policy truths that advanced the neoliberal objective of the idealised learner-citizen who is constructed in the best interest of the nation’s future.

In a TODAY article, the government’s efforts to reduce stress were explained: ‘The Government has taken steps to reduce the over-emphasis on academic grades … by removing academic streams’ (Ting, 2019b). The government’s policy direction found support in an Op-ed by The Straits Times Education reporter Amelia Teng (2019a) who writes ‘The ongoing review and education reform undertaken by the MOE in recent years has been to encourage … healthier attitudes towards learning instead of viewing it as a race with competitors to beat’. Teng’s use of the word ‘healthier’ positioned the audience to see an ‘improved’ and ‘more advantageous’ approach to education polity and learning and signalled the media approval of this policy direction – which can be regarded as a required policy response to increasing pressures of globalisation and uncertainty over Singapore’s future – but also one that addressed the anxiety evident in Singaporean students’ 2018 PISA data. Students were disciplined as vital to Singapore’s economic growth as subjects who were ‘responsible and self-regulating, reflective, flexible and self-transforming’ (Francis and Skelton, 2005: 124).

In light of the 2018 PISA results, the reporting of education policy goals in Singapore by the media continued to demonstrate instrumentalist concerns about competing in the global economy. For example relating education policy to economic growth and 21st century skills, University law lecturer Eugene Tan (Ting, 2019b) in TODAY was quoted as saying ‘student confidence is imperative at a time when the need to be innovative, bold and transformative is a national objective’. Here the discourse was fluid and opportunistic where the student was recast as resourceful and power was constitutive in the shaping of the subject for the needs of the nation (Foucault, 1977). As regimes of truth, and reinforced through the motherhood statements of building growth mindsets, being resilient and adaptable risk takers, Singaporean students are made work ready (globally competent) and disciplined themselves for the shift from manufacturing to innovation and R & D in Singapore where the necessity to excel in exams was not the only prerequisite.

It remains; however, that despite the dominant discourses evident in the press (see Teng 2019c; Teng and Ang, 2019), rejecting Singapore’s examination system in pursuit of a more diverse educational landscape is still a contestable notion. As one parent was quoted in TODAY after the release of the results: ‘In Singapore, you need to study hard to give yourself options, to do what you want’, adding that ‘The problem has its roots in Singaporeans being taught that the country has no natural resources, and that people are the nation’s best resources. Naturally, parents pour their resources into creating these “best resources”, piling on our hopes and putting all our time into it’. As a result ‘ [a] lot of pressure then rides on a child not to screw up their chances because it would be tough to get a second chance’ (Ting, 2019a).

Conclusion

Despite the now highly globalised nature of education, there were clear differences in the discourses emphasised in Australia and Singapore’s print media after the announcement of the 2018 PISA results. Whilst limited to a focus on media in English language newspapers, the differences evident in the reporting of the 2018 PISA results were a result of each country’s distinctive set of data results creating dominant discourses and regimes of truth that reinforced neoliberal imperatives and reflected each country’s context and policy agenda.

The Australian media responded with panic and a back to basics discourse that emphasised literacy and numeracy. The standards discourse was privileged to ensure uniformity and students and teachers were controlled in response to the needs of a knowledge economy. Singapore’s media addressed issues raised in the 2018 PISA data with stoicism to focus on discourses of risk taking and the need for students to exhibit growth mindsets and to be innovative. In Singapore, it is argued that these discourses were the apparatus used to ensure success and competitiveness for student/citizens needed to succeed in a rapidly changing world and vital to Singapore’s continued economic survival.

Echoing the findings from previous research (Gür et al., 2012; Pizmony-Levy, 2018; Stack, 2006), this study also found that dominant discourses and regimes of truth apparent in the media reporting of the 2018 PISA data strengthened government policy positions already in place or planned. The back to the basics discourse highlighted by the Australian media simply reinforced the Australian government’s already planned policy direction to track the literacy and numeracy of school students in response to the Gonski 2.0 report (Gonski et al., 2018), a report that provided “advice on how to improve student achievement and school performance” (vii) Similarly, the growth mindset and increased risk-taking discourses advocated by Singapore’s media after the release of the 2018 PISA data merely amplified the policy Singapore’s MOE had already proposed through its Learn for Life (Ministry of Education, 2020a) and Uplift policies (Ministry of Education, 2020b).

However, it is argued that whilst discourses can be sites of power, they can also be sites of resistance. In Australia, the media reporting of a back to the basics discourse accompanied by panic has been criticised by some commentators as a deficit discourse that must be rejected and replaced by a new educational discourse, one that is agile and future-focused (Reid, 2019). In Singapore, whilst the media reported on the need for a growth mindset and risk taking, the education system continues to favour discourses of competition and an examination system that determines a student’s future.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Australian Research Council (ARC) funded Discovery Project (DP180100325), Global Childhoods: Lifeworlds and educational success in Australia and Asia.

ORCID iD

Jennifer Crome

Jennifer Crome is a doctoral candidate at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education, University of Melbourne examining policy landscapes in the Asia Pacific region. Her research interests are the relationships between education, the economy, policy and culture with a specific focus on the global cities of Melbourne, Hong Kong and Singapore.

References

Alviar-Martin

Baildon

(2017) Deliberating values for global citizenship: a study of Singapore’s social studies and Hong Kong’s liberal studies curricula. In: Choo Sawch

Villanueva

Vinz

(eds) Educating for the 21st century: Perspectives, Policies and Practices from Around the World. Singapore: Springer, 73–92.

Anderson

(2007) Media’s impact on educational policies and practices: political spectacle and social control. Peabody Journal of Education 82(1): 103–120.

Australian Education Act (2013) Australian Education Act 2013: An Act in Relation to School Education and Reforms Relating to School Education, and for Related Purposes. Available at: http://www.comlaw.gov.au/Details/C2013A00067 (accessed 18 September 2020).

Avvisati

Echazarra

Givord

, et al. (2019) Country Note Singapore Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) Results from PISA 2018. Available at: https://www.oecd.org/pisa/publications/PISA2018_CN_SGP.pdf (accessed 12 March 2020).

Bacchi

(2009) Analysing Policy: What’s the Problem Represented to Be? Frenchs Forest. Sydney, Australia: Pearson.

Baker

(2019) Alarm bells: Australian students record worst result in global tests. The Sydney Morning Herald, 4 December, 2.

Baroutsis

Lingard

(2017) Counting and comparing school performance: an analysis of media coverage of PISA in Australia, 2000-2014. Journal of Education Policy 32(4): 432–449.

Bita

(2019) Time for a chainsaw. The Courier Mail, 8 December, 3.

Bonnor

(2019) PISA –the never-ending story. Available at: https://johnmenadue.com/chris-bonnor-pisa-the-never-ending-story/ (accessed 23 January 2020).

10.

Braun

Clarke

(2006) Using Thematic Analysis in Psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology 3(2): 77–101. doi: 0.1191/1478088706qp063oa.

11.

Cohen

(1972) Folk Devils and Moral Panics. New York, NY: MacGibbon and Kee Ltd.

12.

Cowan

(2019) Will progressives heed this wake-up call? The Canberra Times, 8 December, 7.

13.

Davie

(2019) Pisa results: It’s OK to be No. 2 in academics but aim to top student well-being. The Straits Times, 4 December, 11.

14.

Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (n.d.) Singapore Country Brief. Available at: https://www.dfat.gov.au/geo/singapore/singapore-country-brief (accessed 16 May 2021).

15.

Fenech

Wilkins

(2019) The representation of the national quality framework in the Australian print media: silences and slants in the mediatisation of early childhood education policy. Journal of Education Policy 34(6): 748–770.

16.

Foucault

(1977) Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York,NY: Pantheon Books.

17.

Foucault

(1981).‘Body/power’ and ‘truth and power’. In: Gordon

(ed) Michel Foucault: Power/Knowledge. UK: Harvester, 55–133.

18.

Foucault

(1983) Afterword: The Subject and Power. In: Dreyfus

Rabinow

(eds). Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 208–226.

19.

Francis

Skelton

(2005) Reassessing Gender and Achievement: Questioning Contemporary Key Debates. New York, NY: Routledge.

20.

Gonski

Arcus

Boston

, et al. (2018) Through Growth to Achievement: Report of the Review to Achieve Educational Excellence in Australian Schools. Australia: Department of Education and Training.

21.

Gopinathan

(1999) Preparing for the next rung: economic restructuring and educational reform in Singapore. Journal of Education and Work 12(3): 295–308.

22.

Groch

(2019) PISA 2018: Australian school scores fall on the world stage. The Canberra Times, 2 December, 3.

23.

Grey

Morris

(2018) PISA: multiple ‘truths’ and mediatised global governance. Comparative Education 54(2): 109–131. DOI: 10.1080/03050068.2018.1425243.

24.

Gür

Çelik

Özoğlu

(2012) Policy options for Turkey: a critique of the interpretation and utilization of PISA results in Turkey. Journal of Education Policy 27(1): 1–21.

25.

Hamilton

(2017) How international large-scale skills assessments engage with national actors: mobilising networks through policy, media and public knowledge. Critical Studies in Education 58(3): 280–294.

26.

Hattam

Prosser

Brady

(2009) Revolution or backlash? the mediatisation of education policy in Australia. Critical Studies in Education 50(2): 159–172. DOI: 10.1080/17508480902859433.

27.

Hirschmann

(2020) Government expenditure on education in Singapore 2009-2018. Available at: https://www.statista.com/statistics/624666/government-expenditure-on-education-in-singapore/ (accessed 3 October 2020).

28.

(2020) Local meanings of international student assessments: an analysis of media discourses of PISA in China, 2010-2016. Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education 0(0): 1–21. Available at: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/epub/10.1080/03057925.2020.1775553?needAccess=true.

29.

Hunter

(2019) Tehan urges better student tracking. The Age, 10 December, 5.

30.

Jardine

Clifford

Frisen

, et al. (2001) ‘Back to basics’: rethinking what is basic to education through an interpretive study of the work of teachers and students in elementary school classrooms. The Alberta Journal of Educational Research 40(7): 187–190.

31.

Ketchell

(2017) Mixed media: how Australia’s newspapers became locked in a war of left versus right. The Conversation, 19 June, 1.

32.

Lim

(2016) Knowledge, Control and Critical Thinking in Singapore: State Ideology and the Politics of Pedagogic Recontextualization. London, UK: Routledge.

33.

Lingard

Rawolle

(2004) Mediatizing educational policy: the journalistic field, science policy and cross field effects. Journal of Education Policy 19(3): 361–380.

34.

Ministry of Education (2009) 21st century competencies. Available at: https://beta.moe.gov.sg/education-in-SG/21st-century-competencies/ (accessed 12 April 2020).

35.

Ministry of Education (2020a) Learn for Life – Ready for the Future: Education as an Uplifting Force. Singapore: Ministry of Education.

36.

Ministry of Education (2020b) Learn for Life – Ready for the Future: Refreshing Our Curriculum and Skillsfuture for Educators. Singapore: MOE.

37.

Mockler

(2014) Simple solutions to complex problems: moral panic and the fluid shift from ‘equity’ to ‘quality’ in education. Review of Education 2(2): 115–143. DOI: 10.1002/rev3.3028.

38.

Mutalib

(2000) Illiberal democracy and the future of opposition in Singapore. Third World Quarterly 21(2): 313–342.

39.

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) (2019a) PISA 2018 results. Available at: https://www.oecd.org/pisa/publications/pisa-2018-results.htm (accessed 5 December 2019).

40.

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) (2019b) PISA 2018 Assessment and Analytical Framework. Paris, France: OECD Publishing. Available at: https://dx.doi.org/10.1787/b25efab8-en (accessed December 5 2019).

41.

Penberthy

(2019) Going back to basics for better education. The Courier Mail, 15 December, 2.

42.

Pizmony-Levy

(2017) Media coverage of PISA 2012: evidence from pilot study in 20 countries. research report.

43.

Pizmony-Levy

(2018) Compare globally, interpret locally: international assessments and news media in Israel. Globalisation, Societies and Education 16(5): 577–595.

44.

Pons

(2017) Fifteen years of research on PISA effects on education governance: a critical review. European Journal of Education 52(2): 131–144.

45.

Reid

(2019) Changing Australian Education: How Policy Is Taking Us Backwards and what Can Be Done about it. New York, NY: Allen & Unwin.

46.

Savage

(2017) Neoliberalism, education and curriculum. In: Gobby

Walker

(eds) Powers of Curriculum: Sociological Perspectives on Education. South Melbourne, Victoria: Oxford University Press, 143–165.

47.

Sellar

Thompson

Rutkowski

, et al. (2017) The Global Education Race: Taking the Measure of PISA and International Testing Canada. Edmonton, Canada: Brush Education.

48.

Stack

(2006) Testing, testing, read all about it: Canadian press coverage of the PISA results. Canadian Journal of Education/Revue canadienne de l'éducation 29(1): 49–69.

49.

Stack

(2007) Representing school success and failure: media coverage of international tests. Policy Futures in Education 5(1): 100–110.

50.

Steiner-Khamsi

Waldow

(2012) Policy Borrowing and Lending in Education. London,UK: Routledge.

51.

Steiner-Khamsi

Waldow

(2018) PISA for scandalisation, PISA for projection: the use of international large-scale assessments in education policy making - an introduction. Globalisation, Societies and Education 16(5): 557–565. DOI: 10.1080/14767724.2018.1531234.

52.

Takayama

Waldow

Sung

(2013) Finland Has it All? Examining the Media Accentuation of ‘Finnish Education’ in Australia, Germany and South Korea. Research in Comparative and International Education 8(1): 307–325.

53.

Tan

(2019) Singapore students fear failing more than their overseas counterparts. The New Paper, 4 December, 9.

54.

Tehan

(2019) Focus on the Basics to Lift Student Performance [Press Release]. Available at: https://ministers.education.gov.au/tehan/focus-basics-lift-student-performance (accessed 16 January 2020).

55.

Teng

(2019a) Home front; learning life lessons at home and in class. The Straits Times, 5 December, 3.

56.

Teng

(2019c) 15-year-olds in Singapore have a greater fear of failure than those abroad. The Straits Times, 4 December, 2.

57.

Teng

(2019b) Pisa 2018: Singapore slips to second place behind China but still chalks up high scores. The Straits Times, 3 December, 2.

58.

Teng

Ang

(2019) Pisa report: students’ fear of failure tied to focus on results. The Straits Times, 5 December, 2

59.

Tey

(2008) Confining the freedom of the press in singapore: a “pragmatic” press for “nation-building”. Human Rights Quarterly 30(4): 876–905.

60.

Thompson

De Bortoli

Underwood

, et al. (2019) PISA 2018 Reporting Australia’s Results. Volume I Student Performance. Camberwell, Australia: Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER).

61.

Ting

(2019a) Brilliant minds, anxious souls: top students discuss their fear-of-failure demons after pisa findings. TODAY. Available at: https://www.todayonline.com/singapore/brilliant-minds-anxious-souls-top-students-discuss-their-fear-failure-demons-after-pisa (accessed 2 January 2020).

62.

Ting

(2019b) 3 in 4 Singapore students fear failure, higher than global average: OECD study. TODAY. Available at: https://www.todayonline.com/singapore/3-4-singapore-students-fear-failure-higher-global-average-oecd-study (accessed 2 January 2020).

63.

Weir

(2019) Take schools back to basics. Courier Mail, 8 December, 15.

64.

Waldow

Steiner-Khamsi

(eds) (2019). Understanding PISA’s Attractiveness: Critical Analyses in Comparative Policy Studies. London, UK: Bloomsbury Publishing.

65.

Wiklund

(2018) The media as apparatus in the becoming of education policy: education media discourse during two electoral periods. Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies 16(2): 99–134.

66.

Yemini

Gordon

(2017) Media representations of national and international standardized testing in the Israeli education system. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education 38(2): 262–276.

Panic and stoicism: Media,PISA and the construction of truth

Abstract

Keywords

Introduction

The role of the media in schooling and the mediatisation of PISA

PISA, dominant discourses and regimes of truth

PISA in 2018: Australia and Singapore

Australian context

Singaporean context

PISA 2018 results

Policy, educational governance and PISA

Data: Research study informing the discussion

Emerging dominant discourses

Australia’s Panic: We need to return to the basics

Singapore’s Stoicism: We need to build growth mindsets and encourage risk taking

Conclusion

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

Funding

ORCID iD

References