Educational policy trajectories in an era of globalization: Singapore and Cambodia

This paper critically discusses the educational policy trajectories of Singapore and Cambodia in an era of globalization. Drawing upon David Johnson's five metaphors to describe the historical and political forces that shape educational policy trajectories, the paper argues that Cambodia's current educational policy trajectory is characterized by the "politics of compelling" while Singapore's situation is more akin to the "politics of selling". In Singapore, the politics of selling intersects with the politics of gelling, in which various interest groups are encouraged to work together to strengthen the new economy of knowledge. The paper raises a common challenge for Singapore and Cambodia: to shift from a traditional teacher-centred and textbook-based approach to a more student-centred and ICT-based approach in a globalized world. The last section of this paper explores the possibility of addressing this challenge through gelling, by setting a new agenda for education, one that combines foreign and indigenous sources of knowledge from various interest groups. © 2010 UNESCO IBE.