The end of this year will mark the conclusion of the second phase of the ICT Masterplan II (mp2) in the Singapore education system. Launched in 2002 and updated in 2006 (Ministry of Education, 2006), mp2 adopts a “systemic and holistic approach” in which the key pieces of educational reform - changes in curriculum, assessment, instruction, professional development, and school culture – are harnessed to provide for engaged and active learning (Ministry of Education, 2006). Mp2 consolidates and build on the achievements of the first Masterplan launched in 1997. It “continues to provide the overall direction on how schools can harness the possibilities offered by ICT for learning.” (Ministry of Education, 2000). Its vision is “ICT will be pervasively and effectively used to enhance educational processes and structures. By leveraging on ICT as a tool to customise education to meet the needs and abilities of our pupils, we will be able to support and develop lifelong learners as we work towards the overall vision of Thinking Schools, Learning Nation.” The Thinking Schools, Learning Nation (TSLN) policy mentioned here was unveiled two months after the ICT Masterplan 1. The TSLN policy was launched with fanfare by none other than the Prime Minister of Singapore and was declared as a move towards ability driven education in Singapore. It is steeped in the discourse of a more forward-looking system that distances itself from the earlier years of efficiency driven education system. The declared focuses of the TSLN is on developing all students into active learners with critical thinking skills and on developing a creative and critical thinking culture within schools. Its main strategies include (1) the explicit teaching of critical and creative thinking skills; (2) the reduction of subject content by up to 30% of the curriculum; (3) the revision of assessment modes to include project work and more continuous assessment; and; (4) a greater emphasis on processes instead of on outcomes when evaluating students and schools (Tan & Gopinathan, 2000). This paper is an attempt to sift through these narratives of ICT within the declared shift of the Singapore education system from an efficiency driven education system into an ability driven one. It is interested in examining how the 10-year old initiative laid out by the two Masterplans has led to certain “assemblage of practices that are to inculcate virtuous habits and the self discipline that enables one to feel empowered, given voice, and self-actualised with the proper education.” (Popkewitz, 2006). Like Popkewitz, this paper is interested in “flows and assembly of cultural practices” constructed by the narratives of the two ICT Masterplans that “order(s) and produce(s) objects of reflection, action and possibility in schooling.” (Popkewitz, 2006a), and how these are played out on the two sites of schooling. The paper will examine issues of the state’s discourse and how the subsequent uptake of these initiatives by the schools have made an impact on the assumptions of teaching and learning on the two school sites that we are researching. The importance of the paper lies in the fact that the policy assumptions of the ICT Masterplan in mediating change in the curiculum and in producing certain kind of students are as yet uninterrogated. For the purpose of this study, the paper will carry out a discourse analysis study of the Ministry of Education’s documents as well as carry out semi structured interviews with ICT coordinators at two Singapore schools: one a primary school and the other a secondary school. These two schools are chosen as they are sites of schooling that are leading the way in the TSLN policy initiative.

Historical sociology of the Ministry's documents over the past 10 years; discourse analysis of these documents and discourse analysis of the semi structured interviews with the teachers on the assumptions of what affordances the ICT allows for in enabling curriculum and the construction of a more "critical" student.

To provide an initial interrogation into the assumptions of the ICT Masterplans in mediating change in the curiculum and in producing a certain kind of students in the Singapore education system.