Associate Professor Aaron Koh - Biography

Associate Professor Aaron Koh
The Hong Kong Institute of Education, Department of English

Contributions to research

Associate Professor Aaron Koh’s research field is in the broad areas of globalization and education, in particular, the politics at work in the local where government bodies mediate, interrupt and disrupt global forces for local conditions. What is significant to note about Associate Professor Koh’s work is while the context of analysis has always been Singapore, he is the first to distil the theoretical frame borrowed from cultural studies to examine the relation between globalization and education in the East. He has also contributed to this field by developing a multi-modal analytical approach to education policy analysis. He has since published these in these areas in reputable international journals such as Journal of Education Policy (UK), Globalizations (UK), Globalisation, Education & Societies (UK), Discourse (Australia), Pedagogy, Culture & Society (UK), Journal of Curriculum Studies (Canada). His monograph Tactical Globalisation, published with Peter Lang, New York was released in 2010.

Publications (2004 onwards)

Book

Koh, A. (2010). Tactical Globalization: Learning from the Singapore experiment. Peter Lang: Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Frankfurt am Main, New York, Oxford, Wien.

Book chapters

Koh, A. & Luke, A. (2012) Postcolonialism. In Lesko, N. and Talburt, S. (Eds.), Keywords in Youth Studies: Tracing affects, movements and knowledges (pp.180-184). London: Routledge.

Koh, A. (2008). Deparochalization Education: Re-envisioning education for ASEAN. In Lingard, B., Nixon, J. & Ranson, S. (Eds.), Transforming Learning in Schools and Communities: The Re-making of Education for a Cosmopolitan Society. London: Continuum, pp. 37-49.

Koh, A. (2008). Disciplining ‘Generation M’: The paradox of creating a local/national identity in an era of global flows. In N. Dolby and F. Rizvi (Eds.), Youth Moves: Identities in Global Perspectives. London : Routledge, pp.193-206.

Koh, A. (2004). The Singapore Education System: Postcolonial Encounter of the Singaporean Kind. In J. Matthews, A.-H. Hudson & A. Woods (Eds.), Disrupting Preconceptions: Postcolonialism and Education. PostPress: Flaxton, pp. 155-172.

Journal articles

Koh, A. (2012). Tactics of interventions: Student mobility and human capital building in Singapore. Higher Education Policy, 25(2), in press.

Koh, A. (2012). ‘In-between' Asia and Australia: On the politics of teaching English as the ‘Other'. Discourse: studies in the cultural politics of education, 33(2), in press.

Koh, A. (2011). Singapore's ‘global assemblage': digging into the culture of education policy making. Critical Studies in Education, 52(3), 267-278.

Koh, A. & Benson, P. (2011). Editorial Overview: Exploring pedagogies in the popular culture and education nexus. Pedagogies: An International Journal, 6(2), 123-129.

Koh, A. (2009). The visualization of education policy: A videological analysis of Learning Journeys. Journal of Education Policy. 24(3), 283-315.

Koh, A. (2008).On Singaporean authoritarianism: Critical Discourse Analysis and Contextual Dissonance. Pedagogy, Culture & Society. 3(3), 303-314.

Koh, A. (2007). Living with Globalization Tactically: The Metapragmatics of Globalization in Singapore. SOJOURN: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia, 22(2), 179-201.

Koh, A. (2007) Deparochializing Education: Globalization, regionalization, and the formation of an ASEAN education space. Discourse: studies in the cultural politics of education, 28(2), 179-195.

Koh, A. (2006) Working against globalisation. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 4(3), 357-370.

Koh, A. (2005) ‘Heteroglossic’ discourses on globalization: a view from the ‘East’. Globalizations, 2(1), 228-239.

Koh, A. (2005). Imagining the Singapore “Nation” and “Identity”: The role of the media and national education. Asia Pacific Journal of Education, 25(1), 77-93.

Koh, A. (2004). Newspaper literacy: An investigation of how Singaporean students read the Straits Times. English Teaching: Practice and Critique, 3(3), 43-60.

Koh, A. (2004). Singapore Education in ‘New Times’: Global/Local Imperatives, Discourse: Studies in the cultural politics of Education, 25(3), 335-349.