Shadow education signage and educational subjectivity
Meritocracy and responsibilization in Singapore
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21595743 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Carl Jon Way Ng (0000-0002-2497-5529, Singapore University of Social Sciences, corresponding author), Garene Tay (Singapore University of Social Sciences) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Publication date | 2026-06-28 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Discourse & Society (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0957-9265 • E-ISSN: 1460-3624 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/09579265261457564 |
| OpenAlex | W7166566393 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 24 |
Shadow education, particularly private supplementary tutoring, has become a prominent feature of competitive, high-stakes schooling systems. Situated within Singapore’s meritocratic educational context, where educational success is seen as the product of strategic planning, this article examines the semiotic landscape of a shopping mall housing a dense concentration of tuition centres. Through an analysis of tuition-related signage emplaced across corridors, storefronts, glass railings, lift-lobby areas, and escalator balustrades, it identifies four salient discursive framings: credentialized achievement, anticipatory preparedness, aspirational trajectories of learning, and competitive differentiation. The analysis shows how these framings are realized through linguistic, visual, and spatial modalities, and how they derive their force through visibility, emplacement, recurrence, accretion, and situated encounters within the mall’s publicly accessible spaces. The article argues that this semiotic landscape functions as an affective infrastructure, orienting parents, students, and visitors towards particular understandings of shadow education while normalizing neoliberal meritocratic rationalities in everyday commercial space
Meritocracy · Neoliberalism (international relations) · Performativity · Salient · Semiotics · Shadow (psychology) · Signage · Situated · Staring · Subjectification · Diverse Education Studies and Reforms · Global Educational Policies and Reforms · Global Educational Reforms and Inequalities
Neoliberalism as Exception
A Panorama of Linguistic Landscape Studies
Washing the Brain – Metaphor and Hidden Ideology
Higher education in East Asia and Singapore
Discourses in Place
Shadow Education Beyond Tutoring? New Forms of Private Supplementary Classes in Singapore
Situating affect in linguistic landscapes
Language Assemblages
Powers of Freedom
Guiding the young child
Timescapes of shadow education
Culture of Meritocracy, Political Hegemony, and Singapore’s Development
The ‘Third Wave’
Capitalising shadow education
Affect and Emotion
Skilling the nation, empowering the citizen
Meritocracy and Elitism in a Global City
You are your only limit
Linguistic Landscape and Ethnolinguistic Vitality
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |