Abstract:
The issue of educational underachievement presents complex challenges for global economies. This paper discusses at risk students' engagement in school and how they are placed at risk educationally as a result of systemic influences. Based on a study on the Singapore context, this is a retrospective study of low ability streamed Normal (Technical) students who are perceived as low achievers and thus expectations for them to perform academically, let alone succeed, are low. Given that Singapore has often been highlighted as a high performing country, the spotlight on its low ability streamed students provides fresh perspectives for debate and contest.This study examines the talk-in-interaction of eight highly successful adults who were placed in the Normal (Technical) stream. Specifically, the study addresses how former Normal (Technical) students describe and interpret distinctive demands and academic requirements for educational success in Singapore. Earlier studies have relied on pre-conceived notions and ideas about social order in explanation of Normal (Technical) underachievement and little is known about what lie behind their social worlds, especially those who have gone on to achieve educational success.The study takes on the analytic approach of Ethnomethodology (EM) and its interpretive procedures of Membership Categorisation Analysis (MCA) to examine the social practices of Normal (Technical) students' everyday interactions in the home, school and the broader context of community to provide a warranted and analytic claim to explicate assumptions and attributions of ‘Normal (Technical) students', ‘Normal (Technical) stream' and ‘schooling'.The findings showed how participants construct ‘success' as a cultural, normative requirement upon which they draw upon to construct their identities as ‘Normal Technical students'. The findings discussed how participants overcome ‘boundary markers' and the ‘academic oriented curriculum' supported or hindered them to make good of their ‘learner' identities and the disjuncture between everyday moral reasoning about family-school relationships, the complexity of school governance and social forms and expectations in shaping educational success. The paper argues that these constructs and constrains are universal across global contexts as educationally systems grow increasingly marketised and segregated politically and socio-economically. Challenges to address issues for educationally disadvantaged students, how structures and contexts shapes and constrains them in making good of their educational experiences and implications for policy making and practices both in Australia and globally will be discussed.