Education and Power in Contemporary Southeast Asia

This book focuses on education and power in Southeast Asia and analyzes the ways in which education has been instrumentalized by state, non-state, and private actors across this diverse region.

The book looks at how countries in Southeast Asia respond to the endogenous and exogenous influences in shaping their education systems. Chapters observe and study the interplay between education and power in Southeast Asia, which offers varying political, social, cultural, religious, and economic diversities. The political systems in Southeast Asia range from near consolidated democracy in Indonesia to illiberal democracy in Singapore and Thailand to the communist regime in Laos to absolute monarchy in Brunei. Structured in three parts, (i) centralization and decentralization, (ii) privatization and marketization, and (iii) equity and justice, these themes are discussed in single-country and/or multi-country studies in the Southeast Asian region.

Bringing together scholars from and focused on Southeast Asia, this book fills a gap in the literature on education in Southeast Asia.

Azmil Tayeb is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the School of Social Sciences, Universiti Sains Malaysia in Penang, Malaysia, a Visiting Research Fellow at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore, and an Adjunct Professor at the Universitas Negeri Malang in Indonesia. He is the author of Islamic Education in Indonesia and Malaysia: Shaping Minds, Saving Souls (Routledge, 2018).

Rosalie Metro is an Associate Teaching Professor in the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Missouri-Columbia, USA. She is the author of three textbooks: Histories of Burma, Teaching US History Thematically, and Teaching World History Thematically.

Will Brehm is an Associate Professor in Comparative and International Education at the University of Canberra, Australia. He is the author of Cambodia for Sale (Routledge, 2021) and co-editor, with Yuto Kitamura, of Memory in the Mekong (TC Press, 2022) and Public Policy Innovation for Human Capital Development (APO, 2020).