Leonel Lim is an associate professor at the National Institute of Education, Singapore. His research focuses on the relations between ideology and curriculum, the socio- political assumptions of rationality, and the sociology of curriculum. He is the author of Knowledge Control and Critical Thinking in Singapore (Routledge, 2016), and, together with Michael W. Apple, editor of the Routledge book series Politics of Education in Asia.Michael W. Apple is the John Bascom Professor of Curriculum and Instruction and Educational Policy Studies at the University of Wisconsin, USA and distinguished professor of education at the College of Education, Rowan University, NJ, USA. Among his many books are Ideology and Curriculum (1979), Education and Power (1995), Official Knowledge (2000), Can Education Change Society? (2013), and most recently The Struggle for Democracy in Education (2018).

• Introduction – The politics of curriculum reforms in Asia: Inter-referencing discourses of power, culture and knowledge 1. Subterfuge hegemony: The simmering politics of the shelved Hong Kong moral and national education debates in the media 2. Educators as transformative intellectuals: Taiwanese teacher activism during the national curriculum controversy 3. Culture, pedagogy and equity in a meritocratic education system: Teachers’ work and the politics of culture in Singapore 4. Neoliberal global assemblages: The emergence of "public" international high-school curriculum programs in China 5. How to mess with PISA: Learning from Japanese kokugo curriculum experts 6. Politics and the practice of school change: The Hyukshin School movement in South Korea Afterword: On new critical East Asian educational studies

Leonel Lim is an associate professor at the National Institute of Education, Singapore. His research focuses on the relations between ideology and curriculum, the socio- political assumptions of rationality, and the sociology of curriculum. He is the author of Knowledge Control and Critical Thinking in Singapore (Routledge, 2016), and, together with Michael W. Apple, editor of the Routledge book series Politics of Education in Asia.Michael W. Apple is the John Bascom Professor of Curriculum and Instruction and Educational Policy Studies at the University of Wisconsin, USA and distinguished professor of education at the College of Education, Rowan University, NJ, USA. Among his many books are Ideology and Curriculum (1979), Education and Power (1995), Official Knowledge (2000), Can Education Change Society? (2013), and most recently The Struggle for Democracy in Education (2018).

• Introduction – The politics of curriculum reforms in Asia: Inter-referencing discourses of power, culture and knowledge 1. Subterfuge hegemony: The simmering politics of the shelved Hong Kong moral and national education debates in the media 2. Educators as transformative intellectuals: Taiwanese teacher activism during the national curriculum controversy 3. Culture, pedagogy and equity in a meritocratic education system: Teachers’ work and the politics of culture in Singapore 4. Neoliberal global assemblages: The emergence of "public" international high-school curriculum programs in China 5. How to mess with PISA: Learning from Japanese kokugo curriculum experts 6. Politics and the practice of school change: The Hyukshin School movement in South Korea Afterword: On new critical East Asian educational studies