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Paper short abstract:

Based on empirical work in Malaysia, this study contrasts rural young people's aspirations related to 'development' as they encounter Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education, the government's intermediary for national development underpinned by 'science for development'.

Paper long abstract:

Zooming in on the economic promise that dominates the development discourse, Drori’s (1998) model of ‘science for development’ traces the putative link between science education at all levels, the expansion of scientific labour force, and subsequently national economic development. Across the Global South, this model has been internalised and reflected in a national focus on science—and recently STEM—education as a means of development. Through a postcolonial critique of development, this study foregrounds the perspectives of rural young people on 'development' through the prism of aspiration, in their encounter with STEM education as the government's intermediary for national development. Using a comparative case study approach in Malaysia, the aspirations of young people in 'luar bandar' (rural, literally 'out of the city' in Malay) are contrasted against the national discourse emphasising STEM education. I pay close attention to their lived experience as a means of analysing and critiquing development, subsequently pointing to other development 'options'. Emplaced in the othered context of 'luar bandar', young people's aspirations for development are characterised by hybridity with modernity and globalisation, ambivalence vis-à-vis STEM education, employment and mobility, as well as filial piety and a keen awareness of place. Compared to the Malaysian government's aspirations valorising the 'bandar' (city), urbanisation and economic growth, the aspirations of young people in 'luar bandar' demonstrate nuanced accounts of resistance, appropriation and imagination. Such grassroots epistemologies contribute to the work of unsettling the politics of knowledge making in development, thereby potentially salvaging the concept and its potentials.