Educ Res Policy Prac (2008) 7:151–164 DOI 10.1007/s10671-008-9048-z Polices of promise and practices of limit: Singapore’s literacy education policy landscape and its impact on one school programme Jeanne M. Wolf · Wendy Bokhorst-Heng Received: 1 September 2007 / Accepted: 1 July 2008 / Published online: 15 August 2008 © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2008 Abstract This paper is about the interaction between policy and practice, and about how competing policies contributed to a paradoxical tension within that interaction in one school. Within a paradigm of educational renewal, the Singapore Ministry of Education (MOE) has initiated a number of policies designed to give schools autonomy in designing and imple- menting programmes to achieve optimal educational outcomes for its students. Among these are READ! Singapore, Teach Less, Learn More and the School Excellence Model. In this context, we review an MOE initiated Extensive Reading (ER) programme in one school. Despite such innovative policies, Dewey Secondary School’s [The names of the school and individuals have been changed to protect their privacy.] pedagogical and literacy practices continue to be largely influenced by other dominant features of Singapore’s and the school’s own educational culture—an exam-oriented focus that prioritises outcome and skill-based pedagogy and the school’s historical practice of restricting literacies. Competing policies as interpreted by the school and diverse stakeholders result in a morphed ER programme—an adaptation of a reading programme that reflects the programme intent overtly but one that collides at other times, and as a result, is pulled in different directions. The story is, thus, one of ‘policies of promise and practices of limit’. Keywords Extensive reading · Educational policy · Literacy · Multiliteracies · Singapore Introduction: educational reform and policies of promise The intent of the Singaporean government is to give every child a top-rate education (Ministry of Education 2007). As a result, educational reform in Singapore has been ubiquitous. As J. M. Wolf (B ) Tsuda College, Tokyo, Japan e-mail: jeannemwolf@gmail.com W. Bokhorst-Heng Independent Scholar, San Francisco, CA, USA e-mail: wdbheng@gmail.com 123