Liyun Wendy Choo is a Lecturer in the Comparative and International Education Program at Teachers College, Columbia University. She holds a Master of Education in Curriculum and Teaching and a Master of International Studies and graduated from her doctoral programme in 2020. Her doctoral research took a broad view of education and examined the educative process of young Myanmar citizens beyond formal schooling.
Liyun Wendy Choo started her teaching career at Millennia Institute, a public pre-university institution in Singapore and spent two years at the Academy of Singapore Teachers working on in-service teacher professional development. She was a very successful history teacher, Subject Head and later, Head of Department at Millennia Institute. She left Millennia Institute in 2016, and since then, she has taught in a variety of countries, including Lao PDR, Myanmar, and New Zealand, all of which made her more aware of the need to consider ways for diverse learners to bring their experiences and expertise into the learning.
New Zealand most influenced her thinking about tertiary teaching. She believes that a key purpose of higher education is to develop critical and tolerant citizens passionate about learning and contributing to their societies. One idea that struck her when she first went to New Zealand is that academics are legally obliged to act as the critic and conscience of society. This requires public intellectuals to draw on learning from research to raise society’s consciousness about its pressing and latent problems by engaging citizens in public debates. However, academics bring different values and theoretical lenses to the debate, which can be incompatible with one another and confusing to citizens. It is thus essential for public universities to equip citizens with the discerning capacity to engage in critical dialogues with a plurality of voices and to value equality and justice so that they make decisions for the common good. It is these ideas about the purpose of higher education that inform her curriculum design and teaching goals.
Her research interests include international education, everyday youth citizenship, postcolonial citizenship, research supervision and rural education. She is especially interested in Southeast Asia and New Zealand.
Choo, L. W. (2022). Hearing the Silence: Burman Privilege in Myanmar. SOJOURN: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia, 37(1), 128–158. https://doi.org/10.1355/sj37-1f
Choo, L. W. (2022). Of citizens and strangers: the privilege of being Burman. Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/03057925.2022.2054774
Choo, L. W., & Aye, M. M. (2022). Of coup and pandemic : The changing meanings of schooling in Myanmar. Pacific-Asian Education Journal, 33, 23–38.
Choo, L. W. (2021). Critical Realism in Comparative and International Education. In A. W. Wiseman (Ed.), Annual Review of Comparative and International Education 2021 (Vol. 42B, pp. 43–58). Emerald Group Publishing Ltd. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1479-36792022000042B003
Choo, L. W. (2021). Reflecting on the Research – Practice Nexus in Comparative and International Education. In A. W. Wiseman (Ed.), Annual Review of Comparative and International Education 2021 (Vol. 42A, pp. 35–45). Emerald Group Publishing Ltd. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1479-36792022000042A003
Fenaughty, J., Clark, T., Choo, L., Lucassen, M., Greaves, L., Sutcliffe, K., Ball, J., Ker, A., & Fleming, T. (2021). Youth19 Rangatahi Smart Survey Initial Findings Te āniwaniwa takatāpui whānui: Te aronga taera mō ngā rangatahi | Sexual attraction and young people’s wellbeing in Youth19. Youth19 Research Group.
Shah, R., Zhao, A. & Choo, W. (February 2021). Learning on the Margins: The evolving nature of educational vulnerability in Palestine in the time of COVID-19. University of Auckland and the Norwegian Refugee Council. Funded by the European Civilian Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations office (ECHO).https://researchspace.auckland.ac.nz/handle/2292/55159
Choo, L. W. (2021). Reflection on supporting offshore international students during the pandemic. Teachers’ Work, 18(2), 63–68. https://doi.org/10.24135/teacherswork.v18i2.333
Shah, R., & Choo, W. (June 2020). Learning on the Margins: Perceptions of the educational sector on what constitutes educational vulnerability at present. University of Auckland and the Norwegian Refugee Council. Funded by the European Civilian Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations office (ECHO).
Shah, R., & Choo, W. (2020). Accelerated Education Evidence Review. AEWG. https://inee.org/resources/accelerated-education-evidence-review
Choo, L. W. (2019). Relating the political and the social: The possibilities of Buddhist democratic citizenship in Myanmar. The International Education Journal: Comparative Perspectives, 18(2), 68–80.
Choo, W. (2018) Rethinking the Western Tradition in Statebuilding. Everything’s fucked, but the point is to go beyond that, Auckland: Gloria.
Choo, L. W. (2020). Youth citizenship , democracy and peace in conflict-affected, postcolonial states: Relating the social and the political in Myanmar [University of Auckland]. http://hdl.handle.net/2292/53250
Choo, W. L. (2015). Singapore students’ conceptions of history [National Institute of Education/Nanyang Technological University]. https://repository.nie.edu.sg/handle/10497/17379