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School Leadership and Educational Change in Singapore pp 183–199Cite as

Character and Citizenship Education

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Abstract

Schools in the Singapore education system have traditionally served two key functions: economic sustainability and social cohesion. Even though the desired outcomes of Singapore education have given greater emphasis to values-based and student-centric education, maintaining social cohesion remains to be fundamental to a small multiracial nation state. This chapter thus focuses on the latter—describing the evolution of policy initiatives pertinent to nation building. The introduction of the new Character and Citizenship Education (CCE) curriculum to all schools in 2014 marks the most recent system-wide policy initiative that emphasises character and citizenship development. Three school leaders from different school contexts were interviewed to elicit their views and roles concerning CCE implementation, and the challenges and lessons learnt in their leadership roles in CCE are elaborated in this chapter. Among others, it is essential that CCE is not another add-on to educators’ work profile—rather something that is pervasive throughout students’ experiences in school. Hence, building communities within schools that truly value character and citizenship.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    VIA programmes focus on the development of students’ civic consciousness and often involve participation in community-based projects.

  2. 2.

    A distinctive feature of Singapore is that it has four official languages: English, Malay, Mandarin and Tamil reflecting the dominant ethnic groups in the country. Malay is the national language of the country. At the daily flag-raising ceremony, students sing the national anthem and recite the national pledge. The national anthem is in Malay, a language that is not familiar to the majority of non-Malay students.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore

    Zoe Boon & Benjamin Wong

Authors
  1. Zoe Boon
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  2. Benjamin Wong
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Correspondence to Zoe Boon .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore

    Benjamin Wong

  2. National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore

    Salleh Hairon

  3. National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore

    Pak Tee Ng

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Boon, Z., Wong, B. (2019). Character and Citizenship Education. In: Wong, B., Hairon, S., Ng, P. (eds) School Leadership and Educational Change in Singapore. Springer Texts in Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74746-0_11

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74746-0_11

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-74744-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-74746-0

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