Teachers in Asia are often perceived to occupy passive roles as citizens, subject to collectivist goals which take precedence over the interests of the individual. This assessment typically stems from a liberal-democratic perspective, which prioritises the individual as autonomous and self-responsible. While many endeavours have been undertaken by…

Critical patriotism is an ideal in many liberal Western nations. Few studies, however, explore how teachers understand and teach critical patriotism and the possible tensions arising from its adoption, especially in non-Western contexts. This qualitative case study explores the understandings and practices of two Social Studies teachers from an…

In the face of the challenges of globalization, nation states try to reinvigorate their traditional or national values and local identities as a kind of counterbalance to globalizing influences. Hence, social and citizenship education across nations in Asia takes different forms with certain distinctive varieties in terms of policies, practices…

This study explores pre-service teachers' beliefs about citizenship across two nations, the United States and Singapore; the nature of their conversation about those beliefs; and the impact of their cross-cultural dialog on their reflections about the citizenship goal of social studies. Data is based on a Black Board-based threaded dialog, over…

This study aimed to find out whether Singaporean secondary social studies textbooks contain global themes, in which grade level those global themes are introduced, the percentage of global themes in each textbook, and which global themes are emphasized. A checklist consisting of four main global themes was developed. Those are (1) global systems…