ERIC Number: EJ1453900
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2025
Pages: 24
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1468-1366
EISSN: EISSN-1747-5104
Moulding Student Mental Health in Singapore's Character and Citizenship Education: Projected Pedagogic Identities
Pedagogy, Culture and Society, v33 n1 p305-328 2025
This paper examines the official pedagogic discourse communicating the explicit inclusion of Mental Health (MH) education in Singapore's revised 2021 Character and Citizenship (CCE2021) curriculum within Singapore's state-driven educational context of decentralised centralism. By adapting Basil Bernstein's theoretical work on pedagogic discourse -- using William Tyler's typology of Bernstein's 'Pedagogic Codes' and 'Official Pedagogic Identities' -- our findings reveal how MH in CCE2021 projects different, simultaneous student identities. These include retrospective identities of students as resilient, community-minded citizens; prospective identities of students as vulnerable cyber users requiring explicit guidance for their future-readiness; de-centred therapeutic identities of students as reflective, self-actualising students requiring psychological safety; and de-centred market identities of students as trained advocates and community first responders. Together, they generate a tension where therapeutic identities are positioned as prerequisite to the other identities, subsuming individual well-being within community well-being, and conflating the intrinsic good of personal resilience with instrumental notions of future-readiness. This expresses a paradox where state-student social relations are both transformed and continued, as concerns of student confidentiality and efficacy of help-seeking efforts persist. Overall, we contend the educational reform of MH in CCE2021 accommodates rather than reconciles progressive concerns of youth mental health with neoliberal state imperatives.
Descriptors: Mental Health, Citizenship Education, Foreign Countries, Curriculum Development, Self Concept, Values, Social Influences, Cultural Influences, Community Involvement, Resilience (Psychology), Centralization, Internet, Computer Mediated Communication, School Community Relationship, Student Welfare, Help Seeking
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Singapore
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A