Adopting a whole-school approach to Character and Citizenship Education (CCE) involves developing an interconnection between the school curriculum and CCE. The act of imparting the right values to learners can be integrated into every subject discipline, with every teacher taking on the role of a CCE teacher. Associate Professor Suzanne Choo from NIE believes that more intentional efforts can be made to integrate the teaching of school subjects with values education. She shares more about her research study that explores teachers’ perception of the connection between values and their teaching subject, and the pedagogical approaches they employ to engage students with values in their lessons.

Importance of Values Education

In 2020, the Ministry of Education launched a refreshed Character and Citizenship Education syllabus (CCE2021) with the aim to “anchor our students on a strong foundation of moral values, good character and resilience” as well as “encourage them to play a more active role as citizens of Singapore” (MOE, 2020, para. 3).

Associate Professor Suzanne Choo from NIE’s English Language and Literature Academic Group observes that values education, as emphasized in CCE2021, “is more urgent and needed than ever before.” “While we are living in an age of ‘hyper-globalization’ and global interconnectivity, the world is also being pushed further apart as evidenced by rising instances of racism, xenophobia and all other forms of intolerance today,” she says.

Suzanne highlights that while there have been multiple studies exploring the connection between values and CCAs, experiential and outdoor learning, less research has been conducted into the ways values have been integrated into the teaching of academic subjects.

“My research study examines values pedagogy in Singapore,” she explains. “More specifically, it explores what teachers believe are important character competencies they hope to develop in students, and how they do so through classroom culture, lesson planning and lesson enactment.”

The Multiple Dimensions of Values

Suzanne shares that the study focuses on two key dimensions of values – the personal and the relational – adding that these are facilitated along three levels.

“The first is the awareness level in which teachers make students aware of positive or negative values as well as personal, national or global values,” she says. “The second is the analytical level in which teachers equip students to analyse how their personal or relational values are shaped or applied, and the social and global contexts informing these values. The third is the agency level in which teachers empower students to take action to apply constructive values to fulfil their purposes in life or take action in society and the world to help others flourish,” she continues.

Finding Out What Teachers Think

Consisting of two phases, Phase 1 of the research study involves a national survey of 598 teachers from 10 secondary schools who teach a variety of subject disciplines, while Phase 2 involves qualitative observations of classrooms. The survey conducted during Phase 1 reveals that teachers place the most importance on the awareness level in their values pedagogy, with empathy, respect and moral sensitivity being the most important character dispositions they emphasize in the classroom.

“In classroom culture and lesson planning, teachers integrate pedagogies that enable students to be aware of good personal and relational values such as respect and sensitivity to others who are different as well as the consequences of their actions on themselves and others,” she shares.

During classroom lessons, teachers also encourage students to be aware of external influences shaping their values, awareness of Singapore’s values as well as current issues in the world. “In terms of pedagogy, it is heartening to see how teachers are moving away from didactic teaching of values,” she remarks. “It is encouraging to see teachers taking the time and effort to model or demonstrate good values and explain the importance of particular values for students’ growth.”

However, the survey also found that teachers place the least emphasis on analytical engagements with values, especially in terms of metacognition, that is equipping students to analyse how their self-understanding and self-concept are formed.

“In classroom culture and lesson planning, least importance is placed on studying factors that give rise to peer conflicts or influence students’ behaviour and beliefs,” she shares. “Students should be given more opportunities in the classroom to evaluate how their values have changed, how their perspectives are shaped, as well as the underlying agendas of various groups.”

The Future of Values Education

“It is apparent that teachers are well-versed in a repertoire of pedagogical approaches that help students become more aware of positive values and shared societal values,” Suzanne remarks.  Moving forward, there is also a need to also consider how to scaffold values pedagogy from the awareness to the analytical and agency levels. “It is crucial that teachers empower students with the ability to infuse ethical analysis and deliberation as they engage with values,” she recommends.

Reflecting further, Suzanne highlights the importance of ethics and ethical literacy, the latter of which encompasses practices of thinking, relating, communicating and collaborating with others to promote greater empathy for others and constructive strategies to tackle injustices in the world. If every teacher is a CCE teacher, then teachers need to intentionally integrate ethical literacy in their teaching subjects. She reiterates the need to develop further research and professional development in this area.

“Ethical literacy cuts across all disciplines and grounds our pursuit of knowledge and acquisition of competencies,” she explains. “It is premised on a vision of human society grounded on the flourishing of self and others.