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To expand students' preparation for civic life, many teachers regularly engage students in discussions related to contentious issues. These discussions, however, typically restrict the range of communicative styles allowed and prioritizes disagreements between fixed and competing choices. Keith C. Barton & Li-Ching recommend that educators instead engage students in collaborative deliberation -- an authentic problem-solving model of discussion that is premised on relationships, mutual trust, common interests and concerns, and diverse forms of communication. To support collaborative deliberation, teachers need to pay attention to how they frame issues, how they organize student groups, and what kinds of discourse they encourage.

Social studies education and research can and must play a central role in sustaining democratic societies. As we commemorate the 50th anniversary of this vital journal that aims to strengthen social studies education, democratic societies face numerous serious challenges. Although today's circumstances are unique, many of our current challenges have existed (and will continue to exist) in some form throughout the history of democracy. In this article, scholars from various sub-fields of social studies education explore how research, scholarship, and practice in the field can address seven of these persistent civic challenges: ecological sustainability, media literacy, equity and inclusion, civic engagement, political pluralism, civic competency, and sociohistorical change. Essays on each of these topics analyze relevant prior research and offer suggestions for how future research and scholarship can explore how educators can help to address these persistent civic challenges, with the goal of supporting robust participatory democracy.

This article addresses the importance of teaching controversial issues, especially within elementary school contexts. In particular, the article explores the underlying elements of justice within controversies and demonstrates the way in which teachers might explore procedural justice within an elementary classroom.

This paper makes the case for including "critical harmony" as a complement to justice within civic education. The concept of harmony is significant for civic education because it acknowledges the crucial role that relationships play in society--an important moral, ethical, and social ideal in many cultures around the world. Harmony must also incorporate a critical dimension, however, by embracing conflict and tension, valuing difference and diversity, and striving for balance among divergent voices. By using examples of public issues such as housing and gender identity to illustrate the relational dimension of public policy, this paper argues that the concept of critical harmony can contribute to a more comprehensive foundation for students' deliberation of civic issues.

This study explores how Singapore social studies, geography and history teachers make meaning of the concept of meritocracy and its role in the education system. The findings indicate the participants simultaneously adopted "and" challenged the meritocratic values and beliefs promoted by the Singapore state. The teachers strongly believed that the principle of meritocracy helped promote educational and social equality, but they were also deeply concerned about the limitations of meritocracy and the impact of structural and institutional inequalities on educational equality. Even though most participants were able to identify and critique structural inequities and explain how this could affect students' academic achievement, their awareness of the limitations of the meritocratic system did "not" undermine their belief in the system of meritocracy and they could not envisage alternative systems for determining educational access and equality.

Civic education historically has focused primarily on preparing students to influence politics and government policy. Less attention has been paid to the curricular implications of civil society, even though it is a crucial site for deliberatively informed action and one of the primary ways in which students will enter the public sphere. This article highlights the importance of civil society as a component of civic education and critically examines why it has been neglected or disparaged by many civic educators. The article also emphasizes the role of formal curricula in systematically preparing students to critically engage in civil society as they work toward social justice; this preparation involves acquainting students with the knowledge necessary to evaluate the work of such organizations, as well providing students with experience in the kinds of collaborative deliberation that takes place there.

A central goal of civic and multicultural education is preparing young people to participate in deliberatively informed action on important social issues. In order to achieve this goal, educators need to cultivate young people's innate but partial 'sprouts' of benevolence, which are rooted in feelings of empathy and compassion. Without a sense of benevolence, students are unlikely to be motivated to deliberate and take action on the needs of others. Consequently, curriculum related to public issues should begin by engaging students with knowledge of other people's lives and concrete circumstances. By encountering rich and emotionally compelling accounts of the lives of others, students' sense of benevolence can be extended beyond the people and situations they know best. This forms the basis for subsequent curriculum encounters with differing perspectives and worldviews, as well as with structural causes of social issues and potential implications of civic action taken to address them.

This qualitative study investigates three Singapore teachers' conceptions of diversity and discrimination, as well as their perceptions of inequality and social structures. The results suggest that Singaporean teachers' perceptions are not only reflective of multicultural principles culled from personal dispositions or experiences, but are also mediated by state policies and societal narratives. This finding indicates that for multicultural teacher education to be more effective, it is important for teacher educators to take into account systemic and policy issues, in addition to other dispositional and experiential factors that influence teacher beliefs.

This qualitative study examines how climate change scientific knowledge is framed and positioned within the Singapore and Philippines school curricula in relation to broader citizenship concepts and ideas. The findings reveal that climate change is taught in very different ways within both education systems. The Singapore case demonstrates the strengths and limitations of relying on one discipline such as geography as the sole vehicle for teaching such a complex socio-scientific issue. The Philippines case, on the other hand, provides an indication of the advantages and constraints to engaging the issue of climate change from an interdisciplinary social studies perspective.

This paper uses the concept of stories of peoplehood to examine how the Singapore government has constructed a story of harmony and to consider how this story has influenced two important school subjects focused on civic education: Social Studies and Character and Citizenship Education. Stories of peoplehood, including constitutive, economic and political power stories, play a central role in the political project of people-making which involves defining the nature of membership in a political community and promoting a collective political identity. This study provides an alternative way of conceptualizing the goals and curriculum content of civic education and it also offers an example of how a nation state with a strong Confucian tradition has chosen to address the educational goal of living together through the promotion of values such as social cohesion and community relationships within a story of harmony. The study also shows how Singapore political leaders construct a narrow and limited discourse of harmony within the curricula and use it to legitimize policies that privilege particular groups, limit political freedoms, marginalize groups with less power or status, and circumscribe the kinds of actions a citizen can legitimately take.

This qualitative study examines what four pre-service and six practicing geography educators in Singapore schools believe to be the purpose of climate change education, and how this intersects with their beliefs about student readiness to handle controversy within climate change education. A key finding of this study indicates that the teachers' understandings about the purpose of climate change education played the most important role in shaping their perspectives about introducing controversy to their students. The study also suggested that the teachers' beliefs about their students' academic abilities had implications for how they approached controversy for different groups of students.

In this article, the authors investigate 6 Singaporean geography teachers' understandings of climate change education. The findings indicate that the participants held very different beliefs about the primary purposes of climate change education, in spite of the highly centralized national curriculum and the unambiguous state support for the science of climate change. The findings suggest that the diversity in teachers' understandings of the purposes of climate change education and their preferred pedagogical approaches reflect some of the tensions within the larger education system in Singapore.

Numerous studies have highlighted a clear civic achievement gap between students from different ethnic and economic backgrounds in countries such as Singapore and the United States. Concurrently, researchers from both countries have noted that access to government and civics classes and curricula differs considerably across and within schools and school districts. Drawing on research studies conducted in both countries, this article compares the provision of citizenship education in two very different education systems: the United States and Singapore. The article also analyzes some of the explicit and implicit arguments that have been used in support of these policies and examines the potential implications of these policies for the education of young citizens. In both countries, studies strongly indicate that the formal and de facto differentiated access to citizenship education as a result of sorting students into different education tracks implicates students' ability to be full and equal citizens.

Chinatowns are familiar emblems of "Chineseness" in many countries and are among the most visible and tangible spatial manifestations of Chinese migration. Large and well-established Chinatowns can be found in diverse locales, including New York, San Francisco, Vancouver, Paris, Sydney, and Singapore. Despite sharing numerous easily recognizable features, the different Chinatowns also possess many unique and distinct characteristics. In this article, the authors suggest comparing two or more Chinatowns in different countries or regions as a means for teachers to illustrate key geographical understandings and concepts such as stereotyping, migration, cultural diversity, and governance. (Contains 1 figure, 10 online resources and 10 notes.)

In this article, we explore the potential of social media for production and distribution of ideas, public deliberation, and political participation, and as civil spaces and public platforms. We offer an analytical template for critically examining images, discursive structures, and multicultural civic participation promoted by websites aimed at diverse youth in Singapore. Focusing on the controversial issue of immigration, we examine how the issue was addressed in four different online spaces and consider how ideas of citizenship and civic participation in a multicultural society are constructed and defined. Key immigration issues include concerns about the number of immigrants from China, India, and other parts of Southeast Asia, and the consequent impact on housing, employment, and education. We critically evaluate the extent to which these issues are constrained by Singapore's political and multicultural social context in which the government has long prescribed rules for discussing "sensitive issues," such as race and religion. We then consider the educational implications of these sites for teaching about culture and citizenship.

A growing body of research suggests that traditional assessments of democratic participation overlook students' present realities, and fail to capture the knowledge, skills and dispositions necessary to resolve public issues in the twenty-first century. Addressing these concerns, we employed an interpretive perspective in examining students' perceptions of civic competence in one Singaporean school. Analyses of qualitative data reveal students' perceived lack of civic competence to effect systemic change within their school environment and in the larger political arena. This perceived lack of civic competence can be attributed largely to rigid and hierarchical classroom, school and political structures, and the pragmatic focus of Singapore society. We discuss findings in light of civic education research, policy and practice. (Contains 1 table.)

Using Singapore as a case study, this paper examines how the discourses of democratic elitism and meritocracy help allocate different citizen roles to students and define the nature of the social studies citizenship education programmes for different educational tracks. While the Singapore education system is not unique in its stratification of students into distinct educational tracks with diverse educational outcomes, it is one of the very few countries with explicitly differentiated formal national citizenship curricula for students from different educational tracks. Students are formally allocated different citizenship roles and responsibilities according to the hierarchy defined by the state. Three distinct roles can be identified: (1) elite cosmopolitan leaders; (2) globally-oriented but locally-rooted mid-level executives and workers; and (3) local "heartlander" followers. To cater to these different citizen roles, the three programmes encompass significantly different curricular goals, content, modes of assessment, civic skills, and values. The findings indicate that only the elite students have access to citizenship education that promotes democratic enlightenment and political engagement. The social studies curriculum for students in the vocational track, in contrast, focuses almost exclusively on imparting a pre-determined body of knowledge and set of values deemed necessary for academically low-achieving students. (Contains 2 tables.)

Across and within democratic societies, youth experiences of education for citizenship vary widely. A growing body of research suggests that students' experiences of democratic citizenship education will differ according to how academic programmes, community culture, socio-economic status and gender intersect with prevailing conceptions of equality, mutual respect and reciprocity. This qualitative study explores how democratic citizenship education is enacted in two secondary schools with very dissimilar academic programmes and policies. A key finding in the study is fissures in perceptions of civic engagement and democratic rights between students from the two schools, thus suggesting that academic programmes and policies can differentiate the manner in which students are prepared to fulfil their roles as citizens.

This qualitative study attends to six Singaporean teachers' experiences of diversity and understanding of multicultural education to illuminate the influence of national policies and narratives on teachers' perceptions and practice. These cases illustrate that, beyond reflection on identity and diversity, there is a need for teachers to examine how political, cultural, and economic principles have shaped their understanding of diversity and multicultural education. The authors discuss findings in light of socio-political constraints faced by Singapore teachers and forward implications for teacher education.

Drawing on individual interviews with 62 students from three secondary schools, the authors of this study investigate how Singapore students from different educational tracks understand their role as citizens in a democracy. In contrast to most countries, the constitutionally democratic state of Singapore explicitly assigns separate citizenship roles to students from different education tracks. Premised on the principle of meritocracy, the Singapore state has also developed separate citizenship education programs incorporating different values, skills, and knowledge for students from the academic and vocational tracks. The study illustrates sharp disparities in how citizenship and democracy is conceptualized by students from the different education tracks. The differences in civic efficacy, learning outcomes, knowledge, and skills also closely parallel the different goals of the social studies and citizenship education programs for students from the academic and vocational tracks. (Contains 1 table.)

This case study examined how Singapore adolescents from different socio-economic, academic, and racial backgrounds positioned themselves as citizens within a highly-regulated, centralized educational context. Through interviews, classroom observations, and the author investigated students' conceptions of citizenship and their perspectives of the official historical national narrative. Despite their different backgrounds, participants from all three schools consistently provided very similar depictions of citizenship and key events in Singapore's history. This shared understanding can partially be attributed to the inclusive nature of the national narrative in the school curriculum, which consistently emphasizes the themes of unity, consensus, and harmony. At the same time, the participants consciously avoided addressing controversial issues and none contested the central narrative of racial harmony, meritocracy, and progress, largely due to the combination of a climate of censorship and a regime of high stakes tests that stifle democratic discourse within the classroom.

In a world that is, on the one hand, determined to sustain distinct national and group identities and, on the other hand, becoming increasingly globalized, interconnected and interdependent, social studies educators are regularly faced with the challenge of supporting diversity, creating a unified national community, and promoting global perspectives through education. This paper explores how the Singapore education system addresses these disparate goals through its national social studies curriculum for secondary schools, particularly through its use of international case studies. The Singapore social studies curriculum also serves as an interesting case study of how a national social studies curriculum has been shifted away from an exclusive focus on a nation-centric paradigm to one that is more globally oriented in nature, while still being firmly anchored to the nation-state and its priorities.

Background/Context: There is a pressing need to consider how citizens should live together, especially in societies that are increasingly ethnically and politically diverse. Even though multicultural education is constructed very differently and serves very different purposes in different national contexts, relatively little attention has been paid to how education systems of countries such as China, Singapore, and the United Arab Emirates give greater emphasis to the concepts of harmony and social cohesion. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: This study explores some of the ways in which multicultural education is defined and conceptualized in East Asian countries. This paper draws on the case study of Singapore to interrogate the concept of harmony, investigate the implications of the state incorporating this concept as an educational goal for the public education system, and examine teachers' understandings of multicultural education. Research Design: The study adhered to the qualitative case study design. The data consisted primarily of semistructured individual interviews with 24 Singapore secondary social studies teachers, as well as relevant curricular and political documents such as the national Social Studies curriculum, political speeches, and official government publications. Guided by the literature, the interviewers asked questions to surface the participants' understandings of the definition, purposes, and practices of multicultural education. Subsequently, the interviewers used follow-up questions to probe further and elicit additional description of how the teachers arrived at these understandings. The data analysis, shaped largely by the constant comparative method, was data-driven and inductive. Conclusions/Recommendations: By illustrating some of the affordances and constraints of incorporating harmony as an educational goal, this study offers multicultural education scholars and teacher educators an opportunity to better understand some of the ways in which multicultural education is conceptualized in East Asian countries with strong Confucian traditions. The findings from this study suggest that a focus on harmony as an educational goal may help facilitate a move away from programs that emphasize the development of individual students' social and political competencies towards programs and policies designed to promote communal trust and social cohesion. Finally, this study illustrates the some of the challenges teachers face when balancing the goals of building trust and harmony within society and interrogating entrenched interests, institutional inequality, and unequal power relations.