Deliberating values for global citizenship: A study of Singapore’s social studies and Hong Kong’s liberal studies curricula

This chapter examines the role and nature of values in civic education curricula in the Asian global cities of Singapore and Hong Kong. Using a qualitative, comparative case study approach, we situate civic education in broader contexts and analyze the ways values are represented in Singapore’s Social Studies curriculum and the Liberal Studies curriculum in Hong Kong. Through our analysis of syllabus documents and broader societal discourses, we found several common core values across the two settings that simultaneously represented nationalist and global neoliberal discourses of citizenship. Rather than emphasizing political or civic concerns, curricular and societal discourses worked together to underscore self-management and the creation of orderly national societies attractive to global capital and necessary for economic growth in a competitive global economy. However, we found distinctions in each syllabus regarding approaches in values instruction. Documents in Singapore emphasized teaching values through transmissive methods, whereas, in Hong Kong, the Liberal Studies curriculum advocated a more deliberative pedagogy. The chapter poses broader questions regarding narrow, utilitarian forms of citizenship and possibilities for reimagining more critical forms of citizenship education in a globalized world.