Making Policy, Building Pedagogy I

Abstract: Over the last few decades, political and ideological debates around the world have gradually reduced in intensity. Those previously hidden issues of nation-building and governance – including the shaping of administrative capacity – have regained a central position in global political development. Entering the second decade of the 21st century, China and the United States have made taming administration the primary rationale for national government reform. Both reforms represent the latest national governance effectiveness competition performance since the post-Cold War era. This article demonstrates that both China and the United States have attempted to reduce costs, improve the quality and increase the efficiency of public management. In China, reactivating the ruling party's political tradition is a key principle of administrative reform. To make up for the disconnection between administrative technology and political practice and enhance the country's governance overall, the entire reform process is centred on integrating party and government. With the return of traditional Conservatism, which had long been marginalised, administrative reform in the United States involved an overall strategic contraction and the ‘America first’ logic of shifting development priorities to the domestic realm. This explains why the Trump administration focused on strengthening presidential authority.

Abstract: The development of critical thinking (CT) and citizenship are arguably the greatest challenges of educational policymakers in this 21st century globalised world. These issues were precisely what Singapore had to confront since its nascency as a reluctant independent nation-state in 1965. Particularly, to secure political survival, citizenship education was introduced in various formats by way of standardised and purpose-driven subjects, devised to inculcate a national identity to support nation-building. These subjects reflect the intentional nature of the government in developing patriotic knowledge, skills, and attitudes in the young and schooling citizens of Singapore. In a landmark initiative in 2001, Social Studies (SS) was launched as a compulsory-and-examinable citizenship education subject for upper-secondary school students in Singapore. However, the difficulty of balancing the promotion of national identity in a citizenship education subject, development of CT, and managing the demand for performativity places teachers in a constant ‘double bind’; not negating the 'curricular-instructional' gatekeeping role that they play in Singapore's tightly controlled education system. This interpretivist study is guided by symbolic interactionism and the grounded theory methodology. I aim to present some findings from the extant literature, the research context, as well as elaborate on my research design.