Patriotism and National Education: Perceptions of trainee teachers in Singapore

Abstract

The effective teaching of national education requires from the teacher a sense of commitment and personal conviction. The teacher has to demonstrate confidence in what is said and taught in class and, more importantly, through his or her personal values and convictions. In other words, the teacher is required to be patriotic. This paper examines the different types of patriotism among trainee teachers in Singapore, and how these types of patriotism influence their perceptions of citizenship values, the importance of national education, and the extent to which national education is viewed as government propaganda. The results revealed four homogenous clusters that differed significantly in terms of their perceptions.