Global citizenship education practices in Singapore and Australia: Tensions between educational and market rationales

Abstract

This article draws on a qualitative comparative research study of global citizenship education (GCE) in two primary schools, an international school in Singapore and an independent school in Australia. This paper focuses on the implementation of GCE within the two specific school contexts, Singapore and Australia, examining the tensions which existed between neo-liberal market rationales and the critical democratic ideologies at each site. The paper explored in-depth how the neo-liberal market agenda influenced and shaped the societal imaginaries specifically in relation to their GCE commitments. Despite each schools’ commitments to critical democratic GCE ideals, they were very mindful about being distinctive and remaining competitive within their respective educational markets. To that extent, the schools were neo-liberal market actors. Empirical data shows the complexity of a more hybridised or a continuum existence between these two ideologies, thus providing a more nuanced insight of the binary within the school sites.