Postmodern patriotism: teachers’ perceptions of loyalty to Singapore

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to explore humanities teachers’ perceptions of patriotism in Singapore by addressing two questions. First, what are teachers’ understandings of patriotism? Second, what are teachers’ attitudes toward patriotism as a quality of good citizenship?

Design/methodology/approach

The qualitative case study approach was used, with semi-structured interviews and classroom observations as data sources. The participants were four teachers from diverse backgrounds with distinct perceptions of patriotism. Data analysis methods included writing teacher profiles and thematic coding.

Findings

Teachers were generally positive toward patriotism and understood it in four ways: cosmopolitan, nationalistic, social-movement and person oriented. These themes were not mutually exclusive but distributed across the participants in varying extents. These findings show that patriotism is susceptible to individual meaning-making, and there are different scales and expressions of patriotism.

Research limitations/implications

The results from this small case study cannot be generalized. However, owing to globalization, it is likely that alternative ways of understanding patriotism might become more widespread and salient in citizenship education. Hence, the authors recommend that more studies be conducted on larger samples and using other methods.

Originality/value

This study goes in-depth into a case where teachers had positive feelings toward patriotism, and it draws on the context of Singapore to understand how and why this is so. It also revealed conceptions of patriotism that differ from the more common constructs in the educational literature, suggesting that people from post-colonial countries with different histories, might conceive of patriotism differently from others.

Citation

Chua, S. and Sim, J.B.-.-Y. (2017), "Postmodern patriotism: teachers’ perceptions of loyalty to Singapore", Asian Education and Development Studies, Vol. 6 No. 1, pp. 30-43. https://doi.org/10.1108/AEDS-01-2016-0012