Singapore Social Studies Teachers’ Perspectives of Socioeconomic Inequality, Distributive Justice, and Meritocracy

• In Event: Roundtable Session 24
  In Roundtable Session: Diverse Historical Perspectives

Abstract

This study aims to explore how teachers navigate and negotiate the tension between upholding egalitarian ideals of social justice while concurrently enforcing and promoting the principle of meritocracy in schools. Teachers consistently confront the tension between providing compensatory education for children from disadvantaged social backgrounds (in order to level the playing field), and goal of meritocracy (Roemer, 1998). Specifically, it seeks to identify and understand how 12 secondary social studies teachers in Singapore construct a narrative of distributive justice and socioeconomic inequality for different groups of students.

Authors

• Li-Ching Ho, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Enrique Nino Leviste, National Institute of Education - Nanyang Technological University