Suzanne Choo Shen Li

Given the extraordinary pace at which especially new media technologies have developed in the last five to ten years, as well as the unprecedented amount of leisure time youth spend engaging with media such as television, Facebook, or games, there has been greater recognition by scholars, educators, and policymakers of the importance of incorporating media education and media literacy in schools and curricula. Current curricular approaches have moved away from a protectionist rationale toward a concern with supporting youth to become active media users (Buckingham, 2002). This shift towards recognizing youth’s agentive role particularly through digital social media has also led to a focus in media literacy programs on both production and consumption; in other words, fostering youth’s critical and reflective capacities in relation to both their consumption and production of media texts/content. Learner-centered pedagogies that draw on students’ everyday understanding, experience, and use of media in and out of school are advocated (Hobbs, 2011b). Recognizing and building on students’ media experiences is a key principle of media literacy curricula that aim to empower students to become active, reflective, and critical users of contemporary media.

While English literature once occupied a central position in national curricula, enrollment in the subject has undergone a continuing decline in English-speaking countries such as the United States and United Kingdom. Its marginal position may also be observed in formerly colonized countries such as Singapore, where the subject was introduced, appropriated, and reconstructed. My aim, in this paper, is to propose a re-envisioning of literature education premised on the principles of ethical cosmopolitanism. In the first part of the paper, I describe ethical cosmopolitanism by distinguishing it from strategic cosmopolitanism, which has more recently emerged in response to the pressures of economic globalization, leading to the economization of education. In the second part of the paper, I show how the principles of strategic cosmopolitanism have directed the national literature curriculum in Singapore through my analysis of the national syllabus and high-stakes examination papers from 1990 to the present. This leads to the third part of the paper, in which I use a case study of four literature teachers in Singapore secondary schools to characterize the ethical cosmopolitan pedagogies they employ to circumvent nation-centric, economic pressures of strategic cosmopolitanism operating at the national level. More importantly, I discuss how such pedagogies have the potential to foster a hospitable imagination, which constitutes the strongest defense one can give to literature education in the context of an increasingly culturally complex, connected, and contested global sphere.

Today, the intensification of global interconnectivity is a key characteristic of the twenty-first century. This has spurred governments and policymakers to envision how best to equip future-ready citizens who can navigate increasingly globalized workplaces resulting in the worldwide popularity of models that articulate twenty-first century competencies. Twenty-first century education models perpetuated by transnational and multinational organizations posit an idealized vision of the future-ready citizen equipped with requisite skills to compete in the global economy. Informed by economic rationality, such models promote a consequentialist approach to education where the primary aim of schools is to develop citizens as human capital who can thrive in globalized workplaces and ultimately contribute to the progress of their nation. In this paper, I focus on the twenty-first century education model currently infused across schools in Singapore. Using this as an example, I examine models of twenty-first century education from the lens of Confucian cosmopolitanism. I explore how the application of Confucian cosmopolitanism can facilitate an ethical re-orientation of twenty-first century education that shifts the focus from instrumental competencies to humanistic virtues needed for a more hospitable future.

This study seeks to examine the challenges and opportunities faced by schools in facilitating cosmopolitan dispositions or virtues in their students, in particular, through literature lessons. The project is driven by three key research questions:

1. What forms of cosmopolitan dispositions are observed in students in literature classrooms and in sample assignments in the selected schools?
2. How do literary texts develop cosmopolitan dispositions in the teaching of literature in the selected schools?
3. How pedagogical approaches do teachers employ to develop cosmopolitan dispositions in the teaching of literature in the selected schools?

The shift in multimodality and multiliteracies in the English curriculum has become more a need than a choice. With the advent of ‘new’ media and advancing technology, learning scopes have broadened significantly. Methodologies and pedagogies will have to be redefined and re-established to accommodate the over-flowing sources of accessible knowledge. The main issue is that schools and universities, as Hull and Nelson (2005) argued, are still “staunchly logocentric, book centered, and essay driven” (p.225). More than a decade after this assertion, these new forms of literacies appear to have some impact on teaching and learning. However, the inclusion of multimodal text analyses in school-based assessment seems to be lagging. This paper discusses the shift towards multimodality and multiliteracies and their possible impact and implications on the English curriculum. It proposes the alignment of a re-conceptualized English curriculum which infuses the teaching and learning of visuals and technology and the assessment of multimodal texts.

All over the world, governments and policymakers continue to proclaim the need to educate students for the 21st century. In this study, we argue that the impetus for 21st century education should be more accurately termed, 21st century global education which refers to education that seeks to equip students with the knowledge, skills, and sensitivities to compete and navigate the challenges caused by globalization in the 21st century. Based on this initial definition, we examine three theoretical models that may inform the conceptualization and enactment of 21st century global education in schools.
The first model is Human Capital Theory (HCT) which focuses on economic globalization resulting in economic reasoning used to justify policy initiatives and reform. HCT reinforces economic utilitarianism resulting in educational goals prioritizing the teaching of competencies. The second model is the Human Capabilities Approach (HCA) that emphasizes the importance of the intrinsic goods of education (as opposed to its mere instrumental utility). HCA argues that the development of human well-being is deemed the highest end which individuals should seek to attain and which government and public policies should be directed towards. HCA draws attention to the ends of education centred on the development of capabilities to support human flourishing, which involve opportunities for individuals to pursue what they value, freedom to choose among the opportunities given, and agency to construct one’s goals and values. The third model the Cosmopolitan Capacities Approach (CCA) is an extension of HCA. CCA is premised on the philosophy of ethical cosmopolitanism entailing questions about what it means to equip students as cosmopolitans or citizens of the world. CCA perceives that capabilities should not merely foster an individual’s well-being but that in doing so, the individual is then empowered to use his knowledge and skills to empower others. Thus, CCA focuses on the ends of cultivating capacities which denotes the ability or power to perceive, understand, empathize with and defend or find solutions to addressing the concerns of others.