Nurturing character and citizenship of student teachers through community engagement

Abstract

The National Institute of Education (NIE) which is the sole teacher education institute in Singapore seeks to develop teachers who are able to lead, care, and inspire our youths, and to forge trusting partnerships with the community for the growth and well-being of their students. This paper will highlight two initial teacher education programmes which help develop and enhance character and citizenship in our student teachers: Group Endeavours in Service Learning (GESL) and the Youth Expedition Project (YEP). GESL is a programme which involves local community outreach and engagement and gives our student teachers the opportunity to serve and to learn from the community. The community thus becomes their teacher and their learning environment. Whilst GESL is mandatory for all student teachers, international service learning via the YEP is voluntary. Since 2002, our student teachers have travelled to China, India, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Myanmar, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Indonesia and the Philippines to work with local communities in these countries through several international service learning projects. These ventures abroad have had multi-dimensional objectives: infrastructure upgrading, teaching, exchange of knowledge and skills with teachers, environmental conservation, and cultural exchange. The impact and challenges of these community engagement programmes will be discussed in this paper.