"In order for reform to work, everyone involved must be clear about its purposes, policies and procedures and those initiating the change need to relentlessly explain, clarify, train, seek feedback, troubleshoot, modify, re-explain and re-clarify " (Evans, 1996). The debatable nature of 'character' and 'citizenship' is left open to interpretation, compounding the effects of a lack of clarity. Unlike formal subjects such as the languages or sciences where concepts, laws and rules remain fairly constant and are easily assessable, quantifying character and citizenship is not as straightforward. Mr Heng admitted "CCE will be one of the most difficult subjects to teach well" as it is hard to quantify values (Heng, 2011a). In administering sensitive topics such as citizenship, a beginning teacher might fear overstepping the boundaries (Baildon & Sim. 2009) and therefore needs explicit guidance on what needs to be taught. Beginning teachers need to assimilate into the school culture and appreciate the individual dynamics of their colleagues and supervisors in order to seek help and to understand the support systems they can avail. This also presents itself as a challenge as beginning teachers routinely expressed anxiety over being able to adapt into the school culture (Boon, 2011).
Teachers "constantly import data from their own lives" into discussions of curriculum and school practices (Goodson, 1991) and as schools are given certain autonomy in administering the CCE package, a beginning teacher's philosophy and personal beliefs would need to be closely aligned with that of the school. Sometimes, the school culture could be one that emphasises academic achievements giving priority to subjects assessed formally, especially for levels facing high stakes examinations. Another section of this essay also speaks about managing parent's expectations of their children's grades at school.
