Chang, Chew Hung

The concept of “waterscapes” is examined, with a focus on applications in secondary schools and the pedagogy for undergraduate geography students. The waterscape emphasis on external flows of capital, political relations, and policy that interact with the physical watershed, as well as the hydrosocial cycle, are particularly well suited to support teacher pedagogical content knowledge because of the flexibility in interpreting and applying concepts using what we have termed “the shallow sustainability approach”. Employing case studies from the Singapore geography curriculum, we explore new pathways for the traditional interpretation of waterscapes that include linking mathematical modelling of hydrologic systems with rich local narratives.

The aspirations for social studies education that would prepare our learners for a sustainable future are presented in this paper. Given the complex, ambiguous and volatile times that we are in, there is a need to examine the key capabilities that our students will require in order to flourish in a future world. This cannot be done without consideration for sustainability. This paper will provide an overview of the current realities and attempt to articulate the knowledge, skills and dispositions of a future-ready student with a view to designing good socialstudies education. A specific case in teaching and learning of the climate change topic is argued for students to learn to know, to do, to be and to live together.

Research literature on climate change education has been primarily focused on reporting how programmes are designed to help students learn the topic of climate change better. The aim of such education programmes invariably endeavours to educate a globally informed citizenry in response to the contemporary climate crisis through effective teaching and learning. While there have been literature to show how students’ knowledge, skills, attitudes and behaviour have changed for the better with effective teaching and learning, this article seeks to curate some of these practices, especially those published by the author to exemplify how we can achieve the UN Delors report’s (1998) suggestion that education needs to help students to learn to know, learn to do, learn to be and learn to live together. These desired outcomes are also aligned with the aspirations of geographical education as set out in the International Charter on Geographic Education (CGE, 2016). The article will draw on published works by the author, review the relevance of these studies and compare them with other published works to provide an argument for using the Delors Report to help teachers in their curriculum planning and lesson designs. While education is inherently future-oriented, there needs to be some coherent and contiguous treatment of the way education practices can be used. To this end, the article’s approach to curating the published work will provide a critical discussion using a known framework to advance the discourse on best practices for climate change education. Ultimately the aim of climate change education should be to provide students with the capabilities and opportunities to flourish in society now and in the future, particularly in the face of the challenges brought about by global climate change.

For over 30 years, the Southeast Asian Geography Association (SEAGA) has provided a dynamic platform for the exchange of knowledge, research findings, and ideas among academics, policymakers, and educators from Southeast Asia and those working on Southeast Asia. Using Marsden’s (1989) notion of the politicization of geography by significant power groups, this article describes a critical narrative of the key trends, themes, and topics defining scholarly discourse in the community of SEAGA and its potential impact on school geography in the region. For each of the three decades (1990-1999, 2000-2009, and 2010-2019), the authors analyzed significant themes and issues for each period. Employing purposive sampling of conference proceedings and topics presented between 1990 and 2017, the authors found the following trends over the years: i) the pluralization and diversification of themes and topics; ii) an increasing interest for cross-thematic studies, and iii) a greater emphasis on sustainability and environmental issues in recent years. Based on these observations, the authors acknowledge that the evolution of discourses in SEAGA conferences is also a part of broader thematic shifts in international publications such as the Journal of Geography and has a direct bearing on changes in the geography curriculum in schools in other places around the world. In addition, there is a natural confluence of academic geographers and geography educators in the region in discoursing topics that matter to Southeast Asia.