Chang, Chew Hung

How school geography should be taught has been a longstanding issue for geography educators. In some countries, state or national level curriculum predicates how the subject should be taught in schools. This paper examines these questions in relation to existing frameworks of conceptualizing school geography, such as the International Charter on Geographical Education. School geography in Singapore has evolved from regional geography to thematic geography to systematic geography. A review of the curriculum in 2007 resulted in a distinct form of school geography unprecedented in Singapore’s education history. Today, school geography in Singapore is learnt conceptually with national level assessment designed to that end. To what extent is this evolution in curriculum design in step with changes in our world? In response to the changes in school geography, pre-service and in-service teacher training has also responded by focusing on conceptual learning and inquiry. This paper will explore the state of school geography curricula in Singapore today, and the curriculum of teacher training, with the intent to critically discuss the state of geography education in Singapore. Although geography has remained a disciplinary subject whose place has yet been disputed, the big question of why study geography in the first place needs to be answered to ensure its continued survival. In particular, school geography will be examined for its relevance to a fast changing world. This critique ends by offering a reason to how geography plays an important role in education for sustainable development, and its relevance to Singaporeans or even any citizen of the world.

The paper examines the 1992 and 2016 versions of the International Charter on Geographical Education with a view to provide a commentary on the extent that research on assessment issues in geographical and environmental education respond to the directions set out in the two documents. The authors started on a concern with an apparent lack of discourse on assessment issues in geographical education and endeavours to provide a reflection of issues within the geography education community by an exploratory inquiry based on an analysis of article titles published in 4 prominent geographical journals: Environmental Education Research; International Research in Geographical Environmental Education; Journal of Environmental Education and; Journal of Geography from 2010 to 2017. The authors believe that the number of journal articles and issues related to assessment and evaluations in Geographical Education provide an indication of the general direction that were previously proclaimed, have to varying degrees been reflected and enacted upon by geography educators and scholars. The findings show that while the published research articles contribute to achieving some of the action plan items on the International Charter on Geographical Education, areas of improvement include research on professional development and international exchange of ideas about geography assessment. Moreover, the authors believe that geography educators are key facilitators of knowledge-making for Geography Education in the 21st century classrooms. As a consequence, geography educators should be empowered to do research on issues that are “relevant” to them, be guided and mentored, be given the appropriate channels to “feed-back” and “feed-forward” inputs, and if needed, to (re) shape action plans to adhere to the spirit or intention of these declarations.