The International Charter on Geographical Education: A reflection on published research articles on assessment
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.
Uncovering the nexus between scientific discourse and school geography in Singapore students’ understanding of climate change
This paper describes a baseline empirical study of Singapore secondary students' understanding of climate change . It reports that despite evidence of significant awareness on the topic , what learner's think they know does not match up with what they really know. Like other students around the world, their understanding of the phenomenon is not deep enough for accurate definition, explanation and linking of critical concepts together coherently and correctly. The paper critically examines how the introduction of a new national syllabus in geography in Singapore at grade 9level considers current developments in scientific discourse and affords the opportunity to help students develop values , knowledge, and skills to engage the climate change topic. The study argues for geographic education to be responsive in addressing gaps identified through updating the curriculum with current scientific discourse and by providing skills for students to engage a growing volume of information on climate change from various media.
The urban thermal climate of Singapore
The urban heat island phenomenon was examined at three spatial scales in this study. At the island-wide scale, the existence of the nocturnal heat island phenomenon at 2200 hrs for various "seasons" of the year in Singapore was confirmed. The study was undertaken at 2200 hrs to allow for comparison with an earlier study in 1981. The intensity of the phenomenon varies both spatially and temporary. The nocturnal phenomenon has changed since it was last studied in 1981. Secondary heat islands are now present over some sub-urban areas which were previously rural. Previous studies of Singapore's nocturnal heat island have recognised and described the phenomenon substantially but have failed to establish statistical relationship between factors and the phenomenon.
This study established some statistical correlation between some factors (such as urban canyon geometry and size of estate) and the nocturnal heat island phenomenon through empirical data examined at local scales. Urban canyon geometry, in terms of height-to-width ratios, and the physical size of the housing estates have positive correlations but the areal extent of waterbodies has negative correlations with heat island intensities. The role of canyon geometry in the processes involved in the genesis of the phenomenon was further examined at a micro-scale, where three canyons were studied for spatial and temporal variation in ambient temperatures, insolation and wind speed. Results show that canyons with higher height-to-width ratios tend to have weaker winds at the canyon floor and large spatial difference in ambient air temperatures between canyon floor and canyon top. Using the statistical results, a model to predict 2200 hrs heat island intensities based on urban canyon geometry, size of estate and areal extent of waterbodies was proposed. This model gives an overall p-value of 0.0002 with urban canyon geometry being the most statistically significant of the three parameters included in the model.
Supporting field study with personalized project spaces in a geographical digital library
Digital libraries have been rather successful in supporting learning activities by providing learners with access to information and knowledge. However, this level of support is passive to learners and interactive and collaborative learning cannot be easily achieved. In this paper, we study how digital libraries could be extended to serve a more active role in collaborative learning activities. We focus on developing new services to support a common type of learning activity, field study, in a geospatial context. We propose the concept of personal project space that allows individuals to work in their personalized environment with a mix of private and public data and at the same time to share part of the data with team members. To support the portability of the resources in our digital library, the selected resources can be exported in an organized manner.
Enabling IT: Examples of web-based learning from geography lessons
Information Technology is commonly referred to by its acronym IT. But just what does IT encompass and what are the "technologies" of IT that are useful for learning? How will IT enrich a lesson and enable learning? In particular, the question of how different the advent of new ITs such as the World Wide Web (WWW) is from existing ITs such as the video or TV will be examined. Since learning arises from a constructive process of reflection on the material provided and interaction with it, the mere use of IT in lessons may not be a sufficient condition for learning to occur. It may not even be a necessary condition for learning to occur. Furthermore, IT refers to an extremely varied spectrum of "technologies" ranging from plain electronic manifestation of printed material to self-contained, highly interactive, communication-enabled and multi-mediated materials. There exists a problem on the choice of IT for learning. Examples will be drawn from the comparative study of two University Geography courses, one pre-service and one in-service, on the infusion of interactive online web-based courses to enable learning.
E-learning in geography: An example of partial e-learning in in-service geography training
Climate change resilience and public education in response to hydrologic extremes in Singapore
Aims: In February and March 2014, more than 300,000 households were affected by water rationing in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and the surrounding State of Selangor. Further south, reservoir levels in Singapore were dropping, prompting the government to raise the water conservation rhetoric, but falling short of implementing water rationing schemes. The region experienced a dry spell that was unprecedented in the last 30 years. Preparedness for storms has been the "talk of the town" since the 2001, 2006 and 2007 extreme high precipitation events in the southern parts of the peninsula and in Singapore resulted in costly flood damage. While resilience has been a concept used frequently in climate change adaptation, it is derived from ecology, where it refers to the capacity of the system to respond to a disturbance and resist the impact or recover from
the damage of the disturbance. This paper examines the case of Singapore as an urban area in responding to a similar extreme hydrologic phenomenon by examining the climate considerations in designing climate change adaptation strategies.
Place of Study: Singapore and peninsular Malaysia.
Methodology: The paper reviews the rainfall extremes statistics covering the last 30 years for Singapore and then takes a hydrologic event-based case study approach to more closely examine the impact of record storms and the drought of March 2014 to discuss aspects of resilience that can serve as lessons for tropical cities in future adaptation to a climate-changing world.
Results: Extreme rainfall events have become more frequent in Singapore over the past 30 years, while February, 2014 was the driest February since 1869. February, 2014 also had the lowest recorded daily relative humidity at 74.5%. Tropical cyclones are not expected to hit Singapore because of its location near the equator, yet Typhoon Vamei made history by delivering 210 mm of rain on 27 December, 2001. Between 19 and 20 December, 2007 Singapore received 366 mm of rain and within the same week another storm deposited 140 mm of rain in a 24 hour period. While there were some environmental and health impacts related to the February 2014 drought, including low dissolved oxygen levels in water and a localized fish kill, as well as reports of greater human respiratory problems, Singapore was able to weather the drought by requesting voluntary conservation measures, prudent reservoir management, and increasing the output of NEWater and desalinized water. Recent extreme rainfall events have produced localized flooding, but Singapore has progressively pursued a program of improved drainage, stream naturalization, and mplementation of Low Impact Development (LID) technology to reduce flood-prone areas from 3,200 ha in the 1970’s to 36 ha today.
Conclusion: We do not suggest that all countries need to have NEWater or desalinated water to solve drought problems. We do suggest that in managing rainfall related hazards, droughts and extremes have been treated rather independently. Based on the case study of extremes presented for Singapore we propose the importance of establishing a three-step preparedness program for extremes that includes Preparation
(vulnerability and risk identification, adaptive capacity building, and monitoring), Response (information dissemination and relief action), and Recovery.
Learning progressions for climate change: How does it look like in Singapore’s school geography?
Examining information-seeking behaviour in a geography web-based constructivist learning activity
In the official launch of Singapore’s “IT Masterplan 2” on 24 July 2002, the Ministry of Education has announced that the efforts in implementing Information Technology into Education should move beyond providing and sustaining Information and Communication Technology (ICT) infrastructure into effective pedagogical practices using ICT. It is how these ICTs are used rather than what is used that is important. Indeed, one such aspect of ICT use within Geography education – information seeking within web-based learning will be examined in this paper. Much of current literature on web- based learning highlights the flexibility of the web in providing information and enabling students to perform self-guided exploratory learning (Scott 1996 and Kahn 1998). Little empirical research has been done on the actual information-seeking behaviour in web–based learning, especially in Singapore. This paper examines the interactions between the learner and the web through the browsing behaviours of 16 Secondary 3 students when given a task that requires them to search for information on the web to solve a problem. One of the major conclusions from the data analysis is that the students tend to be engaged in rudimentary information-seeking behaviour that does not extend beyond simple keywords searches and following sequential links from search results.
The role of digital libraries in learning about environmental identity through solving geographical problems
Environmental identity or how we orient ourselves to the natural world, leads us to personalize abstract global issues and take action (or not) according to our sense of who we are. Indeed, the often emotional nature of environmental conflicts can be associated with our sense of personal and social identity. Are we willing to give up our SUV for a more fuel-efficient car albeit our knowledge about the enhanced greenhouse effect? (Clayton and Opotow, 2003). In an era where web-based student-centred inquiry is gaining popularity as a mode of teaching and learning about environmental issues and potentially developing students’ environmental identities, the role of digital libraries as delivery trucks (terminology by Clark, 1983) needs to be understood better. An obvious affordance of such a digital library is that it organizes information around themes for problems to be solved. A developmental project to build a first digital library for Geographical assets was undertaken. This digital library (G-Portal) serves an active role in a collaborative learning activity in which the students conduct a field study of an environmental problem, within a geospatial context – in this case, beach erosion and sea level rise. G-Portal not only functions as a digital library of information resources, it also provides manipulation and analytical tools that can be used on the information provided. The concept of personal project space allows individuals to work in their personalized environment with a mix of private and public data and at the same time share part of the data with their team members. This allows students to explore the information, process the information, solve the problem posed and perhaps even form new understandings and reflections of their role in the natural environment.