Seow, Tricia

This chapter shares efforts to conceptualize, develop, and implement two signature labs to support Humanities education in Singapore—the Historian’s Lab and the Sustainability Learning Lab. In particular, we focus on lessons learned in innovation (e.g., the necessity of creative and collaborative synergies among disciplinary experts, curriculum specialists, ICT designers, and teacher leaders, among others) and managing the challenges and constraints of educational innovation in a centralized, results-oriented system that at the same time continually encourages innovation.

This qualitative study examines the influence of teachers’ subject identities on how four secondary school teachers in Singapore conduct field-based enquiry about water quality in geography. Given the complex interactions noted in the literature among teachers’ academic and school training, their academic subject specialisms and their practice, it also interrogated the influence of teachers’ subject specialisations on their practice. In general, it was found that the teachers shared concerns about water conservation and environmental sustainability in their practice of enquiry with their students. However, divergence in teachers’ emphases when conducting GI was also noted, which could be partly attributed to the influence of their other subject specialisations. This underscores the importance of attention to teachers’ subject identities in geography education research, as well as in pre-service and professional development courses for teachers.

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 current syllabuses for geography place an emphasis on Geographical Investigations (GI)/ fieldwork to give students opportunities to appreciate the real world application of geographical knowledge and skills, as well as to help them acquire 21st century competencies. To better support teachers in conducting meaningful and purposeful fieldwork, we need to identify strengths and gaps in teachers’ knowledge and the ways they apply their knowledge in their practice. As such, we employed a qualitative case study approach to gain an in-depth understanding of teachers’ knowledge and its relationship to their practice of fieldwork.

Research on teachers' subject conceptions of geography has contributed to a better understanding of how teachers perceive geography, and has explicated the relationships between teachers' conceptions and their practice. However, such research tends to neglect two important influences on teachers' subject conceptions and classroom practice: power structures and embodiment. The paper argues for an interrogation of the influence of power structures on the way pre-service secondary geography teachers in Singapore think about the subject, and how they teach it. In addition, this article also articulates the importance of considering the ways in which bodies are implicated in the construction of conceptions of geography, as well as in notions of how to teach it effectively. An analytical framework that incorporates power structures and embodiment into a study of pre-service teachers' subject conceptions and teaching practice is suggested as a means of integrating these two elements within research in this area.