Seow, Tricia

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.

Vietnam’s tourism industry has high growth potential with forecasts of double digit growth in the next few years, as the tourism industry contributed more than 13% of its GPD even during the global economic recession in 2009 (RNCOS Market Research, 2010). With this unprecedented rate of growth in the tourism industry, two important questions arise. What are the causes of this growth and what is the impact of this growth? The Singapore Teachers’ fieldtrip offers opportunities for teachers to deepen their content and contextual understanding of Hanoi, as well as a chance to foray into conducting field based enquiry. In Singapore, a revised Geography syllabus will be implemented for the GCE ‘O’ levels in 2013 for Secondary 3 students. A key feature of this revised syllabus is the use of an enquiry approach in the teaching and learning of Geography to engage independent learning, critical thinking, reflective thinking and enquiry. In particular, the “enquiry approach” proposed in this revised syllabus is contingent on both fieldwork and classroom learning. This workshop draws on the experience in the field to advance the discussion on the enquiry process.

Geographical inquiry is an approach to learning that acknowledges the constructivist view of knowledge and prioritises the need for students to make sense of what they are learning for themselves. Alexander (2003; 2008) advanced dialogic teaching as a strategy for eliciting students’ understanding and engaging students in using language as a tool for constructing knowledge. This suggests that the successful use of geographical inquiry as a pedagogy entails learning how to think and talk like a geographer. Geography teachers in Singapore are encouraged to use inquiry-based pedagogies in order to help students understand the nature of disciplinary work in geography and as the main route to knowledge construction (CPDD, 2013; 2014). This chapter draws on a study that examines geography teachers’ language knowledge for content teaching (Morton, 2018) through the use of dialogic talk to guide multimodal data analysis, interpretation, and knowledge construction in geography. Using examples of teachers’ enactment of knowledge in the classroom, we suggest how geography teachers can help students make sense of geographical data through greater attention to language use. We further argue that exploring the qualitative dimension of using dialogic talk as a pedagogic strategy addresses a gap in geography education and contributes to the growing body of work on disciplinary literacy.

This qualitative study examines what six geography teachers in Singapore schools believe to be the purpose of climate change education, and how this influences their practice. A key finding of this study indicates that teachers oriented their practice around their belief that the aim of climate change education was to instill environmental values or critical thinking in their students. The belief in the purpose of climate change education was more influential compared to other factors such as the national curriculum, the school context, or their knowledge of climate change.

This study draws upon a Foucauldian (1971, 1979) notion of discourse to explore how four pre-service geography teachers in Singapore made decisions about what geography is and how to enact their understandings of geography in their classrooms. This analysis of discursive power is particularly relevant to Singapore because of the high level of state control over geography and teacher education. The particular ways in which teacher education is organised in this context also exerts a number of conflicting discursive pressures that pre-service teachers have to reconcile in their subject conceptions and practice. Drawing upon data gathered from concept maps, photo elicitiation exercises, interviews and analyses of teachers’ lesson plans and school curricular documents, the study highlights the dominance of discourses at the state and school levels in the Singapore geography education context. However, it also the notes the ways through which participants “resisted” discourse (Butler, 1991, 1993; Moore, 2004), underscoring the importance of pre-service teachers’ professional identities and beliefs about geography education in sustaining their practice through difficult times.

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.