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I think it's not really something new that we bring real-world issues into our classrooms (especially for a subject like Geography).

However, my main takeaway would be that we do place-based education to allow students to situate themselves (or rather sense-make) in an inquiry (by learning from the local community and environment), and ideally help them "scale-up" these knowledge/emotions/feelings into the broader realm. This could be in the form of scaling up to a larger real-world issue, or even using their prior knowledge from another subject and see it through a Geographer's lens, lending to a more interdisciplinary kind of learning.

Gwendalyn Too

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Place-based learning can help bring out the importance and relevance of sustainability education when student learners become empowered by harnessing their personal geographies. This really lends well to Geography which is learnt through concepts such as space, place, scale and time. The interdisciplinary learning can help to make T&L more effective and streamlined.

Some possibilities:

1. Health District@Queenstown

2. Housing in a Park - biophilic design at Dawson neighbourhood

3. Transport at silver zones in urban neighbourhoods

4. Integrated land use planning at new HDB towns (Tengah vs own urban neighbourhood)

5. Collaboration with other schools for geography fieldwork and interdisciplinary learning - longitudinal study (?) for topics related to water quality, waste management, energy consumption and conservation, urban heat island effect, climate, water and environmental resilience efforts etc in the urban neighbourhood and city context

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Thank you so much for the sharing!

It's inspiring to know how place-based learning can be operationalised and practised, especially in a crowded curriculum.

My personal takeaway is to start small with tapping into the students' personal geographies.

Nuri

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(1) We will discuss as a team on the re-making of the transportation topic based on the insights shared. Currently, student do individual research on the changes/development in Singapore from 2000-2024. One change can be the focus on a specific place/neighhourhood and discussion between students regarding what they think, feel and observed. There is value is place-based education as it will stick better and closer to one's sense of place and learning and critical thinking becomes more authentic.

(2) The narrative on how to go about the learning in Bukit Timah area is close to my heart as I lived in that area and know the place well and can relate to what was shared and how the process of place-based education can be done.

Wendy, NHHS

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I’ve noticed the word "feelings" being mentioned repeatedly during the sharing. This humanizes our teaching and learning, making it more relatable, rather than mechanically teaching the concept of a sense of place. This approach profoundly impacts the learner's experience, fostering a sense of belonging to the community and even contributing to character development. It truly brings the subject to life!

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focusing on place-based education transfer the ownership of learning to students and gives students the drive to be agents of change of their own neighborhoods.

-doris

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Rethink how students can go deeper to understand how their school neighbourhood has changed over the years, esp when the Yew Tee neighbourhood has soo much of history. They do go around their neighbourhood to identify their favourite places for now.

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Started on Tectonics today with an Inquiry on how Singapore can be at risk should any of the 466 undersea volcanoes in our region erupt....Now, how can we even begin to imagine how Singapore can be impacted by tectonic forces (?) if most of us have always assumed that Spore is safe, though we are surrounded by neighbours who are tectonically volatile.....

So inspiring a session today....I think PBE can be designed in any of the clusters in the new syllabus, LS and US. When we talk about Place as a concept, perhaps we think it's easy and more familiar to set IBL in places which we and the students live, study and work in...but the challenge is The Other Place over There.....What do we know, How can we imagine what can happen and how similar or different would that Place experience an issue compared to what we know in our nation, community and neighbourhood?

CSoon

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PBE offers opportunities for us to help students see the relevance of what they're learning and helps them to also consider how they can be agents of change. I think it's great to incorporate this into the teaching and learning of Geography so that students are less focused on performing at the exams. Will need time to think of specific ways to re-look how some topics are currently being taught.

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I’ve noticed the word "feelings" being mentioned repeatedly during the sharing. This humanizes our teaching and learning, making it more relatable, rather than mechanically teaching the concept of the sense of place. This approach profoundly impacts the learner's experience, fostering a sense of belonging to the community and even contributing to character development. It truly brings the subject to life! Thank you very much for all the inspiring and generous sharing!

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Thank you! Learnt a lot on how to apply place-based learning to lessons, such as:

Leveraging on local environment in the lesson design, connecting students to their immediate environment.

Making lessons more meaningful by relating lessons to real-world issues.

Opportunities to blend subjects

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I am inspired to relook at the GIEL and Singapore cluster to include place-based learning in the topics.

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Explore and engage with the neighbourhood near our school and conceptualise how to incorporate place-based learning in the context of the immediate neighbourhood.

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Google Earth has the historical imagery function, which can be used to explore the changes to the environment in the neighbourhood. This could be a good platform to explore Geography in Everyday Life Cluster.

WGS/ CK

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I can think about how I can pick out selected topics from GIEL, Water or Transport to have at least one Place-Based lesson for each level, to make learning come alive and bring the classroom into their community :) I think it's very valuable what students can learn from their immediate environment and this can help them to think about their DAILY lived experiences, slow down to enjoy the PLACE they've been living in and to appreciate the beauty and finer things around them :) Althea

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I would like to foster local identities in our Singapore youths via place-based learning. I feel the new syllabus gives a lot of opportunity for this as it is focuses more on Singaporean context. This will allow for increased relevance to students which will lead to better engagement in class as well as the wider community.

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1. Making learning more personal

A lot of the times students can easily get disengaged when they perceive geography to be a 'just memorise' type of subject, it helps to get them curious and get them to think about why its important to learn what they are learning.

2. Getting a local expert voice

Recently my school's GI x HI got students to interview people who have previously lived in kampungs to share what their life was like. I think it would be good if we can bring in more of these everyday experts that are more relatable yet knowledgeable about our subject matter.

Even giving other students a chance to share their personal experiences might really enrich the learning and get students to connect to the topic better.

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Thank you for the sharing! Just wanted to say that I'm glad for this direction of place-based learning, as it makes it so much more personal and within reach for our students. Really brings about Geography is everywhere around us! I will want to use place-based learning to be at the heart of how I plan lessons for my students and keep a lookout for new lesson ideas since this requires ever evolving materials as resources.

-Sherrie

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I am more inclined to tap on students' personal geographies to contextualise their learning, especially when teaching Geography in Everyday Life. I like the idea of getting students to draw their mental maps and compare their mental maps.

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To think how activities (place-based) can be meaningfully infused into lessons (even at times when we are rushing the syllabus!) To work with the team (and possibly other teams) in coming up various activities to enhance T&L

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I would like to take more time to get students to share what they already know or not know about the their or school neighbourhood.

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The heart, head, hands - definitely something to bring back to school and have conversations with others in the team.

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I will aim to incorporate place-based education into our next GI by intentionally working in some relevant inquiry questions. Have to think about those, but will definitely get students to talk, write and interact with places in the housing estate for housing GI. - Suet Fong (FMSS)

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I've always been attuned to referencing the town and neighbourhood surroundings, and connecting to the syllabus content. However, it also occurred to me I need to teach students the skill of observations and reading the landscape, so they can transfer the knowledge and processes to understanding other parts of Singapore, and even the wider world.

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Audrey lau

A timely webinar as my school will be reviewing the lower sec syllabus next year. Our neighbourhood has a rich history and we will definitely adopt one topic for placed based learning next yr.

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Would like to also work on interdisciplinary learning with Bio trs in sch, something that we have spoke about for a while

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Try to include local people and local places in teaching and learning, such as learning about the history of my school's neighbourhood, and incorporating some interviews/surveys with residents in the area about their lived experiences.

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I can start by having conversations with my colleagues and start noticing the changes that have taken place in our school locale.

1) The rejuvenation of the river in Bishan-AMK Park from a concrete canal to a naturalised river.

2) The improving of accessibility of the area with the addition of Bright Hill MRT station (TEL) and current building of the Cross Island Line right below our school!

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Thank you, Suriani, for the interesting sharing. Mental maps are covered during extended fieldwork for Full Geography in Upper Secondary Geography so it is interesting to see how the pre-university students further apply it if they have been exposed to it previously in secondary school.

I like how the lesson focuses on gender because gender geography is not often discussed or highlighted but with the new geography syllabus centred on sustainability, it does allow for gender issues to be surfaced for further discussion, allowing for the learners to discuss, share and understand the varied perspectives in different contexts. This does pave the way for our students to learn the importance of coming together to build an inclusive, liveable and sustainable society, in spite of the differences.

I do agree that place-based education allows educators not only to sense-make the curriculum in a more positive light that aligns with the current and future directions of the nation, it also enables and empowers students to better sense-make global and contemporary issues by first engaging in a local context that is familiar to them.

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Thanks for the rich sharing by Alvin and Suraini. Some years back, to inject some fun elements to a year-end assignment, one of the tasks that was designed for my students was to produce a mental map to show their journey from their home to the school. I thought it was an easy enough task, since most students live nearby and they likely walked or just took a short bus trip to school. However, what caught me by surprised was the fact that some of the students were driven to school by their parents and they told me that they never observe the environment on their journey.

After listening to the sharing, it gave me some ideas on how to re-look at this piece of assignment, now that the new syllabi also focus quite a fair bit on the concept of sense of place and neighbourhoods.

WGS/ CK

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Dear Suriani,

Thank you for embarking on the journey together with the students in discovering the lived experiences of the target groups in the investigation. Reminded me of how complex the theories can be and yet the students have responded so well to these too! Mental maps really do show more aspects of how place hold meaning in all persons too.

Gives us all strength that these can be further developed and discussed and be commonplace in our classrooms moving forward.

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Dear Suriani,

Thanks for sharing your strategies in getting students to take on the perspectives of different personae to deepen their sense of empathy towards different users of the same shared space. I'm inspired to get students to draw their own mental maps.

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I suppose there are boys in the class? How do they relate to the inquiry question? Did you have to brief the class first such that the boys don't think that it's a gender-biased inquiry?

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Thank you, Alvin, for the heartening sharing. I like how you have remade the curriculum as a lesson designer such that the curriculum is now reframed through a series of guiding questions that trigger inquiry and allow students to really reflect on the relevance and importance of transportation in their everyday life and the local urban context. For curriculum remaking, the entire team of Geography teachers should be involved such that there is the buy-in and ideas can be bounced off each other, allowing for different perspectives to be shared before consensus can be built to fully conceptualise the guiding questions that will set the direction for T&L.

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Thank you Alvin for sharing on your lesson! I enjoyed how you framed their learning through the strategic questions that generated the students' authentic responses.

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I remember watching the big All Bus versus MRT & Bus Debate on TV back in the late 70s or early 80s....It's good to learn that by adopting the MRT and electric buses, we have reduced the environmental impact from CO2 emissions. One aspect of transport in Hougang and the many other 'kangs' in Singapore was how the early road network was not so well-developed, and the interior was densely forested, so people had to use river transport from the sea to access the interior, and how clans settled in villages along the mouths of the various rivers.

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Thanks Alvin for your insightful sharing! 🌈 Can see that a lot of thoughts went into the conceptualisation of the lesson. I like now you approached transport developments from the temporal scale - it opens up a lot of multi/inter-disciplinary learning opportunities, and promotes an appreciation for the present.

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I enjoyed the presentation by Alvin. On place-based education on the topic of transportation. The students can relate better when they share their own experiences. Brings the content in the textbook alive. It is really not inspiring to teach the content from textbook page by page. Curriculum- making is an important process. Jay BBSS

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Hello Alvin

I like how you introduce what transport was like in the past around the school's vicinity. The contextual knowledge definitely gave the students a sense of place and better able to draw connections on (i) the importance of transport design and (ii) relevance of geog of transport.

NJC

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Nafizath (CHS)

thorough capture of essence of place by Emma.

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Thank you Alvin for a very inspiring sharing to revisit the lesson to anchor the students' meaning making. I totally agree with you on the use of the word 'CONVENIENCE' - always so convenient for them to just write or use it in isolation......So must keep probbing! Thank you!

CSoon

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Thanks, Alvin, for sharing your insights and how you have grown in your learning about PBL! The way you did the curriculum (re)making certainly enlivens the lessons and brings in inquiry as an approach to foster self-directed learning.

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Thanks, Emma, for spending your Tuesday morning with us! I like your reminders to give the students a chance to share their perspectives and views. Three takeways for me are:

1) PBL as Big Concepts, Community Contexts

2) Ask > Find Out > Act encourages student agency

3) Bringing in the Community in the Classroom.

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Geography (Sec 2)

Students are encouraged to reflect on their own experiences based on the mode of transport they depend and rely on on a daily basis. From there, students will be exposed to how different modes are relied on, from someone who does not need the LRT at all, learning about the coverage provided when these other modes are readily offered.

In the coming topics on Silver Zones, students are also required to tap on their empathetic minds to recognise the needs of the elderly and how features are designed accordingly!

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Sec 1s: We study the quality of sources of water within the school.

Sec 2s: Students have to interview family members and do a land transect of their neighbourhood.

Sec 3s: Students visit tourist attractions to see how these attractions are important to Singapore's tourism industry.

Chenyee

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Use the immediate neighbourhoods as case studies to explore topics like sustainability; students walking around the neighbourhood to identify ways how the neighbourhood achieves social, economic and environmental sustainability, or hazards found in neighbourhood, etc.

Interview people living in the neighbourhood to investigate a geographical issue.

Nisah BBSS

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Ruby

For our school's Sec 1 GI on TRF, they need to interview park users. As such, we discuss about parks in the neighbourhood.

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I try to get the students to relate to examples from the various urban neighbourhoods that they are residents of, as well as urban neighbourhoods that are in close proximity to the school. Should there be certain developments that make it to the news and any other reliable media coverage, featuring local people and places, I will try to highlight them in the lessons and get students to discuss or raise questions about them. Leveraging technologies that promotes spatial awareness such as Google Earth and VR (e.g. 360 camera, Matterport) can also help.

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For Sec 2 GI, we bring our students to a HDB neighbourhood to explore amenities and sustainable features - Suet Fong (FMSS)

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Our Sec 3 Geographical Fieldwork involves students to investigate possible UHI and propose recommendation to reduce UHI in places they had selected in Singapore. The places selected by the students are their neighbourhoods or city centre.

We also work with the Language Arts department to explore the concept of identity / structure and place in a combined Learning Journey.

NJC

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Audrey lau

By getting the students to use their neighbourhoods as examples for making mental maps to represent their positive or negative sense of belonging.

Or by bringing students for local fieldtrips eg canals near school for testing water quality.

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We believe in experiential learning in the field and brought our students to the Singapore Botanical Gardens to explore the rainforest with the focus on City In Nature. They are encouraged to explore, observe and interact with people and create a presentation to engage their peers to take action for sustainable practices in Singapore. Student agency is encouraged as they are able to choose the focus on an issue in the Singapore Green Plan.

Students also do 'still life' drawings to make observations on their surroundings near the school and the neighbourhood and share their sense of place and interpretation of their creative work. - Wendy, NHHS

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Geography

Learning about our neighbourhoods in Geographies of Everyday Life

Bringing in local case studies as far as possible for Housing, Transport, Tropical Rainforests, Water

English Language

Word of the day sharing - encourage students to share about current affairs, especially local happenings

Discussion for oral practice - environment, sustainability, heritage usually bring in local examples

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In GI, we used Tourism as the basis of the investigation and introduced some local tourist destinations to the classes as we begin with the skills and applications.

CSoon

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Our Sec 2 GI requires students to interview residents in the neighbourhood on inclusiveness and environmental sustainability.

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Using local examples in our day-to-day teaching of geographical concepts and ideas. For example, making references to sustainability features in the immediate neighbourhood (e.g. recycling facilities, use of renewable energy).

Conducting learning journeys!

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Hi all, As a teacher educator I take my student teachers to Southampton Common at the start of the programme to discuss sustainability, place and the future. We hear from the rangers and think about how we can bring the local into our teaching.

Emma Rawlings Smith

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Southampton Common is the largest of Southampton’s open spaces with the first written record dating back to 1228 although it is possible that the area’s status as a common dates back to the town of Hamwic around 500AD.

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OEIC2024 Webinar Resources Google Drive:

1. Presentation Slides

2. Lesson Resources (Alvin - Secondary; Suriani - JC)

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Education is crucial to promote climate action

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Concerns and Questions

(please indicate the name of the presenter if relevant and your name)