Humanities Education in Singapore – Where to Next?

The Office of Education Research (OER), in collaboration with the Academy of Singapore Teachers, held a humanities education research seminar on 20 March 2018. The seminar showcased the implications of findings from NIE’s research in the areas of Social Studies, History and Geography education for the Singapore classroom. It also generated discussions among teachers, researchers and policymakers about the directions ahead for humanities education in Singapore.

Presenters at the seminar included faculty from NIE’s Humanities and Social Studies Education (HSSE) Academic Group and OER’s Centre for Research in Pedagogy and Practice (CRPP) and Learning Sciences Lab (LSL).

The first speaker, Dr. Dennis Kwek, Senior Research Scientist at CRPP and Assistant Dean of Research Communications at OER, shared on how teachers can promote deep inquiry in the Social Studies classroom and help students improve their reasoning skills.

Associate Professor Mark Baildon, Head of HSSE, outlined the strategies that teachers can adopt to guide students to become discerning readers of online sources.

Associate Professor Chang Chew Hung, Associate Dean of Professional Development at the Office of Graduate Studies and Professional Learning and Associate Professor of HSSE, explained how a learning progression framework for the teaching of climate change in geography can help students build on the knowledge they acquired in earlier school levels.

Dr Kenneth Lim, Research Scientist at LSL, described a field-based inquiry approach that can help to surface students’ intuitions about the factors that impact their local environments.

The final two presentationscentredon HSSE’s Signature Programmes in the Humanities – the Sustainability Learning Lab (SLL) and the Historian’s Lab.

Dr Tricia Seow, Senior Lecturer, and Associate Professor Kim Irvine from HSSE, jointly presented on the SLL, a signature programme that aims to foster geographical inquiry by engaging students and teachers in real-world and virtual fieldwork activities.

Finally, Dr Suhaimi Afandi, Senior Lecturer, and Associate Professor Ivy Lim, Assistant Head of Administration and Programmes, jointly presented on the Historian’s Lab, a signature programme that provides opportunities for students and teachers to learn history in an immersive and experiential manner.

The seminar concluded with a panel discussion moderated by Associate Professor Baildon, with Dr Kwek, Dr Seow, Dr Suhaimi and Dr Lim on the panel. Questions were focused on new directions to be taken in humanities education, while the panel addressed topics such as fostering inquiry-based learning in the humanities, metacognition and reflexive thinking across humanities subjects, and the role of teacher-centred pedagogy.