Secondary School Archives - Page 5 of 9

Index

Suhaimi Afandi

Secondary School

Developing Historical Habits of Mind through Inquiry

Author/s:

Suhaimi Afandi (National Institute of Education, Singapore) Eulalia Han (CHIJ Secondary School (Toa Payoh)) Keywords History Junior College Secondary School Inquiry Teaching Historical thinking Introduction Teaching history is not simply about getting students to learn “the right stories” or getting them to absorb transmitted knowledge about the past; it requires teachers to find means to develop students’ […]

Suhaimi Afandi (National Institute of Education, Singapore)
Eulalia Han (CHIJ Secondary School (Toa Payoh))

Keywords
History
Junior College
Secondary School
Inquiry Teaching
Historical thinking

Introduction
Teaching history is not simply about getting students to learn “the right stories” or getting them to absorb transmitted knowledge about the past; it requires teachers to find means to develop students’ historical understanding and to help these students make sense of the knowledge imparted through daily classroom instruction. As many of us already recognize, the knowledge we have about the past is never “given” or “just there” for the taking; the manner in which we come to know what we know about the past requires questioning, imagining, contextualising and (re-)constructing. History education researchers across many national contexts would agree that students need to be taught to understand the nature of historical knowledge – how such knowledge is constructed, how evidence is used to develop interpretations or support claims, how evidence/interpretation is adjudged as valid or credible, etc. – if they are to develop proper understandings about history. Acquiring proficiency in some of these processes calls for a mode of thinking (and an instructional approach) that can enable students to become confident and critical thinkers when studying history. This would involve cultivating certain historical habits of mind that work to develop students’ disciplinary ideas/understandings and help them become more adept at historical analysis. An instructional approach that uses historical inquiry as a pedagogical framework is more likely to provide opportunities for students to develop disciplinary ideas, and offers teachers with potential strategies and scaffolds to help deepen students’ understandings in more exciting ways. This article explores some ways teachers can make “the complex past” more accessible to students by helping them manage historical problems in the classroom while engaging them in disciplined inquiry about the past. It focuses on the use of inquiry as a means to develop good historical habits of mind, and demonstrates this idea by considering the ways students’ ideas (about significance, diversity, causation and accounts) can be developed through historical inquiry.

Download Full Article

Causal Layered Analysis: Deconstructing Singapore’s 2015 General Election

Author/s:

Karthikeyan Rajah Jefferson

Karthikeyan Rajah Jefferson (National University of Singapore) Keywords History Junior College Secondary School Analysis Abstract In explaining social phenomena, students are taught to explicate the causal mechanism between independent factors and a dependent outcome. However, this could lead to a superficial analysis of the phenomenon if students were to focus on precipitating factors. Hence, this paper […]

Karthikeyan Rajah Jefferson (National University of Singapore)

Keywords
History
Junior College
Secondary School
Analysis

Abstract
In explaining social phenomena, students are taught to explicate the causal mechanism between independent factors and a dependent outcome. However, this could lead to a superficial analysis of the phenomenon if students were to focus on precipitating factors. Hence, this paper contends that JC students should be exposed to complementary analytical approaches in order to transcend conventional frames of analysis. Inayatullah’s (2004) “Causal Layered Analysis” (CLA) could be an appropriate method to encourage students to unpack surface-level factors by drawing out their underlying and deeper causes. The CLA comprises four levels of analysis: the litany (precipitating causes), social causes (systemic causes), discourse/worldview (ideational causes) and myth/metaphor (core narratives). This can be illustrated by applying CLA to Singapore’s GE2015, which would suggest that the electorate’s voting patterns are not just the outcome of varied precipitating factors, but also the product of the existing political system and ideas about the nation-state.

Strands: Innovative ideas & approaches, Pedagogy, Issues
In humanities and social studies education, students are often taught to identify key factors that explain social phenomena in order to put forth an argumentative position. This approach is useful for imparting students with the skills to explain and elaborate on the causal logic between the factor and the argument, but could lead to a superficial understanding of the phenomenon if the student solely focuses on precipitating factors. Hence, this skillset should be complemented with critical thought to ascertain the different levels of causation for a more in-depth analysis. This paper contends that the “Causal Layered Analysis” (CLA) by Sohail Inayatullah could be a useful toolkit for students to educe the deeper causes from the surface-level ones. Inayatullah (2004) conceptualized the CLA as a research methodology to deconstruct an existing social reality into “different levels of reality and ways of knowing” in order to transcend the “conventional framing of issues” (p. 18). He posits that there are four levels of analysis: the litany, social causes, discourse/worldview, and myth/metaphor. The litany, “the unquestioned view of reality” or the precipitating factors, can be further explained by underlying systemic causes at the social causation level. In turn, the social causes are legitimated by deeply held worldviews and “discursive assumptions” that are expressed by metaphors or myths, which provide “a gut/emotional level of experience to the worldview under inquiry” (Inayatullah, 2004, p. 8). In other words, the CLA could be operationalized by posing a series of questions. What are the immediate/precipitating factors that caused this phenomenon? Are there any systemic (political, social, economic, and historical) factors that enabled it? What are the justifications/rationales for this arrangement? Are there any core narratives or metaphors that reproduce the rationale? Although CLA is ultimately geared towards policy issues to effect change, the manner in which it deconstructs social phenomena could be instructive for critical analysis.

Download Full Article

Shifting Scales of Time and Space: Establishing Connections Across the Humanities

Author/s:

Tharuka Prematillake Thibbotuwawa

Tharuka Prematillake Thibbotuwawa (National Institute of Education, Singapore) Keywords History Social Studies Junior College Secondary School Historical thinking Introduction Meaningful understanding of history and geography involves being able to identify and establish connections across time and space scales (An et al., 2015; Bain, 2005; Baker, 2003; Foskett, 1999). Nonetheless, one key problem in the history and […]

Tharuka Prematillake Thibbotuwawa (National Institute of Education, Singapore)

Keywords
History
Social Studies
Junior College
Secondary School
Historical thinking

Introduction
Meaningful understanding of history and geography involves being able to identify and establish connections across time and space scales (An et al., 2015; Bain, 2005; Baker, 2003; Foskett, 1999). Nonetheless, one key problem in the history and geography curricula of schools today is this lack of connectivity and sense of scale.[i] Thus, it is appropriate to find out how to help teachers and students expand their disciplinary thinking towards a more holistic (or interdisciplinary) approach that encourages them to shift scales and make connections across time and space. To answer this question, this article proposes a potential conceptual framework in which History and Geography, as interdisciplinary subjects, can conduct meaningful dialogues with each other so that students and teachers can extend their thinking to deepen their understanding of both disciplines and to identify connections across scales of time and place. This framework will be introduced through two initiatives, The Historian’s Lab (HL) and The Sustainability Learning Lab (SLL), funded by an EduLab grant, and currently being developed by the staff in the Humanities and Social Studies Education Academic Group (HSSE AG) in the National Institute of Education (NIE), (Singapore). However, it is important to note that this framework is a work-in-progress and will be further modified and developed as the project moves forward.

Background
Historians and geographers have long argued the necessity of viewing both History and Geography (as subjects) from wider perspectives – beyond isolated events of the past or physical geographic features – to identify connections across time and space (Baker, 2003). For instance, historian Geoffrey Barraclough has emphasised the need to look beyond national histories to a whole world system of history, arguing that it is not only possible but also necessary to view the past “by attuning it to the world in which we live in today” (as cited in Baker, 2003, p.194), so as to gain a more sophisticated understanding of historical events. Hence, instead of the traditional narrow focus on Asian history as the history of a region, it could be understood in relation to Asia’s place in the world and through making connections to the past, present and future across both time and space. In a keynote address at the recent Humanities Colloquium organised by NIE (2016), historian Bob Bain, in channelling French historian Emmaunuel Le Roy Ladurie, conveyed a similar idea. Using Ladurie’s famous observation of historians being either parachutists or truffle-hunters, Bain expanded the metaphors to state his case that it is a necessity for historians to be both truffle-hunters and parachutists.[ii]

Download Full Article

Developing Historical and Metahistorical Thinking in History Classrooms: Some Reflections on Research and Practice

Author/s:

Arthur Chapman

Arthur Chapman (UCL Institute of Education) Keywords History Junior College Secondary School Approaches to teaching history Teachers’ Practice Abstract The history of history education, past and present, often resembles a history of contestation, in which rival and polarized understandings of the meanings of ‘history’ and ‘history education’ vie for dominance (Nakou and Barca, 2010). A common […]

Arthur Chapman (UCL Institute of Education)

Keywords
History
Junior College
Secondary School
Approaches to teaching history
Teachers’ Practice

Abstract
The history of history education, past and present, often resembles a history of contestation, in which rival and polarized understandings of the meanings of ‘history’ and ‘history education’ vie for dominance (Nakou and Barca, 2010). A common polarity in debates on history curricula is the opposition between ‘knowledge’ and ‘skill’, an opposition that has had considerable currency in recent curriculum reform processes in England which have emphasized ‘core knowledge’ (DfE, 2013).

Drawing on examples of classroom practice (Chapman, 2003; Woodcock, 2005; Buxton, 2010) and on systematic research and theorizing (Shemilt, 1983; Lee and Shemilt, 2009) this paper aims to destabilize such binary talk and to explore the ways in which ‘first order’ knowledge and understanding about the past and ‘second order’ or metahistorical knowledge and understanding of how the discipline of history works are both logically inter-related and inseparable in practical terms. The notion of historical ‘enquiry’ (Counsell, 2011) is explored as a pedagogic tool for the simultaneous development of these inter-related dimensions of historical thinking.

Introduction
As has often been the case around the world (Carretero, 2011; Nakou and Barca, eds., 2010; Taylor and Guyver, eds., 2011), recent public discussions of history curriculum and pedagogy in England have tended to be structured through overdrawn dichotomies – between ‘content’ and ‘skills’, between ‘traditional’ and ‘progressive’ and between ‘child-centred’ and ‘subject-centred’ pedagogies (Lee, 2011, pp.132-134). This paper aims to demonstrate the emptiness of these oppositions through discussion of a key aspect of historical understanding – historical explanation. It will argue that these oppositions present us with fallacious choices that restrict options to ‘either / or’ where, in reality, more complex choices, including ‘both / and’, are possible and desirable and, very probably, inevitable.

Download Full Article

Military Government and its Discontents: The Significance of the British Military Administration in the History of Singapore and Malaya

Author/s:

Kelvin Ng

Kelvin Ng (CPDD, MOE) Keywords History Junior College Secondary School Military Government History of Singapore and Malaya Abstract The post-war British military government in Singapore and Malaya has often been relegated to a marginal place in historiography. In this article, I argue that this period bears closer study, because its legacies were central to the subsequent […]

Kelvin Ng (CPDD, MOE)

Keywords
History
Junior College
Secondary School
Military Government
History of Singapore and Malaya

Abstract
The post-war British military government in Singapore and Malaya has often been relegated to a marginal place in historiography. In this article, I argue that this period bears closer study, because its legacies were central to the subsequent turbulent political history of the region, and therefore has much relevance to both researchers and educators.

An Epilogue, a Footnote, and a Case of Historiographical Neglect
In the late summer of 1945, a great reckoning loomed across Southeast Asia. In Burma, a mechanised British army had pursued ragged and demoralised Japanese forces across the Chindwin and Irrawaddy rivers and raced to liberate Rangoon before the monsoon broke. At the other end of Asia, America’s unparalleled transoceanic campaign had arrived at the doorstep of the Japanese home islands. Starved by submarine warfare, its urban centres levelled by firebombing, the Japanese imperium was on its last legs. Throughout the occupied Southeast Asian territories, Japanese garrisons without hope of resupply or evacuation prepared to fight to the end. The battle-hardened British and Indian troops gathered to avenge the disasters of 1942 faced a grim struggle.

Download Full Article

Serious Fun: Game Design to Support Learning about the Surrender of Singapore

Author/s:

Suny Matt Gaydos

Suny Matt Gaydos (South Korea) Tharuka Prematillake Thibbotuwawa (National Institute of Education, Singapore) Neo Wei Leng (National Institute of Education, Singapore) Connie Tan Keni (National Institute of Education, Singapore) Suhaimi Afandi (National Institute of Education, Singapore) Mark Baildon (National Institute of Education (Singapore)) Keywords History Junior College Secondary School Surrender of Singapore Game Design Serious Fun: Game Design to Support Learning […]

Suny Matt Gaydos (South Korea)
Tharuka Prematillake Thibbotuwawa (National Institute of Education, Singapore)
Neo Wei Leng (National Institute of Education, Singapore)
Connie Tan Keni (National Institute of Education, Singapore)
Suhaimi Afandi (National Institute of Education, Singapore)
Mark Baildon (National Institute of Education (Singapore))

Keywords
History
Junior College
Secondary School
Surrender of Singapore
Game Design

Serious Fun: Game Design to Support Learning about the Surrender of Singapore
Chronology, or putting past events in temporal order, is a starting point for making sense of the past (Seixas & Morton, 2013). However, sequencing the past into chronological order requires more than the memorization of events and their dates. Chronological thinking is central to historical reasoning because it enables us to organize our thinking about the past, consider relationships between events, determine cause and effect, and identify the structure or “plotline” of stories told about the past (i.e., those contained in accounts or historical narratives). It entails more than simply filling out a timeline, although timelines are essential tools for helping students understand chronological order and cause and effect relationships, and other patterns in history.

In this article, we highlight the development of a game, Singapore Surrenders!, collaboratively designed by a group of historians, history education specialists, and game designers to help students develop their chronological reasoning skills and to learn about events leading to Singapore’s surrender during World War II. We outline our conceptualization of the game, the process of designing the game, and its implementation in an undergraduate course on Singapore history.

The Thinking behind the Design
The Singapore Surrenders! game was conceptualized as a part of The Historian’s Lab, an effort initiated by the Humanities and Social Studies Education (HSSE) Academic Group at the National Institute of Education. The theoretical framework which defines The Historian’s Lab has been generally influenced by the work of Vygotsky (1978) and Bruner (1977), especially with regard to their views on the child as an active problem-solver, having his or her own ways of making sense of the world, and whose level of psychological development can be potentially improved under proper adult guidance or collaboration with more capable peers. In these classrooms, the teacher designs and facilitates dynamic learning experiences and supports the child’s construction of knowledge by encouraging active participation and collaboration (Mercer, 1991). Notions of constructivism, situated learning (Lave, 1988; Lave & Wenger, 1991) and cognitive social learning (Rogoff & Lave, 1984; Rogoff, Matusov, & White, 1996) have guided the Lab’s design of curriculum materials and rich tasks to support student learning. These ideas may be summarized by the four principles that undergird the project’s approach to learning and knowledge construction, namely: a) that learning is interactional and collaborative in nature; b) that learning occurs through participation in a community; c) that knowledge is socially constructed within specific contexts and social engagements; and d) that learner competency can be progressively developed through the co-sharing of knowledge and the design of appropriate scaffolding and guidance.

Download Full Article

Towards an Effective Professional Development Model to Deepen History Teachers’ Understanding of Historical Concepts

Author/s:

Andrew Anthony

Andrew Anthony (Academy of Singapore Teachers (Singapore)) Lloyd Yeo (Academy of Singapore Teachers (Singapore)) Suhaimi Afandi (National Institute of Education, Singapore) Keywords History Junior College Secondary School Approaches to teaching history Abstract This small-scale study explores professional development (PD) designs for history teachers in Singapore and proposes a PD model that uses a job-embedded collaborative approach. Drawing from […]

Andrew Anthony (Academy of Singapore Teachers (Singapore))
Lloyd Yeo (Academy of Singapore Teachers (Singapore))
Suhaimi Afandi (National Institute of Education, Singapore)

Keywords
History
Junior College
Secondary School
Approaches to teaching history

Abstract
This small-scale study explores professional development (PD) designs for history teachers in Singapore and proposes a PD model that uses a job-embedded collaborative approach. Drawing from research on effective PD and data gathered from questionnaires and interviews conducted with participants involved in a PD workshop, this paper considers the value of collaborative PD approaches aimed at promoting and encouraging historical thinking. The authors conclude that PD history workshops that are carefully designed to support the development of teachers’ professional knowledge bases, and ones that offer opportunities for teachers to actively translate conceptual ideas into concrete teaching strategies, are critical in transforming beliefs and practices that can work towards more robust historical thinking and discourse in the classroom.

Introduction
The teaching and learning of History as a disciplinary field of study in schools is a complex and sophisticated endeavor. The assumption that acquiring historical knowledge may be achieved simply by committing historical narratives (including factual details such as events, names and dates) to memory no longer holds. Preparing students for education in the 21^st century involves expanding their knowledge base beyond content mastery or information accumulation, to include deeper understanding about the nature of a specific discipline and the development of relevant thinking and reasoning skills that can allow students to engage with the subject matter. Over the past few decades, research on history education has shown that learning history, for the purpose of deeper understanding, involves not only the study of historical narratives but also the acquisition of discipline-specific cognitive strategies that students can use to better learn and understand the past. To be able to better understand the nature of history, students must be equipped not only with the relevant historical content but also with the necessary tools that can enable them to think historically about the past.

Download Full Article

Teaching for Historical Understanding (TfHU): Developing a Discipline-based Curriculum Model at Tanjong Katong Secondary School

Author/s:

Suhaimi Afandi

Suhaimi Afandi (National Institute of Education, Singapore) Rozanah Basrun (Tanjong Katong Secondary School, Singapore) Nani Rahayu Mohamed (Tanjong Katong Secondary School, Singapore) Liz Sriyanti Jamaluddin (Tanjong Katong Secondary School, Singapore) Sya Feena (Tanjong Katong Secondary School, Singapore) Nur Hazelin Idayu (Tanjong Katong Secondary School, Singapore) Keywords History Junior College Secondary School Abstract This paper reports the experiences of the History Unit […]

Suhaimi Afandi (National Institute of Education, Singapore)
Rozanah Basrun (Tanjong Katong Secondary School, Singapore)
Nani Rahayu Mohamed (Tanjong Katong Secondary School, Singapore)
Liz Sriyanti Jamaluddin (Tanjong Katong Secondary School, Singapore)
Sya Feena (Tanjong Katong Secondary School, Singapore)
Nur Hazelin Idayu (Tanjong Katong Secondary School, Singapore)

Keywords
History
Junior College
Secondary School

Abstract
This paper reports the experiences of the History Unit at Tanjong Katong Secondary School (TKSS) in their attempts to craft a discipline-based curriculum model focusing on instruction that develops students’ historical understandings. The paper describes the project structure and development of the Tanjong Katong (TK) Teaching for Historical Understanding (TfHU) approach to historical instruction, shares some reflections by teacher participants involved in the project, and highlights several learning points and implications for curriculum change at TKSS. The history teachers at TKSS recognised that the TfHU project had further developed their awareness of more effective methods to teach history, and were confident that the focus on disciplinary understandings will enhance student engagement in their history classrooms. They demonstrated strong belief that students can be made to understand complex issues in history if they are given the proper tools or cognitive challenges suitably crafted to develop deeper thinking about aspects of the discipline.

Introduction
Recent efforts to address apparent shortcomings in the teaching and learning of history in schools have seen remarkable changes in the way the national history curriculum has been conceived. Across all age and academic levels (lower secondary, upper secondary and post-secondary) history instruction has shifted towards an approach that is inquiry-based, and one that focuses on the development of students’ historical understanding (MOE, 2012). At its best, a curriculum that uses historical inquiry as a pedagogical framework, supports it with ample opportunities for students to engage in rich tasks that are structured to develop disciplinary ideas about history, and provides teachers with interventionist strategies or scaffolds to help manage students’ preconceptions is more likely to develop deeper historical understandings among its learners. Designing a framework for curriculum development with progression in mind would serve not only as a focal point for thinking about ways to improve students’ ideas about history, but also offer opportunities for formative assessment strategies that are targeted at moving students’ ideas forward. Yet, how far have schools embraced the idea of history education as one that deepens students’ ideas and understandings about the historical discipline? To what extent has inquiry been successful in fostering students’ thinking and understanding in history? Has historical instruction in local classrooms changed in a way that has seen a shift from content aggregation and accumulation to one that focuses on providing students with opportunities to develop disciplinary practices and conceptual understandings? These are important questions that require addressing, but ones that may not be sufficiently tackled within the scope of the current paper. Instead, this paper reports the experiences of the History Unit at Tanjong Katong Secondary School (TKSS) and their attempts to craft a discipline-based curriculum model that placed focus on instruction that develops students’ historical understandings. The paper describes the project structure and development of the Tanjong Katong (TK) Teaching for Historical Understanding (TfHU) approach to historical instruction, shares some reflections by teacher participants who went through the process of undertaking to teach for understanding, and highlights several learning points and implications for curriculum change at TKSS.

Download Full Article

Conceptual Teaching in Primary Social Studies: Teaching the Primary Three Reader,“Making the Little Red Dot Blue and Brown” in a Conceptual Way

Author/s:

Sim Hwee Hwang

Sim Hwee Hwang (National Institute of Education, Singapore) Keywords Social Studies Junior College Secondary School Primary School Social Studies Conceptual Teaching Abstract This paper looks at what conceptual teaching is about, the differences between conceptual and traditional teaching and the advantages of conceptual teaching. Different deductive and inductive approaches for teaching the big ideas of subject […]

Sim Hwee Hwang (National Institute of Education, Singapore)

Keywords
Social Studies
Junior College
Secondary School
Primary School
Social Studies
Conceptual Teaching

Abstract
This paper looks at what conceptual teaching is about, the differences between conceptual and traditional teaching and the advantages of conceptual teaching. Different deductive and inductive approaches for teaching the big ideas of subject matter, that is, the concepts and generalisations, are described. The paper also focuses on the teaching of the primary three social studies reader entitled, “Making the Little Red Dot Blue and Brown” using some of the conceptual teaching approaches mentioned. The paper concludes with the importance of teacher subject matter knowledge in conceptual teaching.

A Paradigm Shift: Conceptual Teaching for Primary Social Studies
One longstanding issue which primary social studies teachers in Singapore schools face is the challenge of content coverage, especially in the upper primary, within a tight curriculum time. As it is, the time allocation for lower primary social studies teaching is a single period of 30 minutes per week; and for upper primary, it can range from a weekly of two periods of 60 minutes (Primary 4) to three periods of 90 minutes (Primary 5 and 6) per week (CPDD, 2013). Moreover, the upper primary periods are not necessary arranged back to back for uninterrupted teaching and the periods at all levels can be scheduled just after the morning school assembly, recess or physical education or music lessons. When such periods do not end on time, the amount of time for actual social studies teaching can be reduced as time is needed for pupil movement and settling down. Some teachers worry that if they do not teach the social studies textbooks produced by the Ministry of Education (MOE) from cover to cover, they are not doing their job as teachers properly. For these teachers, the “tyranny of content coverage” is a pressing concern.

To overcome the above-mentioned challenge, one needs to rethink the way primary social studies can be taught. The paradigm shift requires one to teach conceptually but what is conceptual teaching? According to Erickson (2002, 2007, 2008), conceptual teaching or concept-based instruction as she called it goes beyond fact acquisition. It is about teaching the big ideas of a subject matter using relevant content, information or facts to support that teaching. Teachers do not have to teach all the factual content in conceptual teaching. Instead they need to select and reorganise only the relevant ones to teach these big ideas. Conceptual teaching is best achieved through inductive teaching as pupils are guided to understand the big ideas rather than through direct instruction of what these ideas are. The insights they gain from such teaching can help them retain and better transfer their learning to other contexts.

Download Full Article

Diversity: Approaches to building conceptual understanding in the Social Studies classroom

Author/s:

Koh Kar Loong Kenneth

Koh Kar Loong Kenneth (Yuying Secondary School (Singapore)) Chelva Rajah S N (National Institute of Education (Singapore)) Keywords Social Studies Junior College Secondary School Understanding Social Studies Diversity Abstract With the heightened emphasis placed on students’ understanding of core content or key concepts in the 2016 Social Studies curriculum in secondary schools, it remains of utmost interest […]

Koh Kar Loong Kenneth (Yuying Secondary School (Singapore))
Chelva Rajah S N (National Institute of Education (Singapore))

Keywords
Social Studies
Junior College
Secondary School
Understanding Social Studies
Diversity

Abstract
With the heightened emphasis placed on students’ understanding of core content or key concepts in the 2016 Social Studies curriculum in secondary schools, it remains of utmost interest for the social studies teacher to revisit some of the key strategies and beliefs involved in building conceptual understanding in the classroom. This pedagogy was developed to strengthen students’ understanding and appreciation of key concepts and principles while encouraging them to apply these concepts to their understanding of the world around them. This article thus seeks to explore the various pedagogical beliefs, instructional strategies and challenges that would be applicable for the classroom teacher in the conduct of the new Social Studies syllabus. For the purpose of this article, we will be touching on the concept of diversity to anchor our discussions. Having a good grasp of the key concept of diversity is an essential part of students’ learning as this concept forms the building blocks for gaining a better understanding about the issue on ‘Living in a Diverse Society’.

Introduction
The Ministry of Education, Singapore introduced a new Social Studies syllabus in 2016, which presents a paradigm shift in the teaching of the subject. Rather than the traditional content-based mode of teaching, the new syllabus emphasises an issue-based pedagogy that revolves around student mastery of core content (key concepts) and dynamic content (case studies). This pedagogy was developed to strengthen students’ understanding and appreciation of key concepts and principles while encouraging them to apply these concepts to their understanding of the world around them. The revised syllabus revolves around three broad issues: citizenship and governance, diverse society, and globalisation.

Download Full Article

HSSE Online

Index

Suhaimi Afandi

Authors List

Authors List

Developing Historical Habits of Mind through Inquiry

Causal Layered Analysis: Deconstructing Singapore’s 2015 General Election

Shifting Scales of Time and Space: Establishing Connections Across the Humanities

Developing Historical and Metahistorical Thinking in History Classrooms: Some Reflections on Research and Practice

Military Government and its Discontents: The Significance of the British Military Administration in the History of Singapore and Malaya

Serious Fun: Game Design to Support Learning about the Surrender of Singapore

Towards an Effective Professional Development Model to Deepen History Teachers’ Understanding of Historical Concepts

Teaching for Historical Understanding (TfHU): Developing a Discipline-based Curriculum Model at Tanjong Katong Secondary School

Conceptual Teaching in Primary Social Studies: Teaching the Primary Three Reader,“Making the Little Red Dot Blue and Brown” in a Conceptual Way

Diversity: Approaches to building conceptual understanding in the Social Studies classroom

HSSE Online

HSSE Online