Susan Adler (University of Missouri-Kansas City)
Kho Ee Moi (National Institute of Education, Singapore)

Keywords
Primary Social Studies
Primary School
Primary Social Studies

Abstract
This paper explores the question of the nature and purpose of social studies with the aim of showing the relevance and importance of teaching the subject well. The authors argue that social studies is about citizenship education and as such, is an important subject in the school curriculum. Teachers’ orientations towards the subject, that is, the beliefs about the goals of the subject and perspectives that teachers may hold about what constitute critical knowledge, skills and values to be taught are also discussed. Some key knowledge, skills and values essential to developing young people to become informed, concerned and participative citizens are highlighted with some examples of what lessons may look like.

Introduction
The start of a new school year is approaching and Ms Tan, who teaches Primary 4 is busy preparing for the new students with whom she will be working.  Although she is starting her fifth year in the classroom, she is still excited, and a little apprehensive, when the school year begins.  Today she is rethinking some of the social studies activities she and her Primary 4 colleagues had developed in the past.  Tomorrow they will all be at the meeting, and she wants to be ready with some new ideas.  She wants the teachers, and most importantly the children, to understand how meaningful social studies can be.  Ms Tan worries that too often the other teachers will put aside social studies lessons in order to concentrate on the “more important” subjects such as Maths and English Language. “What could be more important than the study of people, how they live together and how we got to where we are today?” Ms Tan wonders.  Ms Tan believes that if our children do not understand themselves and the social and physical world in which they live, it will not really matter, in the long run, that they excel in Maths, understand scientific method or can write good essays.  She knows all these things are important, but if children do not learn how to knowledgeably participate in their communities, their nation and the world, all the rest will have no meaning.

Ms Tan is facing a dilemma familiar to many teachers – making sure there is time in the primary school curriculum to teach social studies and to teach it well.  Ms Tan’s students are very lucky.  Not only does she believe that social studies is important, but she has a clear sense of why it is important and what students ought to learn from their social studies classes in primary school.  Think back to your own experience as a student in social studies.  Do you remember the class as dull?  Did it seem to be a lot of information that really never held together or did it seem interesting?  Did your teachers sometimes drop social studies altogether in order to teach subjects considered by some to be “more important”?  Or was it exciting and engaging?  Whether social studies is exciting, interesting and challenging or dull and boring, or even ignored, depends greatly on the teacher.  Teachers who understand and appreciate the purposes and goals of social studies are more likely to find ways to make its teaching meaningful to the learners.  Understanding the goals of social studies will help you to ensure that the knowledge, skills and values that are so vital to social studies will be a part of the actual curriculum you teach, not just words in the syllabus and the textbook.  This paper will explore various ideas about the goals and purposes of teaching social studies. As you read through this paper, consider where you stand and what you believe should be the reasons for children to learn social studies.

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H Doreen Tan (Singapore International School (Hong Kong))

Keywords
Primary Social Studies
Primary School
Primary Social Studies

Abstract
This article looks at the nature of history and how we can teach history as a discipline. It suggests several steps that teachers may want to use to teach history as an investigation as well as how to do history in the field.

Introduction
What are your memories of how you were taught history? I was born in the era, when we had history as a subject at primary level. My experience of history at the primary level was that of a story told. Sometimes the stories were interesting, if I had a teacher who was a good storyteller, sometimes not. At the lower secondary level, we underlined ‘important’ points in our textbook and at the upper secondary level, we took notes, which the teacher dictated from her notebook. For the ‘A’ levels, we referred to our textbooks, as our teachers lectured. My experience as a student of history for the first 12 years of my education is that history is a story told, of some events in the past which had nothing to do with me as all I was required to do was memorise the information taught and regurgitate it during examinations. Up to this point, History to me equaled the past as that was what I was told and I could read about the past from the textbooks which we did not question. However, the past will remain in the past unless someone records it or someone attempts to recreate it by looking at the records left behind. It was only at the university level that my experience of history changed as we examined different perspectives through different readings or sources and wrote our own accounts based on these readings. So what is history and how do we teach history?

Many of us were taught history as a body of knowledge to be memorised and forgotten after our examinations. Did you have the same experience? Or were you a product of the syllabus change in 2000 whereby you were taught content followed by source-based questions but without seeing the relationship between the two? Many history teachers when interviewed could not tell me whether history was a discipline as they were never taught the processes of historical investigation. However, they were able to articulate that science is a discipline as they had to do laboratory work when they were in school. Thus, our belief or understanding about a subject is also formed by how we were taught it in school.

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