Abstract

This paper examines the strengths and constraints of the Singapore Secondary Geography curriculum in advancing sustainability education and suggests that current approaches to sustainability can lead to simplified representations of climate solutions, limited engagement with social and ethical trade-offs, and insufficient attention to unequal impacts across places and communities, even within student-centred classroom contexts.Drawing on lesson examples, learning artefacts and student reflections, this paper illustrates how teacher curriculum-making enables the enacted curriculum to complement the intended curriculum in equipping students to think through systems, recognise contested sustainability pathways, and act as informed stewards of their environment. Through intentional task design, scaffolded inquiry and reflective dialogue, classroom enactment moves learning beyond discrete topics towards understanding the consequences and feedback loops across human and environmental systems. Sustainability is therefore approached not as arriving at a set of correct answers, but as exercising judgment through ethical
reasoning and careful considerations of trade-offs.

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