HSSE Online Editorial

The social studies scene in Singapore is rapidly evolving. Revised curricula are being rolled out together with renewed accentuation on more active and engaging pedagogies and deliberate emphasis on enabling and empowering every student to become an independent learner, a critical thinker and a culturally sensitive citizen. This edition of HSSE Online brings together ideas from teacher educators and practitioners on student-centred pedagogies, particularly, inquiry-based learning that aim to achieve these citizenship education goals.

In the first article, Melvin Wang, Mashita Abdol Rahman, Sudheesh Balakrishna Pillai and Goh Yong Yong share a school-based case study of how primary sources can be used to create inquiry-based, student-centered learning experiences in the primary social studies curriculum. Their innovative study highlights the potential of using sources to stimulate inquiry and deepen children’s understanding of social studies content. Chee Min Fui extends the potential of using sources to stimulate children’s inquiry into culture so as to broaden and deepen their learning about that concept. She offers useful examples of enduring understandings about culture together with suggested classroom inquiry activities such as interviewing resource persons about their culture.

Inquiry outside the classroom in the form of fieldwork is the focus of the next article where Sim Hwee Hwang shares about the merits of doing fieldwork in children’s localities, identifies the different children’s localities and suggests themes for possible fieldwork.  Guidelines on how to plan such fieldwork for effective learning as well as two examples of fieldwork in children’s localities are included. The inquiry method is exemplified in Yang Peidong and Chow Lee Tat’s article in which they share the findings of a research that was carried out to find out the characteristics and experiences of immigrant teachers in mainstream Singapore primary and secondary schools. The research also focused on the practical challenges and value tensions that these immigrant teachers encounter in their professional settings.

In the final article Kho Ee Moi advocates the use of differentiated instruction so as to enable every child to learn and make sure no child falls between the cracks. The article highlights the need for differentiated instruction to manage the increasing diversity in our classrooms today and explains, with examples, how this can be carried out in the primary social studies classroom.

We hope you will be encouraged through these articles to use more inquiry-based instructional methods and differentiated instruction in the social studies classroom. Although many of the ideas shared here are centred on the primary social studies curriculum, they can easily be adopted and adapted for secondary school.

Kho Ee Moi
Sim Hwee Hwang
Chee Min Fui

Editors, HSSE Online