Singapore: Curriculum Making and Geographical Learning Progressions

Abstract

The school geography in Singapore has a few organizing themes that are consistently featured in the curriculum from primary to post-secondary levels. In examining the historical development of learning progressions in school geography and its trajectory set against a rapidly globalizing world, the learning of climate change across different levels is used as a frame of reference for this chapter. In addition to analyzing curriculum documents, the curriculum making process (Lambert and Hopkin 2014) in the Singapore case of climate change learning is examined using Bennetts’ (2005) “Progressions in Geographical Understanding” from the lower to upper secondary levels. In particular, the analysis will focus on the construct of geographical understanding through the six key geographical concepts identified in the Singapore curriculum, in addition to the concept of curriculum development for each key stage of the students’ progression on learning about climate change.