Abstract
The introductory chapter kicks off by exploring what fieldwork is, the types of fieldwork undertaken in the myriad of humanities subjects in Singapore across different levels of education, the value of fieldwork, some issues and challenges arising from such undertaking, and the way forward. It also provides an overview of the three sub-sections of the book—“Pedagogical Framework, Practice, and Perceptions,” “Roles of Archaeology and Anthropology,” and “Case Studies in the Field: Mono- and Multidisciplinary Dimensions”—as well as a brief summary of the individual chapters.
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Notes
- 1.
Occurring within the scope of an academic discipline or between the people active in such a discipline. See online Merriam-Webster Dictionary, accessed at https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/intradisciplinary#targetText=Definition%20of%20intradisciplinary,active%20in%20such%20a%20discipline, 2019, October 27.
- 2.
Problem-based learning—A student-centered pedagogy in which students learn about a subject through the experience of solving an open-ended problem found in trigger material; inquiry-based learning—A form of active learning that starts by posing questions, problems or scenarios to students; rather than presenting known facts; place-based learning—An approach to curriculum development and instruction that directs students’ attention to local culture, phenomena, and issues as the basis for at least some of the learning they encounter in school; project-based learning—A student-centered pedagogy which believes that students acquire a deeper knowledge through active exploration of real-world challenges and problems.
- 3.
Broad worldviews such as the organismic worldview believes that the learning impulse of children emanated from within the child while the developmental contextualistic worldview believes that learning in children is a mixture of impulse from within the child as well as from the external environment. Closely overlapping with developmental theories such as the Constructivist Theory, Multiple Intelligence Theory and Sociohistorical Approach, these paradigms advocate that there is autonomy in children, there are multiple intelligences in them or that cultural factors affect their learning more than other inputs.
- 4.
In terms of curriculum approaches, the transaction paradigm see knowledge as “being constructed and reconstructed by participating in the teaching-learning act [coordinated by teachers]” while the transmission paradigm sees knowledge as primarily organized and dispensed by the teachers.
- 5.
The geography fieldwork pedagogy course at the National Institute of Education aims to serve purposefully as an important transitional space for these student teachers themselves to acquire the necessary geography pedagogical content knowledge and skills as well as to revisit their conceptions of fieldwork.
- 6.
In an informal survey conducted in 2019 without identifiers on one batch of postgraduate in diploma of education student teachers (N = 11), they were issued seven questions on Google Form. Slightly more than half had gone on a fieldtrip designed specifically for the subject of history (54.5%) (geography is the subject in which students were more likely to experience fieldtrips). Trainees who experienced fieldtrips were more likely to associate them with the agenda of heritage/National Education (NE) trails rather than with the core curriculum subject (of history) (54.5% vs 27.3%). The trips were more experienced as “fieldtrips” than “fieldwork”. As with the student-teachers surveyed in Tan’s study, the interviewees were hopeful that the NIE course would help them design better fieldtrips/fieldwork.
- 7.
A dialectical method of inquiry and debate by means of a carefully constructed series of leading questions to arrive at logical responses and to stimulate rational thinking.
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Sim, T.Y.H., Sim, H.H., Tan, G.C.I. (2021). A Brief Discussion of Issues and Summaries of Chapters. In: Sim, T.Y., Sim, H.H. (eds) Fieldwork in Humanities Education in Singapore. Studies in Singapore Education: Research, Innovation & Practice, vol 2. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-8233-2_1
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