Abstract
Fieldtrips play a crucial role in students’ learning by providing them with a shared social experience beyond the confines of the classroom. The chapter highlights the value of “everyday spaces” in historical fieldtrips. These spaces are authentic and are more commonly associated with mundane day-to-day living rather than spaces dedicated for historical study such as museums and heritage sites. Nonetheless, they can enhance students’ understanding of history and heighten their awareness that the past is all around them. Reframing such everyday spaces as a platform for history education is empowering—it allows for a diversity of learning experiences and data collection and brings to life historical concepts through a greater degree of interaction between the students and space, as the former become active constructors of historical knowledge. Everyday spaces also lend themselves naturally to a multidisciplinary approach of learning, which consequently provides opportunities for teachers to incorporate other disciplines into the fieldtrip. In this chapter, a fieldtrip to Balestier, a subzone in the central region of Singapore, is presented to illustrate the value and potential of everyday spaces for the teaching and learning of history.
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Asmira, E., Tay, S. (2021). A Case for “Everyday Spaces” in Historical Fieldtrips. 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_3
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