DOI: 10.25340/r4/warcio
title: Related Data for Thesis/Dissertation: A study of Singapore geography teachers in responding to curriculum changes

description: In Singapore’s education system, teachers are highly encouraged by the Ministry of Education (MOE) to take up professional development (PD) courses to keep abreast with curriculum change cycles for school subjects that occur every six to eight years. The Geographical Inquiry (GI) was introduced in 2012 that included fieldwork (Curriculum Planning and Development Division, 2017) and implemented in 2013 to 2022 (Curriculum Planning and Development, 2023) school geography syllabus. It was an ambitious initiative as it encompassed concurrent changes to the national geography syllabus in terms of content, pedagogy, and assessment. Yet, the literature on curriculum transition, and selection of PD and subsequent practices, have been sparse. This study questions how teachers decide on the type of PD to take and to make sense of the newly acquired knowledge for their daily curriculum making. The qualitative study draws upon grounded theory that is developed from the perspectives and practices of ten geography teachers in their implementation of fieldwork assessment and inquiry in a newly introduced curriculum. To address how teacher PD can address opportunities and challenges in schools during curriculum transitions, the research study proposes an analogical framework, namely the ‘Professional Development Torchlight’ (PDT), that builds upon existing theories of social behaviour and teachers’ decision-making models in the context of curriculum change. Firstly, the research study adopted ‘structuration theory’ by Giddens (1984) to reflect the dynamic social systems in schools that are (re)produced by teachers’ agency while interacting with their existing school structures. The research study also considered teacher’s agency at the center of the ‘curriculum making model’ (Lambert and Hopkin, 2014). The PDT therefore demonstrates various competing concerns and subsequent selections made by Singapore geography teachers during their enactment of the fieldwork inquiry assessment, a new component to the geography curriculum. The methodology used was mainly qualitative and aimed at developing a framework to describe how teachers make decisions about what professional development courses to take. The inductive-deductive methodology used is consistent with both developing the framework through cases studies, as well as finding evidence to support the discussion based on structuration and curriculum making. It sets out to discover the opportunities and challenges situated within teachers’ school contexts that might influence their decision-making of PD activities during curriculum changes. It is also interested in establishing evidence and locating subsequent teacher practices in the classrooms and fieldwork. With the PDT, findings can describe how selections were made and how these were supported by powerful geographical knowledge (PGK). The translation of initiatives from PD activities are informed by teachers’ own interpretations and understandings during curriculum changes across place (schools) and time. For the future, it hopes teachers exercise informed decisions and draw upon their agency to navigate and implement learned practices in their respective PD learning journeys.