“An education in Geography is about students studying the Atlas and learning how to locate different cities on a map.”
This is perhaps the most common misconception that some students and parents, or even society at large has about the study of Geography.
While it might have been true in the past, it is important to realise that we have long passed the era of exploration and discovery. Rather, Geography today is concerned with different systems and processes in the world, and how human and other physical beings affect and are affected by those systems. The study is underpinned by these six key concepts:
- Space
- Place
- Scale
- Physical and human processes
- Environmental and cultural diversity
- Interdependence
The Geography syllabus in Singapore’s education system aims to foster an understanding of these concepts in students in order to expand their knowledge, understanding and skills of the subject.
At Mulberry Education, we have put in place two key objectives of our Geography lessons to fulfil the aforementioned aim. They are:
- Teaching students to go beyond factual identification of concepts to analyze, synthesize and produce reasoned arguments.
- Helping students to acquire the skills necessary to conduct inquiry and research in a real-world context
True to the dynamic nature of the subject, the structure of our lessons is adapted according to the needs of different students. Here are some of the skills that our students will acquire:
- Extract relevant information from different types of geographical data
- Analyse, evaluate and synthesise geographical data according to different question requirements.
- Apply relevant factual knowledge – geographical facts, concepts, processes, interactions and trends to answer questions.
- Evaluate techniques, strategies and management practices according to different criteria
- Fieldwork techniques – identification of geographical question, sequence of fieldwork inquiry, primary and secondary data collection methods