Singapore
Singapore
In the first article of a three-part series looking at how lessons in Singapore’s schools have evolved to become more relevant and engaging, CNA journalist Aqil Haziq Mahmud went back to the classroom to find out how Geography has changed since he was a pupil.
CNA journalist Aqil Haziq Mahmud using virtual reality googles to explore a coastal environment during a secondary school geography lesson. (Photo: CNA/Calvin Oh)
SINGAPORE: It had been 15 years since I was in secondary school, but I could still feel that familiar feeling of dread as the teacher scanned the class for someone to answer his question.
Mr Andrea Ang, who teaches Secondary 3 Geography in Compassvale Secondary School, settled on me. The lesson I attended on May 6 was about coastal environments, and Mr Ang asked how a breakwater was supposed to protect the coast.
“We ask our new classmate Haziq,” Mr Ang said over a microphone, eyes glinting behind his glasses. “If I have a current of water that is moving along the coast, and you have this sort of structure that is protruding outwards, how do you think it will affect the coast? Very challenging question.”
I was back in a Geography lesson for the first time in many years as part of a CNA series in which journalists experience first-hand how teaching methods and curriculums in Singapore’s schools have evolved.
I had taken combined humanities in secondary school so I had a rough idea of Geography, but the technical question by Mr Ang threw me off guard. My stuttering must have looked silly, because my classmate Raveena Magendrakumar, who sat on my right, started explaining the concept to me.
“So basically, the swash and backwash is here,” she said, showing me some printed notes. “It will transfer the sediment using the longshore drift, that’s why the coast will erode. This thing (the breakwater) is needed to prevent the sediment from transferring.”
Raveena used at least three terms that sounded alien to me, but my job has made me used to simplifying complicated stuff. Making my most intelligent guess, I rattled off a summary: “It will help protect the sediments.”
It was the correct answer – Mr Ang said the breakwater’s “J” shape will help retain sediments and thus reduce erosion – and I felt relieved. Like on many occasions throughout my secondary school education, I was saved by a friend.
I knew it was okay to be wrong and learn from it, but having went through decades of education in an Asian context, I guess being wrong would still feel bad anyway.
My first impression of the class, however, only brought positive feelings.
The computer lab was air-conditioned and carpeted, and students took off their shoes before entering. On the tables were school-issued laptops – called personal learning devices – and boxes of virtual reality (VR) goggles.
The widespread use of technology in a secondary school class was impressive but not surprising. Nowadays, tablets and smartphones are teenagers’ best friends.
Before the lesson, I was told that the VR goggles would be used to view 360-degree videos of the breakwater site at East Coast Park that we would visit in the second half of the day. The aim was to “investigate” the effectiveness of one of Singapore’s coastal protection measures.
Granted, I was probably invited to their most eventful and tech-filled class, but this was still a far cry from my time learning geography. Back then, we learnt about land features in faraway countries, teachers referred to textbooks and wrote on whiteboards, and all of us never strayed from our fan-ventilated classroom.
The first part of the class, taught by another Geography teacher Ms Shirin Shaik Muhyideen, quickly set the tone for relevancy.
We were shown two maps of the east coast area in the present day and from many years ago, and were asked to compare how the coastline had changed. Then we were shown a video of Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s remarks at the 2019 National Day Rally, where he talked about the seriousness of climate change and how Singapore was going to tackle it.
“How do you think sea level rise will affect East Coast Park, and then what can we do about this?” Ms Shirin asked in a clear and sharp voice.
I immediately knew the point behind the lesson, and I could see the students buying in too.
Students viewed the maps on slides in Google Classroom and actively typed their answers on the Padlet page, meaning everyone’s responses instantly appeared on a large screen in front. Some who gave verbal replies later also referenced Mr Lee’s comments.
My answer to what could be done was to install coastal protection measures, but another classmate who sat on my left, Tytus Cheong, went a step further with a well-elaborated example that sounded obscure to me.
“There’s something like a metal cage with boulders inside; I’m not too sure if it applies to Singapore because … most of it has been damaged by people (with) a lot of vandalism,” he told me. “So, you might not see it.”
Tytus was referring to gabions, a coastal protection measure that prevents erosion by absorbing wave energy. Gabions are cheaper to build than breakwaters and sea walls but are not widely used in Singapore, presumably because of the reasons Tytus mentioned.
Ms Shirin switched the slides to a picture of the measures at East Coast Park, showing sea walls, breakwaters and groynes. Breakwaters and groynes might look the same and similarly reduce the force of waves, but they run parallel and perpendicular to the coast, respectively.
“Where exactly are the breakwaters, maybe you can point it out?” she asked a student, who murmured: “The thing that is extending out.” “There are a lot of things extending out,” came Ms Shirin’s reply, eliciting a few chuckles.
As the focus shifted to breakwaters, Ms Shirin handed over the class to Mr Ang. He touched on some of the more technical aspects of this feature, but still tried to ensure the students understood why they were learning about it.
“We are not just going to the coast to collect data, there is a reason why we are going to the coast. Collect data for what?” he said before pausing. “We are going to do something that the Government is also commissioning reputable bodies to do: Assess the effectiveness of some of the coastal protection measures.”
To give students an idea of what to expect later, Mr Ang asked students to use the VR goggles and watch a 360-degree video of the breakwater area. The class erupted into excited chatter as students unboxed their goggles and started fiddling with the device.
They used their own smartphones to scan a QR code on the slide, taking them to a 360-degree YouTube video produced by Mr Ang himself. They connected their wireless earbuds (not supplied by the school) to their phone – Mr Ang felt it was weird hearing his own voice – and slid the phone into a compartment at the front of the VR goggles.
It was my first time using this type of goggles, so Tytus helped me out. He reminded me to select the VR option on the YouTube video before I hit play and strapped the goggles around my head.
I was immediately transported to East Coast Park, with Mr Ang as my personal guide. I turned my head around and took a closer look at the breakwater behind me, fronted by the sand and sea. It was the next best thing to actually being there, and I could see how this beat looking at pictures or watching videos.
After letting students explore the virtual environment, Mr Ang naturally had some trouble regaining their attention.
The next few minutes were filled with crinkling sounds of students putting back the VR goggles in their plastic covers, interfering with Mr Ang’s questions. The teacher requested that they do this later, but the crinkling noises continued.
When Mr Ang asked what dangers we should look out for during field work later, someone said alligators and everyone giggled.
It was clear that the students were delighted about being back together in groups. COVID-19 had forced them to go for Zoom classes, and when they could finally go back to school, they could only sit individually like in an exam setting.
Group size limits and safe distancing measures were lifted in schools and the rest of the country on Apr 26, only a week before this class.
“When you’re on Zoom, you’re not really like there in the lesson. Half of your brain is basically distracted by your home; sleeping, eating, home life,” Raveena told me in an interview after class.
“Being in the class, you’re able to pay attention and ask the teacher, ‘What is this?’ Teachers are able to make sure that the quiet and louder students all get the same kind of education. It’s very relieving we are going back to the old ways.”
Fellow classmate Nur Marisya Normen Alfandy said it was the first time she could better get to know her classmates since everyone switched classes at the start of Secondary 3.
“It’s very fun because I get to discuss with new people,” she said, adding that she loves talking to people. “Since we went to Secondary 3, some of us are not really familiar with each other.”
Tytus said his favourite part of the lesson was the close-proximity discussions he had with his classmates, something he said he did not get as often due to the pandemic.
“Having these discussions now really makes the lesson more interesting and makes me feel more passionate about the subject as well,” he said.
But the students said they particularly enjoyed the VR part as well, with one of them saying he did not expect to use such a novel learning method instead of the usual “pen and paper”.
“It’s very interesting, because we can have a view of what we are going to see later and get a new perspective,” said Sean Lee. “The VR goggles let us see the real-life context. How do we apply what we learnt in school to the outside world?”
Indeed, Marisya called the real-life issue of climate change a “worldwide problem”.
“Singapore is surrounded by water, so this is actually very important for us because the sea level is rising,” she added. “And if we don’t do anything about it, basically Singapore is going to get submerged. And we are the future generation; we should do something about it.”
Mr Ang told me that Geography is in a “very strategic position” to discuss the issue of climate change, saying that lessons now involve “marrying the content that we learn in classroom to contemporary issues”.
“In the past, students just learn sets of facts: What are volcanoes, what are the elements of weather. But I think after a while they start to ask, ‘Why are we learning this?'” he said.
“And I think when you bring what is happening in the world to the classroom and show them the relevance, even if let’s say they may not have a big grand solution to climate change, at least now they are aware.
“Being aware is the first step. Subsequently, they can start thinking about, ‘Now that I know there’s an issue like this happening, what can I do using my geographical knowledge?’ That’s why we tied this in together with the geographical investigation on coasts today.”
Mr Ang, 30, studied Geography at the National University of Singapore. He graduated from the National Institute of Education (NIE) before teaching at Compassvale Secondary, where he has been for four years now.
As a student taking Geography classes in secondary school, Mr Ang recalled the “very prevalent use” of textbooks and whiteboard.
“We are still using textbooks and whiteboards, but it’s accompanied by the use of mobile phones and personal learning devices,” he said.
Since students nowadays are more exposed to technology, he said its use in the classroom helps them “satiate their curiosity about some of the phenomenon they will learn”.
“Let’s say I mention in particular a volcano, Eyjafjallajokull, in Iceland. Students will want to search about it because it sounds so funny and spells so weirdly,” he added.
“They would have that impetus, with the permission of the teacher, do that sort of simple research to find out a little bit more about the volcano. So I will say definitely, (technology) helps to spark their curiosity.”
While I wished the next part of the lesson was a trip to a volcano in Iceland, I was more than happy to spend time at East Coast Park. I barely did field work in secondary school, and any trip to the computer lab or the odd heritage site was celebrated as a break from the mundane.
It was expectedly warm at the park and many students donned caps or hats. Mr Ang wore a T-shirt that said “geographer”, which Tytus had earlier pointed out was his favourite. Mr Ang had apparently worn it during his NIE graduation ceremony, Tytus said.
The teacher brought us to the breakwater and explained its features again. I live in the east and visit East Coast Park regularly, so I appreciated finally understanding how a breakwater worked. I initially thought it was an aesthetic feature to make Singapore’s man-made beaches more interesting, and for people to sit and watch the sea.
By then, Mr Ang had distributed worksheets that showed the things we were going to measure: Wave energy, longshore drift and beach profile. These measurements would be taken at various distances from the breakwater to measure the feature’s effectiveness. It sounded very scientific, but Mr Ang’s explanations made it simple enough.
Wave energy would first be measured with a ranging pole, an extendable stick with a pointed end that is used to mark a spot on the beach where the waves hit. In one minute, students would count the number of waves that hit the pole. It was a simple observe-and-count session, and we had fun counting aloud in unison and recording the results.
As the sunny afternoon dragged on, some students started participating less, although Mr Ang made it a point that everyone had a go in the measurements. Some students were wearing shoes instead of sandals, so they were wary of getting wet in the relatively high tide.
Then there was the usual group of slightly mischievous boys, the kind you find at the back of the class, not paying attention and doing their own things. The three boys were chatting with each other, wandering to other parts of the beach and eating takeaway McDonald’s. Mr Ang had to call them out several times, and jokingly labelled them the “three musketeers”.
Still, the boys were good sports when Mr Ang asked them to participate in the next few tasks. One was to throw an orange bought from the school canteen into the sea, to see where it drifted in five minutes and thus measure the rate and distance of longshore drift.
The students were tickled about the prospect of throwing a fruit into the sea, but the teachers ensured that the orange was tied to some string so it could be retrieved and reused. One of the musketeers also correctly pointed out that we had the wrong wind direction when measuring longshore drift.
Then, to measure beach profile, we used the ranging pole to mark out different spots upwards from the water, at equal distances from each other. At each spot, a clinometer was used to determine the slope angle of the beach. This was done by looking into the instrument, directly ahead at another student who was at the next spot.
Tytus had volunteered to be the first student, and he looked into the clinometer directly at classmate Tan Jia Hui, who was holding the ranging pole at the next spot. Mr Ang warned that “sparks” could “fly”. Jia Hui emphatically dismissed this by saying “never”. I could not help but snigger.
After the required data was recorded, equipment cleaned and students debriefed, I pulled some of them aside to ask how they felt about learning in the outdoors.
Jia Hui said it was engaging because “you get to have an opportunity to actually bond with your classmates, and you also get to learn more knowledge from it”.
“It’s also one of the most preferred ways to learn geography instead of looking at notes and writing down notes,” she said.
While Jia Hui said she appreciated the hands-on experience as it allowed her to better understand the subject matter, she admitted having some issues with the waves.
“It will suddenly just come straight without you knowing, and it will start to wet your clothing a little,” she added.
Likewise, Raveena found the outdoor experience more enjoyable than “sitting in a chair and listening to the teacher”, which she called “very one-dimensional”.
“We are able to hang out with friends and play around while learning about new stuff in geography. I feel like this is a good memory for us to have moving forward in the future,” she said.
Mr Josef Tan, lead specialist in the Geography unit of the Ministry of Education’s (MOE) curriculum planning and development division, told me that this version of field work was developed in 2013 as part of efforts to renew the syllabus every six years.
“We wanted to evolve our field learning,” said Mr Tan, 45, who taught Geography at a secondary school and junior college for seven years before moving to MOE’s headquarters 11 years ago.
“In the past, students learn about farms, developments, mountains and volcanos, so they will go on field trips to visit these places. We wanted to evolve this practice to have a bit more interaction and engagement.
“Most importantly, we wanted students to actually investigate issues, to collect data, to understand that knowledge is not from the books but constructed by people.”
According to Mr Tan, some discussions during curriculum planning would revolve around whether to make fieldwork non-mandatory. But this made a lot of Geography teachers unhappy because “field work is really important to us”, he said.
“The pandemic was difficult, but Geography teachers continue to do field work,” he said.
“What many of them did, was they came to the field themselves with video cameras and all kinds of 360-degree equipment, and then they brought back the experience to the classroom. So field learning is something teachers cannot do without.”
Mr Tan said the main difference with Geography lessons now is that they are “action-oriented”, with outcomes like spreading the word on social media or sending proposals to relevant authorities.
“Students will not be working alone, taking a test by themselves, but they will be involved in group projects. And the project will have some kind of actionable item that some of them will then turn into a passion project,” he said.
Nevertheless, Mr Tan acknowledged that geographical issues now, like sustainability and climate change, are “a lot more complicated”, with differing opinions in the classroom.
“The inclusion of this topic in the syllabus is important, because part of the idea is to create a safe space for students with differing opinions, to meet, talk about it and have a reasonable conclusion,” he added.
After a full day of attending a Secondary 3 Geography class in 2022, I concluded that with the advent of technology, students now have more interactive and engaging opportunities to learn about pressing and relevant topics.
It is hard to say if I would have appreciated being in the same situation, as when I look back at my secondary school days, I reminisce about simpler times.
Ultimately, I am glad that students now are exposed to things like climate change and actual investigative field work at a suitably young age, and I hope this puts the country in good stead to tackle the challenges of tomorrow.
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