Tricia Seow is a Lecturer at the Humanities and Social Studies Education (HSSE) Group. She conducts pre-service courses in Geography for student teachers. Prior to joining NIE, she was teaching Geography in a junior college. Kalyani Chatterjea is an Associate Professor with HSSE. She is a Physical Geographer by training and is an experienced field-based researcher.

Research in Action

issue 44 sep / oct 2013

From the Field to the Geography Classroom

In Geography, what students learn in the ﬁeld is just as important as what they learn from the textbook. This is why ﬁeldwork, which can help students connect geographical concepts to real-life phenomena, is a crucial part of learning in Geography.

Making Fieldwork Purposeful

What comes to mind when you think of fieldwork? Most Geography students would remember collecting data at a site such as Pulau Ubin, and reporting their findings in class.

“But it’s got to go beyond that,” says Ms Tricia Seow, an NIE Lecturer. “Fieldwork has to be very purposeful, and the purpose can lie at different levels.”

The most basic level would, of course, be the skills needed to collect accurate data. The next level is where things get interesting. Fieldwork can be used to support inquiry-based learning.

Tricia gives an example of students collecting data about waves at a beach. They may find that the relationships between wave energy and gradient at the coast don’t match what the textbooks lead them to expect.

This is where teachers can say to the students, welcome to the real world! There can be many reasons for the difference and it is up to them to find out. One reason could be that they are at a man-made beach where sand is often added to the coast.

Here’s where the cycle of deeper learning begins. “It’s about interrogating theories and really getting students to understand the complexities of the real world and in turn, better understand the theories,” says Tricia.

Experiencing the Big Concepts

Geography is a subject that deals with abstract concepts such as space.

“But space in itself means nothing to students. You say space or place and you might get blank looks! Students can learn the definitions but what’s the point of that?” asks Tricia. “So fieldwork is a good way to unpack these concepts.”

For example, teachers can bring their students to Chinatown and Little India and frame them for the students as tourism spaces. Students can ask questions like: Is this a tourism space? What makes it a tourism space? Who uses this space?

It’s introducing them to how geographers think, inquire, and produce knowledge about the world that we inhabit.

– Tricia Seow, Humanities and Social Studies Education Academic Group

Through fieldwork techniques like land use surveys, they might find that for example, the composition of shops cater more to tourists along some streets and more to locals on others.

These techniques help them to understand concepts like spatial distribution or concentrations. They can also use the data to explain whether the area is indeed a tourism space.

“These are abstract concepts unless they’re actually based on something students have experienced,” says Tricia. If teachers can relate concepts to the data that students collect, Geography will come alive for them.

Deeper Learning with Fieldwork

Classroom teaching and fieldwork complement each other very well, Tricia tells us. After teaching a geographical concept, tool or skill, a trip out of the classroom can be planned.

To make the most of this trip, the field-inquiry question is very important.

Exploring land use, for example, is an interesting way to learn the topic of space. What is the space used for? Who is the space intended for? Students must decide what data to collect to answer these questions.

In the field, there are many dimensions to consider. For instance: “If you want to know who uses this space, there are many things to consider, like signs. If the signs are in Japanese, that tells you something about whom it’s intended for,” Tricia says.

“Ask people, like the shopkeepers and the patrons. Are the patrons usually tourists? If so, where do they come from?”

When the fieldwork is done, students return to the classroom, analyse their data and present them to the class.

During the presentations, there’re three things that teachers can explore with their students.

First, did students collect the information in the best way they could? Choosing the right techniques and samples are crucial: Who did they ask, where did they collect the data, and when?

Second, did students represent the information in the best way that they could? If they were looking at who patronizes a shop more often, would graphs, percentages or animation be better representations?

Last but not least, the teacher should guide students in making sense of all the information and opinions presented by every group.

Getting Back to the Classroom

For deeper learning to occur, what happens after the fieldwork makes a big difference. “What happens post-fieldwork is crucial. If it is not done properly, it won’t make sense,” says Tricia.

“So when you come back to class, you exercise reasoning skills and make sense of the data collected. This is where students present or prepare some kind of deliverable of their findings and interpretations.”

From there, the teacher can ask students to reflect on how fieldwork has helped their learning, based on all their presentations and deliverables.

For example, how does the data help students with skills development? How does fieldwork help them understand the theories better? How does fieldwork develop them as geographers? “This is really where the teacher value adds,” Tricia says.

“It’s introducing them to how geographers think, inquire, and produce knowledge about the world that we inhabit. We don’t expect them to come up with a complicated and complex theory, but something relevant to their own little inquiry.”

There is great value in learning Geography both in and out of the classroom. Tricia believes that students will one day see the benefits of fieldwork as a form of inquiry.

“My hope is that it’ll come together at some point in their lives and they’ll realize that they didn’t know it then, but way back in school, they were already thinking like a geographer.”

What is Involved in Field Trips?

Inquiry-based field trips may seem fairly complicated, especially when you are planning for one for the first time. We asked Associate Professor Kalyani Chatterjea, a HSSE colleague of Tricia’s, for some advice.

The work that teachers and students put in even before the field trip happens is crucial. “This involves many hours of good foundation on the concepts and thorough planning of fieldwork,” says Kalayni. “It decides how much success is achieved from the field exposure.”

Kalyani suggests that teachers consider the following points when planning field trips:

Groupwork: This is essential in the field. Students should learn to work in groups first. Team-bonding matters have to be taken care of right at the beginning.
Concepts and Tools: Concepts have to be taught in class first so that students understand the context of what they see in the field. They also have to be trained extensively in the use of various instruments.
Working Protocol: A student’s performance in the field is important the group’s success, so students have to be organized and know what they and their teammates are supposed to achieve. This should be sorted out before the field trip.
Safety First: In the field, a teacher is responsible for the students’ safety. Survey the location first and decide on what safety measures should be put in place.
Consolidate Learning: At the end of a fieldwork session, it is essential to sum up the session first before moving on to the next one. This will help students to consolidate their learning.
Relax: “While we plan for the work, it must be also remembered that we learn a lot better when we play as well – so the teacher must ensure that there is sufficient time allocated for relaxation, both physical and mental,” says Kalyani.

The success of any field trip depends much on the teacher who juggles many roles.

“The teacher is not just the facilitator,” Kalayni explains. “He or she has to double up as the mentor, teacher, manager, counsellor and a friend for students learning and living through that experience.”

Useful Resource

Kalyani has developed a mobile app called NIEmGeo to help map and geo-tag locations and data for field sites. It has been used by 300 NIE student teachers and 6 secondary schools. More information about this app can be found at https://sites.google.com/site/niemgeo