Inquiry-Based Fieldwork for Children’s Localities and Beyond in Primary Social Studies: Student Teachers’ Understandings, Concerns and Suggestions

Abstract

Fieldwork using children’s localities and beyond is important for learning primary social studies as it provides many cognitive and affective benefits to young learners. For fieldwork to achieve active student learning and engagement, inquiry-based fieldwork can be adopted. In this chapter, the authors will look at such an approach for teaching primary social studies and the stages for fieldwork planning. They will share their findings from their small-scale qualitative study which focused on their student teachers’ understandings of the approach, their concerns for planning and implementing inquiry-based fieldwork in schools, and how they would like to be supported by their schools in addressing their concerns. The authors will discuss the implications especially those on the school support for beginning teachers’ fieldwork application in primary social studies teaching in Singapore.