Vol. 17 No. 2 (2026)
Special Issue: SI_TGEO

Teaching Urban Geography for a World in Transition: Textbook Representations and Students’ Conceptions of Urban Housing in Singapore

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Su Peng Cheak
National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore
Tricia Seow
National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore
DOI: https://doi.org/10.48088/ejg.s.che.17.2.264.282
Categories

Published 2026-06-13

Keywords

  • Geography Education,
  • Textbooks,
  • Student Conceptions,
  • Urban Housing,
  • Photo Elicitation,
  • Teaching Agency
    • ...More
    Less

How to Cite

Cheak, Su Peng, and Tricia Seow. 2026. “Teaching Urban Geography for a World in Transition: Textbook Representations and Students’ Conceptions of Urban Housing in Singapore”. European Journal of Geography 17 (2):S.264-S.282. https://doi.org/10.48088/ejg.s.che.17.2.264.282.

Copyright (c) 2026 Su Peng Cheak, Tricia Seow

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Received 2025-12-31
Accepted 2026-06-04
Published 2026-06-13

Abstract

In an era of rapid urbanisation and global interconnectedness, geography education plays a crucial role in shaping students' understanding of diverse urban environments worldwide. This paper examines how the Singapore lower secondary geography textbook influences students' conceptions of people's lived environments in urban areas. Through photo-elicitation interviews with six Grade 7 to 8 students, this study reveals both the positive contributions and limitations of using textbooks as a primary resource in geography education. While the textbooks successfully developed foundational geographical knowledge and fostered national identity, they often gave rise to superficial and binary conceptions about urban housing in different global contexts. The findings also highlight the critical importance of teachers in mediating these narratives to provide more nuanced representations of urban places in the geography classroom, while also underscoring the importance of students’ own personal experiences in shaping these understandings. This case study offers broader implications for geography education, particularly regarding how curriculum materials, teacher mediation, and students' personal geographies together shape students' capacity to navigate an increasingly complex and interconnected urban world.

Highlights:

  • Textbooks shape students' views of global urban housing, creating insights and misconceptions.
  • Teacher agency provides counter-narratives that challenge and refine students' textbook-generated misconceptions about urban housing.
  • Findings call for more balanced representations of urban housing in geography curricula.
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