This project investigates the ways secondary social studies teachers and students develop and can be supported to develop key inquiry and literacy practices with digital sources of information as they investigate global issues in Singapore’s Social Studies curriculum (e.g., transnational terrorism, international conflict, sustainable development, etc.). The project will research the implementation of web-based tools and curriculum materials to support source-based interpretation and explanation, which play a central role in Singapore’s social studies curriculum and examination system and in NIE’s pre-service and in-service teacher education programmes in social studies. Specifically, research will investigate the effectiveness of inquiry-based curriculum materials and resources in helping teachers and students critically analyze, interpret, and evaluate complex multimodal web-based texts in inquiry-based learning environments as they investigate global issues. This research will contribute understandings about the challenges and possibilities of helping students develop important inquiry and literacy practices that will better prepare them for increasingly complex, diverse, and digital social environments.

Project Objectives:

1. Improve secondary students’ social studies inquiry and literacy skills to prepare them to become effective and productive workers and citizens of the 21st century.
2. Improve social studies teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge and capacity to support source work, inquiry, and inquiry-based student learning in the contexts of the global digital information society.
3. Design and implement web-based curriculum resources that support source work, inquiry and new literacies in social studies classrooms. This would include using existing web-based tools (the Critical Web Reader - CWR) and developing complementary online resources and curriculum materials that meet the unique needs of Singaporean educators. These online resources will support inquiry and reasoning, source work, and student learning about global issues in Singapore’s social studies classrooms. 
4. Implement and research the efficacy of the above approaches and objectives in two contexts: teacher preparation courses and secondary social studies classrooms in Singapore. Evaluation procedures will examine the extent to which implementation of the project supports teacher and student learning in several areas (specified in the research design section).

Research questions:

1. What are effective ways to help pre- and in-service teachers learn about and be able to teach key inquiry and literacy practices with digital information sources (i.e., make inferences, evaluate reliability, evaluate claims and evidence, evaluate relevance and utility, compare and contrast sources, and construct explanations)?
2. What are effective ways to guide secondary school students in these key inquiry and literacy practices with digital information sources?
3. To what extent does this work help secondary school students develop key literacy and inquiry practices with digital information sources?
4. To what extent does this work help the students develop understandings about significant global issues?
5. What challenges do teachers and students face in developing and utilizing these key inquiry and literacy practices with the range of information sources they encounter on the Internet?