Discovering Unwritten Stories—A Modular Case Study in Promoting Landscape Education

Abstract

Landscapes have been and are an important aspect of any society, culture, economy and environment. Besides the role of landscape and Landscape Sciences in these arenas, there have been increasingly greater calls to incorporate landscape into the curriculum. Moreover, Landscape Education is beneficial in developing important foundations in students, particularly that of active citizenry. While the benefits of Landscape Education are evident, current research remains focused on Western, especially European, contexts. This article discusses how a leading Singapore public University incorporates Landscape Education within a relatively new module on Toponymy offered in the Linguistics and Multilingual Studies Programme. While the links between Linguistics and a course in Toponymy or even the links between Toponymy and Landscape may not be immediately apparent, an analysis of the content covered in the module demonstrates congruence to existing frameworks and principles in teaching Landscape Education and, at the same time, provides a case in point in interdisciplinarity, drawing from diverse disciplines such as Language, Linguistics, History, Geography, Landscape Sciences, Anthropological Linguistics, among many others. This study provides useful references for educational institutions in incorporating Landscape Education into their curriculum.

Keywords

• university curriculum
• toponymy
• linguistics
• landscape education
• European Landscape Convention (ELC)