Embrace tech and keep honing craft, minister urges teachers

By now, many families with children of school-going age would be familiar with the Singapore Student Learning Space (SLS), an online platform developed by the Ministry of Education (MOE) that was used heavily during the Covid-19 pandemic.

- Amelia Teng

Introduced in 2018, the platform carries 12,000 resources - from lesson designs to videos and assignments and is used by 84 per cent of students monthly.

To date, teachers have shared 7,500 lessons on SLS, leading to time savings of about 641,000 hours.

Sharing these statistics on Tuesday, Education Minister Chan Chun Sing challenged the 1,500strong audience of mainly educators to go further, and to continue honing their craft and embrace technology in their lessons. More than 13,000 participants tuned in online.

As part of efforts to equip students and teachers with skills for the future, Mr Chan announced a new research centre for character and citizenship education (CCE) within the National Institute of Education (NIE) - the first of its kind in the region.

The Singapore Centre for CCE, led by Professor Tan Oon Seng, 65, who is currently dean of special projects at NIE, aims to promote professional learning and research in CCE to support the development of children and youth.

Speaking at the Teachers' Conference and EXCEL Fest held at Marina Bay Sands, Mr Chan said he hopes the centre will develop pedagogies or teaching methods that are as strong as those for academic subjects, and be able to spread good practices to the wider teaching fraternity.

CCE must run in parallel with academic development, he said.