Speech by Minister Chan Chun Sing at the Opening Ceremony of the Ninth Redesigning Pedagogy International Conference, at the Nanyang Auditorium, Nanyang Technological University

1. First, let me thank you for the opportunity to join you for the ninth Redesigning Pedagogy International Conference (RPIC) here today.

2. Also, congratulations on the 20th Anniversary of the Centre for Research in Pedagogy and Practice (CRPP). I am very happy to see that CRPP continues to break new ground and help us advance our research agenda on this critical journey to improve teaching and learning in Singapore.

3. I think all of us can agree that the world has changed; and will continue to change, and perhaps at an even faster rate. The natural conclusion for us must therefore be that we have to change the way we learn and teach.

1. Amongst the many changes, we must also recognise the key ones for us to apply our minds incisively and focus our efforts on finding new ways to help our people learn and teach better.

4. Today, I will focus on a few key changes that should drive our improvement in our teaching and learning:

1. First, our world is going to become even more connected digitally. Which means that:
   1. Access to information alone will lose its premium.
   2. Overload of information becomes a risk.
   3. Sensemaking increasingly becomes the challenge.
2. However, the world is becoming a more fragmented place along the dimensions of geopolitics, ideology, supply chains and even possibly technological standards.
   1. Our ability to serve as a trusted platform to connect commands a premium.
   2. The ability to bring people from diverse backgrounds together to create new solutions will create new value.
3. Second, product and business lifecycles are becoming more and more compressed, as data and technological breakthroughs accelerate innovation.
   1. Innovation of products, services, market reach, production processes at speed to meet emerging and unmet needs now commands a premium beyond trying to compete to lower the prices of existing products and services.
   2. The speed of evolution commands a premium.
   3. Speed of evolution comes from the ability to tap of diverse perspectives and experiences to generate new ideas and solutions.
   4. Whoever that can better organise themselves to learn and develop new solutions faster, wins.
4. Third, but not the least, new mental and socio-emotional stressors have emerged in a more connected and faster-paced world. Without a strong, stable socio-emotional foundation, we cannot even begin to talk about scaffolding our people for their lifetime learning.
   1. Resilience to bounce back from setbacks, ability to deal with uncertainties and untidiness are no longer good-to-haves, but essentials for lifelong learning.

5. To summarise, teaching can no longer be the transmission of knowledge, and neither can learning be about the absorption of knowledge or known ideas alone.

1. Instead, our new "product specification" for our teaching-learning system must be our ability to create new ideas, perspectives, and products of value to the world.
   1. To create then requires us to be able to connect and collaborate.
   2. To connect means our ability to understand other people and perspectives forms the foundation for us to develop new ideas to meet new and emerging needs.
   3. To collaborate is the ability for us to be able to leverage our collective strengths, and that of others, to harness the ideas and energies of diverse people and perspectives and bring them together in a trusted environment for them to create something new and of value for ourselves and the world.

The Future of Teaching and Learning

6. Now with this as the background, our teaching and learning systems must strive to achieve "7 Shifts".

1. The first shift. Beyond the transmission of knowledge, teaching and learning must increasingly be about acquiring the art of sensemaking. In a world overloaded with information, we need to help our learners make sense and make choices anchored by our values. From information overload, we must learn to distil and discern, in order for real knowledge and wisdom to emerge. This must start from young. We must help our students acquire the skills of critical thinking, verification of sources of information, and appreciate diverse perspectives to come to their own deeper conclusions and understanding of an issue. This is part of our overall Character and Citizenship Education (CCE) roadmap.
2. To hone students' sensemaking abilities across different fields and domains, our Institutes of Higher Learning (IHL) are also actively strengthening interdisciplinary learning.

7. The second shift. Beyond understanding yesterday's solutions for yesterday's challenges; teaching and learning must now increasingly focus on finding tomorrow's solutions and framing tomorrow's challenges right.

1. For example, in Commonwealth Secondary School, students are taught Design Thinking via their TrailBlazer programme. As part of the programme, students work with grassroots and other community organisations to first understand their needs and design appropriate solutions. It all starts with first understanding their needs. Through these experiences, students are trained to exercise empathy, ask the right questions and then prototype out-of-the-box solutions. Hence, to ask the right question is fundamental.
2. Another example is Singapore Polytechnic (SP)'s Learning Express (LeX) programme, where selected students go on overseas trips to learn new languages, experience new environments, and build relationships with others All these are just a few examples of how we want to help our students frame their challenges right before they even begin their attempt to find the next solution.

8. The third shift. Beyond focusing on developing the optimal syllabus/ curriculum or system, teaching must increasingly provide diverse models and methods to meet the diverse learning needs of our students.

1. In the early years of our nation building, we had fewer resources, so our priority then was to train our people as efficiently as possible using a standardised model.
2. Today, we have a range of school models: from specialised schools like the NUS High School of Mathematics and Science, the School of the Arts, the Singapore Sports School, Assumption Pathway School, and Crest Secondary School, to Independent Schools, Integrated Programme schools, and so forth.
3. The diversity of our schools caters to the diversity of our students' strengths, interests and aptitudes.
   1. Even within schools, we have started to adopt differentiated instruction, such as Full Subject-Based Banding (SBB), to customise learning for different learning profiles.
4. We are also providing greater flexibility in our post-secondary education pathways.
   1. Our polytechnics and Institute of Technical Education (ITE) provide students with a wide range of course options, ranging from STEM to the humanities.
   2. The introduction of the Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT) and Singapore University of Social Sciences (SUSS) also provide applied learning pathways for students in the fields of science and technology and the social sciences, respectively.
5. Unlike the previous "one-size-fits-all" approach, customising learning like this requires more resources. But where we can, we will give our students a diversity of choices to maximise their potential. And this an ongoing journey. MOE will continue to explore a greater variety of models for schools to cater to the diverse learning needs of our students based on the subjects and the resources available. Ultimately, diversity will also strengthen our system resilience in an uncertain world by enhancing our ability to constantly evolve new solutions.

9. The fourth shift. Beyond focusing on how to teach and learn better within our classrooms and schools, we have to increasingly focus on how to teach and learn better beyond the physical classroom. We have to learn and teach beyond the physical and virtual domains; both in schools and outside the school.

1. To facilitate out-of-the-classroom learning, we are developing adaptive learning tools powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI) that can provide personalised guidance to students.
   1. Specifically, we are developing an Adaptive Learning System (ALS) for Mathematics that recommends a step-by-step pathway customised for each learner. We are also developing a Learning Feedback Assistant (LFA) for English that provides students with immediate feedback on their writing.
2. To develop students' capacity for self-directed learning, we are integrating regular Home-Based Learning (HBL) days into the schooling experience of secondary and junior college/ Millennia Institute students.
   1. This allows students to learn to manage their time, and to prioritise and exercise initiative in learning outside the classroom. This will be a critical skill for them as they go into the workplace as well – because learning goes beyond the classroom.
   2. It also gives our teachers opportunities to innovate in their pedagogy – to design effective blended learning experiences that bridge in-school and home-based learning.
3. As we develop our students' abilities, we are also developing teachers' proficiency in e-Pedagogy via professional development resources and online learning modules.
4. We are also growing our expertise in adult learning and developing resources for learning at the workplace.
   1. The Institute of Adult Learning (IAL) has been set up to facilitate research in adult learning and build a stronger adult learning ecosystem.
   2. The National Centre of Excellence for Workplace Learning (NACE) was set up to help our local organisations realise, retain and build competencies through workplace learning. For a holistic education system, we need a tri-force of NIE, NIEC, and IAL to make sure that our research in the entire lifecycle of learning and teaching is complete. NIE has been a key plan of this programme of ours but going forward, we will need NIE, NIEC and IAL to provide the continuum of research to help our people engage in lifelong learning.

10. Our fifth shift. Beyond focusing on how we can leverage the talent of the individual teacher, we must always focus on how to leverage team strengths to evolve, progress and rollout best practices faster.

1. This calls for more sharing across context and even across generations, enabled by technology, data and analytics.
2. One such effort is the Student Learning Space (SLS) "Community Gallery" feature, which facilitates the sharing of resources among teachers, who can adopt or adapt resources to meet the needs of their students.
3. There is also the Singapore Learning Designers Community (SgLDC), consisting of more than 20,000 educators who come together to share, learn, and collaborate on technology-enabled learning experiences. They share their technology-enabled lessons, crowdsource for lesson ideas, and help one another troubleshoot technical challenges. So, how well we are able to collaborate with one another will determine the speed of our evolution within our education system. The better we are able to do this, the faster we evolve, and the better we are able to serve our cause of bringing up a new generation of learners.
4. Our IHLs are also sharing resources. The polytechnics and ITE have jointly developed the POLITEMALL, a one-stop portal to access online learning content across multiple sectors and disciplines. Through it, students can access content and collaborate online.

11. The sixth shift. Beyond focusing on the pursuit of excellence in academics, we must increasingly also focus on the socio-emotional and mental resilience foundations for our learners.

1. Our refreshed CCE curriculum aims to help students develop new competencies, in addition to laying the foundation for sound values, social-emotional competencies and citizenship dispositions. Specifically, there is a greater emphasis on Mental Health and Cyber Wellness education.
   1. Schools will sensitise students to their sense of personal well-being and mental health, and equip them with help-seeking and peer support competencies.
   2. With many of our students being digital natives, the refreshed curriculum aims to equip them with the knowledge and skills to navigate cyberspace. They also learn to respect boundaries for healthy relationships and personal safety.
2. Our IHLs also have an enhanced LifeSkills curriculum to develop competencies such as critical thinking, communication and engagement skills, self-awareness and mental resilience in students. It also seeks to broaden students' perspectives on local and international issues in a more globalised and interconnected world.

12. The seventh shift. Beyond focusing on the strengths of our teaching fraternity, we must also focus on our ability to leverage the strengths of our community networks.

1. It has often been said that it takes a village to bring up a child. If so, then the art of mobilising the village strength must be a core competency for our teaching fraternity.
2. In 2019, MOE developed the Guidelines for School-Home Partnership (GSHP) to give students, schools and teachers clarity on what a meaningful partnership between schools and parents can be.
3. MOE also provides schools with plug-and-play resources for schools to use when engaging parents on issues and topics they are concerned about. One example is supporting their child through the key transition stages.
4. To mobilise the village, teachers must first understand it. Our latest efforts to broaden our teachers' perspectives on what is happening in the community and the world include giving our teachers short-term attachment opportunities beyond our school and beyond our education system. These opportunities lie across public and private sectors. We want our teachers to go out to learn, to grow and to bring back new perspectives to enrich our own fraternity in order to improve the way we teach and learn in our schools.

13. So, these are the "7 Shifts" that we need to focus on in the coming years. If we do this well, we will take another major step towards the next stage of learning and teaching in our schools, so that we can best optimise the human potential that we have within our country.

Closing

14. In closing, I would like to commend colleagues at MOE and the National Institute of Education (NIE) for the remarkable strides that we have made towards grooming future-ready students and teachers. I would like to thank everyone for your effort.

15. This is an effort that will always be work in progress. As a fraternity, we need to continue to stay nimble, and calibrate our approach based on our students' needs and the evolving macro environment. As we do so, it is imperative to keep the end goal in mind – students who can connect, collaborate and create with others in the "new world".

16. Once again, congratulations on the 20th Anniversary of the Centre for Research in Pedagogy and Practice (CRPP). I wish participants a fruitful conference ahead.