Assoc Prof Kenneth Paul Tan teaches at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy and is also the School’s Assistant Dean (Academic Affairs). He previously taught at the Political Science Department and the University Scholars Programme. A recipient of more than ten teaching awa rds since 2000, his research interests include political theory, comparative politics and cinema studies, specialising in Singapore studies with a special focus on topics such as democracy, civil society, media, the arts, multiculturalism and meritocracy. CDTLink caught up with Assoc Prof Tan to find out more.

Congratulations on receiving this year’s OEA! How did you feel when you received the news?

I felt deeply honoured. In January this year, I was awarded tenure and promoted to associate professor. So this award was the second piece of good news I received this year, making 2009 a really great year for me.

Tell us more about your teaching philosophy.

My philosophy, if you can call it that, has evolved with my practice. Both are driven by the complex pleasures of teaching and a belief that education is a noble vocation. I have set myself a few personal goals. I want to inspire and empower students to take active ownership of their own learning and to be comfortable with the notion that they themselves are sources of learning for other students and their teachers. I want to set high standards for my students, challenging them with complex ideas and questions that require full engagement with the readings and class activities.

I also want to get students into the habit of continually re-examining the familiar in the light of the new and unfamiliar. I want to encourage them to embrace and not fear the messiness of knowledge and understanding. I want to help them to think, express themselves and communicate with others in ways that are clear, critical, creative and vivid. I want to encourage academically inclined students to pursue graduate studies and eventually a career in academia. Finally, I want to play at least a small part in helping my students to fulfil their potential in life and develop as intelligent, sensitive, critical, open-minded, imaginative, creative, practical, communicative and active citizens equipped with a moral and ethical compass to make sense of the big questions for humanity, nation, government, community, society and self.

Who, or what inspired you to teach?

I come from a family of teachers. My father began as a school teacher before going into business, while my mother was a school teacher from the start to the end of her career. My wife is a school principal, the youngest in Singapore to become one. I started thinking like a teacher when I was an undergraduate student in the UK. We had a very heavy reading load and I devised a way of studying that involved imagining how I would teach whatever I was reading to a class of college students. Later, I was fortunate enough to begin my academic career at the University Scholars Programme, where my progressive teaching values were formed.

What for you is the most rewarding part about being an educator, and what is the least rewarding?

I love the classroom: preparing for it, performing and interacting in it, and reflecting on what went well and not so well at the end of the day. I love the opportunity to meet new students with each new semester: getting to know them, their experiences, interests, hopes, fears and ambitions, and getting them to fall in love with my subject. I love how students I meet later in life remember my courses and tell me with enthusiasm how my teaching has had an impact on the way they think and act. (I sometimes wonder whether it was the content or manner of my teaching that made the strongest impact.) I love the way designing new modules and preparing materials for them can be dovetailed with my own research interests. In fact, my research agenda has been partly driven by teaching needs and the teaching itself has been continuously refreshed by developments in my own research. What I don’t enjoy doing is grading essays—I recognise the importance of giving detailed feedback on students’ work (I usually give a page of detailed and constructive remarks for each essay), but I also feel exhausted doing it.

You mentioned that teaching must extend beyond mere mastery of content to an expanded mode of reasoning and judgment about their appropriate and beneficial application in the world. How has this aim informed your teaching style?

It is important to go beyond teaching students how to achieve goals through technical application. We also need to be able to question the assumptions underlying these goals, locate the often unintended and unexpected consequences of our actions no matter how well-meaning they might be, and think and communicate not just in narrowly technical ways, but also through moral-political and aesthetic modes of reasoning. I have therefore tried to make my classroom as democratic as possible, encouraging philosophically informed dialogue that is enriched through creative modes of expression and aimed at developing critical thinking, empathy and imagination. In my OEA public lecture, I described some examples of how I have attempted this: through a dialogue-writing exercise, case-study and role-play approach and service learning.

How has your teaching style evolved since you started your academic career in 2000?

I think I have become less of a control freak! When I started teaching, I wanted to generate full and active class participation through lessons that—looking back—were over-planned and over-designed. I really enjoyed designing and executing pedagogical innovations. I t reated the classroom as a kind of theat re production with highs and lows, and richly suggestive moments that would stimulate unconventional thought and discussion. Now, I am much more comfor table with less structure, though I still believe in the value of bringing academic materials to life by introducing thoughtful stimuli to draw out productive reactions. I have also
developed a mind-mapping technique to enhance Socratic discussion as a way of working with student reactions.

What makes a good teaching day for you?

It’s a good teaching day when I feel that the key ideas and concepts I wanted to discuss were dealt with in a participative, wide-ranging and non-superficial way; and when ideas I had not even thought of emerged during class dialogue, making the classroom a more genuine community of collaborative learners.

What advice would you give a graduate student/new academic when it comes to teaching?

Take ownership of the teaching assignments that you get. Don’t allow them to be a chore. Bring yourself and your research interests fully into the teaching, and be open enough to allow your teaching experience to relate with your research activities in a synergistic way.