TLLM 2.0 – Tech Less, Learn More

The Spirit and Intent of TLLM

Twenty years ago, Singapore’s Teach Less, Learn More (TLLM) emerged from then Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s first National Day Rally speech as a call for restraint on “one thing we shouldn’t do” for students to learn more in life. 

The original text from (then) PM Lee’s inaugural 2004 National Day Rally (see https://www.pmo.gov.sg/Newsroom/National-Day-Rally-2004) reads:
“ there is one thing which we shouldn’t do and that is when we add more teachers, we better don’t add more homework or increase the syllabus because that just defeats the whole purpose. Then we are back to square one. In fact, I think we should cut down on some of this syllabus. It would mean less pressure on the kids, a bit less rote learning, more space for them to explore and discover their talents and also more space for the teachers to think, to reflect, to find ways to bring out the best in their students and to deliver quality results. We’ve got to teach less to our students so that they will learn more. Grades are important – don’t forget to pass your exams – but grades are not the only thing in life and there are other things in life which we want to learn in school.” (text italicised by authors for ease of reference).

Months later, on 29 September 2004, (then) Minister of Education Mr Tharman Shanmugaratnam added the following in charting the Ministry’s TLLM initiative and crystalising the Prime Minister’s exhortation to “teach less so that our students will learn more” into (simple) “Teach Less Learn More” as a system-wide initiative.
“Teach Less, Learn More has caught the imagination of educationists, students and parents, and the public and media. It has lit a fire of its own. It also goes to the heart of what we are trying to do in education… We need to reduce the load on many of our students, by trimming our syllabuses wherever we can without losing the rigour of the education we provide. Schools should also evaluate how much homework we give to our students. But we must also review our pedagogic approaches, to go beyond a focus on tests and examinations.”
In these times of unbridled encouragement for teachers to explore the many “affordances” (things we can do) “to leverage digital technologies to accelerate and deepen learning” (MOE, 2020), we invoke the spirit and wording of the original TLLM 1.0 to issue a similar call for restraint to Tech Less, Learn More (TLLM 2.0). Rephrased in the context of prioritising (deepened) learning, and therefore excessive Teaching is likened to excessive “Tech”, TLLM may thus read as:
“I think that there are a lot we can do [with tech], and which we will do. But there is one thing which we shouldn’t do and that is when we add more [tech or] teachers, we better don’t add more homework or increase the syllabus… We’ve got to teach [or tech] less to our students so that they will learn more… [Why?] grades are not the only thing in life and there are other things in life which we want to learn in school. (Lee, 2004, para 112)

The question of purpose implied in the last line of Mr Lee’s reasoning – ultimately why it matters that students learn more (LM) in/for life – needs to be our starting point for te(a)ching less (TL). In this sense, we support Kapur and Lee’s (2013) inverting of TLLM to advocate Learn More Teach Less (LMTL), emphasising the need for teachers and students to first “learn more” about/from one another in exploring the curriculum’s content of worth (see Kapur, 2021 for more on productive failure), before teachers can develop informed judgments for “teaching less” (teaching the deeper essentials) to prepare students for life. Rethinking the specifics of what and how to “TECH less/more” requires that we first “learn more” from pursuing the WHY question.  

Why Tech Less in order to Learn More?
The more we observe a tendency to talk and think exclusively in terms of HOW we can leverage digital technologies, the more we need to slow down and push back to ask fundamental WHY questions. Teachers need to judge the educational purpose and human/e quality of our designs for student doings, knowing, and being/becoming. As Biesta (2012) notes, “if a particular idea is simply seen as ‘common sense,’ [e.g. the need to tech more] then there is a risk that it stops people from thinking at all” (p. 32); teacher thinking to judge educational purpose (why do this and not do that) “lies at the very heart of what goes on in the classroom and in the relationships between teachers and students” (p. 42). We must be wary when we find ourselves thinking less or not questioning at all. In the Singapore context, we must consider “why tech less” because our thinking has been dominated by numerous HOW questions that assume “why we need to tech more” is a given.
We must interrogate imperative HOWs with WHYs that pause to probe questionable claims and assumptions. In the words of Professor Neil Selwyn (2016) a renowned expert in the sociology of technology (non)use in educational settings:
very little Ed-Tech Speak could be described honestly as objective, accurate or appropriately nuanced… the language favored within education to describe digital processes and practices tends to […] leave little room for alternate outcomes… seemingly innocuous terms such as ‘learning technology’… ‘Smart Board’, ‘intelligent tutoring system’ and ‘connected learning’… convey a clear sense [that learning, smartness, intelligence or connectedness] will happen when these technologies are used in education… the possibility of technology not leading to learning and/or other educational gains is rarely a matter for consideration. (p. 438-9)

In a recent paper, Selwyn (2024) argues for reframing Ed-Tech as a sociological, cultural/political, and environmental problem for humanity rather than a solution. He notes the strong counterarguments on proven harms in “increasingly intensive (if not excessive application of digital technology in education over the past twenty years” (p. 187) e.g. widened educational inequalities, increased environmental impact from excessive use of energy and resources to support scaled up production/use/disposal of tech devices, and round-the-clock data processing/storage.

An example to provoke situated teacher reasoning on why “tech less” can enable “learning more”
This is an illustrative example of learning well that does not automatically require using more educational technology. It does not ask to be followed or applied; nor does it prescribe a “model answer” kind of example. It aims to provoke your own situated teacher reasoning/s in conversation with fellow teachers:

Teacher X: “Why not use Padlet? A digital platform for students to post inputs is more convenient and efficient. It’s also better for the environment. Use less paper! It’s much slower to use physical post-it notes. Must distribute the post-it pads, each student must take one, write on it, paste it somewhere, move physically to view a display of the notes, then must collect and store after class etc. Students may also not have pens with them, it slows things down when they need to wait for classmates to finish writing and then borrow the same pen/pencil. I’m so used to the convenience of Padlet, I don’t use physical post-its anymore.”

Teacher Y: “Thanks for sharing! In some ways it is so, in other ways it is not so. I love Padlet too. I use it when I do a mass lecture for a large class of 180 students or when it’s not feasible and also not desirable to slow things down with physical post-it notes. For today though, since my tutorial group of 24 students have sat in the lecture theatre for three hours this morning, learning with their digital devices most of the time, I’d like to switch things up and slow things down for/with them in our afternoon seminar. The educational purpose of the post-lunch seminar is to make sense of the morning lecture. We know how our bodies and minds are different after lunch! So I deliberately want to do things differently from this morning’s learning experience. I want to slow things down and get people moving-thinking-interacting with requiring the use of good old post-it notes, along with intentional liberating constraints like: (i) Each person gets only one post-it note, (ii) silent thinking time to hear oneself think and recall/write/depict only ONE idea from the morning’s lecture that is the most striking, (iii) followed by getting up to move around in the tutorial room, mix with classmates from other groups to view, make sense of collated post-it notes, (iv) and progressively accomplish whole-class sorting, organising of inputs from each person to form a structured physical display of striking takeaways from the morning lecture.

HoD ICT: The vision of the EdTech Masterplan 2030 is “Technology-transformed learning, to prepare students for a technology-transformed world”. I agree with you that it is good to slow down and to limit students to depict only one idea (at that time). But everything you had wanted from post-its could have been achieved digitally – You can adjust the settings to limit each user to one digital note, you could use the interactive tools for each person to annotate or even interrogate their note, the learners can move around the padlet screen without leaving their seats, and you can sort with a swipe!

Teacher Y: Padlet can get everyone to post quickly but compared with physical post-its, Padlet does not enable “learning more” from the tangible and embodied process of getting one’s idea to fit (and be fit for viewing) on a fixed-size piece of paper, holding onto another person’s note, taking in the look and feel of what has been said/done with that post-it, sorting the physical notes, changing the placement because another classmate taps my shoulder and shares why that note connects better with another note etc. Being able to physically “see” all the post-its in one visual frame is important here. In Padlet, we rarely get to see a complete BIG picture of ALL posts at one glance because it depends on the selective framing of our device screen and whether some posts are longer/take up more digital visual space etc. I’m also mindful of the need for my students to have a physical experience of learning without their devices and screens. In a “technology-transformed” era, I think our curriculum and assessment practices need to double down on opportunities for embodied social learning that are not mediated by digital technology. With due respect for the EdTech masterplan vision, we must nevertheless also consider the risks of “technology-deformed learning” which might deform ways of being and interacting with others in face-to-face encounters if there is unrestrained overreliance on digital technology. Hey, thanks for letting me think aloud! I’ll stick with the “tech less” option for this tutorial.”