Creating an Online
Community Practice for
Humanities Educators

Under the impetus of a group of beginning teachers and Mr Chelva Rajah, the National Institute of Education’s Humanities and Social Studies Education (HSSE) Academic Group has formed an online network since May 2015. This online network serves as a platform for networking activities among history teachers and a central repository for resources related to history. In May 2016, it widened its scope to include social studies teaching resources to support social studies teachers. It is now called HSSE-HEN (Humanities Educators Network). This ground-up initiative by beginning teachers was mootedduring a focus group discussion held in January 2015. During the focus group, there was a call for greater support for beginning and pre-service history teachers, and for closer collaboration between HSSE and the history education fraternity. Currently, there are 368 teachers as registered members. The web administrators are beginning teachers who have volunteered their services. They approve relevant and useful resources to be uploaded. In addition, advisors of the network are history and social studies teacher educators.