Chee Han draws heavily upon craft apprenticeship in his approach to education. As a cultural universal that has survived social change and natural selection, the apprenticeship model of teaching has proven to be effective in enskilling the young not only in practical crafts, but also the art of communal living. Beyond phenomena like “legitimate peripheral participation”, “situated learning”, and “communities of practice”, Chee Han has also observed that drills, made meaningful by metaphorical mnemonics and directed at tangible objects, form a core technique of apprenticeship systems. As a life-long practitioner of martial arts and meditation, Chee Han has also observed how drills, despite eliciting images of dull repetitions, provide an effective way to cultivate long-lasting competencies that serve as strong foundations for creative adaptations. In his teaching and educational research, he has thus focused on designing simple “cognitive drills” or better known as “thinking routines”, to imbue within students habits of being, acting, feeling and thinking, that the mere teaching of concepts, formulae, and theories, does not achieve.

Over more than 20 years, Chee Han has taught courses at undergraduate and graduate levels, including classical and contemporary social theory, sociology of the body, social research methods, Singapore studies, introduction to sociology, and cultural studies. Chee Han has also been teaching martial arts and qigong for over 15 years - as a preoccupation.