We created the Holistic Science Teaching Fellowship because we thought that the traditional method of teaching science - using lecturing and rote learning - did not and has not worked to inspire curiosity and critical thinking amongst science teachers. Our conversations with hundreds of teachers around the world over the last 5 years tell us that students are not interested in science as they don't see much relevance of this in their lives. Teachers teach science in a rather boring and uninspiring fashion without connecting it properly with their everyday lives and the broader human experience. This is a tremendous waste of opportunity of inspiring millions of students to take on STEM careers and to create a scientific culture within the society at large.
Often, but particularly in the developing world, teachers' own training is very narrow and so they fail to connect science with other disciplines and to answer questions beyond their scientific domain. This has a negative effect on curiosity and critical inquiry in the classroom. Holistic Science Teaching empowers teachers to connect science with other disciplines such as history, philosophy, ethics (and religion) and and real life, creating engaged learners who ask Big Questions and begin to see science as part of their lives and the bigger human story.
Holistic Science Teaching Fellowship & Workshop (HSTFW) combines a complete end-to-end teacher training and behavioral change intervention. The process begins with a 4+1 day (in-person, hybrid, or online) training workshop followed by a 3-4 month supported implementation phase where teachers apply holistic science teaching pedagogy in their classrooms, learn to curate holistic science lesson plans, and ask and respond to Big Questions effectively. As they learn to implement holistic teaching in the classroom, they submit classroom videos, and receive detailed feedback based on a rigorous classroom observation process using an extended TEACH+Holistic rubric.
In practice, HSTFW creates classrooms where curiosity drives learning, not just content delivery. HSTFW supports teachers through planning tools, specimen lesson plans, and a digital portal for assignments and peer exchange. The programme is now offered in flexible - synchronous (in-person+online) and soon asynchronous (MOOC) - formats but with the final certification requiring the same rigorous content, delivery, and evaluation.
Since July 2024, we have also launched a Master Trainer Programme with more than 40 Master Trainers currently being trained in two cohorts of about 20 each. These Master Trainers, once ready, will be required to plan and implement their own in-school implementations of Holistic Science Teaching and will be supported and supervised through our programme portal and certification team.
The Holistic Science Teaching Fellowship has been spreading over the last 5 years through a blend of in-person and digital strategies. In the first (pilot) phase (2019-2021) - disrupted by COVID19 - we ran 1 in-person workshop in Pakistan and 2 online workshops in Algeria and Pakistan to pilot test the receptiveness and demand for this kind of training. In the second phase (2022-2025), we have run 5 workshops - 2 in Pakistan, 1 in Indonesia, and 2 online - and have reached 320+ teachers from across 8 countries. These teachers have also participated in a research pilot to evaluate transfer of training and quality of classroom implementation. The results of this research pilot is currently being evaluated and will be published shortly.
Owing to the popular demand by schools, we have also launched a Master Trainer Programme to help schools run their own holistic science teacher training interventions with us doing the final evaluation and certification of these teachers. In addition, we have also in discussions with some of the leading in-service and pre-service teacher training degree (B.Ed and M.Ed.) programmes in Pakistan and abroad to introduce Holistic Science Teaching in B.Ed curricula.
Finally, we're developing a Holistic Science MOOC to enable Teachers to do holistic teaching in a self-paced manner. The cost of a high-quality training+behavioral intervention is a significant adoption bottleneck as these approaches seek to bring this down to help spread it faster.
Over a period of time, several modifications and improvements have been made including finetuning of the pedagogy itself but also methods of delivery (in-person to hybrid), modes of delivery (synchronous vs. asynchronous), improvements in assessment, and simplification and gamification of the pedagogy.
The most important of these modifications was the introduction of a rigorous classroom evaluation tool - World Bank's TEACH framework currently being used in 50+ countries - to evaluate teachers performance in the classroom. Unlike many other teacher professional development programmes, our focus has been on achieving behavioral change and classroom impact and rigorous evaluation, feedback, and follow-ups are central to achieving this aspiration. We use a modified TEACH+Holistic Rubric to evaluate classroom performance, provide one-to-one feedback and coaching, and help teachers iteratively improve classroom implementation. This allows us to rigorously evaluate the impact on teachers' classroom performance (pre-post) and compare it with teachers from other parts of the world.
We're also currently exploring the use of AI in helping carry out these evaluations and feedback sessions to further enhance our ability to scale the adoption of holistic science teaching. We're also in the process of developing - and (soon) launching - a trivia game called "Who wants to be a Holistic Teacher?" that will help improve learning and retention by teachers by gamifying the learning process.
There are multiple ways to do Holistic Science Teaching each with a different level of commitment and potential impact.
The first thing one could do is to do a self-paced MOOC. This would clarify basic concepts and is a low-commitment way to get started.
The second thing one could do is to participate in one of our in-person or synchronous virtual courses (4+1 days) that are intense and get you to begin to think deeply about holistic science teaching. These courses happen a couple of times a year (Upcoming July 2025 online cohort is available at https://pif.org.pk/scienceteaching). These can be followed with classroom implementation leading to certification.
A third way to do the course is to become a Master Trainer which is a year-long process during with you undergo 10 days of training + hands-on capacity building (first 6 months) and then designing and implementing your own holistic science workshop under our supervision.
You can do all of the above, in sequence, or pick and choose the level of engagement and impact you desire to make and plan accordingly.
For queries, email us at holisticscience.teachers@gmail.com.
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Explore stories from past cohorts and join a growing community of educators committed to transforming science education on our social media platforms.
