Joy of Learning Foundation

JLF works towards transforming science teaching, to make it more hands-on and minds-on, where children learn through authentic experiences, observatio Read moren, questioning, reasoning and analysis. Our work can be broadly classified into design and dissemination. Design: Our core work is building pedagogic content knowledge (knowledge of teaching methods specifically aligned to particular topics), missing in existing teacher education. We develop sessions about middle and high school science topics. We identify key concepts per topic and research on misconceptions in children. Then we evolve innovative pedagogical techniques and experiments for effective delivery. The classroom becomes a lab where all learning is through experiments, using simple materials. Chosen activities are threaded together in a logical progression to make a complete session of roughly 4-5 hours. Joy in learning, active physical and mental engagement and fascination with science are essential elements in these. So far, 18 such sessions have been developed on the fundamentals of physics, chemistry and biology. Dissemination: The designed sessions are offered to teachers in workshops. They help deepen conceptual understanding; offer a basket of pedagogic techniques and view of an interactive classroom. Feedback shows after this process, teachers are significantly more equipped and motivated to replicate such methods. These pedagogical techniques are also tried with children in workshops to test their efficacy and refined. Workshops are regularly offered upon open invitation and delivered when sought by interested agencies. We have served teachers and children across sectors and belonging to 14 states. So far, our reach is about 1300 teachers, 800 student-teachers and 800 children. We intend to increase our reach to more teachers and children in future by expanding our team, as well as covering more topics in science.