The term “Scientific Teaching” was coined in 2004 by UW-Madison Professor Jo Handelsman (Wisconsin Institute for Discovery, Plant Pathology) in response to the need to address the attrition of STEM majors and promote evidence-based teaching methods. However, the story begins almost a decade earlier.

Early Days

Scientific Teaching content, before it was named, began as Biology Brought to Life, a student research guide for Plants, Parasites, and People, a biology course for first-year, non-science-major undergraduates at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Published in 1995 by Dr. Jo Handelsman and colleagues, the course also included a revolutionary companion guide for teaching assistants that described how to use active and cooperative learning approaches with the evidence to back up why.

In the early 2000s, these materials grew to serve a broader audience outside the course and drew from the scholarship of teaching and learning, discipline-based education research, action research, evidence-based instructional practices, teaching-as-research, and others. The content, however, was unique in its focus on scientific disciplines and higher education. As content expanded and became codified, it became a set of hole-punched pages gathered in a three-ring binder. Later versions of fancy binders had pre-printed tabs to denote section breaks, but many of the early tabs were hand-written.

Regardless of format, each binder contained a fresh, new perspective on STEM teaching and learning because it leveraged the best educational approaches known at the time. It included a synthesis of the current state of recommended STEM education practices with content pulled from higher education, K-12 literature, and curriculum and instruction research, along with practical examples and tools for teaching.

National Academies

The scientific teaching binders served as the textbook for graduate student courses taught through the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Wisconsin Program for Scientific Teaching, and subsequently, starting in 2004, for the National Academies Summer Institute on Undergraduate Education in Biology. Held at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for a decade, both programs modeled scientific teaching through their interactive formats, active learning approaches, and cooperative group projects. Eventually, these institutes expanded to regional, international, and mobile counterparts.

Each iteration of these programs informed an evolution of the scientific teaching body of knowledge. For example, backward design approaches, educational taxonomies, facilitator training content, and institutional transformation tips were added as a direct result of what we and our colleagues learned each time we led one of these programs.

Together, these programs have trained more than 5,000 college faculty and future faculty to use evidence-based Scientific Teaching practices.

Scientific Teaching, 1st ed.

In 2004, Dr. Handelsman and colleagues published an article in Science magazine, which both coined the “scientific teaching” term and served as a call to arms to reform how science was taught in higher education.

Jo Handelsman, Sarah Miller, and Christine Pfund published the Scientific Teaching book in 2007, which is a 184-page guide for college STEM faculty (and future faculty) to use as a guide for teaching using evidence-based instructional practices and for creating real scientific experiences for their students.

The published book swiftly became the foundation for two decades of graduate programs and national, regional, and local institutes held around the world. The book and its programs were cited as exemplary approaches to college STEM education reform in reports such as Vision and Change and Engage to Excel.

The book has more than 100,000 copies in circulation, and since 2009 it has expanded to a six-book series called the Scientific Teaching Book Series. 

The Latest Scientific Teaching

Scientific Teaching was revolutionary at its first printing and many of its recommended practices have stood the test of time, but nearly two decades have passed.

New interventions and research findings have blossomed in many fields – education research, social science, education psychology, inclusive learning, online and hybrid learning, discipline-based education research, and more – rendering many of the perspectives, practices, and philosophies from the first edition Scientific Teaching incomplete or outdated.

Therefore, in 2022, Handelsman and Miller received grants from the Hewlett Foundation and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute to update the content and make it available to the international Scientific Teaching community. A diverse team of instructors was assembled with the expertise and experience to do again what scientific teaching does best: synthesize the current state of knowledge while providing practical guidance, examples, and tools.

In 2025, the online Scientific Teaching Course was released by Sarah Miller, Jo Handelsman, Jenny Knight, Sharleen Flowers, Mariah A. Knowles, Cara Gormally, Zakiya Kennedy, Taziah Kenney, Julia Nepper, Christine Pfund, Rebecca M. Price, Rou-Jia Sung, Cara Theisen, Sheela Vemu, and Michelle D. Withers. The goal of this course is to position science instructors to enact relevant and necessary STEM education improvements throughout the mid-21st century. In 2026, the second edition of the Scientific Teaching book will be published, based on this course content.

Throughout all of its history, the many authors of Scientific Teaching hope that the courses you teach using the principles of scientific teaching will inspire a generation of college students – especially those from groups historically excluded from STEM – to see themselves as scientists and be equipped to address the scientific challenges that lie ahead.