Quality Holistic Professional Learning in Lebanon

For more than a decade, Lebanon has been at the epicenter of the ongoing crisis of displacement, hosting approximately 1.5 million refugees, including more than 500,000 school-age refugee children and youth. 

Many of these children face difficulties accessing learning, and the nation’s education systems and teachers also face challenges providing quality holistic education to many displaced students alongside other students across Lebanon in a national school system adversely affected by ongoing economic turmoil and stress in the region. 

In response, Childhood Education International’s Center for Professional Learning (CPL) has been collaborating with educators in Lebanon to support teachers working across the national education system, as well as through supporting and complementary programs offered by INGOs and private schools. The aim of the project is to bolster inclusion, equity, and holistic learning experiences and outcomes for every child throughout Lebanon. 

Project Goals

The Quality Holistic Professional Learning in Lebanon (QHPLL) Project builds on our two-year Quality Holistic Learning project, in which CPL worked collaboratively with teachers and other key education leaders in Chad, Kenya, Lebanon, and Niger to create, test, evaluate, and revise open educational professional development resources in Arabic, English, and French.

The QHPLL Project is centered on working with educators in Lebanon to:

• Share and co-create professional development resources in Lebanon  
• Build strong communities of practice among educators across all of the country’s governorates 
• Host workshops within the Communities of Practice that reach 1,000+ educators in Lebanon 
• Equip and empower educators to support and lead for quality holistic learning for every child in Lebanon 

Project Structure

CPL’s approach to professional learning is to co-create with educators and other technical experts to ensure that materials are contextualized, appropriate, accessible, and effective. 

Building on success working with educators who served as Project Fellows as part of the Quality Holistic Learning project, CPL recruited Project Fellows for the QHPLL project. Hundreds of candidates applied, and ten were selected from across all eight governorates in Lebanon. 

The QHPPL Project Fellows bring a breadth of experience working in private and public schools, as well as NGOs, and represent the country’s three linguistic communities – Arabic, English, and French. The CE International team is collaborating with them and with three consultants in the region to create communities of practice that promote dialogue, reflection, and learning centered on holistic pedagogies across Lebanon.

Project Impact

As of April 30, 2024, the project team in Lebanon had hosted 36 informational sessions to introduce the Quality Holistic Professional Development Open Educational Resources to their colleagues across the country and facilitated 26 learning sessions or workshops.

Forty-eight institutions and schools have engaged with the project team and materials, and eight unique communities of practice have formed in different regions of Lebanon. Hundreds of teachers across Lebanon are completing online courses and submitting portfolios of work to earn competency-based micro-credentials and teacher leadership recognition from the QHPLL Project Team.