ABSTRACT
This descriptive-qualitative study aimed to determine the experiences of mountain school teachers on K to 12 curriculum program and their expectations on MATATAG Curriculum for an enhanced guidelines implementation. It was found out that the experiences of teachers on K to 12 curriculum were congested competencies, limited learning resources materials, delayed delivery of learning materials, lot of paper work to do, and lack of adequate training. Their coping strategies were maximizing time for preparation, producing localized materials, prioritizing the most essential competencies, seeking administrative support, and continuing professional development. Based on the result its study revealed that mountain school teachers expected to have more responsive and realistic curriculum, enough suitable materials, flexible administration support and more trainings and seminars provided in the MATATAG curriculum.
Keywords: Mountain School Teachers, K to 12 Curriculum Program, Experiences, Expectation, MATATAG Curriculum, Enhanced Guidelines Implementation
INTRODUCTION
The K to 12 curricula started last 2012 is a comprehensive reform for basic education. This educational reform in the Philippines is catching up with global standards in education system. The improvement of educational system includes undergoing reform in structure, curricula, and philosophy of the education system. The curriculum aims to provide comprehensive education that prepares students for higher education, employment, and entrepreneurship leading them to become holistically developed and productive citizen of the country. This policy appears admirable and timely, but it faces some pedagogical and socioeconomic problems (Okabe, 2013).
The MATATAG Curriculum known as “Bansang Makabata, Bansang Makabansa,” was introduced to focus on addressing educational challenges and problems that teachers and learners experience. This curriculum will aim on prioritizing the mastery of literacy and numeracy skills among Filipino learners.
Teachers have various expectations on the MATATAG curriculum which will be implemented for school year 2024-2025. They reflect on the essentiality and feasibility of choosing learning competencies, the need for good quality, flexibility, sustainability, and safety in choosing learning modalities, and the importance of aligning, distributing, and ensuring sufficiency of learning materials. Teachers also emphasize the devotion, adaptability, and helpfulness of teachers, the need for reaching out to students and individualizing tasks, and the leadership and involvement required for success in education. The new curriculum is seen as adaptive and flexible to the changing educational landscape brought by the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, teachers play a vital role in implementing curriculum policies, facing tensions such as confusion, frustration, and powerlessness, but also appreciation, flexibility, and importance in making sense of and operationalizing the curriculum.
The researcher conducted the study to identify issues about education in implementing overloaded curriculum, excessive teaching demands within constrained timeframes, and an overloaded academic load such as the competencies that need to be mastered by teachers and learners which hindered the mastery of fundamental skills like reading and simple mathematics problem.
Curriculum implementation is a challenge among all teachers especially in terms of how it should be implemented at the classroom level. Given the paradigm shift in Philippine basic education classrooms brought about by the K to 12 Education Program, there is a need to describe and understand the experiences of teachers specifically the mountain school teachers.
A lot of questions on mind of the teachers on the ground regarding K to 12 curricula and the MATATAG Curriculum, since some of the resources were already provided even though its already late but the thing is there are resources. Here comes the new curriculum that we are going to implement but we feel we are not ready especially that our training was not enough. That is why the researcher studied the experiences of mountain school teachers in K to 12 curricula to help improve the implemention of MATATAG curriculum specifically the late issuance and provision of learning materials. And lastly, the researcher also wanted to gathered the expectations of teachers on MATATAG curriculum which served as bases for an enhanced guideline’s implementation.
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