ABSTRACT
The descriptive research study aimed to find out the teachers’ level of implementation, challenges encountered, and coping strategies on the spiral progression approach in teaching science as bases for program enhancement. The respondents of the study were the 30 junior high school science teachers purposively selected in public secondary schools in the District of Tigbauan, Iloilo. Findings of the study revealed that spiral progression approach was “highly implemented” by the junior high school science teachers. There was no significant difference in the level of implementation when the teachers were classified as to highest educational attainment, grade level taught, field of specialization, and length of teaching experience. Science teachers encountered challenges such as insufficient learning materials, time constraint, poor retention of basic concepts of learners and mastery of content across areas of specialization. It is recommended that this research may be replicated in other district for wider generalizations and to adequately establish the level of teachers’ implementation of the spiral progression approach in teaching junior high school science.
Keywords: Spiral Progression Approach, Implementation, Challenges, Coping Strategies, Program Enhancement
INTRODUCTION
Science is a complex, dynamic and rapidly changing field that covers extra ordinary interesting subjects to study and teach. The teaching science is as important as the subject itself because the learners’ learning capacity is influenced by the way the concepts of the lessons are taught by the teachers. Teachers have great potential to affect learners’ educational outcomes. How teachers teach is one of the key determinants of learners’ success or failure most especially with the changing science curriculum and approach to teaching in the country that aims to improve and develop scientific literacy among learners in order for them to be globally competitive.
In an effort to improve science education in the Philippines, the science curriculum was redesigned and disseminated. The enhanced curriculum boasts a spiral approach to its design, where the same concepts are built on increasing sophistication and complexity from Grade 1 to Grade 12. The spiral progression approach is a technique often used in teaching where the basic facts of a subject are first learned, without worrying about details. Then as learning progresses, more and more details are introduced, while at the same time they are related to the basics which are reemphasized many times to help them enter long-term memory.
The basic idea behind spiral progression approach is to expose the learners to a wide variety of concepts or topics, skills and attitudes that are deemed of “continual concern of everyone “until they are mastered. A spiral curriculum design is one in which “key concepts are presented repeatedly throughout the curriculum, but with deepening layers of complexity.” After a mastery of the initial topic, the students “spirals upwards” as the new knowledge is introduced in next lessons, enabling him/her to reinforce what is already learned. In Science, concepts and skills in Earth Sciences, Life Sciences, Chemistry and Physics are presented with increasing levels of complexity from one grade level to another in spiral progression, thus paving the way to a deeper understanding of core concepts.
In connection with the redesigned science curriculum, it is obvious that its implementation depends heavily on teachers. The new curriculum assigns teachers’ new tasks, responsibilities and roles. In order for teachers to realize the roles mentioned and to implement the curriculum successfully, they must be-well prepared about the structure changes, and implementation of the new curriculum. To evaluate the outcomes and level of implementation of high school science curriculum in real school settings, it is appropriate to take the viewpoints of teachers. Recommendations, ideas, and criticisms are very important for the improvement and development of the new curriculum.
It has been observed that many teachers in the School District of Tigbauan specifically at Bagacay National High School, Cordova National High School, Parara National High School, Barroc National High School, Barosong National High School, Binaliuan National High School, Napnapan National High School, and Tigbauan National High School, who were teaching science were trained on specific science discipline such as general science, biology, chemistry or physics and were not science generalists. This orientation did not prepare them to handle the implementation of spiral progression approach in teaching science, hence the study.
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