INTRODUCTION
Hence, today‘s educational policies aim at making education more effective (Uusiautti & Maatta, 2013) and consequently, ―seeing teaching as a continuous process of learning (Stockard, 2010) can make education stronger. In order to be branded globally competitive, educators are pushed to be important prime movers of change for social transformation. It is however surprising to see that despite the concrete efforts of teachers, students and their learning remain as serious problems. Their depleting interest to study complicated subjects almost resembles to their lowering interest in other subjects like Social Studies. Teaching Social Studies takes a lot of patience and competence to give students the opportunity to appreciate and develop love for memorization, critical analysis and relate history to their real life. Consequently, innovation in instructional styles seems to be a requirement. The teachers just try to see to it that they perform their instructional tasks like attainment of the objectives, teaching strategy, integration of ICT, classroom management, content resources, learning assessment and instructional materials as assessed by the principals, department heads and the teachers themselves.
Teachers tend to have students participate in activities that do not encourage critical thinking, but instead encourage rote memorization of names, dates and places (Chiodo & Byford, 2006). On their part, they find teaching the subject as challenging as it should be because of the diverse perception of students, the insufficiency of motivating elements to maintain their interest focused on the subject. This requires Social Studies teachers to make use of various teaching strategies to be able to continue with the conducive learning environment. Van Sledright (2010) explained “the common preoccupation with having students commit one fact after another to memory based on history textbook recitations and lectures does little to build capacity to think historically”. In addition, it was observed that teachers need to connect the content to the individual interests of the students, thus increasing student interest in the content and actively engaging students in the learning process. This entails utilizing a variety of teaching techniques that help engage students in the learning process. Some examples of engaging instructional methods include cooperative learning, role playing, and technology (Hoagland (2010).
RESEARCH QUESTIONS:
1. What strategies were employed by Social Studies teachers of Batangas National High School in teaching Grade 7 Asian History and Culture?
2. How may the Social Studies teachers be described in teaching the following lessons among the Grade 7 students:
2.1 Asian History; and
2.2 Asian Culture?
3. Is there significant relationship between the strategies employed of Grade 7 Social Studies Teachers and extent of contextualizing Asian History?
4. What Plans, Program and Activities (PPAs) may be proposed to improve the teaching of Grade 7 Social Studies Teachers?
RESEARCH DESIGN/METHODOLOGY:
This study made use of a descriptive-correlational research design for the different purposes. Descriptive research was used to describe the level of teaching strategies of Social Studies teachers and the extent of contextualizing Asian history and culture. Correlational study was also used to assess the degree of relationship between the two variables under study. Purposive sampling technique was used to select the respondents of this study. This is most appropriate to the current study because of the very big number of Grade 7 students of BNHS. Thus, the respondents of this study totalled to 200. Through self-prepared test questions, the researcher gathered results from the selected respondents. The instrument was administered in December 2017 personally and individually to the target respondents from Batangas National High School. After the conduct of the administration, the researcher retrieved, analyzed and interpreted the data using appropriate statistical tools.
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