By Ma. Teresa Montemayor (PNA)
MANILA — The Department of Education (DepEd) has urged the teacher education institutions (TEIs) to use learner-centered approaches in training the country’s future educators, saying quality education depends on the quality of teachers nationwide.
“There will be no change in the classrooms, in education, if the teacher themselves do not know how to use project-based learning, learner-centered activities and 21st-century skills. If you want the teachers to engage basic education students, they must be 100-percent engaged as well,” DepEd Undersecretary for Curriculum and Instruction Lorna Dig-Dino said Thursday in a roundtable discussion in Makati City.
Dig-Dino said she observed that most TEIs still use lecture-type discussions in their daily classes, which is not an appropriate approach for effective learning.
“Nagturo din ako at ganoon kami tinuruan (I’m also a teacher and that’s the way we were taught), but it’s time to re-learn to acquire important skills. We need to start reviewing the 2017 Philippine Professional Standards for Teachers (PPST), we need a curriculum that is ladderized,” she added.
Knowledge Channel Education Consultant Fe Hidalgo, who was also in the roundtable discussion, said there is a need for “specialist teachers” in the elementary level.
“Even now, I think there is a lot of deficit in training teachers during pre-service and in-service, particularly in the field of mathematics, science, and reading. We need to connect DepEd data and teacher deficits by area, by subject, and CHED (Commission on Higher Education) data on teacher programs,” she said.
Hidalgo added DepEd, CHED, and other concerned institutions must agree on the identified deficits, which must be addressed in the teacher training programs.
Meanwhile, Dig-Dino explained that the country uses a spiral curriculum with integrated math and science, hence, there is no need for specialist teachers until junior high school.
“What we truly need are teachers who can create lesson plans. We don’t want to teach lesson planning and learner-centered approaches during the insets. These should have been perfected before they graduate,” she said, adding that quality assurance must be done by the TEIs before the education students graduate.
In response, CHED Education Program Specialist Ericson Reyes said the current teacher education program is quite new and it would take years before the commission could issue a revised curriculum.
“When the teacher education curriculum was drafted, the PPST was not the only standard that was considered. There were other standards, which we needed to consider like the ICT (information and communication) competency standards. So, maybe, the group might share with us the studies for future reference for the review of our program standards and guidelines,” Reyes said.
During the discussion, the Philippine Business for Education (PBEd) reported that only 20 percent of the 1,258 TEIs nationwide have their curricula aligned with the new professional standards.
PBEd also reported that out of 4,752 licensure exam takers from poor-performing TEIs, only around five percent of them pass.
