Differentiated strategies to beat perennial education problems

MODERN Filipino teachers face a lot of challenges nowadays especially on the issue of how they can deliver quality education without a single student being left behind the rest.

Holistic learning, the ultimate goal of each educator, can be obscured by three obstacles on which they may feel powerless to address: class size, overall workload, and instructional time. These are genuine concerns that we are facing for decades now, so let’s take a closer look at each challenges and possible solutions.

1. Problem with class size

Class size is one among the many perennial problems each of our public schools nationwide face for years now. This is also linked with the shortage of classrooms, facilities and teachers in our public schools especially in urban areas. Some education experts say that students from smaller classes perform better academically, with the largest impact appearing to be on early elementary pupils. Critics, meanwhile, counter that costs rise as class size falls and that the impact of smaller classes decreases for older grades.

One education research, in fact, found that small class size has “a positive but small effect on learning. What is more important is the teacher expertise in the instructional setting.”

What we can do: Transform whole class instructions into small learning teams. Working with 40 or 50 students at once can feel overwhelming at times. Differentiation through content can be done by dividing students into small learning teams of four or five. Provide tasks that specifically target skills or outcomes through respectful work based on students’ readiness level.

2. Workload

A common public school teacher typically sees at least more than 200 students a day in five classes. A large workload can make it difficult for the teacher to get to know all of their students. With large workloads, relationships become even more important. Knowing students’ names and something about them is necessary if we want to have a more personalized approach to learning and support.

What we can do: Assign activities that can reflect students’ character, assess their personality, and to set expectations. Teachers can also ask students to write a narrative about themselves which they can submit privately. They can use sticky notes, emails, letters, or postings directly to the teacher. These insights can provide needed perspective that informs a teacher’s action.

3. Time

A typical class day in heavily populated urban schools commonly has three shifts, comprising of 4 or 5 hours per shift. They often need to squeeze classes into 30- or 40-minute instructions to cater at least 10 subjects. With this very limited time for instructions and activities, teachers often wonder how they can teach effectively. Meanwhile, rural schools have longer class hours often reaching 100 minutes long. With this much longer instruction, however, students may get easily bored if we fail to engage them with the lessons. Teachers should look at how they can create learning experiences within the timeframe that place the students in the role of active learners instead of passive receptors.

What we can do: Focus students on deeper learning. Plan lessons based on what students need to know, understand, and do. With this clear goal in mind, plan a variety of activities that build connections for students based on their different needs. Also use informal informative reflective tasks in which students can consider what they understood and did not from the lesson. Students need opportunities to check their understanding before moving forward on the lessons./