INITIATIVES AND CHALLENGES IN BOOSTING INCLUSIVE LITERACY

PENELOPE G. CORTEZ

The Department of Education (DepEd) recently reported the latest efforts of the Department in boosting inclusive literacy such as integrating information and communication technology (ICT) in the school system; enhancing ICT literacy of learners, teachers, and school heads; and augmenting computer requirements in public schools and laptop units for mobile teachers.

According to Secretary Leonor Magtolis Briones, the Department includes new developments like inclusive literacy in ICT – which is wonderful because it will speed things up, it will speed up the learning process, and it will enable our learners to have access to information not only in the country but also in the rest of the world.

Briones recognizes that literacy has gone beyond being able to just read and write.

While the Education chief acknowledged the challenges of implementing inclusive literacy, such as population increase, dropout rate, and lack of resources, she commended the increased participation of teachers, students, the community, and partners in the effort to improve literacy for learners with exceptionalities.

Other major interventions to ensure inclusive literacy include training programs for teachers handling learners with various disabilities, enhancement trainings for school heads and supervisors, development of instructional materials for children with disabilities, and implement6ation of early interventions, transition programs, and headstart programs.

Briones expressed her gratitude to various partners who have extended their assistance to the Department. She said the DepEd has the full support of many partner agencies, local government units, NGOs, private sector, faith-based organizations, and even individuals who take the initiative in contributing to literacy because they know that mentoring a child into a state of full literacy requires resources, requires love, requires mentoring.

Just recently, DepEd conducted the 2018 National Literacy Conference and Awards (NLCA), with the aim to bolster partnerships and community participation in improving inclusive literacy in the country.

Spearheaded by DepEd’s Literacy Coordinating Council (LCC), NLCA served as a venue where implementers of literacy programs and projects can share experiences and where best practices are recognized.

Briones said what the Literacy Coordinating Council is doing is truly a major contribution to national development. She said our country cannot develop without people who are literate, who are informed, and who know how to respond to problems of development.

Anchored on the theme, “Inclusive Literacy through Integrative and Innovative Partnerships,” the event aspired to showcase and explore valuable practices on partnerships for inclusive literacy, successful partnership approaches for others to replicate, mechanisms for networking and linkages, and policy recommendations related to promoting collaboration for inclusive literacy, and to recognize literacy champions for the 2018 National Literacy Awards (NLA).

The two-day conference consisted of different plenary sessions, with topics such as updates on the Alternative Learning System (ALS) and the importance of collaboration to attain inclusive literacy.

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The author is Teacher III at M. Nepomuceno Elementary School

LEVI RUTH F. ADUNA

When we think of student engagement in learning activities, it is often convenient to understand engagement with an activity as being represented by good behavior, positive feelings, and, above all, student thinking. This is because students may be behaviorally and/ or emotionally invested in a given activity without actually exerting the necessary mental effort to understand and master the knowledge, craft, or skill that the activity promotes.

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Considering interrelated elements when designing and implementing learning activities may help increase student engagement behaviorally, emotionally, and cognitively, thereby positively affecting student learning and achievement .

In aiming for full engagement, it is essential that students perceive activities as being meaningful. Research has shown that if students do not consider a learning activity worthy of their time and effort, they might not engage in a satisfactory way, or may even disengage entirely in response. To ensure that activities are personally meaningful, we can, for example, connect them with students’previous knowledge and experiences, highlighting the value of an assigned activity in personally relevant ways. Also, adult or expert modeling can help to demonstrate why an individual activity is worth pursuing, and when and how it is used in real life.

The notion of competence may be understood as a student’s ongoing personal evaluation of whether he or she can succeed in a learning activity or challenge. It has been found that effectively performing an activity can positively impact subsequent engagement. To strengthen students’sense of competence in learning activities, the assigned activities could be only slightly beyond students’current levels of proficiency, make students demonstrate understanding throughout the activity, show peer coping models (i.e. students who struggle but eventually succeed at the activity) and peer mastery models (i.e. students who try and succeed at the activity), and include feedback that helps students to make progress.

We may understand autonomy support as nurturing the students’sense of control over their behaviors and goals. When teachers relinquish control (without losing power) to the students, rather than promoting compliance with directives and commands, student engagement levels are likely to increase as a result. Autonomy support can be implemented by welcoming students’opinions and ideas into the flow of the activity, using informational, non-controlling language with students and giving students the time they need to understand and absorb an activity by themselves.

Embracing collaborative learning is another powerful facilitator of engagement in learning activities. When students work effectively with others, their engagement may be amplified as a result, mostly due to experiencing a sense of connection to others during the activities. To make group work more productive, strategies can be implemented to ensure that students know how to communicate and behave in that setting. Teacher modeling is one effective method (i.e. the teacher shows how collaboration is done), while avoiding homogeneous groups and grouping by ability, fostering individual accountability by assigning different roles, and evaluating both the student and the group performance also support collaborative learning.

Establishing high-quality teacher-student relationships are another critical factor in determining student engagement, especially in the case of difficult students and those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. When students form close and caring relationships with their teachers, they are fulfilling their developmental need for a connection with others and a sense of belonging in society. Teacher-student relationships can be facilitated by caring about students’social and emotional needs, displaying positive attitudes and enthusiasm, increasing one-on-one time with students, treating students fairly, and avoiding deception or promise-breaking.

Finally, students’perspective of learning activities also determines their level of engagement. When students pursue an activity because they want to learn and understand (i.e. mastery orientations), rather than merely obtain a good grade, look smart, please their parents, or outperform peers (i.e. performance orientations), their engagement is more likely to be full and thorough. To encourage this mastery orientation mindset, consider various approaches, such as framing success in terms of learning (e.g. criterion-referenced) rather than performing (e.g. obtaining a good grade). You can also place the emphasis on individual progress by reducing social comparison (e.g. making grades private) and recognizing student improvement and effort.

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The author is Teacher III at Natividad High School