RECALIBRATING COMPETENCY OF PUBLIC SCHOOL TEACHERS: RESEARCH-BASED IMPLICATIONS TO SCIENCE EDUCATION
Juvelyn L. Esteban, EdD
Research is indeed a platform of excellence in education. Hence, it crafts the best possible ways to mold certain notions, programs, or even novel tools and materials that will help the world to establish its purpose and realize its goals in making life easier and making it possible for quality to be met at many aspects.
In a research conducted in 2013, 96 public school chemistry teachers were tested through a competency test and were asked to answer perception questionnaires. The purpose of the study was to correlate the two variables as to provide certain intervention programs to enhance the competency of these teachers in teaching the subject.
Through the demographic variables, the research found out that all the teachers are eligible to teach in the public school based on the regulations of the government. This only shows that the selection process was genuine and that they all passed the requirements for a public school teacher to fulfill. Thus, preliminarily, it can be deduced that they are competent enough.
In another view of the findings, it was concluded that the teachers’ least-used teaching strategy was computer-aided instruction, which is apparently a contradiction to the demands of 21st century education. Also, it was generalized through the test conducted that the teachers were very poor in the mastery of knowledgecontent areas.
These findings may reflect a certain issue in education; it may implicate that public school teachers’ competencies should be recalibrated. On the other hand, these findings inspire the department and all those who work for it to look for opportunities to enhance the system, the teachers’ skills and competence so we can all provide better quality of education.
The findings do not only provide negative impacts. It could be one way to learn new things and a way to provide better platforms for teachers and administrators to focus on important areas so that there will be silver linings. The inspiration that research findings could be a foundation in crafting programs and trainings for the department to focus on, which will then result to co-dependence in enriching the methodologies teacher should use in teaching the subjects.
Researches like this would be one way to transform the negative aspects into possible objectives related to enhancing the educational processes. Thus, these gray areas of education could only be solved when they are acknowledged and when they are known. Research is a platform that will make these unknown notions revealed, which in turn, will be baseline data to add to the frontiers of knowledge that the high authorities need to understand so they can cater the specific needs of teachers, who are the main implementers of the curriculum.
--oOo-
The author is Principal III at Tibag High School, Tarlac City