Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Context:
The NNHS Experience
Dr. Maria Cristina A. Robles & Mr. Marco D. Meduranda
23rd ICTED International Conference on Teacher Education
Here's the overview of our presentation. We shall first share the ground
work we did before the creation of our school-based action research
program. Next, we will explain how we build professional learning
communities in Navotas National High School through Learning Action Cell
(LAC) and action research. Then, we will discuss the outcomes and insights
we derived from this experience as well as the future direction of our
program.
Let me show you the members of the NNHS research team, the
school's lead learners. My job was to assist the principal in the
conceptualization and implementation of our research and professional
development programs.
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The school research committee led by the principal also developed
this guiding framework that helped teachers understand why we need to
build professional learning communities in school.
We carried out all of these orders: TQC or Teacher Quality Circle, PLC
or Professional Learning Community, CI or the Continuous Improvement
program and Action Research using Learning Action Cells, first, by informing
them what the policies are all about, then involving them on how to
contextualize and operationalize the activities given the school realities,
and then inspiring them or empowering them to be self-managed and self-
directed in accomplishing the collective goals of improving learning
outcomes and making them accountable to the results. We endeavored
to carry out these processes in a systematic, ongoing, job-embedded,
contextual and programmatic way as all activities are incorporated in the
3-year School Improvement Plan following the school-based management
principles.
How did we conduct this program? First, we used learning action cell as a way
to continuously inform, involve and inspire our teachers. In NNHS, LAC is an
opportunity for teachers to gather and discuss identified classroom problems and
collaboratively work to address the concern or improve the current practice.
Since one of the challenges identified by teachers in doing AR is the lack of time,
we uniquely restructured the class schedules to give time for teachers to
collaborate in doing AR and LAC. Without sacrificing contact time for students,
we were able to devise a schedule system where teachers deliver their teaching
in four days and on the fifth day they were given an OFF- DAY, to be used for
department-based learning action cells and action research follow-ups. These
off-days were supervised by the master teachers and the department heads. The
division office also approved our schedule system to support the first year of
implementation of the program.
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During in-service trainings, we also designed intensive school-based action
research capacity building training workshops which simplified the process of
doing action research in fun and purposeful way.
To address fear of writing and statistics, we were also able to develop tools
that simplify the writing of action research. This templates guided teachers from
the topic conceptualization up to research proposal writing. One of our tool was
even recognized and adopted by DepEd National Capital Region. We also
developed a school research editorial team composed of willing English and
Math teachers who took care of the editing and statistics of teachers action
research reports.
For the first year of the implementation of the school-based action research
program, teachers received continuous technical assistance in the conduct of
their projects. These were done before, during and after their AR studies.
One way to monitor and evaluate the teachers' AR projects is through our
KUMUSTAHAN sessions. Here, teachers, by areas of specialization, presented and
reflected on what they had accomplished and received feedback and
technical assistance. Since AR is a recursive process, teachers sometimes plan for
another cycle of action plans to meet their AR success indicators.
In August 31, 2017, our teachers were able to complete their action
research projects funded by BERF and they were given recognition by DepEd
NCR.
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With regard to the effects of the program to student learning outcomes, we
would like to share that all 32 interventions developed by teachers during the 1st
year of the implementation of the program showed positive results on students'
learning outcomes. These findings were verified through the data triangulation of
students' pretest and posttest results, the findings from the focus group discussions
and the evaluation of students formative assessments like worksheets used in the
course of the intervention.
We were also able to engage the parents in the action research process.
In fact, the concept from our Isang Nanay, Isang Gulay Project came from them.
The AR project seeks to augment the resources of our school-based feeding
program by engaging each parent to plant vegetables in their homes and then
offer these vegetables in our school-feeding activities. This process caught the
attention of Senator Bam Aquino. We were invited to present this modality in a
hearing in the senate last November, 2016. And last June 29, 2018, the bill was
passed into law and it was so rewarding that our simple action research project
became part of a national law.
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in promoting collaborative culture in schools as these allow teachers to
work together to analyze and improve classroom practice.
2. Transforming a school into a professional learning community requires
creativity, hard work and innovativeness. Its success depends not on the
merits of the concept itself but on the commitment and persistence of the
educators within it.
3. Pre-service teacher education should provide opportunities for future
educators to explore and apply the principles and processes of action
research as this will foster an openness toward new ideas, reflective
practice, meaningful collaboration and inclusive education.