Survey of Elementary Teachers' Basic Literacy Knowledge: Basis for an Extension Program

The OECD developed the PISA, which assesses 15-year-old students’ ability to apply their knowledge and skills in reading, math, and science to real-world situations.  Of the 79 participating countries, the Philippines was ranked lowest in the 2018 PISA results.  Although the 2022 result manifested slight improvement, the Philippines is still in the bottom 10 out of 81 countries for the second consecutive assessment. Chi (2023) reported that most Filipino teachers employ ineffective teaching strategies, which hinder student learning. This phenomenon calls for teacher training on the use of effective teaching strategies.  Hence, the Philippine DepEd implemented aggressive reforms in four (4) key areas:  K to 12 review and updating, improvement of learning facilities, teachers and school heads’ retooling and reskilling through a transformed professional development program.'  Of the four (4) key areas, the most important is the teachers’ retooling and reskilling through a transformed professional development program.  Teachers who possess strong content knowledge and practical teaching skills can provide excellent classroom instruction (Haycock, 1998), which is regarded as the “best weapon against reading failure” (Snow et al., 1998, p. 343).  This study aimed to ascertain the literacy knowledge of the reading teachers across the five (5) constructs- phonological awareness, phonics and word recognition, grammar awareness and structure, vocabulary development, and reading comprehension.  It involved 228 elementary reading teachers.  The study adopted Perry’s (2019) Survey of Basic Language Constructs, which includes phonological awareness, phonics, and word recognition.  The researcher added reading comprehension, grammar awareness, and vocabulary development items to contextualize the competencies needed to teach reading in the DepEd curriculum.  The study’s results revealed that the elementary teachers’ reading comprehension was “average mastery” (M=70.53; SD=2.42), the highest of the five tested constructs.  The elementary teachers got the lowest mean score (M=34.57; SD=1.04) in phonics and word recognition, described as “very low mastery.”  Based on the study's findings, an extension program will be developed to retool elementary reading teachers.  Specifically, it will train teachers to use Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL). CLIL is a task-based language learning method that teaches language through conversation about subject matter, thus creating a meaningful learning environment where students use the target language to learn the subject’s content.  Teachers scaffold through feedback, putting the students in “the zone of proximal development” (Vygotsky, 1978); students can complete tasks because a teacher is assisting them. CLIL is interactive, mediated, and student-led learning, necessitating social interaction between teachers and students.