Philippine E-Journals

Philosophy of Teaching in the Philippines & How Schefflerian Philosophy of Teaching can be Significant to it

John Israel U. Cunanan

 

Abstract:

Per Department of Education Order No. 42, series of 2017 (DO 42, s., 2017), the Philippine Professional Standards for Teachers (PPST) is now adopted and implemented. It is the checklist that defines what makes a teacher a good teacher, and one of the indicators is Philosophy of Teaching (PoT). The bulk of this paper is an analysis of the approaches of PoT in some existing textbooks for the subject, The Teaching Profession (TTP), one of the professional education courses required to all pre-service teachers in the Philippines. The first part of the paper addresses four (4) concerns that contribute to the over-all tenability of the aim of essay: (1) clarification about the meanings of personal and learner-centered, (2) answering the accusation of blatant anachronism, (3) making explicit the connection between TTP and PoT (of PPST), and (4) making sense of the assumption of the necessity of PoT. The second part argues that the approaches toward PoT in the country, as found in selected TTP textbooks, are problematic. The problems pointed out, which are solely based on a scrutiny of selected textbooks, are the absence of clear-cut distinctions, and the absence of the element of ratiocination (and its accompanying component, normativity), which are all necessary conditions for a discussion of a viable PoT. The third part introduces the Schefflerian PoT (S-PoT) of Israel Scheffler as a viable framework of PoT for Filipino teachers because it constitutes the two stipulated conditions of any PoT (per PPST): personal and learner-centered. Furthermore, it includes the element of ratiocination and is normative. Thus, S-PoT becomes significant here in the Philippines.