Education

Last school year 2012-2013, the educational system of the Philippines was enhanced from the 10-years basic education into 12-years through the program called the K-12 Education Plan of the Department of Education.

Accordingly, the implementation of the K-12 education plan in the Philippine Basic Education Curriculum is the key to our nation’s development.  The government may be facing many problems in the implementation of the program yet it is important that we implement it because the enhancement of the quality of education is very urgent and critical.

It is not difficult to understand why, despite the additional costs the program would entail, the public generally appears to take the President’s K -12 basic education program sitting down.  In 2010, Mr. Isagani Cruz wrote in one of his columns in a local newspaper some good reasons not to disagree with K-12 education plan in the Philippines.

Advocating the importance of education beyond learning process, Outcome Based Learning emphasizes the learning processes that would lead to planed and specified learning outcomes. The essential attributes reflect the students’ competencies and values, and represent outcomes that are transferable to a variety of contexts for the present and the future.

Ever since the founding of Hong Kong Institute of Education, student learning outcomes have been assimilated into the existing Bachelor of Education curriculum. With the introduction of the OBL approach, we make the outcomes explicit at the Institute level. Outcome-based Unit located within the centre for learning, Teaching and Technology (LTTC), together with all academic departments within within the institute, has been developing generic and course specific, and integrating professional knowledge, concepts, skills and dispositions into the attributes of our ideal graduate.

The Big Ideas of Understanding by Design

1)   UbD is a way of thinking purposefully about curriculum planning and school reform, a set of helpful design tools, and design standards - - not a program or recipe

2)   The end goal of UbD is understanding and the ability to transfer learning – to appropriately connect, make sense of, and use discrete knowledge and skills in context.

3)   Evidence of understanding is revealed through performance when learners transfer knowledge and skills effectively, using one or more “facets” (explain, apply, perspective, empathize and self-assess)

4)   Educators are coaches of understanding, ont mere purveyors of content or activity

5)   Planning is best done “backward” from the desired results and the transfer tasks that embody the goals

6)   UbD transforms Content Standards and other goals into focused learning targets based on “big ideas” and transfer tasks