Abstract
Abstract The COVID-19 pandemic has led teachers in the Philippines to rely on technology to provide and support continued education for K-12 students. However, it is not only technology, but also the interactive online learning environments crafted by teachers that impact student science learning. To support teachers to cope with pandemic teaching, the government provided professional development in the form of teacher-training webinars. This study evaluated the webinars using Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles to understand the impact these professional development sessions had on science teachers’ self-efficacy for delivering science instruction during the pandemic. The study found that webinars including UDL design elements improved science teachers’ self-efficacy for teaching science and there were no significant differences in teacher perceptions relative to gender or teaching experience. Implications for the use of UDL to design long-term professional development offerings beyond the pandemic are discussed.
Highlights
The closure of educational institutions worldwide in response to the COVID19 pandemic has affected more than 1.5 billion learners worldwide, including more than 28 million learners in the Philippines (UNESCO, 2020)
The instrument we developed was divided into four parts: (1) data collection of research participants’ demographic profiles, (2) science teachers’ evaluations of online trainings/webinars through the lens of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) adapted from He’s (2014) online course design based on a UDL rubric, (3) science teachers’ responses of perceived confidence and self-efficacy adapted from the online learning readiness scale via free access of Hung, Chou, Chen, and Own (2010), and (4) science teachers’ responses about perceived challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic in the Philippines adapted from Alea, Fabrea, Roldan, and Farooqi (2020)
The study showed that science teachers surveyed graded the online trainings/webinars they attended and participated in as very good, with the highest rating (M = 3.68, SD = 0.81) given to innovative teaching with technology under the UDL principle of providing multiple means of action and expression
Summary
The closure of educational institutions worldwide in response to the COVID19 pandemic has affected more than 1.5 billion learners worldwide, including more than 28 million learners in the Philippines (UNESCO, 2020). In response to the pandemic, the Department of Education (DepEd) and President Duterte announced the postponement of the new school year, which starts annually in June (pre-pandemic in the Philippines) to give time to revive many sectors of the falling economy (Palatino, 2020). In July 2020, several senators questioned the agency’s ability to train all its teachers for distance-learning education in time for the opening of classes, as only 40% of the more than 800,000 public school teachers had been trained for the “new normal” (Abelita, 2020). Even before the pandemic, the country faced serious challenges to providing quality science education and to using technology to facilitate teaching and learning. A report from the World Economic Forum ranked the Philippines 67th among 140 countries in 2016 and 79th among 138 countries in 2017 in terms of global competitiveness in quality science education (Fuente, 2019)
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