Teaching Chemistry in a Spiral Progression Approach: Lessons from Science Teachers in the Philippines

Abstract

As the Philippines moves towards implementing the K-12 curriculum, there has been a mismatch in teacher preparation in science. The present teacher education curriculum prepares science teachers to specialise in a specific field (e.g. integrated science, biology, chemistry, and physics). However, in the K-12 curriculum, they are required to teach all the sciences in a spiral progression approach. Hence, this study analysed the experiences of science teachers in teaching chemistry in the K-12 curriculum in order to identify their challenges and how they are overcoming them. Findings suggest that the teacher’s content, pedagogy, and assessment in chemistry are problematic; specifically, challenges such as instruction-related factors, teacher competence, in-service training sufficiency, job satisfaction, support from upper management, laboratory adequacy, school resources, assessment tools, and others influence teacher success in teaching chemistry. These identified challenges greatly affect the ultimate beneficiaries of education, which is the learner.