Women of K-12: Exploring teachers’ cognition in language policy implementation

Abstract

Women mother tongue educators constitute the larger population as compared to their male counterpart. Therefore, women play essential role in the success of the implementation of the latest language-in-education policy. The objective of the study is to determine teachers’ cognition on the use of mother tongue in multilingual class. Teacher cognition was descried by Borg (1998) as the teachers’ various beliefs, attitudes and perspectives towards language teaching. Teacher’s cognition of female teachers was explored to elucidate how teacher’s beliefs influence their educational practices. It was discovered from the interviews that although the participants believe that the use of mother tongue in multilingual class enhances learning, it also poses challenges among teachers. It is also significant to note that teachers tend to deviate from the Mother Tongue-based Education (MTB-MLE) implemented in the Philippines to suit the needs of their students. It was further probed that teacher cognition influences pedagogical practice in multilingual class.