Christopher C. Bernido and M. Victoria Carpio-Bernido
Research Center for Theoretical Physics, Central Visayan Institute Foundation Jagna, Bohol 6308, Philippines
ABSTRACT
The socio-economic, scientific, and technological competition among nations is known to be strongly impacted by the quality of education and training a nation provides for its human resources, especially the youth. Here we examine the case of Philippine education and trace the main roots of its poor performance in international assessments spanning a quarter of a century. Drawing insights from several decades of varying curricular reforms, we note how significant learning loss in basic education is generated by: (1) the choice and arrangement of curriculum content whether Spiral in progression or Disciplinal in approach; and (2) a congested curriculum. Of these, the choice of curriculum is observed to be more critical since it entraps large cohorts of students to a learning process once the intended, or prescribed, curriculum is decided. A congested or overcrowded curriculum, on the other hand, may be remedied, though not without challenges, at any point in the school year. In this paper, we contrast the Spiral Curriculum from the Disciplinal or discipline-based approach and discuss why the fundamental design and features of one curricular framework is more superior than the other when implemented in a classroom. During a pandemic where there is no face-to-face interaction between teacher and student, the inadequacies and shortcomings of a curriculum are further amplified. We then briefly discuss how process-induced learning fostered by the CVIF-Dynamic Learning Program can address the loss of