BEAM Newsletter

Pre-service provides continuing professional development for Teacher Educators

The BEAM Pre-service and Materials Development teams have again worked collaboratively for teacher educators’ professional development in lesson guide preparation and constructing new syllabus for education students.

A three-day on assessment, lesson guide exploration and development of new syllabi  was conducted and participated by 60 teacher educators, members of the Pre-service Professional Development (PD) team, from the 21 partner Teacher Education Institutions (TEI) across Regions XI, XII and ARMM on 11-13 February, 2008 at the USEP Training Hall, Davao City.

Teachers nowadays are faced with the complex nature of assessing students’ performance especially those that measure significant learner achievement, growth and development. True enough, assessment is performance-based; however, not all teachers can do away with pencil and paper tests. Hence, the need to learn how to evaluate student performance through varied assessment strategies. These varied tools may include how test are developed and are improved, how educational data are described and how test results are analyzed and interpreted.

Mr. Dennis Alonzo, a recipient of the Philippines-Australia Human Resource Development Facility (PAHRDF) scholarship in Australia on assessment and a USEP faculty member was the resource speaker for day 1. The objective of this activity was to familiarize PD team members on the current trends on test design/analysis and other forms of assessment.

On the 2nd day, training was held on Lesson Guide Exploration, facilitated by MatDev adviser

Roger Saunders and the rest of the In-service specialists to assist teacher educators on how to prepare lesson plans using the BEAM Learning Guides (LeGS). The Materials Development component has been responsible for developing the LeGS, an internet-based software that assists teachers how to create their lessons. After the activity, each participant was required to present their lesson plan as output.

Twelve professional development team members convened on the last day for a workshop on syllabus development for new courses in Math, English and Science.

Creating and using a learner-centered syllabus is integral to the process of creating learning communities. The concept is simple but its implications are far-reaching: students and their ability to learn. Course syllabi in Mathematics, Science and English developed by the Professional Development team members focus on the process of learning rather than the content. The teacher adapts to the students rather than expecting the students to adapt to the content and the responsibility is placed on students to learn rather than on professors to teach. These syllabi had undergone several levels of evaluation and are being used by the 21 TEIs which are members of the Pre-service consortium.

In the CHED Memorandum 30 or the Revised Teacher Education Curriculum, new subjects have been added to BEED and BSED curricular programs. The need to develop course syllabi for these new courses is urgent especially that some of these subjects will be offered the next semester. Sustaining the gains made by BEAM Pre-service as well as putting into practices what the PDs had been doing, these course syllabi will provide constructivist practices in the teaching and learning process in the classroom.

The objective of the workshop is to provide an avenue teaching educators continuing professional development especially in developing course syllabi that exhibit constructivist practices and principles. Participants were required to submit a draft of new syllabi that were critiqued and enhanced during the workshop.

The three workshops was made possible and successful through the initiative of BEAM Materials Development and Pre-service components, working collaboratively to strengthen the quality of teacher education in universities and colleges to produce better-equipped teachers that will respond to the dynamic needs in basic education.