Off-Campus Learning Experience of Social Studies Student Teachers: Basis for an Enrichment Program

Abstract

INTRODUCTION

One of the most important components of any teacher education program in the country is off-campus training or student teaching, which is a mandate of the Commission on Higher Education. All student teachers undergo training for a full semester in order to expose them to the real teaching environment and equip them with the competencies required in the teaching profession. Despite the supposedly intensive off-campus training, a lot of problems still persist as experienced by both student teachers and their cooperating teachers. It is for this reason that the study on off-campus learning experiences of Social Studies student teachers, with the end of devising an enrichment program, was conducted.

METHODS

With the researcher-made questionnaires and Focus Group Discussions as data gathering instruments, descriptive design was used in the study. The respondents of the study were 120 Social Studies student teachers and their respective cooperating teachers, all of whom were from three divisions of Batangas. Statistical tools used to treat the gathered data were frequency, percentage, mean, t-test, and ANOVA.

RESULTS

Results of the study revealed that majority of the student teachers are female, residing in the rural area, with an annual family income of Php120,000 or less, practicing Roman Catholics, and had an average of 200 hours or more spent in off-campus teaching. The cooperating teachers assessed that the Social Studies student teachers greatly manifest classroom management skills, but they moderately manifest the skills in pedagogical knowledge, contextualization and localization, decision making, communication, and human relations. Likewise, it was revealed that there are significant differences in the assessments of the two groups of respondents on the manifestation of student teachers' skills and competencies, except in classroom management. Similarly, there are significant differences in the student teachers' skills in pedagogical knowledge, decision making, communication and classroom management in relation to the length or number of hours allotted for off-campus training.

DISCUSSIONS

The common issues encountered during off-campus training are the need to emphasize student participation in classroom discussion, the need for additional activities for student remediation, and the irregular class attendance of students. An enrichment program was devised based on the aforementioned findings to help address the issues encountered.