ISSUES ON SUSTAINABILITY IN EDUCATION: THE PHILIPPINE BASIC EDUCATION CURRICULUM CONUNDRUM
Abstract
This paper presents some issues concerning Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) borrowing Stephen Sterling’s proposal to use Sustainable Education (SE) instead of ESD. The issues raised in this paper about ESD is limited to educational paradigms and not the curricular contents in which the ESD recommends. The reason being is that SE highlights the change of educational paradigm and not focused on curricular contents. With these issues, the paper explores on what is response of Philippine Basic Education Curriculum to the call to ESD. The paper attempts to analyse the response based on the prevailing issues raised. The paper utilises qualitative research design. Document analysis is the technique used in analyzing the empirical materials. The empirical materials presented in this paper are: (1) Department Order number 14 series of 2013, (2) Department Order Number 13 series of 2012, and (3) Department Order Number 8, Series 2015). These three DOs are implementation documents which are meant to articulate the K-12 BEC. The analysis focuses on the exploration of these documents that are linked to K-12 BEC. This technique provides the authors inferences and the context of the paper was culled from the documents itself. With this, it provides insights and representations of facts that was used primarily to understand the conundrum posted. Learner-centered approach to teaching and learning is one of the main features of the K-12 BEC. This approach coincides with Sterling’s definition of sustainable education and Barr and Tagg’s new paradigm in teaching and learning. However, the three DOs show disjunct on the learner-centered feature of the curriculum. The empirical materials show elements of teacher-centered approach, an opposing paradigm to the learner-centered approach. The elements of teacher-centered approach that the empirical materials confirmed are (1) rigid instructional time per subject matter, (2) mass-produced textbooks, and lastly, (3) inflexible content standards. This paper opens further discourse on sustainable education and paradigms in teaching and learning. It has a potential to open a wider discussion on the curriculum implementation practices of the country.
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