Breadth or Depth? Parallelism and Re-spiraling of Araling Panlipunan Competencies for Elementary Learners in Saint Louis College-Cebu

Abstract

This action research is conducted to address the issues surrounding the competencies and instruction in teaching Araling Panlipunan in the Elementary Level of Saint Louis College-Cebu. The learning competencies which serve to be the scaffold in understanding the civic, cultural, and historical context embedded in the curriculum have a different progression when the Revised-Basic Education Curriculum shifted to K-12 Curriculum. In the new curriculum’s spiral progression, several topics or competencies from higher grade level were distributed to the lower grade level to which in effect, these competencies are no longer aligned to the level of understanding and appreciation of the grade school learners.Learners from the 4^th grade to 6^th grade were chosen through random sampling to answer the researcher-made survey questionnaire. The questionnaire focuses on the approaches, integration of the different domains such as integration of the core values and relevant social issues, and the competencies’ level of difficulty.  The relationship between the level of difficulty and the insufficient mastery of the topic shows the negative impact of distributing the advance topics to the lower grade level. This conforms the readiness of the learners’ level of understanding. Araling Panlipunan (Social Studies) is exploratory, discovery, and value-laden discipline, thereby, it is essential to redesign the progression of competencies to give more depth and meaning to the competencies that learners need to master.

Keywords: Competencies, Spiral progression, curriculum, Araling Panipunan

DOI: 10.7176/JEP/14-14-01

Publication date:May 31^st 2023