DepEd-NEAP FED-UPOU Teacher Education Tie-up
The Department of Education's National Educator's Academy of the Philippines and the UPOU recently launched a cooperative effort to improve teacher proficiency in English. Spearheaded by the University's Faculty of Education, which the NEAP had earlier tapped to help bolster its certfication Program in English, the project takes off in February, and will run its full course by May. The blended program which is structured to be delivered online, with face-to-face (F2F) weekend meetings for each course, is meant to augment what the NEAP perceives to be a 12-unit deficiency in English teacher education.
As NEAP's counterpart, the FED- UPOU is committed to design courses, assess teachers' entry-level skills, produce learning materials and deliver instruction in four courses. These courses include: The Psychology of Reading, Beginning Reading, Specialized Writing, and Effective Speech and Communication. These four areas each have a broad scope which the program aims to effectively cover.
Beginning reading is meant to open up a range of learning experiences that will allow the teachers to internalize basic concepts and principles, strategies, and knowhow in materials development and assessment in beginning reading, that will enable teachers not only to improve their teaching, but to develop in themselves and their learners the love of reading, beginning with the joy of discovering new words that will lead to the strengthening and development of a rich and functional vocabulary.
Effective Speech Skills and Communication is another course intended to equip teachers with the ability to recognize, fine-tune and apply principles of oral communication, including types of public speaking. In this course, audience awareness, the process of speech preparation and skills in delivery will be explored and mastered. The skills acquired fromm the course are meant not only to be transferred to students as among the competencies of the course the teacher is suppossed to teach, but it is expected that the teacher shall also have become, in the process, a more skilled, credible speech model and public speaker. In addition, teachers are expected to have akeener sense of the levels of language use and communication, and the cultural contexts in which these come into play.
Specialized Writing is the course under which a variety of forms and skills in writing falls under. The subject is intended to enhance the skills of teachers in teaching students skills in the prduction of discourse such as those used in the genres of journalism, business correspondence and the research paper. The course begins by remediating, when needed, and further developing the basic writing skills, beginning with grammar and composition concepts and principles.
The Psychology of Reading aims to provide the teacher with broad learning experiences that will allow them to examine reading theories and models, the nature of reading and the facors affecting this. The learning they acquire from the course is meant to present implications on teaching that will allow teachers to best choose approaches suited to the reading situations in the classroom.
Faculty and Affiliate Faculty, as well as mentors identified by the project leaders have been tapped to be tutors and FICs who shall be responsible for online as well as F2F delivery in target development areas in Mindanao, with learning centers in DepEd's RELCs in Davao, Cagayan De Oro .The joint project, which involves some one hundred twenty elementary teachers, is under the auspices and supervision of the office of NEAP Director Dr. Lorna Dig Dino, with UPOU as implementing partner headed by Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs Nemah N Hermosa and FED Dean Ma Theresa L De Villa. (Bambi Torrecampo, FEd).
date posted: February 13, 2009