new normal education in the philippines essay

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The “new normal” in education

• Viewpoints/ Controversies
• Published: 24 November 2020
• Volume 51 , pages 3–14, ( 2021 )

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• José Augusto Pacheco   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-4623-6898 1  

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Effects rippling from the Covid 19 emergency include changes in the personal, social, and economic spheres. Are there continuities as well? Based on a literature review (primarily of UNESCO and OECD publications and their critics), the following question is posed: How can one resist the slide into passive technologization and seize the possibility of achieving a responsive, ethical, humane, and international-transformational approach to education? Technologization, while an ongoing and evidently ever-intensifying tendency, is not without its critics, especially those associated with the humanistic tradition in education. This is more apparent now that curriculum is being conceived as a complicated conversation. In a complex and unequal world, the well-being of students requires diverse and even conflicting visions of the world, its problems, and the forms of knowledge we study to address them.

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From the past, we might find our way to a future unforeclosed by the present (Pinar 2019 , p. 12)

Texts regarding this pandemic’s consequences are appearing at an accelerating pace, with constant coverage by news outlets, as well as philosophical, historical, and sociological reflections by public intellectuals worldwide. Ripples from the current emergency have spread into the personal, social, and economic spheres. But are there continuities as well? Is the pandemic creating a “new normal” in education or simply accenting what has already become normal—an accelerating tendency toward technologization? This tendency presents an important challenge for education, requiring a critical vision of post-Covid-19 curriculum. One must pose an additional question: How can one resist the slide into passive technologization and seize the possibility of achieving a responsive, ethical, humane, and international-transformational approach to education?

The ongoing present

Unpredicted except through science fiction, movie scripts, and novels, the Covid-19 pandemic has changed everyday life, caused wide-scale illness and death, and provoked preventive measures like social distancing, confinement, and school closures. It has struck disproportionately at those who provide essential services and those unable to work remotely; in an already precarious marketplace, unemployment is having terrible consequences. The pandemic is now the chief sign of both globalization and deglobalization, as nations close borders and airports sit empty. There are no departures, no delays. Everything has changed, and no one was prepared. The pandemic has disrupted the flow of time and unraveled what was normal. It is the emergence of an event (think of Badiou 2009 ) that restarts time, creates radical ruptures and imbalances, and brings about a contingency that becomes a new necessity (Žižek 2020 ). Such events question the ongoing present.

The pandemic has reshuffled our needs, which are now based on a new order. Whether of short or medium duration, will it end in a return to the “normal” or move us into an unknown future? Žižek contends that “there is no return to normal, the new ‘normal’ will have to be constructed on the ruins of our old lives, or we will find ourselves in a new barbarism whose signs are already clearly discernible” (Žižek 2020 , p. 3).

Despite public health measures, Gil ( 2020 ) observes that the pandemic has so far generated no physical or spiritual upheaval and no universal awareness of the need to change how we live. Techno-capitalism continues to work, though perhaps not as before. Online sales increase and professionals work from home, thereby creating new digital subjectivities and economies. We will not escape the pull of self-preservation, self-regeneration, and the metamorphosis of capitalism, which will continue its permanent revolution (Wells 2020 ). In adapting subjectivities to the recent demands of digital capitalism, the pandemic can catapult us into an even more thoroughly digitalized space, a trend that artificial intelligence will accelerate. These new subjectivities will exhibit increased capacities for voluntary obedience and programmable functioning abilities, leading to a “new normal” benefiting those who are savvy in software-structured social relationships.

The Covid-19 pandemic has submerged us all in the tsunami-like economies of the Cloud. There is an intensification of the allegro rhythm of adaptation to the Internet of Things (Davies, Beauchamp, Davies, and Price 2019 ). For Latour ( 2020 ), the pandemic has become internalized as an ongoing state of emergency preparing us for the next crisis—climate change—for which we will see just how (un)prepared we are. Along with inequality, climate is one of the most pressing issues of our time (OECD 2019a , 2019b ) and therefore its representation in the curriculum is of public, not just private, interest.

Education both reflects what is now and anticipates what is next, recoding private and public responses to crises. Žižek ( 2020 , p. 117) suggests in this regard that “values and beliefs should not be simply ignored: they play an important role and should be treated as a specific mode of assemblage”. As such, education is (post)human and has its (over)determination by beliefs and values, themselves encoded in technology.

Will the pandemic detoxify our addiction to technology, or will it cement that addiction? Pinar ( 2019 , pp. 14–15) suggests that “this idea—that technological advance can overcome cultural, economic, educational crises—has faded into the background. It is our assumption. Our faith prompts the purchase of new technology and assures we can cure climate change”. While waiting for technology to rescue us, we might also remember to look at ourselves. In this way, the pandemic could be a starting point for a more sustainable environment. An intelligent response to climate change, reactivating the humanistic tradition in education, would reaffirm the right to such an education as a global common good (UNESCO 2015a , p. 10):

This approach emphasizes the inclusion of people who are often subject to discrimination – women and girls, indigenous people, persons with disabilities, migrants, the elderly and people living in countries affected by conflict. It requires an open and flexible approach to learning that is both lifelong and life-wide: an approach that provides the opportunity for all to realize their potential for a sustainable future and a life of dignity”.

Pinar ( 2004 , 2009 , 2019 ) concevies of curriculum as a complicated conversation. Central to that complicated conversation is climate change, which drives the need for education for sustainable development and the grooming of new global citizens with sustainable lifestyles and exemplary environmental custodianship (Marope 2017 ).

The new normal

The pandemic ushers in a “new” normal, in which digitization enforces ways of working and learning. It forces education further into technologization, a development already well underway, fueled by commercialism and the reigning market ideology. Daniel ( 2020 , p. 1) notes that “many institutions had plans to make greater use of technology in teaching, but the outbreak of Covid-19 has meant that changes intended to occur over months or years had to be implemented in a few days”.

Is this “new normal” really new or is it a reiteration of the old?

Digital technologies are the visible face of the immediate changes taking place in society—the commercial society—and schools. The immediate solution to the closure of schools is distance learning, with platforms proliferating and knowledge demoted to information to be exchanged (Koopman 2019 ), like a product, a phenomenon predicted decades ago by Lyotard ( 1984 , pp. 4-5):

Knowledge is and will be produced in order to be sold, it is and will be consumed in order to be valued in a new production: in both cases, the goal is exchange. Knowledge ceases to be an end in itself, it loses its use-value.

Digital technologies and economic rationality based on performance are significant determinants of the commercialization of learning. Moving from physical face-to-face presence to virtual contact (synchronous and asynchronous), the learning space becomes disembodied, virtual not actual, impacting both student learning and the organization of schools, which are no longer buildings but websites. Such change is not only coterminous with the pandemic, as the Education 2030 Agenda (UNESCO 2015b ) testified; preceding that was the Delors Report (Delors 1996 ), which recoded education as lifelong learning that included learning to know, learning to do, learning to be, and learning to live together.

Transnational organizations have specified competences for the 21st century and, in the process, have defined disciplinary and interdisciplinary knowledge that encourages global citizenship, through “the supra curriculum at the global, regional, or international comparative level” (Marope 2017 , p. 10). According to UNESCO ( 2017 ):

While the world may be increasingly interconnected, human rights violations, inequality and poverty still threaten peace and sustainability. Global Citizenship Education (GCED) is UNESCO’s response to these challenges. It works by empowering learners of all ages to understand that these are global, not local issues and to become active promoters of more peaceful, tolerant, inclusive, secure and sustainable societies.

These transnational initiatives have not only acknowledged traditional school subjects but have also shifted the curriculum toward timely topics dedicated to understanding the emergencies of the day (Spiller 2017 ). However, for the OECD ( 2019a ), the “new normal” accentuates two ideas: competence-based education, which includes the knowledges identified in the Delors Report , and a new learning framework structured by digital technologies. The Covid-19 pandemic does not change this logic. Indeed, the interdisciplinary skills framework, content and standardized testing associated with the Programme for International Student Assessment of the OECD has become the most powerful tool for prescribing the curriculum. Educationally, “the universal homogenous ‘state’ exists already. Globalization of standardized testing—the most prominent instance of threatening to restructure schools into technological sites of political socialization, conditioning children for compliance to a universal homogeneous state of mind” (Pinar 2019 , p. 2).

In addition to cognitive and practical skills, this “homogenous state of mind” rests on so-called social and emotional skills in the service of learning to live together, affirming global citizenship, and presumably returning agency to students and teachers (OECD 2019a ). According to Marope ( 2017 , p. 22), “this calls for higher flexibility in curriculum development, and for the need to leave space for curricula interpretation, contextualization, and creativity at the micro level of teachers and classrooms”. Heterogeneity is thus enlisted in the service of both economic homogeneity and disciplinary knowledge. Disciplinary knowledge is presented as universal and endowed with social, moral, and cognitive authority. Operational and effective knowledge becomes central, due to the influence of financial lobbies, thereby ensuring that the logic of the market is brought into the practices of schools. As Pestre ( 2013 , p. 21) observed, “the nature of this knowledge is new: what matters is that it makes hic et nunc the action, its effect and not its understanding”. Its functionality follows (presumably) data and evidence-based management.

A new language is thus imposed on education and the curriculum. Such enforced installation of performative language and Big Data lead to effective and profitable operations in a vast market concerned with competence in operational skills (Lyotard 1984 ). This “new normal” curriculum is said to be more horizontal and less hierarchical and radically polycentric with problem-solving produced through social networks, NGOs, transnational organizations, and think tanks (Pestre 2013 ; Williamson 2013 , 2017 ). Untouched by the pandemic, the “new (old) normal” remains based on disciplinary knowledge and enmeshed in the discourse of standards and accountability in education.

Such enforced commercialism reflects and reinforces economic globalization. Pinar ( 2011 , p. 30) worries that “the globalization of instrumental rationality in education threatens the very existence of education itself”. In his theory, commercialism and the technical instrumentality by which homogenization advances erase education as an embodied experience and the curriculum as a humanistic project. It is a time in which the humanities are devalued as well, as acknowledged by Pinar ( 2019 , p. 19): “In the United States [and in the world] not only does economics replace education—STEM replace the liberal arts as central to the curriculum—there are even politicians who attack the liberal arts as subversive and irrelevant…it can be more precisely characterized as reckless rhetoric of a know-nothing populism”. Replacing in-person dialogical encounters and the educational cultivation of the person (via Bildung and currere ), digital technologies are creating uniformity of learning spaces, in spite of their individualistic tendencies. Of course, education occurs outside schools—and on occasion in schools—but this causal displacement of the centrality of the school implies a devaluation of academic knowledge in the name of diversification of learning spaces.

In society, education, and specifically in the curriculum, the pandemic has brought nothing new but rather has accelerated already existing trends that can be summarized as technologization. Those who can work “remotely” exercise their privilege, since they can exploit an increasingly digital society. They themselves are changed in the process, as their own subjectivities are digitalized, thus predisposing them to a “curriculum of things” (a term coined by Laist ( 2016 ) to describe an object-oriented pedagogical approach), which is organized not around knowledge but information (Koopman 2019 ; Couldry and Mejias 2019 ). This (old) “new normal” was advanced by the OECD, among other international organizations, thus precipitating what some see as “a dynamic and transformative articulation of collective expectations of the purpose, quality, and relevance of education and learning to holistic, inclusive, just, peaceful, and sustainable development, and to the well-being and fulfilment of current and future generations” (Marope 2017 , p. 13). Covid-19, illiberal democracy, economic nationalism, and inaction on climate change, all upend this promise.

Understanding the psychological and cultural complexity of the curriculum is crucial. Without appreciating the infinity of responses students have to what they study, one cannot engage in the complicated conversation that is the curriculum. There must be an affirmation of “not only the individualism of a person’s experience but [of what is] underlining the significance of a person’s response to a course of study that has been designed to ignore individuality in order to buttress nation, religion, ethnicity, family, and gender” (Grumet 2017 , p. 77). Rather than promoting neuroscience as the answer to the problems of curriculum and pedagogy, it is long-past time for rethinking curriculum development and addressing the canonical curriculum question: What knowledge is of most worth from a humanistic perspective that is structured by complicated conversation (UNESCO 2015a ; Pinar 2004 , 2019 )? It promotes respect for diversity and rejection of all forms of (cultural) hegemony, stereotypes, and biases (Pacheco 2009 , 2017 ).

Revisiting the curriculum in the Covid-19 era then expresses the fallacy of the “new normal” but also represents a particular opportunity to promote a different path forward.

Looking to the post-Covid-19 curriculum

Based on the notion of curriculum as a complicated conversation, as proposed by Pinar ( 2004 ), the post-Covid-19 curriculum can seize the possibility of achieving a responsive, ethical, humane education, one which requires a humanistic and internationally aware reconceptualization of curriculum.

While beliefs and values are anchored in social and individual practices (Pinar 2019 , p. 15), education extracts them for critique and reconsideration. For example, freedom and tolerance are not neutral but normative practices, however ideology-free policymakers imagine them to be.

That same sleight-of-hand—value neutrality in the service of a certain normativity—is evident in a digital concept of society as a relationship between humans and non-humans (or posthumans), a relationship not only mediated by but encapsulated within technology: machines interfacing with other machines. This is not merely a technological change, as if it were a quarantined domain severed from society. Technologization is a totalizing digitalization of human experience that includes the structures of society. It is less social than economic, with social bonds now recoded as financial transactions sutured by software. Now that subjectivity is digitalized, the human face has become an exclusively economic one that fabricates the fantasy of rational and free agents—always self-interested—operating in supposedly free markets. Oddly enough, there is no place for a vision of humanistic and internationally aware change. The technological dimension of curriculum is assumed to be the primary area of change, which has been deeply and totally imposed by global standards. The worldwide pandemic supports arguments for imposing forms of control (Žižek 2020 ), including the geolocation of infected people and the suspension—in a state of exception—of civil liberties.

By destroying democracy, the technology of control leads to totalitarianism and barbarism, ending tolerance, difference, and diversity. Remembrance and memory are needed so that historical fascisms (Eley 2020 ) are not repeated, albeit in new disguises (Adorno 2011 ). Technologized education enhances efficiency and ensures uniformity, while presuming objectivity to the detriment of human reflection and singularity. It imposes the running data of the Curriculum of Things and eschews intellectual endeavor, critical attitude, and self-reflexivity.

For those who advocate the primacy of technology and the so-called “free market”, the pandemic represents opportunities not only for profit but also for confirmation of the pervasiveness of human error and proof of the efficiency of the non-human, i.e., the inhuman technology. What may possibly protect children from this inhumanity and their commodification, as human capital, is a humane or humanistic education that contradicts their commodification.

The decontextualized technical vocabulary in use in a market society produces an undifferentiated image in which people are blinded to nuance, distinction, and subtlety. For Pestre, concepts associated with efficiency convey the primacy of economic activity to the exclusion, for instance, of ethics, since those concepts devalue historic (if unrealized) commitments to equality and fraternity by instead emphasizing economic freedom and the autonomy of self-interested individuals. Constructing education as solely economic and technological constitutes a movement toward total efficiency through the installation of uniformity of behavior, devaluing diversity and human creativity.

Erased from the screen is any image of public education as a space of freedom, or as Macdonald ( 1995 , p. 38) holds, any image or concept of “the dignity and integrity of each human”. Instead, what we face is the post-human and the undisputed reign of instrumental reality, where the ends justify the means and human realization is reduced to the consumption of goods and experiences. As Pinar ( 2019 , p. 7) observes: “In the private sphere…. freedom is recast as a choice of consumer goods; in the public sphere, it converts to control and the demand that freedom flourish, so that whatever is profitable can be pursued”. Such “negative” freedom—freedom from constraint—ignores “positive” freedom, which requires us to contemplate—in ethical and spiritual terms—what that freedom is for. To contemplate what freedom is for requires “critical and comprehensive knowledge” (Pestre 2013 , p. 39) not only instrumental and technical knowledge. The humanities and the arts would reoccupy the center of such a curriculum and not be related to its margins (Westbury 2008 ), acknowledging that what is studied within schools is a complicated conversation among those present—including oneself, one’s ancestors, and those yet to be born (Pinar 2004 ).

In an era of unconstrained technologization, the challenge facing the curriculum is coding and STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics), with technology dislodging those subjects related to the human. This is not a classical curriculum (although it could be) but one focused on the emergencies of the moment–namely, climate change, the pandemic, mass migration, right-wing populism, and economic inequality. These timely topics, which in secondary school could be taught as short courses and at the elementary level as thematic units, would be informed by the traditional school subjects (yes, including STEM). Such a reorganization of the curriculum would allow students to see how academic knowledge enables them to understand what is happening to them and their parents in their own regions and globally. Such a cosmopolitan curriculum would prepare children to become citizens not only of their own nations but of the world. This citizenship would simultaneously be subjective and social, singular and universal (Marope 2020 ). Pinar ( 2019 , p. 5) reminds us that “the division between private and public was first blurred then erased by technology”:

No longer public, let alone sacred, morality becomes a matter of privately held values, sometimes monetized as commodities, statements of personal preference, often ornamental, sometimes self-servingly instrumental. Whatever their function, values were to be confined to the private sphere. The public sphere was no longer the civic square but rather, the marketplace, the site where one purchased whatever one valued.

New technological spaces are the universal center for (in)human values. The civic square is now Amazon, Alibaba, Twitter, WeChat, and other global online corporations. The facts of our human condition—a century-old phrase uncanny in its echoes today—can be studied in schools as an interdisciplinary complicated conversation about public issues that eclipse private ones (Pinar 2019 ), including social injustice, inequality, democracy, climate change, refugees, immigrants, and minority groups. Understood as a responsive, ethical, humane and transformational international educational approach, such a post-Covid-19 curriculum could be a “force for social equity, justice, cohesion, stability, and peace” (Marope 2017 , p. 32). “Unchosen” is certainly the adjective describing our obligations now, as we are surrounded by death and dying and threatened by privation or even starvation, as economies collapse and food-supply chains are broken. The pandemic may not mean deglobalization, but it surely accentuates it, as national borders are closed, international travel is suspended, and international trade is impacted by the accompanying economic crisis. On the other hand, economic globalization could return even stronger, as could the globalization of education systems. The “new normal” in education is the technological order—a passive technologization—and its expansion continues uncontested and even accelerated by the pandemic.

Two Greek concepts, kronos and kairos , allow a discussion of contrasts between the quantitative and the qualitative in education. Echoing the ancient notion of kronos are the technologically structured curriculum values of quantity and performance, which are always assessed by a standardized accountability system enforcing an “ideology of achievement”. “While kronos refers to chronological or sequential time, kairos refers to time that might require waiting patiently for a long time or immediate and rapid action; which course of action one chooses will depend on the particular situation” (Lahtinen 2009 , p. 252).

For Macdonald ( 1995 , p. 51), “the central ideology of the schools is the ideology of achievement …[It] is a quantitative ideology, for even to attempt to assess quality must be quantified under this ideology, and the educational process is perceived as a technically monitored quality control process”.

Self-evaluation subjectively internalizes what is useful and in conformity with the techno-economy and its so-called standards, increasingly enforcing technical (software) forms. If recoded as the Internet of Things, this remains a curriculum in allegiance with “order and control” (Doll 2013 , p. 314) School knowledge is reduced to an instrument for economic success, employing compulsory collaboration to ensure group think and conformity. Intertwined with the Internet of Things, technological subjectivity becomes embedded in software, redesigned for effectiveness, i.e., or use-value (as Lyotard predicted).

The Curriculum of Things dominates the Internet, which is simultaneously an object and a thing (see Heidegger 1967 , 1971 , 1977 ), a powerful “technological tool for the process of knowledge building” (Means 2008 , p. 137). Online learning occupies the subjective zone between the “curriculum-as-planned” and the “curriculum-as-lived” (Pinar 2019 , p. 23). The world of the curriculum-as-lived fades, as the screen shifts and children are enmeshed in an ocularcentric system of accountability and instrumentality.

In contrast to kronos , the Greek concept of kairos implies lived time or even slow time (Koepnick 2014 ), time that is “self-reflective” (Macdonald 1995 , p. 103) and autobiographical (Pinar 2009 , 2004), thus inspiring “curriculum improvisation” (Aoki 2011 , p. 375), while emphasizing “the plurality of subjectivities” (Grumet 2017 , p. 80). Kairos emphasizes singularity and acknowledges particularities; it is skeptical of similarities. For Shew ( 2013 , p. 48), “ kairos is that which opens an originary experience—of the divine, perhaps, but also of life or being. Thought as such, kairos as a formative happening—an opportune moment, crisis, circumstance, event—imposes its own sense of measure on time”. So conceived, curriculum can become a complicated conversation that occurs not in chronological time but in its own time. Such dialogue is not neutral, apolitical, or timeless. It focuses on the present and is intrinsically subjective, even in public space, as Pinar ( 2019 , p. 12) writes: “its site is subjectivity as one attunes oneself to what one is experiencing, yes to its immediacy and specificity but also to its situatedness, relatedness, including to what lies beyond it and not only spatially but temporally”.

Kairos is, then, the uniqueness of time that converts curriculum into a complicated conversation, one that includes the subjective reconstruction of learning as a consciousness of everyday life, encouraging the inner activism of quietude and disquietude. Writing about eternity, as an orientation towards the future, Pinar ( 2019 , p. 2) argues that “the second side [the first is contemplation] of such consciousness is immersion in daily life, the activism of quietude – for example, ethical engagement with others”. We add disquietude now, following the work of the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa. Disquietude is a moment of eternity: “Sometimes I think I’ll never leave ‘Douradores’ Street. And having written this, it seems to me eternity. Neither pleasure, nor glory, nor power. Freedom, only freedom” (Pesssoa 1991 ).

The disquietude conversation is simultaneously individual and public. It establishes an international space both deglobalized and autonomous, a source of responsive, ethical, and humane encounter. No longer entranced by the distracting dynamic stasis of image-after-image on the screen, the student can face what is his or her emplacement in the physical and natural world, as well as the technological world. The student can become present as a person, here and now, simultaneously historical and timeless.

Conclusions

Slow down and linger should be our motto now. A slogan yes, but it also represents a political, as well as a psychological resistance to the acceleration of time (Berg and Seeber 2016 )—an acceleration that the pandemic has intensified. Covid-19 has moved curriculum online, forcing children physically apart from each other and from their teachers and especially from the in-person dialogical encounters that classrooms can provide. The public space disappears into the pre-designed screen space that software allows, and the machine now becomes the material basis for a curriculum of things, not persons. Like the virus, the pandemic curriculum becomes embedded in devices that technologize our children.

Although one hundred years old, the images created in Modern Times by Charlie Chaplin return, less humorous this time than emblematic of our intensifying subjection to technological necessity. It “would seem to leave us as cogs in the machine, ourselves like moving parts, we keep functioning efficiently, increasing productivity calculating the creative destruction of what is, the human now materialized (de)vices ensnaring us in convenience, connectivity, calculation” (Pinar 2019 , p. 9). Post-human, as many would say.

Technology supports standardized testing and enforces software-designed conformity and never-ending self-evaluation, while all the time erasing lived, embodied experience and intellectual independence. Ignoring the evidence, others are sure that technology can function differently: “Given the potential of information and communication technologies, the teacher should now be a guide who enables learners, from early childhood throughout their learning trajectories, to develop and advance through the constantly expanding maze of knowledge” (UNESCO 2015a , p. 51). Would that it were so.

The canonical question—What knowledge is of most worth?—is open-ended and contentious. In a technologized world, providing for the well-being of children is not obvious, as well-being is embedded in ancient, non-neoliberal visions of the world. “Education is everybody’s business”, Pinar ( 2019 , p. 2) points out, as it fosters “responsible citizenship and solidarity in a global world” (UNESCO 2015a , p. 66), resisting inequality and the exclusion, for example, of migrant groups, refugees, and even those who live below or on the edge of poverty.

In this fast-moving digital world, education needs to be inclusive but not conformist. As the United Nations ( 2015 ) declares, education should ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all. “The coming years will be a vital period to save the planet and to achieve sustainable, inclusive human development” (United Nations 2019 , p. 64). Is such sustainable, inclusive human development achievable through technologization? Can technology succeed where religion has failed?

Despite its contradictions and economic emphases, public education has one clear obligation—to create embodied encounters of learning through curriculum conceived as a complicated conversation. Such a conception acknowledges the worldliness of a cosmopolitan curriculum as it affirms the personification of the individual (Pinar 2011 ). As noted by Grumet ( 2017 , p. 89), “as a form of ethics, there is a responsibility to participate in conversation”. Certainly, it is necessary to ask over and over again the canonical curriculum question: What knowledge is of most worth?

If time, technology and teaching are moving images of eternity, curriculum and pedagogy are also, both ‘moving’ and ‘images’ but not an explicit, empirical, or exact representation of eternity…if reality is an endless series of ‘moving images’, the canonical curriculum question—What knowledge is of most worth?—cannot be settled for all time by declaring one set of subjects eternally important” (Pinar 2019 , p. 12).

In a complicated conversation, the curriculum is not a fixed image sliding into a passive technologization. As a “moving image”, the curriculum constitutes a politics of presence, an ongoing expression of subjectivity (Grumet 2017 ) that affirms the infinity of reality: “Shifting one’s attitude from ‘reducing’ complexity to ‘embracing’ what is always already present in relations and interactions may lead to thinking complexly, abiding happily with mystery” (Doll 2012 , p. 172). Describing the dialogical encounter characterizing conceived curriculum, as a complicated conversation, Pinar explains that this moment of dialogue “is not only place-sensitive (perhaps classroom centered) but also within oneself”, because “the educational significance of subject matter is that it enables the student to learn from actual embodied experience, an outcome that cannot always be engineered” (Pinar 2019 , pp. 12–13). Lived experience is not technological. So, “the curriculum of the future is not just a matter of defining content and official knowledge. It is about creating, sculpting, and finessing minds, mentalities, and identities, promoting style of thought about humans, or ‘mashing up’ and ‘making up’ the future of people” (Williamson 2013 , p. 113).

Yes, we need to linger and take time to contemplate the curriculum question. Only in this way will we share what is common and distinctive in our experience of the current pandemic by changing our time and our learning to foreclose on our future. Curriculum conceived as a complicated conversation restarts historical not screen time; it enacts the private and public as distinguishable, not fused in a computer screen. That is the “new normal”.

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My thanks to William F. Pinar. Friendship is another moving image of eternity. I am grateful to the anonymous reviewer. This work is financed by national funds through the FCT - Foundation for Science and Technology, under the project PTDC / CED-EDG / 30410/2017, Centre for Research in Education, Institute of Education, University of Minho.

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Pacheco, J.A. The “new normal” in education. Prospects 51 , 3–14 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11125-020-09521-x

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s11125-020-09521-x

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ADAPTION AND IMPLEMENTATION OF THE NEW NORMAL EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM IN THE PHILIPPINE SETTING

2020, ADAPTION AND IMPLEMENTATION OF THE NEW NORMAL EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM IN THE PHILIPPINE SETTING

The New Normal policy has made a tremendous effort on the Philippine educational system since the inception of the COVID-19 Pandemics in early February 2020. The Department of Education has made a tremendous effort in organizing the system for such an unexpected event. Whereas, the whole institution planned on several readiness steps to bring the teachers and the staffs to a level where they would be the one to provide the learning modules for the students. Thus, the whole public school system has busied itself in module making and has been part of various and endless webinars from various institutions-both public and private. However, the problem and challenges encountered by our educational system has been so because the country is not yet ready to provide the technology that has been available beforehand to other countries especially in some ASEAN countries. Thus, the adaption and the implementation of such system may be said to be late. The effect of this late subscription of the Department of Education to various alternative means of education, rather than the traditional, has gotten our country's readiness to a starting point. That while other countries effectively supplanted these alternative forms of education to their learners, the Philippines has just started-and, to this means, what other country has been doing before is said to be the country's New Normal. The research established the current status of the ICT integration in the South East Asia and the world in general as compared to the Philippines as an overview of the country's ICT condition. The result shows that majority of the respondents believed that there is good adaption and implementation of the New Normal policy in the various areas.

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The emergence of Corona Virus Disease 2019 pandemic required educational institutions to shift to new instructional paradigm to ensure learning continuity. With the restrictions on mass gathering, online distance learning has emerged as one of the alternative modalities. This descriptive study primarily aimed to assess the faculty readiness of St. Louise de Marillac School of Bulan (SLMSB), Inc., a private secondary school in the Municipality of Bulan in Sorsogon Province, Bicol Region of The Philippines, in implementing online learning as an alternative instructional mode. Using an adapted survey-questionnaire, twenty (20) faculty members participated in this research which is a total enumeration of the teachers in the school. Employing descriptive statistical tools on quantitative data which are supported by qualitative data collected through interview, it was found out that the faculty members of SLMSB are sufficiently ready on online learning in terms of their technology access, considering the measures being undertaken by the school administration. They are also ready in terms of their technology skills and their attitude towards online learning. However, despite the general result on readiness, analysis of the indicators revealed that they need to be trained in terms of use of online learning management system, and use of tools for developing learning materials. With these results, it is recommended that a capability-building program for faculty members of SLMSB be conducted to prepare them in facilitating online learning through an extension program that may be offered by Sorsogon State College-Bulan Campus.

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The outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic as a massive global concern has brought unprecedented challenges in different sectors of the world. One of it is education which posed as one of the most vulnerable sectors significantly impacted by it. This phenomenon changed the mode of instructional delivery and the viewpoint of education stakeholders on the kind of learning continuity applicable to the learners amidst the looming uncertainty brought about by the health crisis. Using phenomenology, this study explored the voices of public Science school teachers regarding their instructional dilemmas to adapt in the demands of the new normal teaching and learning. Findings uncovered seven emerging emotional themes capped as HOPEFUL: Hard-working and dedicated; Optimistic amidst uncertainty; Problematic yet reflective; Evenhandedness in responsibilities; Frightened but ready; Undisruptive desire to reach; and Lifelong learner. Despite the evident uncertainties of the situation, this paper describes the experiences of the Science teachers in their response to their mission of shaping today's generation towards undisruptive education.

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The incursion of COVID-19 to various states has set forth the challenge for the educational institutions to transition to the New Normal teaching and learning scheme. In the scarce of the studies driven by the perception of Senior High School (SHS) teachers on its ways and challenges using learning management system (LMS), this qualitative study was conducted. Specifically, the study aimed to explore the strategies and methods of teachers using LMS in (a) facilitating and (b) assessing learning; and (c) to determine the perceived dilemmas of teachers in online learning in the New Normal. Respondents were purposively chosen and underwent semi-structured in-depth interviews by dint of video conferencing. Data were transcribed, coded, and thematically analyzed. Results revealed three themes on facilitating learning such as maximizing LMS features, employing adaptive tools, and utilizing class structures: and two themes on assessing learning, namely item-based and output-based assessments. Four emerging themes on SHS teachers' perceived challenges were lumped as "EASE": Establishing connection; Access to online learning demands; Stable wellness amidst the pandemic; and Ensuring quality learning experience. Findings revealed that despite this unprecedented transition, the use of LMS does not necessarily equate to an optimum edge in an online teaching and learning environment. Nevertheless, this paper describes how educators embody the commitment to quality education by concretizing adaptive and responsive measures to the demand of the New Normal setup.

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PH education and the new normal

If last year’s enrollment figures are to be a basis, the Philippine education system will be expecting around 27 million students to enroll in the Basic Education System in the coming school year. With the early closure of the school year in March, the enhanced community quarantine in effect, and the still unclear future that the COVID-19 pandemic will bring, the Department of Education (DepEd) and our millions of learners are facing enormous challenges.

In a recent evaluation on ALS (Alternative Learning System) interventions done in the Mindanao region during the quarantine period, platforms such as ICT4ALS, FB Chat, Google Classroom, the Aral Muna app, and DepEd Commons emerged as the most common technological interventions used. Also popular are the use of radio-based intervention — partnerships with local radio stations to announce questions or lessons that can be replied to by phone. There are also the door-to-door delivery of worksheets, take-home learning activity sheets, and take-home portfolio completions. These modalities are being used and explored during the quarantine period and will serve as key learning points for implementation in the bigger education system.

While home school and online learning are among the proposed solutions, access to technology and the internet, especially in remote areas, remains a challenge. In the public education system, it is not uncommon for students to lack internet connection at home or be unable to afford to “load” their phones regularly. Some do not even have computers or phones at all. As this is a reality that many schools, students, and communities will face, the DepEd proposes a combination of different learning modalities and will be using the Blended Learning approach.

In-classroom study and individual study/online classroom work, or Blended Learning, will allow students to learn at their own pace under guided modules. The DepEd has launched an online study platform called DepEd Commons, accessible to both private and public schools, to help students continue their lessons. It has also developed an ALS platform in partnership with Unicef called ICT4ALS, a portal of learning resources, activity sheets, and online tutorials for ALS teachers and learners.

However, the challenge of technology access still remains for public school students. Other factors such as home environment (conduciveness to learning), learner attitudes toward home learning, and technology competence can affect learner outcomes and the effective use of Blended Learning. Learning at home also requires parent participation and support.

Education’s new normal will not just be about operating in an environment that secures the health of students; nor will it be about completely transitioning to online modalities. Instead, it should be about using technology to increase efficiency in areas with the capacity to do so, while empowering learners and communities to create positive learning environments in which the student can grow. It should not sacrifice quality but continue to provide equal opportunities, most especially to the marginalized and vulnerable sectors. It is not a one-size-fits-all solution, but one that is dependent on the needs of each learning community.

While the DepEd carries most of the burden for this challenge, the role of local government units is crucial. An alignment of resources and education goals within each community is needed to support the education ecosystem of students, teachers, and parents and assist the adjustment to the new normal — home schooling, parent-as-teachers training, community internet centers, a Citizen Watch for education, establishing LGU leaders as education champions.

While the future remains unknown, by working together to support and empower the education ecosystems in our communities, we can help establish the structures that our students will need to receive the quality education they deserve, and bring stability in a time of uncertainty.

Ching Jorge ( [email protected] ) is the executive director of the Bato Balani Foundation and an Asia21 Fellow of the Asia Society.

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Challenges and Teacher Resilience: The New Normal Classroom Instruction Using Social Media in the Philippine Context

Posted: 12 Jan 2021

Jayson L. De Vera

Philippine Normal University, Manila, Philippines

Date Written: November 5, 2020

The world, as we know it, has changed over a short period, with the rise and spread of the deadly novel Coronavirus known as COVID-19. The primary purpose of this study is to assess the Challenges and Teacher Resilience based on self-reflections in the New Normal classroom instruction using social media in the Philippine context. The study wants to explore the reflection of teachers using a narrative research approach. The study wants to know how teachers view the reality despite this pandemic, and narrative researchers gather these stories and compose experiential narratives that will give us a view of the current situation of our learners, teachers, and the country as a whole. Respondents were selected using a convenience sampling technique. Data were collected from the teachers’ written reflection guided by three main constructs used as guide questions. The results of the study can be summarized by the acronym "BRIGHT”. Build resilience to overcome the challenge of new normal; Resourcefulness in time of pandemic; Innovate to produce interactive and effective instructions; Goal-oriented; Hone skills in various teacher preparations that will show flexibility and authenticity; and Technology-assisted learning environment through the use of social media. This article, a revolutionary of its kind, provides consequences that can be welcomed as we step through the new normal of having a streamlined online teaching experience and shaping an undisruptive education sensitive to crises such as the COVID-19 disease outbreak.

Keywords: Teacher challenges, instruction, self-reflection, social media, and teacher resilience

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Jayson L. De Vera (Contact Author)

Philippine normal university, manila, philippines ( email ).

Philippines

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Getting to Know the Philippines’ New Normal in Education

• October 27, 2021

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced everyone’s hands to adapt to the changing times as far as learning is concerned. With the issues and hopes caused by this sudden event, how are we dealing with this setup? With the current status of the country’s new normal in education, learn more about Childhope Philippines’ alternative learning system (ALS) efforts to keep bringing topnotch learning to children.

3 Main Types of Education

As we know it, learning goes beyond the four walls of the classroom. Aside from the basics given by such a formal setup, kids and youth also get the learning they need from their actions outside school. Hence, there are 3 main types of learning: formal, informal, and non-formal.

Formal Education

Mostly taking place in the premises of the school, this type of learning is given by trained teachers who are skilled in the art of instruction. Also, both students and teachers engage in the whole process of the learning system.

Informal Education

On the other hand, this type of learning refers to when one is not learning in a school and doesn’t use any clear learning style. Neither pre-planned nor intended, this isn’t given by a school, isn’t given based on a fixed schedule, and doesn’t follow a structured syllabus. Thus, those in these learning sessions can choose which style fits their distinct cases.

Non-formal Education

This includes adult basic learning, adult literacy learning, or school equivalency arrangements. Often aimed to serve the needs of certain groups, this type of learning needs open options in the course design and assessment scheme.

What is the New Normal in Education in the Philippines?

It goes without saying that learning in today’s new normal is a tough feat, not just for the students but for the teachers and the parents as well. Thus, the need for open learning options is on the rise to help solve key issues and keep giving topnotch learning amid the global health crisis .

One key approach is to adopt the ways of blended learning. This system uses both offline and online education through tech.

Education System in the Philippines

To help students shift into the sudden changes brought about by the health crisis, distance learning methods have become part of the new normal in education.

Further, the modern systems such as TV broadcasts and online learning are currently being adopted in hopes to help address the top education issues in the Philippines .

New Normal Learning Challenges

• Access : Struggling to engage in online learning, those with no stable internet access and resources risk being left behind.
• Cost : Students who can adapt to this setup find it cheaper due to the lower cost of transport, arrangement, and the total cost of school-based learning. Although, spending on online resources can be a challenge for those less privileged.
• Flexibility : While learning at home can mean learners having the freedom to plan their time to complete their modules and courses, some find it hard to keep up with the pace due to the style of this learning setup.
• Method : Aiming to combine face-to-face sessions with tech gives rise to blended learning, helping boost the learning power of students. On the other hand, some of them may find this method dull and limited due to the lack of personal interaction.

Planning for the New Normal Learning

With the sad truth that not everyone is able to have access to blended learning tools, there’s still a need to adapt to certain demands during this challenging time. At the most basic level, here are the things Filipino students need to prepare for the new normal learni ng:

• Set study space : Having this helps boost the whole learning setup.
• Test runs : Doing this aims to launch the new setup to learners at home.
• Learning routine : Having a routine helps students adjust to the new setup.
• Ways to keep updated : This helps students to stay abreast of updates to ensure smooth learning.
• Healthy mindset and well-being : Despite the sudden shift to online learning, having a stable support system during such a change is important.

The Alternative Learning System (ALS)

To have basic learning is deemed a gateway for everyone to boost their learning and skills training. Besides, learning is a basic human right. When taken for granted, those without proper learning are exposed to dire poverty.

In an effort to help address this, ALS programs support people who haven’t received a basic-required stage of formal learning. Set as a blended learning program, ALS is a mix of self-paced, modular-based learning with guidance from mobile teachers. Also, ALS also plays a huge role in certain areas where learning faces key risks due to conflicts, natural hazards, or remoteness.

Childhope Philippines’ Non-formal Learning

As part of our mission to strongly respond to the call on helping street children and youth through our Street Education and Protection (STEP) Program, the KalyEskwela cause simply translates to “school on the streets.”

Under the DepEd’s ALS, street children and youth learn through modules guided by our street teachers. Also, we aim to give learning aid for youth going back to the formal school system.

Sound like something you’re interested in? If you want to join us to change lives, you may be the one we need! Learn more about our STEP Program and other causes. Join our projects first-hand by being a Childhope volunteer now! You may also get in touch with us to check how you can donate today .

You may also visit our Facebook page for more updates. Help us spread the word to engage more people about our mission!

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• Book Reviews

Filipino homeschooling students - blended (printed-digital modular) distance learning with self-learning materials during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. Photo by judgefloro on Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

COVID-19 and a new social contract for education in the Philippines

Chester Yacub and Dr Pauline Eadie - 18 Feb, 2022

Due to one of the longest and strictest lockdowns in the world, limited in-person teaching in the Philippines only resumed in late 2021, 20 months since the start of pandemic restrictions in March 2020.  More than 27 million children have been out of school. The country’s Department of Education (DepEd) was only able to allow 100 public schools to take part in its pilot run of face-to-face classes in November 2021. Only five thousand students went back to the physical classroom. However, with the current wave of COVID-19 cases due to the Omicron variant still being managed, in-person classes have been disrupted again. The Philippine national government has no choice but to continue to rely on remote learning. This has set the Philippines back in attaining UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4: Quality Education which aims to achieve inclusive and equitable quality education and to promote lifelong educational opportunities for all.

In her 24 January 2022 message for International Day of Education (IDE), UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay called for a new “social contract” for education. Her message asked for past injustices be repaired and for digital inclusion and equity in response to an educational crisis exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Basic Educational-Learning Continuity Plan    (BE-LCP) has been the DepEd’s flagship response since the beginning of the pandemic. Aiming to deliver quality education in the “new normal” setting, the BE-LCP involves the distribution of self-learning modules integrated with alternative learning modalities such as online, blended, television-based, and radio-based instructions. This programme has safeguarded not just students, but also teachers and staff, from contracting COVID-19.

Nonetheless, the national government’s earnest efforts to deliver inclusive quality education were met with challenges. We found evidence of these challenges in a series of 38 interviews with public servants, NGO workers, and community leaders in urban poor areas in Metro Manila and Bulacan. Our respondents reported on both the observable impacts of COVID-19, and the government and community responses to the pandemic. The key concerns our informants pointed out regarding basic education included: interrelated issues of accessing the internet, availability of gadgets, and proficiency in using technology; low quality instruction and supervision from guardians, most often stay-at-home mothers, due to their own limited educational attainment; and lack of physical and psychological space conducive to learning.  However, the pandemic did not trigger these issues for those living in urban poor communities; it just made them worse.

To respond to these perennial challenges, DepEd Secretary Leonor Briones encouraged education experts and stakeholders to a collective effort in designing future learning spaces in her speech during the DepEd’s celebration of the IDE this year. DepEd took its cue from UNESCO’s Futures of Education project which aimed “to rethink education and shape the future”. The UNESCO initiative proposed to view education as “a new social contract” – a shared global effort to broaden the horizon of learning so that knowledge can genuinely shape humanity and the environment in an increasingly complex and fast-changing world.

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As an incentive for the student-tutors, they can join another community project called “Laptop for Work”. As part of the programme, the tutors themselves have to render community service so that they can keep the laptop provided to them to guide their tutees. Thus far the mission station has provided 29 laptops for their scholars. Other tutors are still working towards ownership of their device. The tutors have the option to community service, such as helping with the liturgy or volunteering in the feeding program or community pantries. Most tutors, however, opted to conduct tutorial classes.

This simple yet ingenious example addresses all three challenges to the remote learning plan of the national government: technology access, knowledge expertise, and a conducive learning environment. The model community-tutoring programme has provided the electronic devices and Internet access that pupils need to access their online modules. They also receive personalised academic guidance from a competent student tutor, and a space conducive to study within the chapel. More importantly, this mentorship programme involves the entire community: not just the pupil-tutor pair, but also their parents, other volunteers who prepare the study area and snacks, and the generous benefactors. Thus, this program has not only been an effective solution to persistent learning issues during the pandemic but also a concrete example of how education can in fact be a “social contract”.

Schemes such as the one outlined above may go some way to addressing the inequalities in educational access that have been worsened by the pandemic.  However, there is also the danger that some students may lose educational aspiration or never return to education. Because of this, education departments need to future proof their policies by paying attention to SDG 4-related Targets 4.3 (Adult Education) and 4.4 (Skills for Work) . To an extent, a “second chance” to learn has been addressed by DepEd’s adult-centred Alternative Learning System (ALS) , though studies show that this program has also been impacted by the pandemic . Nevertheless, educational attainment is crucial, not just for the employment prospects of the individual but also for development prospects of the country as a whole.

More practical attention also needs to be given to digital inclusion, that is, affordable and accessible internet access and the availability of devices. Many of our interviewees told us that even when school children were able to access online lessons they had to share devices with siblings. For many families, the only way to access online learning resources was by using mobile phones. Some commendable efforts have been made by local government agencies, charities, and schools to distribute devices but inevitably they were limited.

These are some practical ways to respond to the crisis in education yet there is still a lot more reimagining and actual transformational work on learning that has to be done. In a globalised world, it takes not just a village but the whole world to raise every child. Only then can we celebrate an inclusive international day of quality education.

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DepEd prepares Self-Learning Modules for education’s new normal

July 1, 2020 — Steadfast in its preparation for School Year 2020-2021, the Department of Education (DepEd) will provide Self-Learning Modules (SLMs) with the alternative learning delivery modalities to be offered for various types of learners across the Philippines.

The integration of SLMs with the alternative learning delivery modalities (modular, television-based, radio-based instruction, blended, and online) will help DepEd ensure that all learners have access to quality basic education for SY 2020-2021 with face-to-face classes still prohibited due to the public health situation.

“The SLMs and the other alternative learning delivery modalities are in place to address the needs, situations, and resources of each and every learner and will cover all the bases in ensuring that basic education will be accessible amid the present crisis posed by COVID-19,” DepEd Secretary Leonor Briones said.

SLMs are delivered in printed format to schools that are located in coastal areas, far-flung provinces, and communities without access to the internet or electricity. For households with gadgets and devices, the Department has announced that SLMs can also be accessed online or offline.

Secretary Briones noted that SLMs will be integrated in video lessons, most especially for K to 3 learners who will require more auditory learning than other grade levels.

With inclusivity in mind, DepEd Region II Director Dr. Estela Carino added that learners with special needs will have video sessions as well as assigned teachers that will be guiding them throughout their lessons.

“The activities we placed in the SLMs will be appropriate for learners with special needs, too. We still have to give these learners the same kind of care that we gave them while we were doing face-to-face classes. Most of them would be using video-taped lessons aside from the modules,” RD Carino said.

DepEd has provided a set of SLMs for each region for contextualization, which shall be printed in July and will be prepared for distribution nationwide, including learners in coastal and far-flung areas.

The Department also assured that the safety and health of teachers and personnel will be its top priority as SLMs can be done at home. Teachers who would need to visit their schools to get materials to prepare the SLMs are required to follow the existing work arrangement and health protocols.

To further integrate the SLMs with the learning delivery modalities, DepEd is set to finalize the learning delivery modalities which will be implemented for each region after the consolidation of Learner Enrollment and Survey Forms (LESF) from the June enrollment.

The New Normal Education in the Philippines

New normal welcomes students as more schools return to in-person classes | ABS-CBN News

New normal welcomes students as more schools return to in-person classes

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