Embracing the New Normal Set-Up from Modular to Face-to-Face Learning: A Grounded Theory

Abstract

Educators bear a great amount of responsibility for taking purposeful actions and ensuring that all learners continue to receive a high-quality, inclusive, and equitable education despite the pandemic. To assure the continuity of learning in the Philippines public basic education system, modular learning has become the most popular distance learning technique as this considers learners in remote locations who do not have access to the internet for online learning. As the education transforms back to face-to-face learning, this qualitative study conducted an in-depth exploration of teachers as an instructional specialist in the education transition using the grounded theory. The in-depth interviews with the participants exposed four emergent themes and a central category on the teachers’ experiences as an instructional specialist in the education transition. “Teacher’s adaptable determinants” emerged as the core category and entailed four essential themes: (1) Understanding of function; (2) Recognition and acceptance of the inevitability of the circumstance; (3) Efforts made in response to the ongoing difficulties; and (4) Ability to adjust in the face of adversity. The grounded theory of appreciation-accommodation-resilience: teacher’s adaptable determinants in educational transition unveils an understanding that being a teacher in this time of transition requires teachers to appreciate their function (recognition and understanding), to accommodate certain initiatives (adjust), and to be resilient in difficult circumstance (efforts) for the learning continuity to thrive amid the prevailing challenges and other adversities of the pandemic. The theory can provide a frame of reference for the educational leaders and institutions for them to come up with regulations and other guidelines that are responsive to the needs and experiences of the teacher’s in actualizing the objectives of face-to-face learning in the public basic education system. Overall, the theory highlights the accounts of the teachers as an instruction specialist in the education transition from modular distance learning back to face-to-face learning. Teachers’ appreciation, accommodation, and resilience are being magnified as their adaptable determinants in this educational transition