Philippine E-Journals

Attitude and Readiness of Special Education Teachers in Blended Teaching: Basis for A Training Development Program

GAY C. CLAUDIO

Discipline: Education

 

Abstract:

As the world progresses towards digitalization in education, innovations have been embraced rapidly. Blended teaching (a combination of in-person and online classes) has been introduced to enhance the teaching and learning process amidst challenges and threats brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. This study investigated special education teachers’ attitude and readiness to implement blended learning modalities. The study used purposive sampling employing a total enumeration of 40 SPED teachers in 10 public SPED schools in Sarangani province. The results revealed that with all the indicators in teachers’ attitude towards blended teaching, an overall mean of 3.22 was obtained, which corresponds to an overall descriptive value of “Favorable’. This means that teachers portrayed positive attitudes and practices that prompted them to develop their knowledge and skills in the shift from traditional education to blended instruction. Overall, the relationship between teachers’ attitudes and the level of readiness toward blended teaching is “Highly Significant.” The correlation between the teachers’ attitude and the teachers’ level of readiness in six areas (i.e., Technical Literacy, Planning Blended Activities, Personalizing Instruction, Facilitating Student-Student Interaction, Facilitating Teacher-Student Interaction, Planning Blended Assessments) is “Highly Significant” while only one of the seven areas (i.e., Implementing Blended Assessments) is “Not Significant. Thus, this study proposed an action plan to support teachers in blended teaching. Further, a pool of experts in blended teaching and learning reviewed and evaluated the proposed action plan. They rated the proposed action plan as “highly valid.”