NEAP OIC Director Dr. Jennifer Lopez (front, right) and NEAP Director III Dr. Leah Apao (front, left) with one of the 3 groups of participants at the National Training of Trainers (NTOT) for the rollout of HOTS-PLPs (Science) in Cebu City on 19 June 2023.

National Educators Academy of the Philippines (NEAP) OIC Director Dr. Jennifer Lopez underscored the importance of the Higher Order Thinking Skills – Professional Learning Packages (HOTS-PLPs) in “helping teachers teach better” as she spoke at the National Training of Trainers (NTOT) for the rollout of the learning packages.

The training followed RCTQ’s capacitation of more than 300 core team members on 5-8 June 2023 who now serve as trainers-facilitators for more than 1,500 NTOT participants that have converged in Cebu City every week per subject group from June 19 until July 7, 2023.

“NEAP strongly supports the administration’s MATATAG Agenda. More specifically, NEAP is mandated to contribute to the fourth pillar of MATATAG, which is to Give support to teachers to teach better,” Director Lopez said, referring to DepEd’s current reform agenda. “These resource packages will help teachers achieve that.”

The learning packages for Grades 7-10 teachers of Science, Mathematics and English/Reading aimed to provide support materials for teachers to help them develop the higher order thinking skills of their students by developing HOTS items/questions using the Structure of the Observed Learning Outcome (SOLO) framework with answers and advice.

NEAP is now on its second week of conducting the NTOT with the first week being organized for 544 Science trainers, this week for more than 500 Mathematics trainers, and next week for English/Reading trainers. They aim to train a total of 1,632 school leaders as HOTS-PLPs trainers who will roll out the materials in all public schools nationwide.

Director Lopez also emphasized to the participants the need to embed the use of these materials in every school’s professional learning community.

“As the Department of Education renews its focus in upgrading education quality, the strengthening of the professional training and development at the school level of our nearly a million teachers is urgent and necessary,” she said. “By collaborating with RCTQ for this initiative, we aimed to help teachers and school leaders to continuously reflect on and work closely together during their learning action cells (LAC) and in-service training. The ultimate goal is to improve the teaching practice, and enable teachers to develop their learners’ higher-order thinking skills (HOTS) so these learners can succeed academically and thrive in their future endeavors.”

RCTQ assisted DepEd in developing and now in the rollout of these learning packages as their shared response to the findings from a series of international assessments showing poor performance of Filipino learners. The results of the 2018 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) for Filipino learners. ranked the Philippines last in Reading and second last in Mathematics and Science out of 79 countries. PISA is an assessment that measures 15-year-olds’ ability to use their higher order thinking skills in Reading, Mathematics and Science to meet real-life challenges. The same areas of learners’ poor performance were also documented through an analysis of teachers’ performance in RCTQ’s Teacher Development Needs Study in 2014.

The learning packages address the following indicators in the three sets of DepEd’s professional standards:

Philippine Professional Standards for Teachers (PPST)

  • Indicator 1.5.2: Apply a range of teaching strategies to develop critical and creative thinking, as well as other higher order thinking skills.
  • Indicator 1.5.3: Develop and apply effective teaching strategies to promote critical and creative thinking, as well as other higher order thinking skills.

Philippine Professional Standards for School Heads (PPSSH)

  • Indicator 3.2.2: Provide technical assistance to teachers on teaching standards and pedagogies within and across learning areas to improve their teaching practice.

Philippine Professional Standards for Supervisors (PPSS)

  • Indicator 3.1.2: Apply appropriate instructional leadership support strategies to help divisions/districts/schools and/or learning centers with the continuous improvement of the teaching-learning process.

In 2021, RCTQ provided research and technical assistance to NEAP in the development of the PLPs with support from the Australian government through its Philippines COVID-19 Development Response Plan. (RCTQ Comms)

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National Educators Academy of the Philippines (NEAP) OIC Director Dr. Jennifer Lopez underscored the importance of the Higher Order Thinking Skills - Professional Learning Packages (HOTS-PLPs) in 'helping teachers teach better' as she spoke at the National Training of Trainers (NTOT) for the rollout of the learning packages. The training...
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