Decolonizing the Philippine Education System: Perspectives in Student Learning and Engagement

Abstract

The colonial powers had long profoundly influenced colonized nations' education systems, including the Philippines. With its severe impacts on various aspects of individual, community, and national construction, there were multiple ongoing documented and undocumented individual and group movements from different intellectual elites in response to our heavily colonized systems. With recent macro-level research on projecting the future of the Philippines in decolonizing its systems, classroom teachers' individual efforts to introduce and practice decolonization need more documentation and analysis to construct an image of a national narrative of decolonizing movement into our education systems. With almost half a decade of integration into current practice, the study used autoethnography to form an analysis of the lived experience of decolonizing Social Sciences classes in Senior High School, including the perceived impacts on learner development and appreciation of Humanities and Social Science Strand students. Analysis revealed that decolonized practices and integration in the classroom lead to students fostering active engagement in class discussions, regaining confidence in the critical exchange of ideas in task creation, and deepening the realization of the relevance of local knowledge. It was found that learning experience better prepares them for different research competencies, although further investigation is needed to prove the relevance of the observation. The research underscores the need to look into other practices and consider whether individual efforts can be made and whether they are being applied in public education systems.