Classroom Teachers' 21st Century Skills in the K to 12 Basic Education Curriculum Implementation: Basis for Policy Review to Increase NAT Scores

The shift from learners’ content mastery to skill proficiency in the 21st century teaching- learning process have prompted the Department of Education (DepEd) to align teachers’ skills and competencies. Despite the efforts, the results in the National Achievement Test (NAT) are comparably low. With this, the researchers conducted descriptive research which involved a survey to 663 elementary and high school teachers from the 14 divisions in DepEd Region X. These teachers were given with a validated questionnaire to measure their problem-solving skills, information literacy skills, and critical thinking skills as factors of 21st century teaching skills. Sociodemographic profiling of these teachers indicates that majority of them are aged 18-37 years old, female, have taken master’s unit, more than six years in service, and have anindividual performance commitment and review (IPCR) rating of very satisfactory. Findings reveal that the teachers’ 21st century skills are in the average level with the three factors. These skills differ significantly with the teachers’ educational level and IPCR rating. Moreover, the learners’ 21st century skills have a mastery level descriptive equivalent of average across Grade 6, Grade 10 and Grade 12 levels based on the 2017-2018 NAT results. Through correlational analysis, it is ascertained that there is no significant association on the 21st century skills between teachers and learners. Given all these, a review on how learners acquire and develop 21st century skills is called for to ameliorate policy formulation in increasing NAT scores.