The Potentially Implemented K-12 Spiral Curriculum: A Content Analysis of Selected Geometry Textbooks for Junior High School

• Main Author: Punzal, Chara Deanna
• Format: text
• Published: Archīum Ateneo 2020
• Subjects: n/a
• Online Access: https://archium.ateneo.edu/theses-dissertations/536
• Institution: Ateneo De Manila University

In Republic Act 10533, also known as the “Enhanced Basic Education Act of 2013,” the Philippine congress declared that the national curriculum was to follow a spiral progression. Because of this, a myriad of textbook series was published by several private publishing companies. However, it was found that little to no research regarding textbook studies and the spiral curriculum exists locally. This content analysis aimed to study how the spiral curriculum is being potentially implemented in selected geometry textbooks for junior high school. Textbook discussions, examples, and exercises were closely examined to determine manifestations of the four features of a spiral curriculum. First, topics from the DOST-SEI and MATHTED framework and DepEd Curriculum Guide for Mathematics were marked with progressive symbols to determine how these topics are revisited in textbook discussions. Second, textbook examples and exercises were assigned Van Hiele levels according to Van Hiele’s model of geometric thinking to determine whether difficulty level is increasing across grades 7 – 10. Third, pre- requisite skills were identified in examples and exercises to determine how new learning is related to previous learning, and, lastly, an over-all student competency level was assigned per textbook to determine whether an increase in competency level can be concluded. It was found that an explicit spiral cannot be concluded from the selected textbooks. Majority of the topics found from the two series used in the study were not revisited at all throughout junior high school. Van Hiele levels were also not continuously increasing. The percentage of higher levels were at its peak at grade 8 and lowest at grade 7 or 10. Though a lot of previously learned topics were used as prerequisites in several examples and exercises, it was not enough to conclude a higher v level of student competency. It was found that the difficulty and complexity level is highly dependent on the nature of the topic itself and less on the author’s approach. From this study, it can be concluded that the spiral curriculum can be concretely shown, measured, and crafted more explicitly. Due to the lack of local research in textbook study, this study highly recommends further exploration of textbook research and the spiral curriculum.