21st Century Education In The Philippines

The 21st - century embarked International schools and/or universities to cope up with the crucial global demands set for education; due to this, American schools/universities were challenged to promulgate 21st - century learning in order to yield competent students (McAfee, 2014). The Philippines is gradually dealing with the extensive reform and improvement of the educational system brought by the implementation of the K-12 program (Okabe, 2013). It is observed that prior to the implementation of such educational system, the quality of the Philippine education was poor – revealing low quality performance and unpreparedness of student to embark on college education. The nation’s competence lies on the standard of education that nation sets.

Thus, 21st - century learners must acquire wider skills such as the 4Cs – Critical thinking, Communication, Collaboration, and Creative. 4Cs was derived from the three 21st - century education approaches of Ministerial Council of Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs (MCEETYA), American Management Association (AMA) and Partnership 21, and AT21CS. It was observed that there are existing similarities in these 3 approaches in which it features the core of 4Cs. Critical thinking refers to the analytical skills of a student in solving complicated problem. Furthermore, creativity refers to the application of the unique imagination or ideas of a student. On the other hand, communication goes with collaboration wherein it emphasizes the ability of a learner to engage and interact with other group of people (Keane, 2016). In line with this approach, UNESCO’s Four Pillars of Education by Jacques Delors emphasized that education must uplift the four important types of learning: learning to know,

In the study it is stated that the school facilities are considered as the primary learning environment of the students and it is responsible for the effective learning experience for developing the 21st - century skills of a student. School facilities are physical spaces that play an important role in an educational set up. These are also referred as the social, psychological, and conceptual environments that influence the students as they interact for learning in these physical spaces that create the proximity needed for in-depth learning interactions (Cleveland, B. & Fisher, K., 2014). The school facilities of the learning institutions are important to learning experiences of the students that drives their perspective about the school, (Hanssen,