Criticality and Sustainability in the Philippine Education Virtual Engagements

Abstract

With the shift of instructions, this chapter presents how pandemic has hugely affected the learning quality of Filipino learners. With those academic challenges, classroom practices were innovated to address the learners' needs through critical pedagogy (CP). Initially, the “stories of the people” were used as instructional tools because of their impact on the learners as victims of learning oppression. These “stories” centered on the country's resiliency in addressing the pandemic issues such as education and health readiness, food security, and equality to basic services. Critical approaches, such as the community-based, inquiry-based, problem-based, and reflective approaches, were employed to convert people's stories into new knowledge. Besides CP, the UN's Sustainable Development Goals serves as a new reference to strengthen criticality. These goals are more explicit for the learners to shape a humanized world. Hence, integrating criticality and sustainability can better serve Philippine basic education in achieving social justice to break oppression, and marginalization.