CULTURE-BASED LESSONS. The Graduate Diploma in Cultural Education program is designed to strengthen the culture-based teaching of the basic education curriculum by enhancing the understanding of public school teachers of local and national history, culture, heritage and the arts to effectively integrate culture-based lessons. Photo courtesy of Xavier Center for Culture and the Arts.

Twenty-nine teachers from public elementary and high schools in Northern Mindanao are pursuing their Graduate Diploma in Cultural Education (GDCE) at Xavier University through the Xavier Center for Culture and the Arts, in partnership with the National Commission for Culture and the Arts’ Philippine Cultural Education Program (NCCA-PCEP), XU School of Education and the Department of Education.

The teachers who come from the various cities and provinces in the region are studying Local Cultural Mapping, Media Based Cultural Documentation, Issues in Cultural Education, and Development of Culture-Based Lesson Exemplars.

These courses comprise Level II of the two-summer 24-unit post-baccalaureate program designed to strengthen the culture-based teaching of the basic education curriculum by enhancing the understanding of public school teachers of local and national history, culture, heritage and the arts to effectively integrate culture-based lessons in Science, Mathematics, Social Studies, and English and Filipino Languages; and Music, Arts and Physical Education.

Last summer, the teachers successfully completed Level 1 of the program, which consisted of courses in Pedagogy of Cultural Education, Cultural Diversity and Languages of the Philippines, Review of Philippine History and Heritage, and Philippine Arts.

This summer’s program will run from April 4 to 29. The graduation ceremony is slated sometime this July.

The GDCE, which started out as a Certificate Program in Cultural Education, has been a program of the NCCA-PCEP through several conduit teacher education institutions nationwide, including Xavier University, since 2008. 

PCEP envisions “a nation of culturally literate and empowered Filipinos” by ensuring that culture is the core and foundation of education, governance, and sustainable development. 

At the end of the program, teachers are expected to be culturally aware, sensitive and competent in imparting not only knowledge but also the responsibility of promoting, protecting and handing down Filipino culture, values, heritage and traditions to the younger generation.