SiMERR and RCTQ staff are busy rolling out the Teacher Development Needs Study (TDNS). The TDNS Project will assist  the Department of Education in the Philippines (DepED) to determine development programming for in-service teachers in terms of 1) teaching competence/pedagogical knowledge and skills; and 2) subject content and pedagogical content knowledge.The study is designed to reveal not only what teachers at different career stages ‘know’ but also what they ‘do’ in the classroom. To this end, data from all 17 regions were made available to RCTQ and SiMERR comprising the responses of 60,800 teachers. These data are in the mid stages of analysis, and to date the study has:

1. determined the psychometric characteristics of the current Teacher Assessment tool in determining the teachers’ strengths and needs for professional development;
2. piloted the subject content and pedagogical content knowledge of Grade Six and Eight teachers in Mathematics, Science, English and Filipino; and
3. begun planning ways to correlate teacher variables, subject content and pedagogical knowledge and skills with student performance in different subject areas.

Presently,  RCTQ and SiMMER staff are preparing a report for DepED on the findings so far, whilst also preparing for nation wide testing of  Grade Six and Eight teachers subject content knowledge  in Mathematics, Science, English and Filipino, which will be followed up later in the year by qualitative, field-based investigation of teachers’ classroom behaviour.