Living the Shift: Lived Experiences in Implementing the Matatag Curriculum in the Philippines

Abstract

This hermeneutic phenomenological study examined the lived experiences of five public elementary school teachers in one Schools Division of the Negros Island Region, Philippines, as they implemented the Department of Education’s MATATAG Curriculum. The study responds to a gap in existing MATATAG scholarship, which has remained largely policy-descriptive and has left largely unexamined how teachers experience the reform at the level of personal and professional meaning. Guided by Van Manen’s phenomenological approach and Braun and Clarke’s reflexive thematic analysis, semi-structured, in-depth interviews conducted in English, Filipino, or Hiligaynon with teachers whose combined service spans well over a century produced a coding matrix of 150 coded statements mapped to twelve interrelated themes, organized here into four clusters: (a) encountering the reform through the weight of accumulated professional history and inadequate orientation, (b) absorbing systemic resource and design gaps through personal labor and improvisation, (c) undergoing emotional, agentive, and identity transformation largely without institutional accompaniment, and (d) redefining success, voicing policy advocacy, and confronting learner readiness as a systemic equity concern. Findings indicate that MATATAG’s implementation strain reflects a policy design and support gap rather than a failure of teacher performance or commitment; teachers sustained the reform’s delivery through what this study terms quiet custodianship, absorbing systemic shortfalls at personal cost so that their students would not feel them. As a small-sample qualitative inquiry situated in a single Schools Division, the study does not aim for statistical generalizability; its contribution lies instead in the interpretive depth and transferable resonance of the experiences documented. The study offers evidence-grounded recommendations for professional development redesign, binding material-delivery accountability, differentiation infrastructure, and formal channels for teacher voice in curriculum governance, and situates these within the broader literature on teacher agency and curriculum enactment.