Living The Shift: Teachers' Experiences with Matatag Curriculum Implementation as Basis for Instructional Supervisory Plan

Curriculum reforms globally requires substantial adaptability and resiliency from educators at the forefront of implementation. In the Philippines to raise the caliber of the K–12 curriculum, the Department of Education (DepEd) implemented the MATATAG curriculum, which presented difficulties for teachers in this regard (Schleicher, 2024). The Department of Education (2024) claims that the updated curriculum places more emphasis on reading and numeracy skills, learning competencies, and fewer learning topics. However, this depends on how resilient the elementary teachers are.
Despite being essential to the success of curricular reform, the study of Javier (2024) revealed various obstacles in implementing the MATATAG curriculum, including the need for appropriate implementation approaches, inadequate government policies for inclusive education, including a lack of training, limited resources, and uneven support from administrators, and technical problems in implementation. Alsubaie (2024) asserts the MATATAG curriculum is designed to improve foundational skills of pupils’, yet, he further stated that, changing to a new curriculum led to increased workload for teachers, leading to additional stress and exhaustion.
Moreover, Hall & Hord (2025) revealed through comprehensive study that teachers must apply the curriculum to meet students' needs while adhering to the provided guidelines, the curriculum's failure and success still largely depends on the roles that teachers play. Macasero (2025) further highlights issues such as teacher readiness, lack of access to information resources, and infrastructural limitations pose significant challenges to the effective rollout of the curriculum. Effective support systems and teacher readiness are essential for the MATATAG curriculum's successful implementation (Kilag et al., 2024). The study of Keiler (2025) reveals that giving the teachers enough assistance, trainings, teaching resources, continuous administrative support will help improves the implementation of the new curriculum.

Curriculum, Supervisory, Implementation

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