Teachers’ Beliefs and Readiness for the Aral Program: A Study in Early Implementation

The ARAL Program is an educational initiative aimed at addressing learning gaps and supporting students’ academic recovery. This study examined the beliefs and readiness of Junior High School teachers toward the program during its early implementation in School Year 2025–2026 using a descriptive-correlational research design. Results showed that teachers’ attitudes and participation in in-service training were the most significant factors influencing their beliefs and readiness. A strong positive relationship was found between attitude and both beliefs and readiness, while training demonstrated weak to moderate positive correlations. Teachers experienced a moderate level of challenges, with insufficient training identified as the primary concern. Further findings revealed that teachers’ beliefs were significantly and positively related to their readiness in terms of knowledge, preparedness, and willingness to implement ARAL strategies. Additionally, beliefs had a weak negative relationship with challenges, suggesting that more positive beliefs slightly reduced difficulties in implementation. Overall, the results highlighted that attitudinal factors and professional development experiences played a more important role than demographic characteristics in shaping teachers’ engagement with the program. Based on these findings, it is recommended that the Department of Education and school administrators enhance sustained, hands-on training, foster positive attitudes through mentoring and recognition, provide continuous support and monitoring, establish feedback mechanisms, improve policies based on teacher input, and conduct further studies in diverse contexts.

ARAL Program, Teacher Readiness, Teacher Beliefs, In-Service Training, Program Implementation

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