Republic of the Philippines

Laguna State Polytechnic University

Province of Laguna

Graduate Studies and Applied Research

1ST SEMESTER AY 2020-2021

Researcher: _______________________ Program: MAED Major in ________

Date Submitted: ___________________

Proposed PRIORITY Title of the Study

SETTING A SELF-PACED LEARNING ENVIRONMENT IN ENHANCING
THE READING COMPREHENSION OF GRADE 9 STUDENTS AMIDST
GLOBAL CHALLENGES

Area of Study
English Teaching and Learning
Reading Proficiency of the Students
Background of the Study/ Rationale

As the world becomes increasingly interconnected, so do the risks we face. The

COVID-19 pandemic has not stopped at national borders. It has affected people regardless of
nationality, level of education, income or gender. But the same has not been true for its
consequences, which have hit the most vulnerable hardest. Education is no exception. Students
from privileged backgrounds, supported by their parents and eager and able to learn, could
find their way past closed school doors to alternative learning opportunities. Those from
disadvantaged backgrounds often remained shut out when their schools shut down. This crisis
has exposed the many inadequacies and inequities in our education systems – from access to
the broadband and computers needed for online education, and the supportive environments
needed to focus on learning, up to the misalignment between resources and needs (Schleicher,
2020)
Self-Paced Learning requires learners to think about how they learn. Teachers have
focused on helping students understand what it means to learn on SPL in contrast to learning
in a traditional setting. Strategies for illustrating this contrast have included explanations and
strategic questioning about what type of strategies might have been required in the traditional
setting, and how learners expect that it might be different on SPL. Directly asking learners
about their expectations seems like a useful strategy. However, learners will still likely need
some guidance in setting appropriate expectations for SPL. This might require assistance in
problematizing thinking about ideas such as, “online learning is going to be easier than
traditional learning because I can do it at home.” (Carter, Rice, Yang, & Jackson, 2020)
Steadfast in its preparation for School Year 2020-2021, the Department of Education
(DepEd) will provide Self-Learning Modules (SLMs) with the alternative learning delivery
modalities to be offered for various types of learners across the Philippines.The integration of
SLMs with the alternative learning delivery modalities (modular, television-based, radio-based
instruction, blended, and online) will help DepEd ensure that all learners have access to quality
basic education for SY 2020-2021 with face-to-face classes still prohibited due to the public
health situation.“The SLMs and the other alternative learning delivery modalities are in place
to address the needs, situations, and resources of each and every learner and will cover all the
bases in ensuring that basic education will be accessible amid the present crisis posed by
COVID-19,” DepEd Secretary Leonor Briones said. SLMs are delivered in printed format to
schools that are located in coastal areas, far-flung provinces, and communities without access
to the internet or electricity. For households with gadgets and devices, the Department has
announced that SLMs can also be accessed online or offline.
With this in mind, the researcher is interested to maximize the potential use of Self-Paced
 Republic of the Philippines
Laguna State Polytechnic University
Province of Laguna

Graduate Studies and Applied Research

1ST SEMESTER AY 2020-2021
learning for the students. That is why she intends to focus her study on self-paced learning
environment of the student respondents at home and how it contributes in enhancing the
reading comprehension of the students.

Theoretical/Conceptual Framework

To alleviate the issue of Curriculum Learning (CL), Koller’s group (Kumar, Packer, and Koller
2010) designed a new formulation, called self-paced learning (SPL). SPL embeds curriculum design as
a regularization term into the learning objective. Compared with CL, SPL exhibits two advantages:
first, it jointly optimizes the learning objective together with the curriculum, and therefore the
curriculum and the learned model are consistent under the same optimization problem; second, the
regularization term is independent of loss functions of specific problems. This theory has been
successfully applied to various applications, such as action/event detection, reranking, domain
adaption, dictionary learning, ad tracking. (Jiang, et.al. 2015)
The concept of self-regulated learning, which emphasizes responsibilities of learners in their
own learning processes and autonomy was first noted in the 1980s. Self-regulation is the ability of
learners to effectively engage in their own learning processes metacognitively, motivationally, and
behaviorally. Self-regulated learning is defined as "an active and constructivist process whereby
learners attempt to monitor, regulate, and control their cognition, motivation and behaviors after setting
goals for their learning, are guided and restricted by their own goals and the learning environment they
are in". Therefore, self-regulation is a set of strategies that significantly affect learning. Self-regulation
includes setting goals, using effective strategies for regulating learning, coding and repeating
information, monitoring performance, asking for help when needed, and having confidence in one's
own skills. A learner who can self-regulate is organized, does careful planning, and makes keen
observations and assessments. (Kocdar, Karadeniz, Bozkurt, & Buyuk, 2018)
A promising extension of the flipped classroom explores whether students can exercise self-
regulated behaviors in the classroom without the need for pre-class activities. Studies have shown that
tablets can help students show self-regulation, take ownership of the learning process and
collaborate with one another. For example, tablets can increase motivation, foster
learning, promote personalized learning, stimulate face-to-face social interaction
between children, and increase self-directed learning. Direct real-time feedback from the tablet
apps moderates the level of students’ distraction, since it allows them to flow on to the next
task at hand rather than idling in class and waiting for feedback from their teacher . Hence,
tablets do provide substantive opportunities for self-regulated learning. However, it has been
suggested that more research is required to assess tablets effectiveness in classroom learning
environments. (Palaigeorgiou & Papadopoulou, 2019)
Five factors including goal setting, help seeking, self-study strategies, managing physical
environment, and effort regulation emerged in the scale, which was developed for the distance learners
who are engaged in self-study programs. No other scale whose sample group was the same as this scale
was found. Conversely, the comparison of the scale with the scales developed in different sample
groups for face-to-face and cohort-based online learning showed similar factors. For example, the
factor called goal setting, which implies setting aims and targeting results while studying. This
similarity was observed despite the different sample group and the fact that it was developed
completely for online settings. Another factor in the scale was determined as help seeking. This factor
implies that learners seek help from the Internet and social media, friends, and subject experts. Another
factor in the scale was called self-study strategies. No scale having the same factor was found in
previous studies. This factor includes the methods and strategies followed by learners who are
studying on their own. Another factor in the scale was called managing physical environment. This
factor implies that the distance learners organize their physical study environment. (Kocdar,
Karadeniz, Bozkurt, & Buyuk, 2018)
As far as teaching reading is concerned, a plethora of research provides a proof for the validity
 Republic of the Philippines
Laguna State Polytechnic University
Province of Laguna

Graduate Studies and Applied Research

1ST SEMESTER AY 2020-2021
and effectiveness of teaching reading through self-regulation. In the study of Teng & Zhang (2020)
students became more active in using an array of self-regulated learning strategies (e.g., metacognitive
strategies, social behavior strategies, and motivational regulation strategies). It was also found that the
self-regulated learning strategies-based instructional model contributed to increased levels of linguistic
self-efficacy and performance self-efficacy. Moreover, Bai & Guo (2018) mentioned that the use of
self-regulated learning strategies had significant and positive relationships with the students’ self-
efficacy. In particular, the use of planning and self-monitoring strategies had the strongest correlations
with self-efficacy. This study opens a new window to understanding how students’ self-efficacy in
English writing develops as a result of their self-regulated learning strategy use. Lastly, Nuckles, et.al.
(2020) shared that writing has the potential to scaffold self-regulated learning due to the cognitive
offloading written text generally offers as an external representation and memory aid, and due to the
offloading, that specifically results from the genre-free principle in journal writing. However, to enable
learners to optimally exploit this learning opportunity, the journal writing needs to be instructionally
supported.
Since Self-Paced Learning as an indicator will be tested as to how it contributes to the reading
comprehension of the students, it is important what are those skills under the reading comprehension
should be covered to maximize the potential of describing the competency. Reading comprehension
can be challenging for kids for lots of reasons. Whatever the cause, knowing the skills involved, and
which ones your child struggles with, can help you get the right support. There are six skills for reading
comprehension according to Lee (2014). The first skill is Decoding which is a vital step in the reading
process. students use this skill to sound out words they’ve heard before but haven’t seen written out. To
read fluently is the second skills, whereas students need to instantly recognize words, including ones
they can’t sound out. Fluency speeds up the rate at which they can read and understand text. Having a
strong vocabulary as the third skill is a key component of reading comprehension. Students can learn
vocabulary through instruction. But they typically learn the meaning of words through everyday
experience and also by reading. Practicing the fourth skills as to Sentence Construction and Cohesion
leads the students to understand how sentences are built might seem like a writing skill. So might
connecting ideas within and between sentences, which is called cohesion. But these skills are important
for reading comprehension as well. The fifth shows Reasoning and Background Knowledge where the
students have the background or prior knowledge about the world when they read. They also need to be
able to “read between the lines” and pull out meaning even when it’s not literally spelled out. Lastly
the Working Memory and Attention when students read, attention allows them to take in information
from the text. Working memory allows them to hold on to that information and use it to gain meaning
and build knowledge from what they’re reading. The ability to self-monitor while reading is also tied to
that. Kids need to be able to recognize when they don’t understand something. Then they need to stop,
go back, and re-read to clear up any confusion they may have.

Research Paradigm
Self-Paced Learning Environment Reading Comprehension
INDEPENDENT VARIABLES DEPENDENT
 Goal Setting  Decoding
VARIABLES
 Help Seeking  Fluency
 Self-Study Strategies  Vocabulary
 Managing Physical  Sentence Construction &
Environment Cohesion
 Effort Regulation  Reasoning and Background
Knowledge
 Working Memory and Attention
 Republic of the Philippines
Laguna State Polytechnic University
Province of Laguna

Graduate Studies and Applied Research

1ST SEMESTER AY 2020-2021

Statement of the Problem

The focus of the study is to describe the self-paced learning environment of the student
respondents at home and how it contributes in enhancing the reading comprehension of the
students.
Specifically, this seeks to answer the following questions:

1. How do student-respondents describe their self-paced learning environment at home in

terms of:
1.1. Goal Setting;
1.2. Help Seeking;
1.3. Self-Study Strategies;
1.4. Managing Physical Environment; and
1.5. Effort Regulation?
2. What is the level of proficiency of the student-respondent on reading comprehension as to:
2.1. Decoding;
2.2. Fluency;
2.3. Vocabulary;
2.4. Sentence Construction & Cohesion;
2.5. Reasoning and Background Knowledge; and
2.6. Working Memory and Attention?
3. Is there significant relationship between the assessed self-paced learning environment at
home and the level of proficiency of the student-respondent on reading comprehension?
4. Based from the result of the student, what plan of action can be proposed to ensure
conducive set-up of a self-paced learning environment at home?

Research Design: Descriptive and Correlational Research

Respondents: One-hundred fifty (150) public elementary school teachers
Instruments:
1. Survey Instrument on Self-Paced Learning Environment
2. Examination for Reading Comprehension
3. Instrument 3
Statistical treatment:
1. Descriptive Statistics: mean, SD, frequency count, percentage
2. Inferential Statistics: Pearson-product moment correlation coefficient (r)

References
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Bautista, R. G. (2015). Optimizing classroom instruction through self-paced learning
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Laguna State Polytechnic University
Province of Laguna

Graduate Studies and Applied Research

1ST SEMESTER AY 2020-2021
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