Relationship Between Kindergarten Teachers’ Accounts and Learners’ Performance

The study was undertaken to ascertain the relationship between the Kindergarten Teachers’ Accounts and Learners’ Performance in different kindergarten classes of Palompon North District, through the descriptive-correlational design. Specifically, it looked into the profile or accounts of the kindergarten teachers and the performance of the learners on the seven developmental domains. Kindergarten teachers experience different challenges in the classroom as they take their roles and responsibilities, but through their positive perspective towards their profession and love for teaching they achieve equal opportunities for young children they work with. Fifteen teachers, shared their life episodes of challenges and opportunities they meet along the way as kindergarten teachers. Challenges were themed as (1) Curriculum, (2) Physical Environment, (3) Instruction and (4) Social Context. The result of the study would inspire kindergarten teachers to improve their teaching skills and widen their understanding on child development to provide appropriate and ultimate learning experience, exposed them to the joy of learning and give them the foundation for a lifelong process.

The study was undertaken to ascertain the relationship between the Kindergarten Teachers' Accounts and Learners' Performance in different kindergarten classes of Palompon North District, through the descriptivecorrelational design.Specifically, it looked into the profile or accounts of the kindergarten teachers and the performance of the learners on the seven developmental domains.Kindergarten teachers experience different challenges in the classroom as they take their roles and responsibilities, but through their positive perspective towards their profession and love for teaching they achieve equal opportunities for young children they work with.Fifteen teachers, shared their life episodes of challenges and opportunities they meet along the way as kindergarten teachers.Challenges were themed as (1) Curriculum, (2) Physical Environment, (3) Instruction and (4) Social Context.The result of the study would inspire kindergarten teachers to improve their teaching skills and widen their understanding on child development to provide appropriate and ultimate learning experience, exposed them to the joy of learning and give them the foundation for a lifelong process.

INTRODUCTION
"What a teacher is, is more important than what he teaches."(Karl Menninger) Qualities that create an excellent teacher are not simple to duplicate, knowing their attributes can offer all teachers a standard of excellence in their attempts to recruit and maintain the finest one.Teachers are the most important ingredient for educational success and that they should be given more power, more responsibility and more credit for making school better (Hatch, 2005).They are the front-line experts who are able to process the complex information available for them, they make good decisions about what's best for their students, and they have the analytical capacity to comprehend the essence of their job and to study their students ' strengths and weaknesses.
"Teaching in the Early Stage is a "complex process", teachers need to plan and create a warm and conducive learning environment, and they organize time and resources, and interact with children who are active learners in the classroom.Teachers work also includes observing, assessing and recording children's progress.Early childhood teachers play a significant role in moulding the whole child because what happens in early childhood can make a lifetime difference (Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA/DFES, 2000), It is not all about delivering the content.Teachers working with preschool or kindergarten children require special training.
Young children are vulnerable, they need attention and concern from people who can be trusted as well as sensitive to their needs.They need adults who has a deep understanding on child development and teach effectively (Siraj-Blatchford et al., 2002).Early childhood teachers must develop core characteristics and skills for them to become specialists in their field.These characteristics might be within the person or can be developed, through professional development opportunities and experiences.
In view of this, teaching experience alone or a degree in another field is not enough to provide the necessary knowledge of young learners and early childhood practices.It has been known that the teacher has an important role in transmitting the knowledge they have learned to educate the learner like what Feeney says cited in Semblante (2013), Children are like empty vessels that need to be filled with the needed data and concept.These entails a wide expectation about the teacher's ability to exert time and effort towards the paramount goal of preparing children to be well informed and become independent learners.
Apparently, the kindergarten teachers are the king pin in the educational set-up as to the most important workforce in the development of the child.Zuzovsky (2003) mentioned that the most influential factor in developing student's performance in early childhood is through employing a seasoned qualified early childhood teacher.Indeed, quality teachers are not just the one who bring about "student learning" but also those who shows desirable characters that upholds the standards and norms of the profession.
Despite the scarcity of early childhood teachers, many elementary school teachers were eager to be trained and enter the field of early childhood education.In public elementary schools, there were limited eligible teachers who specialized early childhood education and strive for professional excellence in the field of teaching early childhood.These teachers are either neophyte or seasoned in the field of teaching.Their experiences become the most influential factor in developing student's performance in early childhood.
By the end of the school year, kindergarten students must demonstrate mastery of the curriculum's skills and domains, but this scenario does not apply to all.For the past years kindergarten learners performed average in all domains of Early Childhood Care and Development as seen in the results of their skill assessment.It is important to investigate why none of them performed at an advanced level, considering the many qualifications of kindergarten teachers' including their experiences.
Teachers' personal quality and certification are not the only indicators that influences learning performance of pupils, but there are different factors hinders the success of learning the skills.This study aims to find out whether early childhood teachers' qualifications or accounts have a direct impact on kindergarten learners' learning performance, as well as what other factors influence kindergarten learners', with the end view of proposing a training matrix for early childhood teachers.Teaching in the early years requires teachers to become creative, flexible and with a well-rounded personality for it is intellectually demanding and personally challenging.

THEORETICAL REVIEW
Teacher plays a significant role in the education of students.As member of the society, he/she is expected to rise above all as he/she takes the responsibility Khurshid (2008).Kola (2015) cited that teachers' qualification is one of the major variables affecting the academic achievement of learners.Teacher qualifications can be divided into two categories.The categories are personal quality and professional quality as presented in figure 1.Personal quality is continuous for a lifetime.Teaching strategies, experiences, and motivation is personal to the individual teacher and keep changing in a teachers' life.
Katz as cited in Heisner (2008) presented a four-stage theory of preschool teacher development.Teachers' development started to progress from survival stage to maturity stage.Teachers' needs varies as they gain experiences in teaching.To provide adequate help, it is essential to comprehend these phases of teachers' growth.In addition, Kola (2015) mentioned that a teacher who has a poor teaching strategy will eventually improve as years pass through professional development.Professional development and experience aided them to improve their teaching strategy and motivation.While the second category describes the professional quality of a teacher.Goe (2007) utilizes teachers' qualification instead of professional qualification and commonly called it teacher inputs.
Teachers' qualification is one of the assets the teacher could have showed during hiring and licensing and in determining who should be allowed to teach.Education officials can use this document to identify potential teachers who are suited for the position.Likewise, professional qualification on the public elementary schools were supported by a department order to strongly implement its rules in hiring teachers.Stated in the DepEd Order 81, s. 2012 (Guidelines for the Recruitment and Deployment of Teachers in Kindergarten) the guidelines implement the standardization of evaluation and selection of kindergarten teachers.
The two categories of qualification may affect teacher effectiveness in the classroom.Hence, Kola (2015) added that qualifications influence learning and lead to learning outcomes.This means that what the student learned will eventually determine their academic performance (learning result).This learning outcome could either be positive or negative.To evaluate the effectiveness of the classroom, experienced teachers assess child's development and learning through readiness assessment using Early Childhood Care Development Checklist.

Objective of the Study
This study ascertains the relationship between the Kindergarten Teachers' Accounts and Learners' Performance in different kindergarten classes of Palompon North District, Leyte Division, School Year 2018 -2019.
It seeks to answer the following queries: 1.The demographic profile of the kindergarten teachers in terms of:

METHODOLOGY
This study utilized the descriptive -correlative research design.To get the teachers profile, this study employed a survey questionnaire on kindergarten teachers' accounts.To get the kindergarten learning performance the researcher obtained the Early Childhood Care and Development Checklist results from the district kindergarten coordinator.The subject of this study were the 15 public kindergarten teachers of Palompon North District.The respondents of the study were 375 kindergarten learners from the 15kindergarten class who were officially enrolled in the school year 2018-2019.
The study utilized three types of instruments: The first instrument was, a revised survey questionnaire from Salgados (2011).Part of the survey questionnaire is the Personal Information about the early childhood teacher, educational attainment and the relative standing on her present teaching position and post graduate studies.The second was the Revised Early Childhood Development Checklist (ECCD) from the Department of Education.The checklist consisted of the child's record and the items were grouped into seven domains. 1) gross motor, 2) fine motor, 3) self -help, 4) receptive language, 5) expressive language, 6) cognitive, and 7) social -emotional.
Transmittal letters were sent to ask permission to the administrators of Palompon North District, Division of Leyte to conduct the study.Upon approval, the researcher administered the questionnaires and scheduled a personal interview to the teachers to gather raw and reliable data direct from the respondents.The instrument of the study is a standardized tool from the Department of Education.Questionnaires were retrieved, collected, tabulated, and collated at the Education Management Information System (EMIS) section of the district.The (EMIS) is responsible in the collection and keeping of the ECCD results of all kindergarten learners in the whole district.In addition, child's record is also taken from the EMIS for the needed data for the kindergarten learners who are enrolled in the school year 2018-2019.After collecting the data, the researcher consolidated the data collected and proceed to coding, tabulating, analysing the results.The information and the data given by the subject and respondents of this study were treated with utmost confidentiality and anonymity through various confidentiality procedures and agreement.Age is an asset to an individual, the most accessible variable, which is added to a person's resume.In this study, age of the teacher was part of the attribute to the students' learning.Presented above were the age range of the respondents from different schools.Age 27 -35 years old constituted 53% of the total population, while aged 36 -44 constituted the 26%.The remaining ranges each have one respondent which constituted the remaining 21%.This showed that the guidelines stipulated in DepEd Order 81, 2012 (Policy Guidelines in Hiring and Employment of Kindergarten Teachers) that requires kindergarten teachers who are not more than 45 years of age, has been followed.Explicitly it implied that the teachers assigned in the lower level especially in the kindergarten were the newly hired teachers.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The figure implied that the kindergarten teachers who participated in the study were neither too young nor too old for teaching.This meant that majority of the teachers assigned in kindergarten were the young generations.Similar to the survey of teachers in Europe, the average age of the early childhood teachers in the locality is comparative to Malta and Turkey where they had greater percentage of young teachers, with almost 33 to 44 % respectively of teachers less than 30 years of age.In these countries, opportunities clearly exist to structure policies for young teacher workplace Boyd et al, 2008 as cited in TALIS (2009).Educational qualification is the academic degree a teacher possesses to qualify him or her to teach.Teacher education particularly BEED with ECE as major field of specialization is one big qualification to teach the kindergarten learners.This study also examined the kindergarten teacher's profile in terms of academic preparation which is believed to be paramount in his/her chosen field.
Table 3 presented the undergraduate degree of the respondents as part of their educational qualification.Among the 15 respondents a large proportion took the Bachelor of Science in Home Technology Education (BSHTE) with 46.67%, followed by both Bachelor of Science in Home Economics and Education Technology (BSHEET) and Bachelor in Elementary Education (BEED) with 20% respectively.1 respondent took Bachelor of Secondary Education (BSED) and another 1 took Bachelor of Science in Industrial Education (BSIED) with 6.67% each baccalaureate degree.This showed that majority of the teachers were not academically prepared to handle kindergarten classes because they were not early childhood education majors.Moreover, to be adequately prepared for pre-school teaching, a teacher for kindergarten should have a specialization in preschool education.This data ironically opposed to the qualification stated in the DepEd Order 81, s. 2012 (Policy Guidelines on Hiring and Deployment of Kindergarten Teachers) which implemented the standardization of evaluation and selection of kindergarten teachers in the Department of Education.The data revealed that the teachers assigned in kindergarten were not qualified to teach.The lack of professionally qualified teachers for kindergarten is indeed a continuing problem of the educational system.Among the respondents taking up masters' degree, only one or 6.67 % of the population has graduated and pursued the right educational qualification who took up MA-ECE.Hence, contingency measures were provided in DepEd Order 81, 2012, if in cases there are limited eligible teachers, measures may be adopted like earning units in ECE within 3 years.Either the contingency measure was not followed, the data collected revealed that there were no units earned by these teachers within the specific duration this is an indication that there was negligence on the monitoring of teachers in the field of kindergarten teaching.
One may not be academically qualified in their undergraduate degree but can pursue or undertake further studies and more advanced level is commendable.A post graduate course can further assist the skills and knowledge in your chosen field.This data revealed that even in their post graduate courses, kindergarten teachers do not qualify nor gave relevant and lateral entry to their field.It must be remembered that qualified teachers are important factors of early childhood education program that will improve the learning outcomes for young children (Barnet, 2003).It is hard to hypothesize that these teachers are doing great in the classroom without educational background related to early childhood.In education, teaching experience is one great factor that could augment the effectiveness of good teaching; it becomes the basis for salary schedule; transfer policies that prioritize seniority; it is commonly considered a major root of inequity among teachers, Rice (2010).Years of experience is believed to be a significant determinant of a learner's performance and oftentimes indicator in teachers' qualification.
From the data, 53.33% respondents had teaching experience for 2 to 3 years, while 33.33% had a teaching experience for a year or less, 6.67% who had 8-9 years and another 6.67% with 6-7 years of experience.
The results revealed that some teachers had been shifted from grade school to kindergarten since the implementation of the K-12 in 2012.According to Katz, by the second year, educators joined the consolidation phase and started to concentrate on individual children's training and needs.While teachers who were in their third to fourth year of teaching had become competent in the practice of teaching children.Teachers in these stages strive to improve their classes and to try new methods on an ongoing basis or to add new twist to their teaching pattern.This implied that most of the respondents did not have more experience in teaching Kindergarten but find opportunities to improve and become better.Learning to teach is a developmental process.The method includes the acquisition over an extended period of time of professional knowledge.In particular, fresh educators need to acquire skills from three to seven years and have the highest effect on learner efficiency (Berliner, 2000) cited in Aqel (2013).
This research revealed a data on seminars and workshops attended by 15 participants of the study.Significantly, 60% of the total sample population had undergone with only a single training or have not attended any training and workshop at all as part of their professional development and 20% of the respondents who had attended with at least 2 to 3 trainings and workshops.Meanwhile, only 1 respondent had experienced attending a training and workshop related to ECE which constituted the 6.67% and 13.33% had attended with 6 or 7 trainings and workshops.While none of the respondents attended more than 7 training and workshops.
Ironically, despite their age ranging from 27 to 35 years, most of the respondents had only attended a single or no training at all, given the fact that more than half of them had 3 years of teaching experience in kindergarten.The curriculum is changing almost every year as the world has been changing with the modern technology.Therefore, it is better to say that experience influence learning especially when driven with enough teacher professional and academic development.There is a strong implication that kindergarten teachers should attend trainings and workshop that may help the teacher refresh his knowledge, learn new teaching strategies, and keep updated with the current curriculum.In the study conducted by Aqel (2013) children were more involved in learning when they were taught using contemporary techniques by welltrained educators.Identical to the study of Gundogan (2002), which revealed that in-service training organized by the school for pre-school educators with the present trend in the early childhood curriculum are not sufficient.

The Performance of the Kindergarten Learners
The Kindergarten Education (KE) programs ensure that all five-year-old kids attain their anticipated norms and abilities, taking into consideration their varied background, previous knowledge and experiences, abilities, attitudes, personal characteristics and interests.The learning program is child-centered, it is suitable to develop fields and must be concerned with the active learning of all young children, including those with unique skills, marginalized and/or atrisk circumstances.This will consequently impact on other domains if progress is noted in one developmental domain.
Children are continually developing in a holistic manner in all domains.Essentially, evaluation helps educators know individual strengths and weaknesses and allows them to design suitable teaching activities to meet individual learners ' requirements.Formative evaluation in kindergarten begins with the Philippine Early Childhood Development (ECD) checklist administration.The Philippine ECD Checklist is a standard screening tool for development.It has a standard management and scoring protocol.It offers important data on the developmental status of a child and helps the teacher detect possible delays in development.Under the seven (7) developmental domains, curriculum norms describe what the children should understand and be prepared to do.These domains are gross motor, fine motor, self-help, receptive language, expressive language, social-emotional and cognitive domain.Generally, the learners were in the average stage in all of the seven developmental domains as reflected on the table.All learners were not able to reach the slight advanced much more with the highly advanced stage.Moreover, it can also be gleaned in the table that there were learners which were slight delayed in all of the seven domains and there were a few percentages of the learners that are significantly delayed in the developmental stages specifically in the gross motor, self-help, cognitive, and social-emotional domain.
Additionally, among the seven developmental domains, the learners obtained the highest competency in the fine motor skills with 99.73 % as compared to other domains.On the other hand, the learners obtained the lowest competency in the cognitive domain with 0.53%.
This result implied that learners could not reach the advance level since teachers lack the knowledge on the implementation of the curriculum.The fact that teachers are not qualified to teach the curriculum signifies the expected average and poor performance of the students.Furthermore, teachers were insufficient with the knowledge about the techniques and strategies on how to implement the kindergarten curriculum because of inadequate orientation, seminars and workshops on how to effectively execute this curriculum.Since they lack the knowledge, it caused them not to be motivated and this deterioration of their motivation led them in conducting inappropriate tasks, activities and assessment in the classroom.

Table 7. Correlation between Teachers' Age and Learners' Performance
The table reflected the correlation between teachers' age and learners' performance in the seven developmental domains.The data revealed the teachers' age which was significantly related to the seven developmental domains of the learners.It can be noted that majority of the teachers were youngsters.This showed that the younger teacher had better performance with the learners in their developmental domains.When teachers are younger, they are more enthusiastic and active most especially that kindergarten curriculum noted that there were 8 out of 15 teachers who were beginning teachers but had helped learners develop the domains averagely.This meant, that even if teachers were not that experienced in the teaching kindergarten curriculum, but they were competent in teaching kindergarten.This was because teachers' plateau in their effectiveness were in their early careers due to better retention because they were beginning teachers.
The performances of these teachers may not be as effective as experienced teachers since they were beginners in the field.However, according to Kini and Podolsky, (2016) teachers continue to enhance their efficiency by gaining experience in the teaching field and by changing the efficiency of students at all stages of their teaching careers, not every inexperienced teacher is less efficient and not every skilled teacher is more efficient.

Table 10. Correlation between Teachers' Seminar-Workshop Attended and
Learners' Performance It can be observed that the learners' performance in the seven domains only reached the average level.This result revealed was that most teachers had only attended a single training or none at all yet despite the fact that they had been teaching ECC for at least three years.Aside from that, it can also be noted that these teachers were not graduates of ECC program.Meaning to say, that learners' performance might had been improved and reached the advance level if teachers had attended seminars and workshop in order to be equipped with knowledge and skills necessary for teaching.Not only that, teachers will keep abreast with new the trends, techniques, strategies and new knowledge for better and quality instruction if they had attended seminars, trainings and workshop.
The result implied that teachers' training and seminar signified the quality of performance of the learners.If teachers significantly relate to the performance of the learners even with a few numbers of seminars, then, they can improve the quality of instruction that will lead to quality education in the teaching -learning process.Furthermore, the result revealed the performance of the learners may have the potentials to be improved if teachers continue to grow professionally through seminars, workshops, and trainings.
One of the problems of the education academe now a days was having the right professional development program for teachers.The need to be regularly updated on the current trends of teaching and learning were imperative in the educational system.Teacher training was essential to deal with the evolving requirements of the profession, particularly in today's setting.Trained educators are better able to teach the learners.Training can enhance the understanding of a teacher on subject matter.Teacher development cannot be underestimated as the whole method of education, it depends on the individual called teacher.Without improving teachers ' quality, the quality of our educational system cannot be enhanced.

CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
Teachers' accounts have implications on learners' performance.It was empirical that the performance of the kindergarten across the different domains was mediocre based from the findings.Primarily, because early childhood teachers are assumed to have extensive knowledge of child development and a solid educational foundation that extends beyond his/her amazing teaching methods and techniques.The theory of Lilian Katz was significant in the conclusion of this study, where teachers need to be understood in their personal and professional needs.Teacher qualification provides great impact in teaching, Thus, ensuring that every teacher is professionally and academically skilled is crucial.
In the light of the findings and conclusion of the study, the researcher recommends the following: 1. Provide in-service trainings and workshop for teachers for the implementation of the kindergarten curriculum.Likewise on the teaching strategies and approaches.2. Policy makers and school officials may monitor their implementing rules and regulations to ensure the standardization and selection of teachers.3. The Department of Education may prioritize the kindergarten in the distribution of materials and other needed facilities as well as the utilization of classrooms.4. Teachers may continue to seek professional growth to be updated on the latest trends in teaching kindergarten and echo their problems to the school heads, the challenges they met that would help address their needs and would lessen their burdens.5.The nearby teacher training institution may offer courses that would cater the needs of the Department of Education.

FURTHER STUDY
Every research is subject to limitations; thus, you can explain them here and briefly provide suggestions to further investigations.

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.Schematic Diagram of the Theoretical and Conceptual Framework

Table 1
Age of the Kindergarten Teachers

Table 2 .
Undergraduate Degree of the Kindergarten Teachers'

Table 3 .
Kindergarten Teachers Post Graduate Courses

Table 4 .
Kindergarten Teachers' Teaching Experience

Table 5 .
Kindergarten Teachers' Seminars and Workshop Attended