Teaching Folk Dances: The Challenges Faced by Public Elementary Teachers in District 4 of the City Schools Division of Las Pinas

The educational foundation of teachers has an impact on the way they teach and the depth of their teaching. Several factors can contribute to the challenges that teachers face in teaching folk dances to children. One, children were no longer exposed to folk dances at home, school, and in the community. Many schools’ shortcut dance or other art forms may be because of the teachers’ poor background in dance education. Teachers’ limited knowledge will produce substandard learning; hence, there are several reasons why folk dance is not emphasized in the elementary curriculum. Also, the teacher’s readiness to teach creates meaningful learning for the pupils. The purpose of this study was to investigate the contributing factors experienced by public elementary teachers in District 4 of the City Schools Division of Las Pinas” in teaching folk dances to pupils. This study analyzed the teachers’ responses and found that teachers were not confident to teach folk dance due to the following factors: there was no proper training on how to teach folk dance; elementary MAPEH teachers were generalists; insufficient knowledge of folk-dance terminologies and identifying folk dances; inadequate skills in performing folk dance steps and interpreting folk dance literature when teaching the dance.