Horizontal Deployment: The Plight of Btvted Graduates Teaching Core Subjects in Public Secondary Schools in Tagum City, Philippines

This paper aimed to discern the lived experience of BTVTED graduates handling core academic subjects in public secondary schools, empirically identify the challenges, adaptive strategies, and insights that would add to the growing body of knowledge in out-of-field teaching. This study examined the lived experiences of 12 BTVTED graduates, selected via purposive sampling, using a phenomenological approach and Colaizzi's six-step descriptive method. The researchers used a two-pronged approach to gather data and obtain these opinions: five participants participated in a focus group discussion (FGD), and the remaining seven provided in-depth interviews (IDI) to provide in-depth viewpoints. The data emerged 13 themes: pedagogical adjustment difficulties, systemic curriculum-related challenges, gaps in content mastery; professional identity struggles and self-doubt; pressure from student expectations; resourcefulness and continuous learning; leveraging technology and digital tools; adapting Tech-Voc approaches to core subjects; collaborative and peer-supported strategies; intensive lesson preparation and adaptation; flexibility and professional identity transformation; pedagogical growth and enhanced effectiveness; and system-level insights and reflective practice. These suggest that peer mentoring and seminars, the formal integration of adaptive strategies through training, and an intensive review of DepEd's hiring and deployment guidelines are key recommendations to address this phenomenon. Moreover, future research studies on this topic may be conducted in various dimensions to explore the broader prevalence of this phenomenon.