Implementation of Mother Tongue – Based Multilingual Education in A Multicultural and Multilingual Community: A Teacher’s Perspective

MTB-MLE aims to promote multilingual education where learners are literate of two or more languages. To have a deeper and better understanding on the implementation of MTB-MLE, this phenomenological research examined the teachers’ view on the matter of its implementation. The study specifically took a closer look on the perceptions, experiences, challenges, and the coping mechanisms of teachers brought about the program. Findings showed that teachers shared the same experiences and challenges met in implementing MTB-MLE. Coping mechanisms are profoundly giving the means and ways for teachers to lessen their burdens and to avoid having unfavorable feeling towards the program. Challenges are affecting teachers in different facets of education such as language differences between teachers and students, insufficient resources, unparalleled learning materials and lack of trainings. These challenges were identified as factor that clogged learnings and incapacitated the skilled and talented educators hence, strategies are made to overcome these challenges. These strategies involved research, resourcefulness, contextualization and localization of materials, and providing a pool of activities for learners are entailed to have helped educators succeed over the challenges.