AN official of Miriam College has earned her master’s degree in designing education under the Transnational Education program of the Philippines and the United Kingdom.

Sofia Soledad DG. De Guzman, the assistant principal for Student Affairs at Miriam College High School, attended both Miriam College and Goldsmiths, University of London to complete her master’s degree.

She took foundational and major courses at the two universities.

“Being part of the MADE program led me to reflect on the learning processes and assessment design that I use in the classroom including the policies we implement in school. Most importantly, the program helped me strengthen my philosophy and advocacy for teaching,” she said.

“I will not forget how much I struggled appreciating the iterative process of design and its impact on the teaching strategies I use in class. I also had to resist giving too much attention to the learning output and the grades I receive but to give more attention to the learning process itself,” she added.

De Guzman said that integrating design thinking in pedagogy will help them re-evaluate the curriculum, instructional design and assessment practices. Design and education, she explained, “are cohesive forces that will compel us to use critical pedagogy if we truly want to be student-centered.”

“Now that we are back in the Philippines, we hope to apply and share the knowledge we have gained from the program for improving the public and private educational sector of our country,” she said.