EXTENT OF FIELD TEACHING PRACTICE ON PRE-SERVICE TEACHERS’ COMPETENCIES DURING PANDEMIC

The Department of Education (DepEd) demands that qualified pre-service teachers be admitted to a variety of elementary schools where qualified and experienced instructors are desperately needed. Pre-service teachers have a significant problem as a result of how teacher education affects educators' early career skills and teaching philosophies. The new normal hurdles the pattern set in different universities; declaration of the educational policy due to a pandemic led to various changes affecting the competencies of field teaching practices of the pre-service teachers. This paper aims to identify the level of competencies of BEED Pre-service teachers in the field-teaching practice during the pandemic. Focus groups, semi-structured interviews, and survey questions were used to gather data on the breadth and depth of the pre-service teachers' experience. The collected data were organized and coded using qualitative tools afterward, the utilization of Convergent Mixed Method Design in discussing the data result. The results show that the pre-service teachers have a "Moderately High Level of Competence" in domains 2, 3, 4, 6, and 7. Contradictions can be gleaned in the remaining Domains 1 and 5, which suggests that the respondents need to first gain more community exposure to strengthen the theoretical knowledge they have learned from the university and apply it in tutorial classes available through BPSU-DC's extension programs and those that are part of the competency plan. Second, a suitable seminar or webinar on how to complete administrative tasks may raise the pre-service teachers' level of competency in Domain 5, about Assessment and Reporting