The spiral progression that slips

By Herman M. Lagon

Spiral progression sounds elegant when explained in a conference room: revisit key concepts every year, add complexity gradually, and let repetition build mastery. It is baked into the K–12 architecture through policy and guidance, especially for Science and Mathematics, where topics are arranged so learners encounter “the same” ideas multiple times across grade levels. On paper, it promises continuity. In real classrooms, it often delivers something else: an annual tour of many stops, with too little time to actually live in any place. The result is familiar to teachers who have watched students “finish” topics they never truly owned—fractions that never settled, algebra that stayed decorative, force and motion remembered as vocabulary, not reasoning.

I still remember asking Fr. Ben Nebres, a mathematician and then Ateneo de Manila University president, during a Jesuit Basic Education Commission meeting in Ateneo de Cebu years ago: What if we do not follow the spiral progression DepEd was proposing for Junior High School? He responded in a way that was half challenge, half dry dare—something like: “If they spiral and you do not, will their graduates be better than yours?” The line landed with the kind of sarcasm leaders sometimes use when they want you to examine your fear of being left behind. It was a fair question, but it also revealed the pressure behind reforms: not always “Will this deepen learning?” but “Will this keep us competitive?” We in the Ateneo de Iloilo did not adopt the spiral approach in the same way, partly because accredited, certified schools have curricular liberty. About 15 years later, our graduates remain competitive in college, and, more importantly, they tend to arrive with fewer holes that need emergency patching. That is not a victory lap. It is simply a lived counterexample that complicates the claim that spiral progression was the only modern path forward.

To be clear, spiral progression is not “random teaching.” The model is built on revisiting ideas over time. Learners do not finish one science before moving to another. Instead of a straight path—Biology, then Chemistry, then Physics—they touch all of them in a year and return to each later with more advanced skills. In theory, this suits how understanding grows: children rarely master something in one encounter. The trouble is that the model assumes conditions that many classrooms do not have—stable time on task, strong sequencing, enough materials, and a safety net that prevents weak foundations from being carried forward like unpaid debt. When those conditions are thin, “revisiting” becomes a polite word for “skimming again.”

What makes the irony sharper is that the Philippine version of spiral progression was often justified by pointing to systems like Singapore. But Singapore’s approach was never a fast tour across multiple disciplines each year. Its spiral is slow, tightly sequenced, and built on deep mastery within strands before new layers are added. Concepts are not merely revisited; they are secured, practiced, and extended with strong materials, trained teachers, and protected instructional time. What was borrowed here was the language of the spiral, not always the conditions or the discipline that made it work there. In translation, a model designed for depth became, in many classrooms, a schedule that rewarded coverage.

When a spiral tries to give equal time to every field, it can end up touching everything but mastering little. Teachers move quickly from matter to ecosystems, then to the periodic table, then to weather systems. Each topic brings new language and tools. Students survive by memorizing terms, not by building clear mental pictures. Studies that examined spiral implementation in Philippine Science classes have pointed to pacing problems, surface coverage, and difficulty ensuring prerequisite skills before moving to harder concepts—issues that turn the supposed spiral into a loop of partial familiarity. You see the symptoms in small ways: students can recite the steps of long division but cannot estimate whether an answer makes sense; they can identify “velocity” but cannot explain why a graph slopes upward; they can chant “photosynthesis” but freeze when asked to reason from evidence.

The second crack is teacher assignment reality. Spiral progression quietly expects teachers who can competently teach across strands within a year—especially in Science, where Biology, Chemistry, Physics, and Earth Science often rotate within the same grade level. In many schools, staffing does not match that expectation. A teacher trained primarily in one discipline gets tasked to teach another because the schedule needs filling. Research on spiral implementation has repeatedly flagged this mismatch as a practical barrier: it is hard to teach for depth when you are teaching outside your strongest preparation, and it is harder still when training and materials are uneven. The learner pays the price, but so does the teacher’s dignity. In the faculty room, you hear quiet jokes that are not really jokes: “Next quarter, Physics na ako, pray for me.” The classroom then becomes a place where confidence is borrowed, not built.

A third crack is what some scholars call, in effect, a “broken spiral”: the model works only if the earlier encounter produced real mastery. If last year’s foundation was shaky, this year’s “higher level” lesson is not enrichment; it is confusion stacked on confusion. Anyone who has taught Mathematics feels this sharply. If place value was never clear, scientific notation turns into a guessing game. International exams like PISA and TIMSS keep showing our students near the bottom in Math and Science, forcing schools to ask hard questions about the curriculum. Some blame foreign standards or language issues, but teachers talk about everyday realities: missed classes, congested topics, thin resources, and training that does not fit the work. No single teacher can create real understanding under those conditions. In those conditions, the spiral approach produces familiarity, not ownership of ideas.

This is not nostalgia for the old curriculum. The lesson is simpler: a system that needs strong sequencing and support will fail when those are missing. The real loss is quiet—students get comfortable with partial understanding. They keep hoping the next level will fix the gap. If we want honesty, we must say it: spiral progression often prioritized coverage over comprehension. If students are asked to climb, the steps should not be missing.

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Doc H fondly describes himself as a “student of and for life” who, like many others, aspires to a life-giving and why-driven world grounded in social justice and the pursuit of happiness. His views do not necessarily reflect those of the institutions he is employed or connected with.