ACADEMIC PROCRASTINATION OF PUBLIC SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS IN BLENDED LEARNING Arvin C. Adona, Adrian U. Bugay, Virgilio M. Sumabat Jr. Philippine Normal University ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Introduction For educators, the quality of students’ performance remains a top priority (Farooq 2011). But the situations of COVID 19 pandemic posed a great impact to teachers, parents, and students in achieving quality education, given the various ways in which the crisis has increased existing socioeconomic disparities and affected learning and educational outcomes through growing educational inequities (Rothstein 2004; Putnam 2015; Reardon 2011; García and Weiss 2017). And for assurance of health and safety, the Department of Education through the implementation of the Basic Education Learning Continuity Plan (BE LCP), the blended learning approach or hybrid learning is the new learning modality to continue education without sacrificing the quality of teaching and learning in the country amidst the situation of the pandemic, this is a fusion of on-line distance and modular learning (digital or printed), television, and radio-based instruction, that led the students and teachers to study and work from their respective places or home for the delivery of learning (Crawford et.al., 2020). The utilization of the Self Learning Modules (SLM) and Learning Management System (LMS) of students learning resources that chose modular or online approach is self-paced, self-regulated, self-instructional, and interactive, the students are expected to perform tasks such as preparing term projects with deadlines, preparing for exams, or completing daily or weekly assignments (Uzun Özer, 2009). However, keeping pace with the fast learning is difficult for many students and reported that procrastination is a frequently observed behavior (Akram, A., et.al. 2019), there are students with an observed form of intentional and habitual delay of tasks (Elsworth, 2009), and this delaying usually causes hindrance in its completion and makes the students less productive (Wolters and Corkin, 2012). Academic procrastination refers to the voluntary delay of an intended course of study-related action despite expecting to be worse off for the delay (Steel & Klingsieck, 2016), and a procrastinator delay or participate less in learning activities due to a failure in self-regulation (Dewitte & Lens, 2000; Steel, 2007), it is generally described as a failure of completing an academic task within the expected time frame (Senécal, Koestner, & Vallerand, 1995), an irrational tendency to delay at the beginning or completion of an academic task (Yong, 2010), or delaying academic work that must be completed (Schraw, Wadkins, & Olafson, 2007), it is the act of needlessly delaying tasks to the point of experiencing subjective discomfort (Solomon and Rothblum, 1984), and the view of "needlessness" (Ellis & Knaus, 1977), as adequate criterion because not all late performing of tasks must be called procrastination, and subjective discomfort (Burka & Yuen, 1983), seems to be too confining and procrastinating does not necessarily imply suffering. The intention – behavior discrepancy, the behavior of delay does not become procrastinatory unless the individual has some sincere intent to complete the task (Lay, 1994), which means the greater the discrepancy between intent and behavior the more severe the procrastination, and it is also a strategic form of a delay (Chu and Choi, 2005). However, academic procrastination is considered as a pervasive trait that can have mostly grave outcomes for students, who are encountered recurrent deadlines, it is also regarded as an - interactive dysfunctional and behavior avoidance process, characterized by the desire to avoid an activity, the promise to get to it later, and the use of excuse-making to justify the delay and avoid blame (Ellis and