EDFD MATTER: Our tools of knowing

Are there people who would count as educated but do not know anything? If you think there's none, it's probably because you believe that knowledge is a central component of being an educated person. You probably think that no person will ever count as educated if he/she is ignorant about everything. I myself believe the same. In the absence of knowledge, there can be no such thing as education. It, therefore, seems to me that knowledge is a necessary ingredient of being an educated person.

Knowledge and cognition

To ensure a strong foundation for our children's future schooling and education, what exactly should we do to carry out the strategy of helping the child develop his/her cognitive faculty? A few words first about the idea of cognitive faculty.

Our cognitive faculty is our means of knowing. There are two known tools of knowing: the sensory faculty and the faculty of reason in the domain of logic. Senses are our means of establishing contact with the things that exist in the physical realm. Such connection is also referred to as experience.To not have the ability to see, hear, feel, smell, and taste things since birth is to not have the opportunity to know the physical world. Without our senses, we are close to being dead.

As for pure reason, it is the tool that we use to tell whether a truth claim in geometry, trigonometry, math, and other similar areas of study is true or false. The ability to reason is learned at a much later period in the life of a child. Compared to the development of the sensory faculty, the human being needs a longer period of time to develop his/her ability to solve pure mathematical problems.

Educational Thought and Practice

Let's say that by "practice" here we mean the application or translation of a certain thought into action. But what is thought? It is said that thought is different from thinking, as the latter denotes a specific activity (e.g., calculating, planning, dreaming, reasoning, philosophizing).

EDFD MATTER: Home and values/character education

Having a certain goal is an important component of a sound parental or home education for very young children, especially those aged 0 up to age before entering preschool. But parents have different goals in mind when they teach their children something. It's therefore difficult, granting that it's  possible, to think of common or shared strategies to secure the educational needs of children, particularly in the home situation.  

This question is probably helpful: Is there anything that parents could agree on as a higher goal of parental education? I’d been thinking about this problem for a long time. And I believe that most, if not all, parents could agree that home education should be aimed at helping the child become a better person than his/her parents and many other excellent models of good character in his/her community. Improvement of the race, yes, that’s what I have in mind. But, of course, the point carries with it a number of difficult questions. Some of which are: (1) What character (i.e., good qualities) should parents develop in their child or children? (2) Who will count as good character models? (3) And how should parents administer character education? Knowing and validating one's own philosophy of parental education is necessary to ground the goals of educational parenting in a stable foundation. Philosophy here refers to the parents' system of fundamental conceptions about parental education. At the center of the parents' philosophy is their basic notion of the goals of parental education. 

I see goal as an essential element of strategy. We devise strategies to accomplish a goal. Parents ask: How can we help our child develop into a better person than we are? Here are two general strategies that may lead to the attainment of the higher goal in view: (1) send the child to school; and (2) give the child a strong parental education. Right now, I’m interested in the second strategy: give the child a strong parental education. These strategy could be sub-divided into more specific strategies. The purpose of the break down is to  provide the child with the ability to advance his/her learning in different areas, and to enable him/her to adjust according to complex and changing demands of his/her environment. So, here are some of those strategies.

The parents should: 

1. help the child develop his/her cognitive faculty
2. teach effective use of language
3. facilitate the development their child’s creativity
4. teach productive values, attitudes, and habits
5. help their child develop the ability to control his/her emotions and adapt in social situations
6. teach their child self-help skills
7. help the child develop his/her gross and fine motor skills
8. ensure good physical health

There are good reasons to believe that these strategies are generally honored for various time-tested reasons.

But what exactly should we teach as parents? And why, again, should we teach them? I hope soon I could find time to address these more specific issues.

EDFD MATTER: Teaching gifted children

      Teachers of gifted students should not be just any teacher. For gifted students have special needs that are most likely unfamiliar to teachers whose scope of training and education may not have included handling gifted students.

      It is unfortunate that nearly all teacher education institutions in the world do not require its pre-service majors to take a subject that includes considerable training in and education about gifted education. It may be said thus that most of the teachers of gifted students acquire relevant teaching competence for gifted education on the job rather than in teacher education institution as pre-service students. In addition, here are some possible concerns that teachers of gifted students are facing today:

·                     worrying about how they can cater for the child’s needs when they have other children with additional support needs in the group

·                     disquiet that the child already knows more than they do about specific topics

·                     concern that the child will develop socially and emotionally as well as academically

·                     anxiety over the child reaching a plateau in their learning (Sutherland, 2008, p. 4)

A teacher may of course suspect that a pupil is gifted and may need a differentiated or customized learning program. While the teacher, however, may further advise the parents of the student to bring their child to a trained evaluator, the preparation of a sound personalized learning plan is a difficult task to carry out if the teacher had not been taught to do one in college. Teachers of gifted students must be astute observers of behavior.  But then again, since the study of gifted education is a non-required component of teacher education and training in probably all countries, an inadequately trained teacher may end up misinterpreting his/her student’s character and condition. Here, for instance, are some observed, but probably unknown to very many regular teachers, excitabilities among gifted students:

1.                  Emotional

2.                  Intellectual

3.                  Imaginational

4.                  Psychomotor

5.                  Sensual (Dabrowski, 1964 & 1972, In Sutherland, 2008, p. 90)

 

These observed traits of many gifted students render the job of the teacher a bit more challenging as these patterned behaviors may also be or are often associated with various cases of learning disability or developmental disorder. Confusing a gifted student for someone with a different special need is therefore not a remote possibility. Teachers and parents should be informed that a misunderstood gifted student may end up carrying an undue baggage which may have far-reaching implications for his/her future life as an adult. In addition, misreading a gifted child, educators should be cautioned, may also have unpleasant or disastrous consequences on the family life and personal development of the gifted.

Reference

Sutherland, Margaret. (2008). Developing the Gifted and Talented Young Learner. London: Saae Publications.

EDFD MATTER: Gift and high ability

           I’m writing this for those who are interested in the phenomenon of giftedness, but I’m confining this post to problems that could be answered with commonsense. What would count as a good educational program for gifted children? What kind of education, and hence, school, is good for a gifted child? How should adult teachers deal with gifted students? What should the teacher do if a parent thinks his/her child is gifted? This type of questions generate inconsistent or conflicting answers, which, of course, are not without problems, inside and outside the cyberspace. I may likewise not be able to give satisfactory answers to such questions, but I hope my thoughts will help teachers and parents gain better understanding of giftedness, gifted children, and gifted education.

I always find myself gravitating toward the idea of gifted education as very little is known about it up to this date. While equally small in population, gifted children are probably less understood than those with developmental disorders (e.g., down syndrome) and learning disabilities (e.g., dyslexia). Being not a medical case, the knowledge that has been generated about the phenomenon of giftedness explains why it’s nearly an alien thing in the sphere of medicine. Ironically, even if giftedness has been around since before the birth of Jesus Christ, it remains a rare and delicate orchid that could go to waste if left unattended. 

What is giftedness?

            Answers to this problem come from different convictions or assumptions. Whether giftedness is something we are born with or it’s one of performance is an issue for which a widely acceptable answer remains elusive. I believe, however, that giftedness, though it defies total scientific demystification, is nothing ghostly in the wider context of world pool of knowledge.

If one is gifted, is it then the case that his/her gift is something he/she is born with? To be gifted, for me, is simply to be born with the required (i.e., normal) faculty that could be used to advance one’s learning and achieve extraordinary mastery in one or various areas of human activity. While genetics seems to be central to this sense of giftedness, gift is nothing but a simple potential to get one’s level of functioning to surpass the highest level of mainstream’s performance in certain activities. One’s gift or endowment could be in the area of cognition, athletics, social relations, arts, practical living, etc.

One’s gift, if inappropriately cultivated, could barely be translated into something optimally useful. Gifted humans then are born, but great men and women, those with extraordinary talents and skills, are made. 
Neglect of one's gift may also have catastrophic effects on the life of the gifted. I need not say more about this.

            Elsewhere, I had addressed the matter on the content and arrangement of home environment of pre-school-aged children who have the potential to advance their learning in various areas of study or activity. 
            For now, I’d like to focus on what might having a gift means.

Gift (as a real potential) and high ability: Are they the same?

            I think the expression “gift” and its cognates, in the same linguistic context, are more ambiguous than the expression “high ability.”

Consider the following:

1.         High ability is what one has and is manifested in what he/she does. In the absence of relevant action, high ability could not be assumed.

2.         High ability is something we cannot see, smell, touch, and so on; we infer high ability from a certain act. In the absence of an act, we cannot posit the presence of high ability.

2.1       One’s mathematical ability is discerned by means of analyzing one’s performance in math test, for instance. Again, ability--high, average, or low--could not be sensed, but it is indicated by what we may witness.

3.         Compared with high ability, gift, in its potential sense, is more nebulous in meaning.

4.         The presence of gift, in its potential sense, may be assumed in the absence of abnormality. Action may not be required to say that one has a gift or is endowed with a certain potential.

5.         Gift, as a potential, is broader in scope in that it applies--granting there is no abnormality--even to those who are not yet highly capable of engaging in activities like reading, writing, and doing arithmetic.
6.          Many people are gifted (with the potential to acquire certain skills and maximize the development of their talents), but only few are capable of high-ability performance in certain areas of human activity. 
7.         Gifted people may not be capable of high-ability performance, but those capable of high-ability performance must be gifted.
8.         It seems thus that high ability performance is nobler than just having a gift, i.e., potential.
8.1      This is not to suggest that high ability is more important than having a gift. Whether one is more important than the other is not an issue here.  

Preparing your thesis/dissertation topic proposal and outline

Graduate students are forbidden to rehash any study and pass it as their thesis or dissertation. A simple change of research place, subjects/participants, retention of a more or less similar conceptual framework, related literature, problems, hypotheses, and instruments of a previous study will not amount to a pioneering study. For that means that one is not about to embark on a search for knowledge that would make a legitimate contribution to the present pool of knowledge. Being the first of its kind should be a quality that all graduate theses and dissertations must hold in common. The UP College of Education should thus exhort its graduating masters and doctoral candidates to submit a proposed topic that could lead to a pioneering research in education.

WHAT SORT OF WORK WILL MAKE PIONEERING STUDY?

Yet I often feel frustrated as well. Everywhere, much discussion about education remains mired in the parochial. Frankly, I am tired of writings by educators that focus on the instrumental or the momentary: Should we distribute vouchers so that youngsters can attend private schools? What are the advantages of charter schools? Are teacher unions the problem? The solution? Should teaching degrees be granted at the college level, only in graduate school, or only for those trained “on site”? How much education should take place at the computer or over the Internet? Should we have local control, national standards, international comparisons? (Gardner, 1999, p. 15)

Today, “pioneering” has a broader meaning. It could be taken as a research that is concerned with problems that had never been addressed in the past. But a planned research may also count as a pioneering study if it seeks to address research questions that other related studies had failed to answer adequately or correctly due to some errors committed by previous researchers. Let it suffice to say that the proposed thesis/dissertation topic should entail a study that does not simply replicate another work or other similar studies. As mentioned, the mere change of site of investigation and group of samples/subjects/participants will not suffice to say that the study is genuinely a pioneering one. For its problems and methodology are a copy of what could be found in a similar research that had been already concluded. Replication of the study, although not disallowed outside thesis/dissertation writing, is done simply to disconfirm another researcher’s findings or claims in the past. So, even if a duplicate study is a valid research that can be done by any teacher or student researcher, it will not constitute a pioneering thesis or dissertation as this exercise requires the student to contribute to the current fund of knowledge. Suffice it to say that a valid topic for a graduate study is a pioneering work that intends to uncover something that has yet to be a part of the current fund of human or public (verifiable) knowledge. In the words of Joe Wolfe: “…your research must discover something hitherto unknown.”


IS IT POSSIBLE FOR TWO STUDENTS TO PURSUE THE SAME TOPIC?

Yes, it is always possible for a researcher to pursue the same topic without necessarily replicating a thesis or a dissertation. One familiar example from the discipline of natural science will do to clarify this point. Although Ptolemy, Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton wanted to know more about the universe, their inquiries led them to different cosmological models. That is to say, all of them pursued one and the same topic, but their respective investigative methods and evidence led them to different conclusions. We could say thus that they undertook pioneering studies. While, for instance, Ptolemy asserted that the earth is the center of a finite dimension (geocentric picture of the universe), Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton argued that it is more reasonable to maintain, based on their respective evidence or premises, that the earth is just a part of a system whose center is the sun (heliocentric picture of the universe). However, despite the shared general view that challenges the geocentric cosmological model, Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, and Newton did not necessarily come up with identical theories. Moreover, albeit their theories have their own defects, they also have original contributions to the existing scientific fund of knowledge. For instance, Copernicus delivered the first blow to the Ptolemaic theory by arguing that the planets move in circles around the steady sun. Galileo later on added that a number of moons travel around the planet Jupiter. Another contribution of Galileo to the pool of scientific knowledge is the Law of Inertia. Kepler’s work, later on, gave rise to the idea that the planets are traveling in elliptical orbits. This led to the final rejection of Copernicus’ claim that the planets move in circles. It was Newton, however, in his Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematican, who explained that the planets move around the sun because of magnetic forces. Another contribution of Newton is the Law of Universal Gravitation. Notice here that the next generations of natural scientists remained busy as many things remain to be discovered and said about what appears to be a boundless thing that we call universe. The tasks that we have in mind here are all concerned with one topic, the complete picture of the universe, but we could expect a lot of pioneering works about it, owing to the original, significant, and verifiable findings that got rid of the previous untenable claims about the universe.

WHAT IS AN INTRODUCTION?

The introduction of the topic informs the readers of what they can expect in your work. It also tells the readers the reason why it was chosen and why it is relevant or important. The introduction should be written in clear and simple terms. On this Wolfe reminds us thus:

Especially in the Introduction, do not overestimate the reader’s familiarity with your topic. You are writing for researchers in the general area, but not all of them need be specialists in your particular topic. It may help to imagine such a person---think of some researcher whom you might have met at a conference for your subject, but who was working in a different area. S/he is intelligent, has the same general background, but knows little of the literature or tricks that apply to your particular topic.

In the U.P. College of Education, these readers are the area (e.g., EDFD) faculty members who will attend your scheduled topic presentation and defense. They include faculty members with different specialization but with more or less similar general background.


WHAT SORT OF PROBLEMS SHOULD YOU ADDRESS?

The set of problems that you wish to address should not be identical to the set of problems that had been addressed by any study (here and abroad), especially in the works that you are citing in your review of related literature. It is possible nonetheless to pursue the same topic if you intend to use a new methodology because you can demonstrate that the methodology of a previous study is questionable or is in need of further revision. Also, it would be helpful to cite the possible answers that you wish to give to your tentative set of problems, and to inform your readers the means by which you wish to arrive at or to test these answers.


RELATED LITERATURE: WHAT DOES IT CONTAIN?

The review of related literature is a proof that you have a comprehensive knowledge of the research developments and of the situation in the area of your concerns before confronting the selected problem(s) besetting your area of study. The review should support the rationale of the study. It answers the following questions. What did other studies fail to achieve/accomplish? What is your alternative solution on the matter at hand? What are the inadequacies, problems, and errors of the related studies? What are the methods used to solve the related problems. Also, the review presents what is known about the scope of your research concerns. It tells the readers what problems had been addressed, what sort of answers had been given to such problems, what controversies were generated by the related studies, etc.

The ensuing study, aside from being an evidence that further developments and progress are still possible along the same line of inquiry, should be replicable. But then again, this does not mean to suggest that one, in the future, could duplicate such study to come up with a thesis or dissertation. It should be replicable only insofar as the author wants to consider it as a scientific study. And in case another research wants to check the findings in the previous study, the confirmatory work is no longer a pioneering one.


DEFINITION OF TERMS: WHY THE NEED FOR IT?

The definition of key concepts is one of the neglected parts of the topic presentation. If they come with the draft, more often than not, they appear to be haphazardly formulated. Coming up with a sound definition of concepts is important in that these concepts are the building blocks or the foundation of the planned work. A definition should really be a clear explanation of how certain key expressions are used in the respective linguistic contexts of the researchers’ works. It is an evidence that the author have a good grasp of the central concepts upon which the theoretical framework of the work is built.

It must be remembered that though the section on the clarification of the key concepts is titled Definition of Terms, bear in mind that this is taken as the definition of concepts rather than of the written words. The names (terms) of such concepts are not always immediately clear to the readers (note that the presenter is the only expert who knows his/her work very well). This is so because the language that we employ allows the use of certain words that have various meanings in different linguistic situations. Take the case of the word “discipline.” Sometimes it is used to refer to a limited number of areas of study and sometimes to mean faithful adherence to a specific set of rules or standards of behavior. One thus needs to tell exactly what s/he meant by the words that s/he uses to refer to the key concepts that figure in his/her work. This is to avoid unnecessary controversies that may arise if readers are left to guess as to the exact use of the words and differ as to its application, or because the exact description of the function of a word had been left to conjecture.

Remember, those who are interested in your would-be work are nonspecialists on your topic. But they would probably consult your final output for purposes other than what you have in mind. And as mentioned earlier, the definition, operational or not, should be clear about the variables whose names usually refer to something other than what they ordinarily mean for the laypersons. Your definitions therefore must be precise and clear.

What are the common problems of unclear definitions?

Too broad

A clear and precise definition is not too broad such that a nonmember of a concept in question is not included. For example, the definition of tarsier as a nocturnal mammal is too broad because it includes non-tarsiers like bats, which, unlike tarsiers, are capable of sustained flight in the dark. Some UP students too behave like nocturnal mammals. The point is, exclude the definition should exclude the non-members of the class tarsier.

Too narrow

A good definition is also not too narrow to exclude the legitimate members of the concept. For example, the definition of media as an institution whose function is to broadcast newsworthy events is too narrow because the term also refers to printed (linear) and digitized (Internet or hypertext) means of communication.

Circular definition

A clear and precise definition is not circular. Circular definition mentions a part, sometimes the root word, of the term that it is supposed to explicate, thus it fails to clarify the concept in question. For example, defining educator as someone who educates is not helpful because it is first necessary to describe clearly the activity that is called education in more familiar terms, assuming that we are not quite clear as to the specific use of the word educator in a planned work. To avoid these types of problematic definitions, it is helpful to be guided by Wolfe’s reminder:

Obviously your examiners will read the thesis. They will be experts in the general field of your thesis but, on the exact topic of your thesis, you are the world expert. Keep this in mind: you should write to make the topic clear to a reader who has not spent most of the last three years thinking about it.

Definitions usually come in different forms. But it is common to see operational definitions and stipulative definitions in theses and dissertations. Both are sometimes mistakenly referred to as operational definition.

Operational definition

An operational definition cites the specific situation in which the term could be or could not be applied. This is done by formulating a rule that warrants the use of a term only when a specified test or action gives rise to a definite result. Hughes’s example is as follows:

A genius is anyone who scores over 140 on a standard I.Q. test.

Stipulative definition

A Stipulative definition is a rule and a reminder of the special usage or the restricted meaning of a word as it occurs in a specific linguistic context. As Soltis explains:

One might, for instance, say, “Look, I know that there are various definitions and views of education currently in vogue, but in order to keep things straight, I shall use the word ‘education’ throughout my discussion (speech, article, book, etc.) to refer only to that social institution created and maintained by a society in order to perpetuate certain aspects of its culture through purposeful teaching and learning.” This is a stipulation. It is saying, “This is precisely what I will mean by the word ‘education’ regardless of what others may mean.

The point to be underscored now is that definitions do not come in the form of operational definition alone.


REFERENCES

Since you will be citing some references in the topic presentation, you are required to include in your draft a list of references.

Gardner, Howard. (2000). The Disciplined Mind. New York: Penguin Books, p. 15.
Wolfe, Joe. How to Write a PhD Thesis. Retrieved 26 October 2001, from http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/~jw/thesis.html.
Ibid.
Hughes, William. (1992). Critical Thinking: An Introduction to the Basic Skills. Canada: Broadview Press. p. 36.
Soltis, Jonas. (1968). An Introduction to the Analysis of Educational Concepts. U.S.A.: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, p. 3

CONCERT FOR EDFD 120 & EDUC 186 STUDENTS

For those who missed the fund-raising concert for my EDFD 120 and EDUC 186 students, who are coming with me to present our research output at a conference in Harvard University on 27 May 2014, take time to catch up by listening to the songs of one of our guests here: https://soundcloud.com/easy-fagela. It's Easy Fagela's music. Easy, a lawyer by profession, is a graduate of UP Law and UP School of Econ. He was also former Collegian writer. Two years ago, Easy won the Nick Joaquin Literary award. If you'll listen to Easy's cool, original, and highly creative music, you'd think that Easy's an excellent musician rather than a fine lawyer. But he is both, I promise you. (Thanks for the free performance and CDs Easy!) Don't forget to listen to Easy's (1) Balloon, (2) OMGSOUL, (3) Red Paint, and (4) If you Hurt Your Children....

I should not neglect to thank Bullet Dumas! I was too shy to invite Bullet to sing at the concert for free. But Bullet didn't give me a hard time and I wondered why. Then he appeared at the concert to be the first one to sing. He was grinning at me, like I've done something naughty, when I saw him outside the Benitez Theater, and I started to feel that, perhaps, we know each other. Then he told me, still grinning, that he was once--4 years ago only--my student in EDFD 120, hahaha! Well, there was simply a wide gulf between Bullet the EDFD 120 student and Bullet Dumas the highly talented Filipino music artist. Of course, it was easy for me to place his name and face as Bullet was mentally active in my class. Bullet majored in Physics and he was once a teacher of Physics. (Bullet, thank you for your generosity. We really appreciate your time. I didn't realize it's you flying with big guys in the Phil. music industry. But I agree, there's indeed only one Bullet among the many big guns in the country. Keep writing songs, man. Your music is superb!) Guys, you must listen to Bullet; start here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVd5EhSE9Lc.

Dr. Ramon "Montet" Acoymo, former dean of the UP College of Music and a world-class tenor, was also there to make the evening unforgettable. (Thanks Montet!) Ehem, I didn't know that Prof. Althea Abigail Canuto COULD SING. Seriously! I should not forget the band called Drink This--sana ay malayo ang maabot ninyo. 

Mabuti na lang talaga at nandito pa rin ako sa UP at napapaligiran ng mga highly gifted at talented na kapwa Pinoy. John Paul Fererria and company were also excellent performers. Ganoon din sina Courtney Gormley and her choir. Also, it was fun listening to the music of Reden and Kenneth Cuden. Siyempre naman, ang husay din nina College Secretary and Prof. Vanessa Lusung-Oyzon at Dr. Maricris Acido-Muega. (Maraming salamat din sa iba pang dumating at nag-tanghal o nanood. Salamat din sa mga bumili ng tickets na 'di nanood pero nagtitiwala pa rin sa mga undergrads ko.)

IJAS CONFERENCE ACCEPTS ANOTHER UNDERGRAD SUBMISSION

ANOTHER UNDERGRADUATE STUDENT SAYS OUR SUBMISSION TO THE CONFERENCE AT HARVARD HAS JUST BEEN ACCEPTED. So, after the HK conference, Eleennae Ayson, an EDFD 120 student of mine last sem, is "running" with the pack one more time. How exciting! CONGRATULATIONS TO YOU AND YOUR PARENTS, NAE!

THIS SEM'S NEW GROUP OF ACADEMIC TARAHUMARAS

THIS TIME IT'S A CONFERENCE AT THE HARVARD UNIVERSITY. Yes, I and my undergraduate students will be reading our paper in Boston this year, at the International Journal of Arts and Sciences conference! Our submission has finally been accepted for oral presentation. Congratulations to the following EDFD 120 and EDUC 186 students: Katherine Ayn Gonzales, Marti Trinidad, Izzah Mei C. Caballero, Patricia Erica Rodriguez, Moira D. Vargas, Emmanuline V., Balgos, Andrew James D. Jiao, Sarah D. Fulgencio, Reynante Fajaro, Edwin del Rosario, Frauline Tadle and Kayla June H. Gormley.

OF MARATHONERS AND RESEARCHERS

(More on Andrell, Nae, Hirome, and Charmaine downstairs). Have you ever seen a real ghost? Seriously, no kidding. If you haven’t seen a Tarahumara runner, then you haven’t seen any real ghost. You’ll see ghosts only when the Tarahumaras wish to reveal themselves. Silly you if you’re now looking around or behind you; the Tarahumaras live only in the treacherous and unforgiving Copper Canyons of Mexico. The Tarahumara (read: Tara-oo-mara) runners are known in the community of marathoners as the best--literally the best--runners in the world. We don’t know the Tarahumaras because, like I said, they are a ghost, an historically ultra-shy phantom. But they could be defined by saying, A triangle is to three angles as a Tarahumara Indian is to running. Tarahumara runners are known to be capable of covering long distances that are equivalent to multiple marathons (i.e., hundreds of kilometers). (The UP academic oval is only 2.2 kilometers.) Some Tarahumaras are known to have even run nonstop for more than two days. Are they superathletes then? Silly you. Of course, they are. But were they born runners? For this question, if you answered “yes,” again, silly you. Of course, no one was born a runner. To say that is an exaggeration, one that’s fit only for titling a book. Obviously, unlike horses, the Tarahumaras, just like any humans, were born with weak legs. So here’s the point, even the Tarahumara runners, who are known for their demonic endurance and ferocious legs, are built—rather than gifted—by their own cultural and environmental circumstances.

And just as no human was born a runner, no pre-service education major was born a researcher. The latter is quite obvious, all right. I want to write about the place of research and, inevitably, publication, too, in the pre-service program of the UP College of Education as, aside from turning out professors of future schoolteachers, one of the things that should separate the UP Educ from other teacher education institutions (TEIs) in the country is its ability to turn out high-caliber researchers. This, understandably, could not be accomplished within the span of four years of training and education at the undergraduate school, but UP Educ students should be introduced to research and publication as a way of life of those who enter and graduate from the College. Ok, this will sound like I’m already very old but I assure you that I age very slowly and, perhaps, if you’re some kind of a marathoner in the department of aging, you’ll be able to catch up with me in no time. Ok, here it is: Since I started teaching in UP Educ, I’d hear one chancellor or UP president after another doubting the validity
of continued existence of the undergraduate program of the College. Sadly, we barely let out a squeak to justify why it should go on living. The only high-ranking UP official that I had personally heard saying he wanted—and I believe him—to keep the educ undergrad program was former UP president Fidel Nemenzo. But after his term, I’d hear from our former college officials that UP administrators tend to ask why the educ undergrad program should be kept when there are other TEIs that could accommodate those who want to pursue a career in teaching after high school. First, our own pre-service education students remain significantly better prepared to teach than their counterparts in any TEI. No slight intended to the faculty and educ students of other TEIs. I'm just stating a fact. Second, unlike other TEIs in the country, the business of UP Educ undergrad program does not end in the mere production of effective schoolteachers as school teaching is just a means to our higher end. UP Educ trains its undergraduate students with the vision that they will become educational leaders or professors of future schoolteachers someday. And third, unlike other TEIs, the UP undergrad school of education is also a school of research and publication for the future professors of schoolteachers.

Today I’d like to focus on the production of researchers at the undergrad level. Doing so is comparable to the making of ultra-runners in the deepest regions of the deadly Copper Canyon. I opened this post with a brief talk about the awe-inspiring Tarahumara runners. I can’t help it because just like the Tarahumara runner, an ultra-educational researcher can’t just appear in the scene without having been made. But the question is, How should researchers be made? I’ll respond to this problem not as an expert in research, but as someone using his reason and commonsense.

In the Tarahumara culture, the making of the ultra-runner begins at a very young age. The Tarahumara children also play the game called "rarajipari," a Tarahumara sport played by men. The women’s version of rarajipari is called "dowerami." Both events require the players to run hard, but it's the adult male Tarahumaras that cover a longer distance of around 150 miles on a rugged terrain, where each member of their competing teams would take turn dribbling a baseball-sized wooden ball all throughout the race. When the Tarahumara children play rarajipari, they are preparing themselves for some serious running in the adult stages of their life. Since rarajipari is just a game, even if by childen's standard it's as exhausting as the more serious Tarahumara business of hunting-by-running-till-the-prey-drops-from-exhaustion, the little ones and the adults enjoy this part of their culture.

Research in education is like a marathon or long-distance running. Without training, relevant experience, or appropriate preparation, one can expect failures, errors, or frustrations in research, which is often a protracted activity. One, for instance, may later realize before reaching the finish line that his/her research instrument or the whole of his/her methodology is defective. Worse, one finds that he/she has nothing to offer but sheer journalistic information, something that everyone already knows. Nevertheless, if research training at the undergrad level must succeed in the long run, the conduct of which should be nothing like a ridiculously narrow-minded and obsessive pursuit of the so-called truths in the realm of education. For this is not fun. And anything that is not fun is often avoided by the students. Mistakes and failures in research thus should be regarded as a natural part of the educ undergrad school’s academic rarajipari. I'm not saying that we just laugh off all sorts of mistakes. But undergrad research should be done the way rarajipari is played by the Tarahumara children. It's highly relevant to what many of them will do in the future yet it's fun. Take note, even the Tarahumara adult runners initially failed, owing to their lack of proper knowledge, when they were first brought to the Unites States to compete at the Leadville 100-mile run in Colorado. The failure of the Tarahumara to win at the Leadville marathon was attributed to their lack of familiarity with the race course and equipment. At night, they held their flashlights as though they were carrying torches. At the aid stations their natural shyness had rendered them weak and nearly helpless. They were too shy to ask for food and drinks. Dehydrated and unable to keep up with the well-nourished marathoners, they had had their first taste of defeat.

At the Hong Kong International Conference in Education, Psychology, and Sciences (HKICEPS), our first Leadville academic marathon, I’d say that I was scared to death for some of my former EDFD 120 students, whom I tasked to lead the presentation of our research outputs. But they had played their rarajipari well in October 2013, two months before attending the HKICEPS, our first Leadville academic marathon. Thanks to Dr. Mariciris Acido for opening the doors of the graduate students’ conference to my EDFD 120 students. Thanks, too, to the DELPS faculty for accommodating my students, free of charge, as research paper presenters at the National Conference for Research and Teaching in Education. In both events, there probably was a lot of pressure but no one passed out due to emotional or mental exhaustion. In both events, my EDFD 120 students were given the opportunity to present their initial findings--without any teacher taking the limelight from them--before finally concluding their respective studies.

At the HKICEPS, Nae Ayson was the first one to stand among us. She led the presentation of our research output. Her whole family was right behind us during the entire presentation. I was hardly breathing while I was synchronizing the slide presentation with what Nae was saying. I must admit I was irrationally nervous until Nae had concluded the presentation of our work. Then I found myself wondering why I should be scared when Nae knows so well her way around our work. Silly me. Then there was Hiromi Urabe, Andrell Guiseppe Flores and Charmaine Go doing the presentation of our research output via poster presentation. The poster was the research output of around 11 people whose names I shall insert here later. I didn’t actually tell Charmaine, Andrell and Hirome that the poster presentation scares me more than the oral presentation because our work was out there, on display, naked, all throughout the day for everyone to see and scrutinize line by line. Those who are curious about our study had all the time in the world to formulate the most devastating questions, if any, about our work. But it seems that we are now out of the woods. Then, it was Andrell’s turn to lead the presentation of our research output in the afternoon. Andrell, too, has just got the kind of panache UP scholars are known for when presenting a well-done work. All things considered, it was a perfect day for all of us. I was the last one to present a paper, my own paper. My students then, I believe, had already left the conference site for more pleasurable pursuits. After all, they were in HK and not in the Copper Canyons.

Nae is now back to the Philippines. Andrell is still enjoying the abnormally chilly weather in Hong Kong at this writing. I think Charmaine and Hirome are also still vacationing in Hong Kong. Me, I ate all the noodles--about 10 miles long--that I could eat there before heading with my family back to the Philippines. Perhaps, my ultra-eating in HK is the reason why I suddenly spotted a significant overlap between the making of the lean runners of the Copper Canyon and the production of academic Tarahumaras in our institution.

It’s been fun running side by side with young ultra-academic marathoners in the making. The good thing about this exercise is that we are all just getting warmed up. And, mind you, more young academic Tarahumaras shall be joining the pack sometime next year. I just hope, I will still be around to run with the rest when it’s their turn to show what we got in our research. Because I think the next scenes will be in the US, Canada, and other parts of the world, places where my students said last sem they want to go and read their papers. Truly, it’s fun and I want to run with ultra-academic Turamaharas in the making. But OMG, where will I draw for my airfare, after my first and, probably my last, trip abroad next year? I hope I could find a pair of flying "huaraches," the Turamahara running sandals made from used tire and leather straps. Hahaha!

I know, I know. You've just done a marathon reading. Hahaha!

MTB-MLE: WHAT SEEMS TO BE THE PROBLEM WITH IT?

The mere presence of  which in the Philippine school system is not enough. The teacher must also have what it takes to turn out well-schooled and educated individuals and citizens. The ability to (1) think, write, and speak clearly; (2) reason effectively; and (3) solve problems using logic and critical thinking are some of the most important things that every teacher must be able to demonstrate to students, who are looking for a model of a learned, well-schooled, and well-educated person.

It is somewhat unfortunate that our country has many regions where it's just difficult to decide which language is the mother tongue of the students. But it's also a bit puzzling to know that many highly intelligent Filipinos, since before World War II down to the 90's, had managed to avail themselves of high-quality education, with English as the medium of instruction and learning in the Philippine schools they had attended.

There are good reasons to suspect that the real solution to the problem in view is not necessarily the regional language that the teacher is using when teaching. It's actually the teacher, his/her mental capacities to get his/her students to cross the gulf between the shores of ignorance and wisdom, that matters most in this issue. MTB-MLE? Think about it one more time. If it's just a simple bundle of languages, then the teacher may not go that far with her teaching.  Any one teacher may have a good command of any dominant regional language, but if he/she cannot think logically, then he/she cannot teach effectively.

We should be concerned, too, with the QUALITY of language that the teacher is using. MTB-MLE is too narrow in scope in that it does not, in any way, entail that the language of the teacher, whether it's MTB or not, is logical or intelligent. We should go beyond the narrow limits of the concept of MTB-MLE by replacing it with the broader idea of "EFFECTIVE LANGUAGE OF INSTRUCTION BASED EDUCATION", which implies the intelligent use of of the mother tongue and other languages.

This, to my mind, means that teacher education institutions should revitalize their focus on the pre-service education students' ability to THINK (independently, critically, creatively, imaginatively) and TEACH (i.e., teacher training and education) effectively before sending them down there to educate the so-called future of the motherland.

Again, textbooks!

It's not world-class basic ed textbooks alone that we need so badly after all. This idea crossed my mind after talking to Teacher Gayon, professor of science education and chemistry, at the Radyo Edukado. Since many Filipino teachers of science (bio, chem, and physics) have no formal training and education in these areas, it's necessary then to publish a type of science textbooks whose contents untrained science teachers could VERY easily follow and, hence, teach effectively despite their lack of training and sufficient knowledge in the field. But then again, where are these textbooks? 

I'm sure I'm not the only one who's tired of hearing statistics about the unfortunate state of Philippine education. We already heard lots of sob stories from the TV reporters.

What most of our schoolteachers urgently need are good textbooks.

It's the textbook, enough of the curriculum

All right, teacher training is an important component of our efforts to advance the Values Education of young Filipinos. But it will take time--perhaps, more than four years--before we could fix the teacher-training problem. So, again, I propose that the DepEd should focus first on the production of a WORLD-CLASS values ed textbook that untrained teachers of values ed could use while waiting to be fully trained to teach the course. 

A good textbook could be produced by a team of INTELLIGENT experts within the span of one to two years, especially if the values ed curriculum is a sound guide. (Unfortunately, at this point, it's not.) While this is not a cure-all remedy, a well-written textbook could certainly help solve a huge part of the problem (i.e., content and pedagogy). The publication-of-a-world-class-textbook approach, apparently, applies to Araling Panlipunan (Social Studies) and other areas of study. I would like to reiterate that the first ones to attempt to write a model textbook should be the curriculum makers themselves. That is to say, the curriculum designers should demonstrate first how their curriculum is to be construed by the textbook writers. 

What's a world-class textbook? One that will pass, with flying colors, a rigorous academic and practical test. Think of the internationally acclaimed math textbooks from the Singapore. Meaning, a merely published textbook from the curriculum makers does not immediately count as a world-class textbook. That status, anywhere in the world, could be attained only through greatest efforts, which typically begins on the day we start building a curriculum. Nevertheless, absent a good curriculum, the publication of a good textbook is nothing like an impossible thing.

HOW DO YOU TEST THE CURRICULUM GUIDE FOR VALUES EDUCATION IN THE PHILIPPINES (GABAY SA KURRIKULUM: EDUKASYON SA PAGPAPAKATAO-Jan. 2013 draft)?

Easy. First write a textbook using the curriculum guide. But the first ones to produce such textbook, which should serve as a model for writing values ed textbooks, are the people (i.e., the consultants) who constructed the questioned curriculum themselves. Such book shall not be sold for profit, of course. It's just a model textbook, granting that one could be made from the current form of the Gabay sa EsP, that the government should distribute for free to all those who wish to write a textbook in EsP. This is to prove that the makers of the Gabay themselves know exactly what they had written in the Gabay, that they could indeed write a decent textbook out of it. This is a fair and necessary test so that the public, especially the major stakeholders in education, could tell if the curriculum in question was not slovenly done, i.e., that its makers indeed know exactly what they had created, its logic including. If the makers of the Gabay themselves could not prove that they can write a decent book from their own guide, the public should readily take that as a sign that the curriculum is nothing but a bunch of beautiful-sounding words in the wind. 

Already I have heard a number of intelligent UP professors, who are also parents of elementary schoolchildren, complaining that the proposed contents of Edukasyon sa Pagpapakatao (in Jan. 2013 draft) are a mere list of unexamined and haphazardly selected "virtues." I agree it's "unexamined" because the Gabay offers no clear and precise, much less logical, definitions of key concepts in and proposed contents of the EsP. I likewise agree that the proposed contents are "haphazardly selected" virtues because the Gabay has no clear criteria for the selection of proposed values to be taught at various levels of schooling. Again, what, for instance, makes those who crafted the Gabay think and say that "konsensiya" (conscience) should be taught from K-3 and not at the other levels of EsP? No answer. Because no criteria for the selection of such value could be found in the Gabay. The same could be said about the other proposed contents of EsP. Hence, I and the other parent professors are wondering how on earth did the makers of the Gabay decide what to teach at various levels of EsP. Try reading the Gabay yourself here: http://www.depedbataan.com/resources/11/k_to12_-_gabay_pangkurikulum_sa_edukasyon_sa_pagpapakatao_baitang_1-10.pdf. Then try, in your mind, writing a book from this curriculum. And you'll most likely see what I mean. Since I could not think of a good textbook out of this problematic guide, I think it's just but right for me--and perhaps the other parents and other stakeholders, too--to make the same demand, i.e., require the makers of the Gabay to be the first ones to write the first textbook themselves. Don't you think that this should be part of the deal? Whenever an educationist is consulted to fix a curriculum, as a rule and matter of fulfilling one's academic duty, he/she should join his/her fellow consultants in proving that a good textbook could be written out of his/her and other fellow consultants' creation. To do that , they should write the first textbook from their own guide themselves. 

Since I cannot write a decent textbook out of the existing questioned curriculum, I'll just give an outline of what I believe to be a logically tenable textbook in Values Education. Soon.