Lifelong learning more than Second Chances: The Story of the Miriam College Adult Education Unit

LIFELONG LEARNING

More than Second Chances: The Story of the Miriam College Adult Education Unit

Carlo P. Garcia Herbert C. Janubas
This presentation shares the rich and colorful history of the Adult Education Unit of Miriam College vis-à-vis the vision, mission, and goals of the Maryknoll Sisters and now, the Miriam College community. It also gives importance to the ways by which this academic unit addresses lifelong learning and the global advocacy of Education for All. As it highlights the very inspiring success stories of its learners as they take a second chance in formal education, it also attempts to encourage other leaders of educational institutions to take steps towards developing their own adult learning units. Academic, organizational, and operational challenges and the ways by which they are addressed by the unit will also be shared. Special emphasis shall be given to the nature of volunteerism among teachers who, over the years, have made the unit a remarkable sanctuary of selfless service.
Carlo P. Garcia is the Principal of the Miriam Adult Education (MAE) Unit. Meanwhile, Herbert C. Janubas is the unit’s Assistant Principal for Academic Affairs.

Learning beyond Retirement: Stories, Challenges, and Promises

Miriam College Association of Retired Employees Panel
Learning beyond one’s retirement remains an important and interesting aspect of inquiry in human development. Grounded on such point of view, this presentation convenes retired teachers and employees of Maryknoll-Miriam College. More specifically, the panelists will share transition experiences from fulltime employment in an academic institution to their individual and collective engagements in various fields of interest. The panel discussion will also feature the formation narrative of the Miriam College Association of Retired Employees (MCARE). From this narrative, rootedness in the principles of lifelong learning shall be articulated. The discussion culminates into the enumeration of specific ways by which other educational institutions can plan for developing comprehensive retirement programs for their employees.
The Miriam College Association of Retired Employees (MCARE) is a community of retired teachers, administrators, and non-academic personnel of Maryknoll-Miriam College. It serves as a conduit for continuous personal and professional development of former employees.

Assessing Students’ Skills in Critical Thinking
Francis Julius N. Evangelista, Ph.D.
Though educators worldwide agree on the importance of developing critical thinking, there is no appropriate, reliable, and affordable assessment tool. The paper looked into the expert consensus of what critical thinking is and the skills involved, as stipulated in the American Philosophical Association (APA) Delphi Project (Facione, 1990). Using this framework, the paper identified criteria by which critical thinking skills of analysis, evaluation, and inference can be assessed (Facione, 1990; Beyer 1995; Moore & Parker, 2005). Based on these criteria, a scale was developed consisting of a 35-item questionnaire. The proposed tool shows promise as an easily administered, objectively scored measure. It has demonstrated a good test-retest reliability (r=.653, <.01) and a KR-20 coefficient of .708 indicating adequate internal consistency. It also has an acceptable criterion validity (r=.686, <.01) when correlated with student performance rating.
Dr. Francis Julius N. Evangelista is an Associate Professor in Miriam College, teaching at its College of Arts and Sciences and the College of Education. He is also the Associate Dean for Academic Support Services of the Higher Education Unit.

A Lifelong Learning Program Framework

in Entrepreneurship Education and Development
Maria Luisa B. Gatchalian

 

This paper focuses on an action-based program aimed at institutionalizing and sustaining entrepreneurship teaching and learning in the tertiary level. It presents a program framework that uses a bottom-up development approach [Anderson, 2010; Filev, 2008; Ries & Trout, 1989] that underscores the value of involving and allowing the stakeholders affected in the whole process of change to participate, work together and collaborate to effect reforms. It explains findings from end-of-course evaluations and discussions conducted by the author with her all-girl entrepreneurship students including discussions with co-teachers, school administrators, and graduates of Miriam College from 2006 to 2011. The program identified challenges, needs, limitations, and aspirations of students wanting to become entrepreneurs. It proposes a framework entitled the “E-Program” which aims to institutionalize long-term collaboration between Miriam College and the alumnae of Miriam’s CBEA Entrepreneurship Department to establish meaningful support and enhancement programs.

Maria Luisa B. Gatchalian is the elected national president of ENEDA for SY 2011-2012, a faculty member of the Entrepreneurship Department of Miriam College, and a member of the Small Enterprise Research and Development Foundation Inc.

Metaphor as a Reflective Tool in Teacher Education
Caroline S. de Leon, Ph.D.
Anchored on Dewey (1933) and Schön’s (1991) concept of reflective thinking as a thoughtful examination of one’s beliefs and experiences in order to arrive at deeper meanings and understandings, this study aimed to: 1) explore the use of visual metaphors as a creative teaching strategy in facilitating reflectivity and meaning-construction of students enrolled in a postgraduate education course; 2) identify participants’ teaching metaphors and uncover their underlying beliefs and conceptualizations of teaching and learning. Data were gathered from 60 participants who belonged to three cohorts of graduate students enrolled in an advanced educational psychology course. Visual metaphors and journal entries were qualitatively examined, analyzed, and four dominant themes were identified. The metaphor approach to reflection offers education students a creative and intuitive alternative to examining their existing concepts of teaching, aside from helping them realize the relevance of reflective practice in teacher development.
Dr. Caroline S. de Leon is the Dean of the College of Education at Miriam College.

Who is the Self that Teaches?

The Autobiographical Turn in Teacher Development Research
Edizon Angeles Fermin, Ph.D.
Why must teachers inquire about their personal beliefs and the way they recognize themselves as professional practitioners? What good does looking into the nature of their personal and professional lives provide their discipline and ultimately, their students? These are the questions that this presentation answers in light of current initiatives to support autobiographical research in teacher education and development studies. It also illustrates the usefulness of such interpretive paradigms as alethic hermeneutics, critical discourse analysis, textual politics, and the theory of personal constructs of George A. Kelly in teacher education studies. It enumerates other areas of inquiry in which the personal dimension of teacher education oftentimes relegated to the margins by traditions of logico-positivist and objectivist educational research may be given more emphasis. It is ultimately an invitation to share truths about teaching and learning how to teach that should take precedence in training teachers.
Dr. Edizon Angeles Fermin is the Principal of Miriam College High School. He is also the Vice President of the Philippine Association for Language Teaching, Inc.

LEARNER CENTEREDNESS AND MULTIPLE INTELLIGENCES

Reading Habits and Teaching Practices of Reading Teachers
Adrian Antonio Asis and Portia Padilla
Teacher quality is the most important factor affecting student learning (Hanushek, 2000). Demonstrating that teachers themselves enjoy reading can build strong positive attitude towards reading in schools (Dulin, 1961). This study investigated the reading habits and teaching practices of reading teachers in different parts of the Philippines. Particularly, it surveyed what types of materials the teachers read, how much of these materials is read, and how much time is spent reading each type. In addition, it also surveyed teachers’ perception of their practices in teaching reading in terms of the following facets of excellent reading instruction: assessing progress and relating previous experiences; variety, appropriateness, and combination of teaching methods; variety of materials; and flexibility and appropriateness of grouping strategies. Finally, it inquired whether or not the teachers’ reading habits related to their teaching practices.
Adrian Antonio R. Asis is a graduate student at the College of Education, University of the Philippines, Diliman where Portia P. Padilla teaches Reading Education.


A Study of Reading and Writing Proficiency Levels of Graduate Students
Erlinda Abletes-Cayao, Ed.D.
This descriptive-correlational study was conducted to evaluate the reading and writing proficiency levels of selected graduate students presently enrolled in the program Master of Arts in Education majoring in Educational Administration or Educational Management in selected higher education institutions in the second semester of academic year 2010-2011. The following instruments were used: reading and writing proficiency inventories, critical reading and writing tests and rubrics for evaluating composing skills of graduate students. Experts in the area of language education and communication served as validators of the instruments used and also evaluated the written work of the respondents. This study used the theoretical framework of Marzano’s New Taxonomy of Educational Objectives (2001). It aimed to respond to the shortcomings of the widely used Bloom’s Taxonomy. Marzano’s model of thinking skills incorporates a wider range of factors that affect how students think and provides more research-based theory to help teachers improve students thinking.
Dr. Erlinda Abletes-Cayaois is the College Secretary of the Graduate School of Arts, Sciences, and Education at the Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila (University of the City of Manila).


Bridging Cross-Learning and Teaching 12 Languages
Fe Z. Aldave-Yap, Ph.D.
The Department of Education in the Philippines (DepEd) has made a decision--final and official regarding Bilingual to Multilanguage Education. The language paradigm shift begins with the DepEd Order No. 74, s. 2009: Institutionalizing Mother Tongue-Based Multilanguage Education (MLE), beginning schoolyear 2010-2011. What are the major mother tongues in the implementation of the new language policy in the early education of school children in the different regions of the country? This paper presents a framework of cross-learning and teaching 10 mother tongues--bridging the First Language (L1) to Filipino (L2) and English (L3 ) as prescribed languages and language education in multilingual Philippines.
Dr. Fe Z. Aldave-Yap is a recently retired Director General of the Commission on the Filipino Language.

Error Analysis of the Written Compositions of First Year Foreign Students:

Basis for Developing a Remedial Program
Elineth Elizabeth L. Suarez, Ph.D.
As errors are seen as important “red flags” (Corder, 1973) that provide evidence of a “system that is evidence of the state of a learner’s knowledge of a second language”, this study analyzes and classifies the linguistic errors committed by first year foreign students in their written compositions as a component of the diagnostic examination administered to them at the beginning of the term and as a formative/ summative output during the semester of actual instruction. Specifically, this study provides a descriptive typology of the grammatical and syntactic errors produced by the respondents which will be used as basis for a language remedial program. Other factors such as the learning style or inclination of the students, their academic grades, and their teacher’s qualitative evaluation were also considered to give a more holistic profile of the students as additional data necessary for establishing further intervention.
Dr. Elineth Elizabeth L. Suarez is the Head of the Miriam College Language Learning Center and a part-time faculty of the Ateneo de Manila University.


The Native Language in Teaching Kindergarten Mathematics
Janet Presnilla-Espada, Ph.D.
This study examined the effect of using the native language in the teaching of kindergarten mathematics. A total of 34 five to six year old children went through a pretest-posttest, quasi-experimental study with 17 participants in each of the controlled or English group and the native language (Waray) or experimental group. The findings revealed a highly significant difference between the mean gain of the control and experimental groups (p-value=.000) indicating that the level of mathematics performance of the experimental group was significantly higher than that of the control group. The result implies that the kindergarten pupils exposed to the native language performed better in mathematics than those who were exposed to English. The study concludes that the use of the native language in teaching kindergarten mathematics results in a higher mathematics performance than the use of a second language as a medium of instruction.
Dr. Janet Presnilla-Espada is a faculty member of the Leyte Normal University.

Creative Drama Exercises for Children with Social-Emotional Disturbances
Bryan V. Catama
This is a descriptive-experimental study on the effects of creative drama exercises in improving the social-emotional development of 8 male pupils aging 9 to 12 years old identified as having Emotional/Behavioral Disturbances (E/BD) caused by parental separation in Saint Paul SPED International Foundation, Baguio City, Philippines. The participants were identified as having E/BD using a checklist before engaging in the creative drama exercises. After a month, the post-evaluation was conducted. The prepared Creative Drama Exercises had twelve sessions conducted within a month, three times a week. The styles and techniques on creative drama exercises were adapted from Ian McCurrach & Barbara Darnley’s Special Talents, Special Needs: Drama for People with Disabilities (1996). The findings are as follows: the creative drama exercises significantly modified the social-emotional disturbances of children with E/BD; and the creative drama exercises slightly affected the social-emotional disturbances of children with E/BD within the program of twelve sessions.
Bryan V. Catama is a university instructor at the School of Teacher Education, Saint Louis University, Baguio City, Philippines.


Stress and Coping Strategies of Middle School Children
Ma. Elenita G. Depasupil, Maria Lourdes B. Abaño, and Jane Grace R. Villaseñor
This study explored the sources of stress of middle school students and the strategies that they employ in handling different stressors in everyday life, drawing from the works of Parry (20050 and Sofronoff (2005). It also identified different signals that enable students to be aware that they are already stressed. Responses culled from sentence completion forms during routine counseling sessions and focus group discussions aided the generation of data. The results show that academics are the top source of stress for the students, followed by relational problems. While they generally use positive coping strategies, there are also students who have a tendency to resort to unhealthy ways of managing stress such as inflicting harm on one’s self. The study offers specific and practical ways by which schools can assist students in coping with stress.
Ma. Elenita G. Depasupil, Maria Lourdes B.. Abaño, and Jane Grace R. Villaseñor are guidance counselors at the Grade School Unit of Miriam College.

Code-switching: An Alternative Resource in Teaching Science and Mathematics
Lourdes Veronica S. Abad
This descriptive analysis of teachers’ and students’ perceptions of code-switching during classroom instruction done through triangulation method reports that code-switching in Chemistry and Geometry is a resource in making knowledge more comprehensible to the students than when only English is used. This study conducted on two teachers and 32 3^rd year high school respondents through survey questionnaires, interviews, focus group discussion and 220 minutes of class observations show that code-switching facilitates the successful negotiation of meaning of difficult texts coded in English and makes input comprehensible to the learners; creates a low-anxiety classroom atmosphere which is conducive to learning; and keeps the students focused in class where lessons are highly technical in nature. However, this study also argues that frequent code-switching in highly technical subjects can be detrimental to the learners because it can cause confusion in the students’ understanding of difficult concepts.
Lourdes Veronica S. Abad is the Subject Area Coordinator for English of Miriam College High School. She was a recipient of the President’s Award for Research in 2009. 


Capitalizing on Comic Books in the Classroom
Patrixia Niña M. Grey
Drawing from Paivio’s (2006) Dual Coding Theory and Hacker’s (1998) concept of metacognition, this study investigated if comic books, like regular classroom resources, could be incorporated in the English classroom for vocabulary study. In the span of six weeks, four second year high school classes in an exclusive school for girls had a 55-minute Sustained Silent Reading (SSR) session using only comic books as material. At the end of six weeks four students, whose logs showed a number of novel words encountered and a variety of reading strategies employed had been interviewed to elaborate on the processes they had gone through in doing the SSR activity. This study had found that students had generally discovered plenty of novel words within comic book pages. As such, it vouches for the appropriateness of utilizing comic books, not just for vocabulary study but for language learning.
Patrixia Niña M. Grey is one of the course managers of the Programs of Excellence in English at Miriam College High School.

Metacognitive Strategy Instruction and Bilingual Readers’ Comprehension
Buenavida A. Tupe and Portia P. Padilla
This study investigated the ways by which the direct teaching of metacognitive strategies affected the reading comprehension of 3^rd year bilingual high school students. Particularly, it inquired whether or not explicit metacognitive strategy instruction improved their reading comprehension of English and Filipino expository texts, their awareness and use of metacognitive strategies, and their performance in their English, Filipino, and World History classes. Qualitative and quantitative measures were used to determine the results of the study. Results revealed that after the intervention, there was an improvement in the students’ Filipino reading comprehension, metacognitive awareness of reading strategies, World History grades, and English grades. However, there was no significant improvement in the students’ English reading comprehension and Filipino grades. The findings suggest that language affects comprehension (Arafat, 1996), and that language skills enhance or enable the effectiveness of the use of metacognitive strategies for comprehension (van Gelderen et al, 2007).
Buenavida A. Tupe teaches at the People of Grace Christian School. Portia P. Padilla teaches Reading Education at the College of Education, University of the Philippines, Diliman.


A Metacognitive Approach to Students’ Preconceptions

concerning Solving Linear Equations in One Variable
Esmeralda S. Bunag
This study examined how a metacognitive approach to addressing student errors or preconceptions in mathematics may prove helpful to teachers and more importantly, to learners. The investigation employed the IMPROVE Approach of Mevarech and Kramarski (1997). It forwards the idea that by explicitly giving attention to the preconceptions of the students, errors may serve as opportunities for learning. The comparison of pre-test and post-test results shows that there is a decrease in the number of learners who committed the following types of errors: (a) on properties: wrong justification and not attempting to answer the question; (b) on solving equations: insufficient explanation, wrong explanation, wrong sum/difference/product/quotient, correct procedure-wrong solution, no procedure-wrong solution, wrong choice-wrong reason, and not attempting to answer the question; and (c) on problem solving: not attempting to answer the question.
Esmeralda S. Bunag is currently teaching elementary algebra in the Mathematics Area of Miriam College High School.

Metacognitive Teaching Strategies, Reading Performance,

and Reader's Self Perception
Ma. Corazon R. Reyes, Ph.D.
Central to this study was the question, “Do metacognitive strategies improve reading performance, metacognitive awareness, and readers's self-perception?” The subjects were 282 sixth graders from three schools taught by regular reading teachers following traditional and metacognitive lesson plans. The strategies included think aloud, focusing, pupil-generated questions, reciprocal question-answer, prior knowledge, teacher modeling, Know-Want-Learn, visual imaging, and fix-up. Metacognitive classes used these strategies, while the traditional classes followed the procedures in the reading text. The pre- and post-test design included a Researcher-Made Test (RMT), Metropolitan Achievement Test (MAT), the Metacognitive Reading Awareness Inventory (MRAI), and the Reader's Self-Perception Scale. The results reveal that the use of metacognitive strategies had a significant and positive effect on the reading performance of the students in all three schools except for MAT and MRAI in one school that already used many of the metacognitive teaching strategies.
Dr. Ma. Corazon R. Reyes is the Director for Basic Education of Miriam College. She also sits in the Basic Education Commission of the Philippine Accrediting Association of Schools, Colleges, and Universities (PAASCU).


Humdrum, Conundrum, and the Brain-Compatible Classroom
Irish C. Sioson
Evidently, education theorists and practitioners have always continued their pursuit to find out the best teaching strategies/ methodologies that would help students to learn what they ought to learn and to enjoy while learning. Perhaps, it is best therefore to focus on the process of learning in order to make more informed decisions inside the classroom. This goal could be achieved by turning a classroom into a brain-compatible classroom that is attuned to how the brain learns by setting an environment in which students maximize their learning potential through devising ways or means that match how the brain grows, develops, and learns based on neuroscience studies of Sousa (2006). Discussing crucial elements in the learning process as another step toward making classrooms more conducive to learning and the ways on how to maximize these elements will be the foci of the presentation.
Irish C. Sioson is the language coordinator of St. Scholastica’s College-Manila. She is also a part-time professor at the Philippine Normal University.

Process Vision of Teaching:

Seeing and Unfolding the Winner in the Learner
Michael Ferrer La Guardia, SDB
Generations after Socrates optimized the Dialectic as an art of reasoning and teaching, learner-centeredness as a vision in education finds a fresh philosophical grounding in the Process Thought of Charles Hartshorne. Basically a metaphysico-theistic system that considers ‘event’ as the fundamental unit of reality, it views the universe as a living, social organism and the human person as a society of event-experiences. This Hartshornean metaphysics of interrelatedness offers a perspective of education as a significant contribution and a beautiful gift to the Divine Life and to the future of life as such. This demands a radical de-centering of consciousness from one’s self to the other and to others, an ‘internal revolution’ that signifies a reorientation of the mind from self-centeredness to self-transcendence. Learning and teaching, thus, become a single and seamless act of unfolding the natural giftedness of others as well as one’s own.
Fr. Michael Ferrer La Guardia is a member of the Salesian Society of St. John Bosco. He currently serves as Dean of the Don Bosco College, Canlubang, Laguna and teaches Philosophy in the same institution and Theology at the Don Bosco Center of Studies, Paranaque City and Loyola School of Theology, Quezon City.