Ways of Being Better: PUP Arts and Letters Faculty Participate in SDRC Capacity Building Workshop

“Usap tayo. Let’s have a conversation on true knowledge.”

These words of welcome were offered by SDRC Director Dr. Melvin Jabar to faculty members of the Polytechnic University of the Philippines College of Arts and Letters at the start of a capacity building workshop held from September 27 to 30, 2021 via Zoom. Focusing on various aspects of qualitative and quantitative research, the training was attended by 45 registrants representing the departments of Humanities and Philosophy, Filipinology, and English and Foreign Languages and Linguistics.

CAL Dean Dr. Romeo Peña, who will be awarded in October as Ulirang Guro sa Filipino 2021 by the Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino, delivered a message to open the workshop. He believed that the College would not arrive at a clear direction if its members did not work toward improving themselves. He acknowledged that the training would address PUP’s goal of vigorous research production and utilization, equip faculty with wider knowledge about research, and enable them to better serve students through mentoring and advising on research output.

Day 1 of the workshop began with Dr. Joahna Estacio of the DLSU Department of English and Applied Linguistics giving a presentation on “Action Research in Education.” Her presentation aimed to correct misconceptions about AR; demonstrate an understanding of how AR is used in Education; identify AR issues in participants’ own classrooms and enable them to propose an initial plan to address these issues. She further stressed that teachers could gain from AR by determining how they should teach a topic or course, and improving their professional stance.

In the afternoon, Dr. Myla Arcinas of the DLSU Department of Sociology and Behavioral Sciences conducted a session on “Action Research for Community Projects.” Her presentation was divided into three parts: A definition, goals, principles, process and tools of AR in community projects; a discussion on AR and Community Development (CD) toward Women Empowerment; and a sharing of the challenges and lessons learned in using Participatory Action Research in women-directed CD intervention efforts.

Day 2 started with Prof. Alice Manlagnit of the DLSU Department of Sociology and Behavioral Sciences sharing her knowledge of “Qualitative Research Methods,” defining such research as focusing on natural settings; on groups, environments, and phenomena; and as having an in-depth and holistic perspective. She also expounded on how to establish validity in qualitative research, how to identify sources of data, and what were the types of qualitative research designs; she devoted part of her discussion to the study of Ethnography.

Dr. Dennis Erasga of the DLSU Department of Sociology and Behavioral Sciences spoke on “Qualitative Data Analysis” in the afternoon. The session centered on how Qualitative Research generates and analyzes data, and the basic principles of data analysis. He addressed questions concerning Data (what counts as data, how is it generated, and how is it transformed to be analyzed); and those on Analysis (what does analysis mean in QR, how is it planned, and how is it performed). He also illustrated the process of coding, or identifying critical segments of texts.

Day 3’s resource person for the morning session was Dr. Homer Yabut of the DLSU Department of Psychology. He guided participants through a discussion on “Quantitative Research Methods” by asking simple questions like how they were feeling and how they coped during the pandemic. He then used their responses to demonstrate how Quantitative Research presents reality in a more understandable way through the use of variables. He also explained Postpositivist Knowledge Claims and made distinctions between quantitative and qualitative research components.

Dr. Marites Tiongco of the DLSU School of Economics discussed “Quantitative Data Analysis” in the afternoon session. Her presentation covered descriptive statistics, tools used in data analysis such as Excel and Stata, examples of research variables and what they measure, confidence intervals for proportion, hypotheses and significance tests, and comparisons of independent and dependent groups. She also provided a matrix for regression diagnostics tests and a decision tree for choosing the right statistic.

The final day of the workshop opened with Dr. Crisanto Regadio of the DLSU Department of Sociology and Behavioral Sciences presenting “Evaluation Research.” The lecture was designed to acquaint participants with the fundamental concepts and approaches to program evaluation. He elicited their perceptions on the concepts of “change,” “progress,” and “development,” and also presented notions on “social change” as defined by various theorists. Focus was given to Huey-Tsyh Chen’s discourse on social development interventions.

Closing the workshop was SDRC Senior Research Fellow Dr. Ma. Elena Chiong Javier, who shared her expertise on “Participatory Action Research” and presented its various definitions and approaches. She illustrated an application of PAR using her experience in the 2010 study “Women and Sustainable Technology: Scaling Up Vermicomposting among the Talaandigs,” citing numerous methodological lessons gained such as PAR’s being open to researchers’ innovation in data gathering and analysis, and its pro-people research-and-development bias.

Each presentation was followed by group activities in which participants were able to apply the new knowledge learned, and a sharing of “AHA! Moments” in which they reflected on research concepts they resonated with.

The Social Development Research Center offers online capacity building and training workshops on a variety of research topics to colleges and universities as well as government and non-government organizations. This is part of its mandate to promote public awareness and discussion in contributing to the nation’s growth.