Culture-Based Education in State Universities in the Cordillera Administrative Region

Abstract

This dissertation set out to explore, using faculty ethnic affiliation, gender, length of teaching experience, educational attainment, and field of specialization, how the use of teaching methods, choice of assessment methods and course content impacted culture-based education in state universities in the Cordillera Administrative Region. This study made use of the descriptive survey method. The survey questionnaire gathers demographic data such as ethnic affiliation, gender, the length of their teaching experiences, and their respective disciplines (which areas they specifically teach). These pieces of information are necessary in order to show exactly the population of the study and how the responses to the survey may be distributed among the respondents. Sixty faculty members teaching in the two state universities in the Cordillera Administrative Region Responded to the Survey. The data collection methods include survey instrument and interviews of willing faculty members. This study was framed to demonstrate that while there are enormous benefits to the enactment of culture-based education in the higher education classroom, there are major challenges that may have limiting affects on its implementation and the optimization of those benefits at the levels of the classroom such as faculty personal lives, and the institutional and the larger society environments. At the level of the classroom, some of the challenges are generated by culture diversity itself. The literature demonstrates that the culturally diverse classroom shows a proliferation of diverse teaching methods, assessment methods and content preferences that are culture-based. As a result, teaching and learning may need to be negotiated through the use of new and different pedagogies if faculty members are to be effective in the performance of their instructional roles. However, the researcher also shows that culture-based learning styles/preferences are just one among many challenges in the classroom. The study determines that there are prejudice and stereotypes in the culturally diverse educational setting. Underperformance due to institutional governance, anxiety about dilution of academic quality, organizational climate, external climate and language problems are all present in the culture-diverse classroom. These classroom diversity-related challenges create a dynamic that impacts teaching and learning. The study recommends that teachers must learn culture-based teaching strategies. This can be done by earmarking and allocating resources to train faculty leaders on the culture-based program. Those trained become a repository of knowledge for the institution through the conduct of educational seminars and workshops for other faculty members and the community. They can also become advisors on culture-based education to the leadership in guiding its efforts. Faculty members should also learn how to use peer mentoring as a teaching strategy to provide culture-based learning opportunities for ethnic minority students. They should exert effort to master the use of various types of cooperative learning. Faculty can choose from a range of methods in forming groups: • Provide opportunity for students to have one other member from the same culture in their group (if that is their preferences) to provide language and peer support and to help counter marginalization of voice. • Consider using groups for a variety of purpose-in class groups for discussion or assignments, homework groups, problem-solving groups, study groups. • Make groups heterogeneous across ethnicity, gender, ability, or home town. • Randomly assign students to groups by numbering, by drawing a number out of a bag, by choosing someone they haven’t worked with or spoken to before. • Allow students to form their own groups occasionally, although use this method sparingly and with caution so as to avoid reinforcing social group differences. • Address assumptions students might make about who they need in the group by reminding students that each individual brings a different combination of strengths and weaknesses into the group work context • Check for the length of time students stay in one particular group. In some instances, students prefer to maintain the same group because they have developed cooperative learning strategies and developed trust; in other instances, exposure to a range of students in a class may improve intercultural understanding and engagement with different ideas and learning styles.

Teachers must ensure that the assessment tasks are inclusive and cognizant of all students’ cultural and educational backgrounds, that is, assessment activities should enable all students to perform according to their strengths. On student assessments, faculty members should consider varying the examination format between short answers and essay answers to enable students to better demonstrate their abilities. This study further recommends that institutions that desire to enact culture-based education need to make full commitment to the effort. It must not only be a seasonal effort but a long-term commitment. They must put it in effect in both the curricular and co-curricular programs. The inclusion of culture, in all its depth and definitions, must emanate throughout the curriculum design process. This is necessary and needed to meet national and global challenges in culture rich educational environments. Higher Education Institutions must draw on their strong research capabilities to undertake cultural studies with the aim to produce learning modules that can be integrated in the curriculum. A cultural studies center must be established in higher education institutions that will serve as repository for culturally relevant materials. Higher education is a vast and complex field and culture-based education a varied and intensive process. Culture-based education in higher education requires high-level commitment among advocates and champions at different levels in universities and institutions. A core group of policy-makers, advocates and champions with the support of governments needs to assist each other in planning for the implementation of culture-based education in higher education in the state universalities in the Cordillera Administrative Region. School administrators that desire to enact culture-based education must have a vision and a strategy, and the strategy must include leadership, funding resources, and a willingness to pay the cost. Finally, an advice for researchers interested in this topic: there is no want of information on ethnic diversity. The researcher must be discriminating in selecting the kinds of literature that will be useful to the topic or subject being studied. Too many opinion pieces of little use are available on the topic of cultural diversity. In order to save valuable time, researchers interested in this subject must define their topic clearly and stick with it. On the other hand, that there is no substitute for a general and broad knowledge of the subject matter. Therefore, a thorough review of the broader context of ethnicity in the Philippines, including history, public debates surrounding the issues, among other things, would be most helpful for conceptualization.