ABSTRACT
In the last five years, multiple calls for research papers, research fora, research-related training and seminars were conducted by the Department, particularly in DepEd Santa Rosa City. This is in response to DepEd Order 43, s. 2015 and DepEd Order 39, 2016 were all DepEd employees are eligible to apply and were encouraged to focus on improving access to education, improving the quality of education, and improving governance through engagement in research.
However, despite the department’s effort from national down to school level, teachers are still hesitant to engage and conduct research. This reality led the researcher to conduct this study to describe the mindset and planned behavior of DepEd teachers towards engaging in research and measure its relationship to the level of their anxiety leading to hesitation to conduct, to keep going, and to finish their research. A descriptive-correlational quantitative research approach was done to systematically and comprehensively describe and analyze the data of each variable under investigation. Based on the results, it is evident that anxiety is present among the participants despite the Growth Mindset of the participants. Time Commitment, Fear of Judgment, and Capability to conduct research were contributors to their fear and hesitation to commit and engage. Moreover, the Planned Behavior of the participants displayed a high impact on their willingness to write and conduct research.
Moreover, the study revealed the significance of the number of training and research experiences to their level of anxiety. It is recommended that the school together with the SDO-Sta Rosa City to increase the involvement and participation of participants to writing and conducting research training. Furthermore, the training was recommended to not focus on lectures on how to conduct research but to hands-on activities that will develop and add to the participants exposure and experience in the actual conduct of research. Though, the study was not able to established significant to the two variables, Mindset and Planned Behavior, further studies on other possible determinants may be conducted to get to the root cause of teachers’ low engagement in research, specifically factors on time commitment and fear of judgement be investigated to resolve the problem at hand.
Keywords: Research Engagement, Level of Anxiety, Mindset Theory, Theory of Planned Behavior, Teacher-Researchers
INTRODUCTION AND RATIONALE
Department of Education (DepEd) released DepEd Order 24, s. 2010 entitled “Basic Education Research Fund (BERF)” providing funds to eligible research proponents from the department nationwide. This action is to strengthen the department’s continuing initiatives of improving the culture of research that will strengthen evidence-based policy development and decision making mandated by the Republic Act 9155 which stated that DepEd is mandated to undertake national educational research and studies. In 2015, another order (DepEd Order 43, s. 2015) was released to reinforce the BERF, which only had twelve (12) approved research proposals in the last four (4) years. In the said revised guidelines for BERF, all DepEd employees are eligible to apply and were encouraged to focus on improving access to education, improving the quality of education, and improving governance. In 2016, DepEd Order 39 was implemented. This order recognizes the importance of focusing on research agenda’s relevance to education issues and the need for maximizing available resources. Apart from this multiple DepEd Orders were issued providing attention and support to increase the number of researchers in the department.
Problem Statement
In the last five years, multiple calls for research papers, research fora, research-related training and seminars were conducted by the Department, particularly in DepEd Santa Rosa City. Research engagements of teachers were highly encouraged and even given important credit for promotion and recognition programs. To qualify for being Best in the Teaching position (Gawad Galing Guro), researchers are given the highest point percentage. RPMS (Results-Based Performance Management) Manual for Teachers and School Head (2018), indicated that Master Teachers are to conduct research every year as part of their Key Responsibility Areas (KRAs).
However, despite the department’s effort from the national down to school level, teachers are still hesitant to engage and conduct research.
Unfortunately, in 2021, Bernardo (2021) wrote an article about teachers buying ready-made research papers for promotion and funding. In the same article, ACT Secretary General Raymond Basilio said, “Continuous learning and genuine continuing professional development is important especially to the teaching profession as we are involved in knowledge transfer and production...however... our teachers are burdened by too much non-teaching duties that limit their time in updating their knowledge.”
In the study of Jamoon and Al-Omrani (2021), they found that teachers had moderate to low level engagement in research due to lack of time, absence of access to up-to-date sources, and lack of encouragement and motivation. Moreover, Mehrani and Saray (2015) highlighted that barriers identified to research engagement of teachers lack collaborations (Mehrani & Saray, 2015) between researcher and practitioners and educational policies.
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