ERF REQUIREMENTS

For those who would like to be upgraded from Teacher I to II to III the following requiremtns are needed for approval of the Equivalent Record Form (ERF).

I. Forms

1. 5 copies of duly accomplished ERF Forms
2. 3 copies of duly accomplihed Form 212 with I.D. pictures
3. Latest updated service record.
4. Performance Rating duly signed by ASDS for two (2) rating periods.
5. Special Order (S.O.) for those who graduated from the private schools.
6. Transcript of Records
7. Latest Appointment
8. P.R.C. License
9. Certificate of Recognition

II. Qualification for Teacher II

1. At least one (1) year of relevant experience
2. BAchelor's degree for teachers plus graduate units or 20 years length of service
a. BSE + 20 MA Units = BSE + 20 years
b. BSE + 20 years = BSE + 20
c. BSE + 18 MA Units + 6 years = BSE + 20
d. BSE + 15 MA Units + 8 years = BSE + 20

BSE + 20 credit allowance (length of service)/3= MA Units


III. Qualification for Teacher III

1. Master's degree in education/42 units in MA = MA Degree or MA equivalent
a. All holders of masteral degree are classified as MA Degree

2. For MA Equivalent

a. BSE + 20 MA Units + 20 years = MA equivalent
b. BSE + 20 years + 18 MA Units +Level IV = MA equivalent
c. BSE + 42 MA Units = MA equivqlent

The Problem : Action Research

Teachers and School Principals often talk about many, many problems about their students and the school. But as observed during training when asked to identify specific problems ...they stammered...and asked " What is my problem?"

The dilemma of most teachers and school heads in identifying problems lies in the fact that they are inclined to always look outside of their practice. They always tried to blame the parents, the students , the class size, the economic status of the parents, the nutritional status of the students. That is why when asked why their students got low scores in the national achievement test, the responses are common - students are hungry, room is over sized, illiterate parents, poor study habits, non-reader students, etc.

Nobody ever asked: "What kind of teacher/school head am I? ". " Why are my students failing in the test?" What have I done?"

A detailed guide in formulating actionable questions is presented below quoted from Action Research in Education by Dr Stephen Waters-Adams
© S Waters-Adams, Faculty of Education, University of Plymouth, 2006


Some key questions:
Barrett and Whitehead (1985) ask six questions which should help you start your inquiry:
1. What is your concern?
2. Why are you concerned?
3. What do you think you could do about it?
4. What kind of evidence could you collect to help you make some judgement about what is happening?
5. How would you collect such evidence?
6. How would you check that your judgement about what has happened is reasonable, fair and accurate?

What can I investigate through action research?

Action research can be used to investigate practical, everyday issues:
• ‘Action research investigates everyday problems experienced by teachers’ (Elliott, 1981).
• ‘All you need is a general idea that something might be improved’ (Kemmis and McTaggart , 1982).
• ‘I experience a problem when some of my educational values are negated in my practice’ (Whitehead 1985).

Starting points might be of the following kinds:
1. I want to get better at my science teaching…
2. I’m not sure why my students don’t engage in discussion…
3. I have to implement the speaking and listening guidelines, but I’m not sure what is the best way…
4. How can we make staff meetings more productive?….
5. I’ve seen something working well in school X; I wonder if it would work for me?…
6. Is there anything we can do about our poor take-up of A level mathematics?…
7. How can I promote more use of computers in the Humanities?…
8. I wonder if I’m too focused on recording with my six year olds?…

It is important to choose an area that you can do something about. Some questions are not amenable to action research:
• Is there any relationship between single-parent families and attendance?
• Are tall children better at pole-vaulting?
• Does ethnicity affect performance in SATs?

Remember that it is the ‘strategic action’ (Kemmis and McTaggart 1982) that you can employ to try to solve the problem that will give you the insights into the factors affecting your practice.
• Jot down some preliminary ideas regarding possibilities for an action research project relating to your own practice.
• Highlight those which might be the most feasible.

2 Focusing on a topic

Golden rules for selecting a topic
• Keep it manageable – keep the focus small scale.
• It should be interesting to you – you may need some perseverance to see the inquiry through!
• It should be workable – you are not stumped for ideas, but can identify ways in which you might have a go at addressing your question.
• It is not too disruptive of normal routines. (Important here to think not just of your own, but others’ that your actions might affect).
Reconnaissance
Once you have mapped out the general area of concern, you will need to focus specifically on something you can do something about. There may be many potential starting points within your inquiry; in a way, it doesn’t matter where you start, as long as you consider that the action may be beneficial. In order to get to this point, however, you may need to spend sometime looking at your practice in a little detail, noting the various aspects which might be changed. This period of focusing is known as ‘reconnaissance’.

Writing

During this time, you may also employ other strategies to help you refine your focus. Winter (1989) suggests a range of writing strategies that may help you:
• brainstorming ideas – looking for patterns, recurring ideas;
• keeping an interest log/diary;
• writing a letter about your concern to someone (no need to post it!);
• writing a story about the situation – stories are a reflexive statement, in which you may express ambiguities and contradictions (they will need analysing – this is best done in the presence of a critical friend – see below).

Whichever method you employ, writing is frequently the most powerful way for helping you make sense of a situation. It allows you to work through ideas and explore possibilities and ‘maybes’.
Remember, the point of all of this is to help you clarify the issue and decide what your first change in action is going to be.

• Practise Winter's technique. Write a letter to someone (real or imaginary) about a specific issue. Analyse your writing for patterns in the way you express the issue, ambiguities in what you say or concerns that you raise. Make a separate note of these.
• Do they help you to focus your thinking?

A critical friend

It helps to talk over the issue with a ‘critical friend’: someone who can help you focus without giving you answers of his / her own. If someone agrees to act as your critical friend, it is worth spending a little time at the beginning of the relationship to work out how you will work together. Being a critical friend is a commitment and a responsibility; it is not an excuse for a colleague to give you their ‘fourpenn’orth’. Some key rules for the critical friend which might prove helpful:
• Try only to pose questions; don’t give accounts of similar experiences.
• Don’t make critical remarks that will put pressure on your colleague to defend him/herself. The critical element in critical friendship should lie in the action researcher, not you!
• Don’t offer your own solutions to the problem. It is for the researcher to work these out for him/herself.
• Ask for concrete experiences and examples to help illustrate a problem.
• Ask for reasons and motives for actions.
• Widen the discussion by asking if other possible factors not analysed yet might be of influence.
(after Ainscow and Conner, 1990)

Action Research Model: An Exercise

In the trainings I conducted about action research , I used a model for the participants to get the feel of how an action research is conducted. The process involved studying a model of an action research by Sherri Blose. the participants were then asked to trace the process done by the researcher. The exercise involved identifying the activity that would fit into the cycle of action research presented in a brief lecture . The cycle looks like the schema below:



As an exercise, read the model of an action research below, and using the diagram above trace the process done by the researcher in the conduct of her action research. Doing the exercise will lead you to some learnings about how to conduct an action research.

Sample action research by Sherri Blose


This action research project investigated the issue of language creativity. Language creativity, or the ability to combine and recombine learned material in novel ways, is an important goal of foreign education because it is a hallmark of an intermediate-level speaker as specified by the ACTFL proficiency guidelines . In this study, the teacher wanted to discover whether her French II students attempted to use language creatively or merely parroted memorized utterances she had taught them.

To answer her question, the teacher tape-recorded a conversation between each of her nine students and a native French speaker, then transcribed the conversations for analysis. Her analysis revealed that the conversations consisted of 74 student utterances made up of either memorized utterances that the students routinely used in class or creative utterances that they had never used before. These creative utterances consisted of language already learned but applied in new ways. To insure the reliability of her own ratings, she allowed the class to judge whether the utterances she had analyzed were creative or memorized chunks of language. She found that she and her class agreed 60 out of 74 times, or 80 percent of the time, on whether an utterance was previously memorized or creatively constructed.

She then tried to identify which students used creative utterances during their conversations with the native speaker and was pleased to learn that all nine students used creative utterances , with the high-achieving students using the greatest number of creative utterances and the low-achieving students using the fewest. Although the quantity of the utterances varied across nine students , the interesting finding was that all students used some creative utterances during the conversations.

Finally, she compared the number of creative utterances that students used to the number of memorized chunks of language and found that 60 percent of the time, students were relying on what they had previously learned in class for conversing with the native speaker. The other 40 percent of the time , their utterances were novel combinations of learned material. Another important finding was that when students attempted to be creative with the language , they often made errors. The teacher thus appropriately entitled her project, “ To Err Is to Be Creative”.

In rethinking her practice, the teacher stated that the project made her more aware of when her students were being creative with the language and the importance of documenting and pointing out these creative productions to the class. Additionally, she informed her students that error in language learning is not necessarily bad, but a necessary part of the language learning process. Finally, she decided that her classroom assessment needed to give credit to students who went beyond the comfort of memorized language and made efforts to use the language in new and creative ways to express their personal ideas.

You can email your exercise to guscepe@yahoo.com for my comments about your exercise.

About Action Research

Conducting Action Research is like traveling the road less traveled.


A friend told me once, that when he was being observed by a group of Principals in one of their meetings , he used a motivational strategy that awe them all. He passed around a gift box and asked the students as well as the observers to peep inside the box. Before he passed the box around, he told them that it is the gift of God to them. When the students and the Principals looked inside the box, everyone were surprised and can't seem to hold back the smiles in their faces. When I asked him, what was inside the box, he told me that the box was empty. The box was just layered with a square mirror that fit in the bottom of the box that when you peep inside you can actually see your own face.
Amazing strategy. Amazing realization too, for those who were able to see inside the box. The best gift God has given to us is our lives. Nothing more nothing less. It's the reality.

In action research it is like seeing oneself in a mirror. As an individual, we can not justify our actions and practices. Why? Because in our rational thinking , we believe what we do is right. With no tool to evaluate one own self, one can not actually say he is wrong. It is very hard for one to admit he is wrong.

Action Research is a tool to improve one's practice. It is a process where one has a chance to look inward and reflect on his actions as a practitioner. One can be a teacher, a master teacher, a principal or a supervisor.

According to Dr Stephen Waters-Adams of © S Waters-Adams, Faculty of Education, University of Plymouth, 2006 , if one has concerned about his practice , it may be a doubt of his strategies, or trying out something new one has to sort things out and try to validate things. The process of validating one's own practice through data collection and analysis is actually an action research.

However, one has to be honest, open and rigorous while undergoing the process. My concern about the principals and teachers craving for a training in action research is the motivation behind the thirst. When action research was made as a requirement in promotion to master teachers or principal positions or when it was made part of the criteria in the performance evaluation of school heads and master teachers, everybody were frantic about attending a training in action research.

Action Research for promotion?

Definitely not the right kind of thinking people in education should possess. If it is - then they fail right at the very start.

Teachers ,Master Teachers, Principals or Supervisors, should conduct an action research because 1) they want to improve their practice 2) they want to know if the strategies or techniques they used are effective to the children or teachers 3) to resolve discomfort in their workplace 4) they want to know how to effectively use the new strategy learned recently.

Dr. Stephen Waters-Adams explains it this way:

• understand one’s own practice;
• understand how to make one’s practice better;
• understand how to accommodate outside change in one’s practice;
• understand how to change the outside in order to make one’s practice better.

And this is one practical example of how to cut across the "theory-practice divide" Improving one's practice can actually result to improved result or output. For example teachers can examine their teaching-learning practices and understand ways to improve it to effect higher learning for the students. Principals can also find ways to improve their practices to effect higher performance of their teachers.


Dr. Adams explains how action research works.

research on action
by using

action as a tool for research

with the process being driven by a dialogue between the elements of:

action and the intentions behind action

or

practice and the values behind practice.


Emphasising the individual nature of action research, Jack Whitehead (1985) puts forward a simple representation of how the process feels:

1. I experience a problem when some of my educational values are negated in my practice;
2. I imagine a solution to my problem;
3. I act in the direction of the solution;
4. I evaluate the outcomes of my actions;
5. I modify my problems, ideas and actions in the light of my evaluations.



Put in the context of our school environment one has to consider the following process in the conduct of an action research:

1. Identify an issue
a) in your classroom (for teachers, master teachers)
b) in your school (for principals)

2. Formulate a question out of the issue
This is your research problem

3. Gather data and analyze data

4. Act on evidences/interventions

5. evaluate your result

6. reflect on the result

7. plan ( go through the cycle again)

Conducting action research is very dynamic. You can actually change one problem to another as the need arises. Data is the most important factor that affect your actions in an action research. Your actions must be based on the data you have. Having said that, data must be true, valid and without an iota of manipulation. Informed decisions spring from what is really happening. You can not do actions based on data that is not true or else you should live in a world of fantasy and you your work is not a research anymore but a mediocre work of a frustrated writer.

Finally, always publish findings of your action research. It will help other practitioners.

For more readings about action research follow the links on the side bar of this page.