By: Christine Joy Q. Talastas
Canda National High School
Sub-Office: Sariaya; SDO: Quezon
Research is a word that most of our students – not only high schoolers but also those who are already in college or are already pursuing their post-graduate degree – find terrifying to work on. It is tiring, taxing, and a little bit or I mean a lot, going to test our patience for its whole duration. The big question now is – are we preparing our students properly for this kind of academic endeavor.
Practical Research 1, Practical Research 2, Inquiries, Investigation and Immersion, and Research or Capstone Project (for STEM) are some subjects in Senior High School which focus on research. With those aforementioned subjects, our objective is to produce research-oriented individuals after they graduate from SHS.
However, I have seen a lot of students who struggled in writing and conducting their research. This academic field is one of the most important to explore and learn as it is the basics or foundation of knowledge and innovation. It helps us to find solutions to our existing problems; to search again for more options on how to deal with matters. Teaching Practical Research in Senior High School is difficult but rewarding as well when our SHS learners have that eureka moment when they were able to prove their hypothesis and present their findings and conclusion to the panel.
To be able to build a culture of research is one of our aims, but if we are to look at our curriculum design, research is not highly taught in junior high school – except for Science and Technology Education Program (STE-P) classes where they have a designated subject for research; how about from those who are from regular classes –who are only able to have some research integration in some of their subjects?
It cannot be argued that the early introduction of a culture of research to our students is vital for them to become successful in this field. Students’ attitudes and motivations greatly affect the way they come up with good research output.
Some key areas that we teachers should look into are (a) our guidance to our student-researchers; (b) students’ exposure to different methods of research; (c) their support group – classmates or groupmates – if they have collaboration and teamwork; and (d) building the habit of researching.
In a research conducted by Bangalan and Hipona (2020), on their study titled Senior High Students’ Attitude and Barriers in Conducting a Research: A Platform to Enhance Scientific Pedagogical Learning, they found out that students would like their teachers to be able to provide proper guidance and assistance in the different stages of the completion of the research. They also suggested that teachers should be more considerate and give students more time to finish their research papers.
Another finding of their research that is worthy to mention is that students, generally, have a positive attitude towards research as expressed in their high rating of research usefulness, positive disposition, and research relevance to daily life. At the same time, the SHS respondents had shown research anxiety by admitting that it is stressful and some found conducting research a difficult task.
We need to remind our senior high school learners that research was, and never will be easy. It is an endeavor that takes a lot of time, effort, and money, along with perseverance and hard work. It’s okay to feel lost at times especially when you have a lot on your plate. If you fail, get up. Work again. Search again. Believe me, it will all be worth it in the end.
