The Efficacy of Purpose Process and Product (PROP) Teacher-Made Tool to Assess the Journalistic Skills of Grade 9 Students in Rizal National Science High School

Abstract

INTRODUCTION

Journalism became less relevant due to widespread popularity of internet (Merican, 2014) and how it disseminates the news through different alternative sources like social media. Government laws also help in strengthening journalism in secondary education by creating republic acts like R.A. 7079 or Campus Journalism Act of 1991. The government aims to promote freedom of the press and campus journalism through the "strengthening ethical values, encouraging critical and creative thinking, and developing moral character and personal discipline of the Filipino youth" became the basis of the study since the school offers enhancement subjects such as, Introduction to Journalism, Basic and Advanced Journalism.

METHODS

The study focused on the effectiveness of the tool to assess the news writing skills of Grade 9 students for a two-week long training. Theorized by the researcher (Paralejas, May2017) the study used two (2) sections from grade 9 made of twenty-five (25) students each which served as the respondents of the study utilizing the pretest-posttest research design using random sampling.

The Experimental Group were told to evaluate their own product using PROP Analytical Scale for NEWS articles while the controlled group used the usual journalistic writing rubrics. The results were computed using MS Excel 2013 Data Analysis.

RESULTS

The results were computed using Microsoft Excel 2013 Data Analysis. Measuring the mean score and graphing was used to indicate the level of efficacy of PROP tool to assess the students' skills in writing a news story.The mean score and graphing indicated the level of efficacy of PROP to assess the students' skills in writing a news story. T-test independent measured the level of performance of experimental and controlled group and the significant difference in the level of performance of the experimental group. The overall interpretation of the efficacy of the teacher-made tool was the mean score of 4.11 and verbally interpreted as moderately accepted as perceived by the students.

DISCUSSIONS

The efficacy of PROP tool in evaluating the students' journalistic skills had an overall mean score of 4.11 and verbally interpreted as moderately accepted as perceived by the students.The development of the tool is commended in teaching Journalism to hone students' skills in writing. Modification of the research will determine whether the tool is appropriate for students' self-assessment.