Research Awareness and Attitudes of Senior High School Teachers of Public Schools in Calamba City: Basis for a Research Mentoring Program

Abstract

INTRODUCTION

Research elucidates, discovers, and evaluates new knowledge, ideas, and the technologies essential in transforming and changing the way students learn. In school, it is a tool for building knowledge and for facilitating learning. Thus, it is quintessential to determine the level of awareness, attitudes, and research outputs of the school teachers since they are the ones that should be endowed with positive behavior and competency toward researches.

The main purpose of this study is to determine the level of research awareness of senior high school teachers in Calamba City as assessed by themselves in terms of orientation, types of research, support, ethics, competence, and dissemination and utilization; the level of attitude of senior high school teachers toward research in terms of research usefulness, for profession, research anxiety, positive attitude towards research, relevance to life, and research difficulty.

METHODS

This study made use of descriptive design gauging the level of research awareness and attitudes of 59 senior high school teachers of public schools in Calamba City using a standardized questionnaire.

RESULTS

On the level of research awareness of public senior high school teachers, it was found out that the teachers have awareness on research orientation, types of research activities, support, ethics, competence, and dissemination and utilization. Regarding the level of attitudes of teachers towards research, the study revealed that the respondents have positive notion on research usefulness, anxiety, positive attitude, relevance to life, and research difficulty.

Based on the pertinent findings, the researcher concluded that the respondents have awareness and manifest knowledge on research proceedings. Furthermore, their attitude towards research is positive. Although they may be aware of the importance of research and have positive attitude towards it. It can be gleaned from the study that the respondents prioritize teaching and extra tasks assigned to them rather than conducting researches in school.

DISCUSSIONS

The results revealed that the senior high school teachers have awareness and positive attitude towards research. However, they find it difficult to do research because of many factors including the support from the concerned office in terms of seminars, workshops, mentoring and other alike activities that will enhance their competencies.