AGED ACADEMICIANS: CONTINUING THE

FIGHT AGAINST IGNORANCE

XI – GREGORY THE GREAT

BORNEJAN, BABY GRACE B.

ANABIEZA, MYDGE MARIELLE O.

MANANQUIL, GLYDEL CHRISTI L.

1. INTRODUCTION

Teachers are well known for delivering instructions and disciplines that help

students to learn. They set their lessons, mentor and nurture pupils to excel in their

academic journey. Along with this comes great responsibility, which teachers

manage skillfully with patience and passion, thus making them modern-day heroes

and role models for students to follow.

Teachers are at the heart of the educational process. The greater the

importance attached to education, the higher is the priority that must be accorded

to the teachers responsible for that education. (Organization for Economic

Cooperation and Development, 1989). More importantly, effective teaching of

maintaining and building upon the desire of most teachers ‘to make a difference in

the lives of students’ (Stiegelbauer, 1992). Teachers can do exert a great deal of

power and influence in the lives of their students, the opportunity to teach well and

to know it matters.

Other places have some cases where older teachers fight for their right to

teach and be valued. Efforts have been under way for years to get rid of or compel

older teachers to retire through faulty teaching assessments, the elimination of

tenure, school closures and outrageous early retirement plans but it is difficult to

measure the effect of replacing old, experienced teachers with younger,

inexperienced individuals. It was believed that adults have more vocabulary skills

than younger adults (Salthouse, 2004). Aside from that, the teaching styles of

aging teachers also evolved through time, thus making them veteran of their own

profession (Kevin & Kokol, 1998).

Research Questions

This research study will focus on understanding the purpose of aging

teachers on educating students despite their old age. This study will answer the

following research questions:

1. What difficulties did the teachers experience in terms of their old age on

teaching?

2. What motivations do teachers use to go on with teaching despite their old

age?

3. What can they suggest to other teachers who are of the same age as theirs

on teaching?

Theoretical Lens

This research is anchored by the theory of Ulla Kinnunnen (1994). She

theorized that the occupational well-being among teachers aging 45 years and

above are affected, and was described to be behavioral and health concerning.

This theory further explains on how teachers educate students despite their old

age.
2. METHODOLOGY

This chapter includes the research method used, description of the

respondents’ profile, sampling, data gathering procedure and the interpretation of

data.

Design

This study will employ a qualitative research design. Qualitative research

design collects non-numerical data and to interpret meaning from these data based

on prior research experience (Baxter & Jack, 2008). This research design focuses

on the life experiences of people (Moustakas & Walters, 1994; 2000). It allows the

researcher to explore individuals or organizations, simple through complex

interventions, relationships, communities, or programs and supports the

deconstruction and the subsequent reconstruction of various phenomena (Yin,

2003). Particularly, the phenomenological approach will be used throughout this

research study. Smith and Woodruff (2018) defines phenomenology as the study

of how things appear in our experiences. Thus, a phenomenological approach

focuses on a person’s experiences based on a certain situation.

Informants

The informants of our study will be quinquagenarian teachers.

Quinquagenarian comes from Latin origin which describes a person aging between
fifty to fifty-nine. The informants will be chosen through snowball sampling.

Snowball sampling, also known as chain-referral sampling, is a method relying on

referrals from initially sampled respondents to the persons believed to have the

characteristic of interest (Johnson, 2014).

Instruments

We will utilize interview guide questions to gather information a data from

the informants. These questions will be asked through in-depth inteview (IDI)

participants as well as for those who would take part in the focus group discussion.

In-depth interview is a qualitative research technique that involves conducting

intensive individual interviews with a small number of respondents to explore their

perspectives on a particular idea, program or situation (Boyce & Neale, 2006).

Focus group discussion on the other hand, is a research methodology in which a

small group of participants gather to discuss a specified topic or an issue to

generate data (Wong, 2008). Meanwhile, to document the responses of the

participants, we will use voice recorders. Voice recorders have become an

important technical aid in social research. It has always been used for intensive

and systematic analysis (Butcher & Fritz, 1956). These would constitute the

evidences needed in this study (Ross & Bowlin, 2019).

Procedure
 To conduct this study, a letter of approval should be issued from the

school’s principal’s office. It is an effective implementation of the principles of

informed consenting to avoid putting risks to the participants (Agarwal, 2019).

We will provide our informants with an informed consent. An informed

consent is a system for granting permission of a user’s personal information to a

third party (Iida & Givotovskky, 2004). The purpose of this is to make them aware

as to what is the study all about. They would also be informed on how they were

chosen and for what would the data be used for. More so, their rights would be

enumerated such as: (i) voluntary participation; (ii) informed consent; (iii)

anonymity; (iv) confidentiality; and (v) protection from harm. Voluntary participation

is described as a right for withdrawal of any informant to take part in a research

study (Afolabi et al. 2018).

Peters and Halcomb (2014) define interviewing as a means of data analysis

which reveals the complexity of an underlying data. In order to conduct a good

interview, Boyce and Neale (2006) states that summarizing key data and verifying

information is very necessary. Researchers need to monitor and be aware of their

interviewing technique. This can be achieved by critically appraising audio-

recordings through out the duration of the interview (Doody & Noonan, 2013).

Reciprocity means an emotion of gratitude, thought to have social effects,

but empirical studies of these effects have focused largely on the repaying of kind

gestures (Algoe, Haidt, & Gable, 2008). This process were the researchers will

give the respondents a token of appreciation.

 Transcription entails a translation or transformation of sound from

recordings to text (Duranti, 2007). The process is a selective one whereby certain

phenomena or features of talk and interaction are transcribed. Recordings are

transcribed into written form so that they can be studied in detail, linked with

analytic codes needed for the thematic analysis (Davidson, 2009.)

Thematic Analysis is an accessible, flexible and known as a popular method

in qualitative research analysis. It provides researchers a foundation with the basic

skills needed to engage with other approaches in qualitative data analysis. Braun

and Clarke (2012) states that, thematic analysis offers rich and compelling insights

through the experiences and perspectives of the informants. Aside from that, it also

illustrates every important theme in the description of the phenomenon under the

study. (Dally, 1997)

As visualized by Flick (2004), triangulation is used to refer to the observation

of the research issue from at least two different points. This is most often realized

by means of applying different methodological approaches as a strategy for data

validation. Patton (1999) verbalized that, triangulation utilizes the use of multiple

methods or data sources in qualitative research to develop a comprehensive

understanding of the phenomena. It has been viewed as a qualitative research

strategy to test the validity through the convergence of similar themes.

The results from the triangulation method will be gathered and analyzed in

the results and discussion chapter of this research paper. Chenail (1995) states

that the presentation of the of the findings is to re-present the study in the form of

a paper or lecture, usually the transcribed document already. It focuses on the

interpretation and analysis of the data collected from the informants (Sollaci &

Pereira, 2004).

Peer debriefing is a technique used by many qualitative researchers for

multiple reasons. Peer debriefing allows a qualified peer researcher to review

and assess transcripts, emerging and final categories from those transcripts, and

the final themes or findings of a given study. Since the researcher is often the

collector as well as interpreter of data, biases and sensitizing concepts can easily

find their way into the work (Charmaz, 2003). In this sense, the peer debriefer

has the challenging task of serving as both conscience and critic for the

researcher’s work.

This research study will be published at the Notre Dame of Kidapawan

College to make it as a platform for other researchers to study, to be of help to

them who are in need of the data with regards to their study. The principal purpose

for the accentuation on the publication has been the fact that unless no researches

are published, there would be no proof for validation of their work. As visualized by

Dangal and Giri (2017), the real essence of publication is the sharing discoveries

and ideas to achieve a wider network and learning what others have already found

and get insights on what more needs to be researched.

Analysis

In this study, we are going to employ thematic analysis. Thematic analysis

is an accessible, flexible, and increasingly popular method of qualitative data

analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2012). It is able to extract the codes and then cluster
them together into larger themes. Gibbs (2007) states the thematic coding is a form

of qualitative analysis which involves character recording and identifying passages

of texts, symbols or images that are linked by a common theme to allow the text to

be furtherly subdivided into categories which will establish a framework of thematic

ideas.
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Interview Guide Questions

Research Questions Initial Questions Probing Questions

1. What are the 1.1 What difficulties 1.2 Which among

difficulties did the do you face in these would

teachers terms of your you consider

experience in old age in the most

terms of their old teaching? difficult?

age in teaching?

2. What can they 2.1 What can you 2.2 Which of these

suggest to other advice to other advices gave

teachers who are teachers who you the most

of the same age share the same benefit out of

as theirs? age as yours? your teaching

experience?

3. What motivations 3.1 What drives 3.2 Which among

do teachers use to you to teach these

go on with despite your old motivations do

teaching? age? you consider

the most

effective?