Revised- Chapter 1

Chapter I

Introduction

Rationale

We are social beings in nature and one cannot take away our need to communicate and interact with other people. The whole process of learning about life, behavior, beliefs and actions comes with socialization. In socialization, we learn different roles we are to play in life. For example, girls learn how to be good sisters, friends, wives and mothers while boys are taught how to be good counterparts of these roles. The construction of our personality also depends greatly on how we interact with other individuals. In adolescence, the most intense and the most crucial period of our lives, much of our personality takes shape. The socialization process has the capacity to lead us to particular directions by constantly exposing us to other people’s beliefs, attitudes and providing us with experience that we can learn and benefit from.

The socialization process can be in any form. Looking around the world, we see that different cultures use different techniques to socialize their children. According to O’Neil (2009) in an untitled educational article, there are two types of teaching methods – formal and informal. The formal education happens in a classroom and is usually a controlled type of teaching by adult teachers. In contrast, informal education can happen anywhere. It involves a constant practice of basic skills and the exploration of the world. Successful socialization leads to uniformity within a society. If all children are brought up by the same social structure, then it is highly possible that these children will grow believing and doing the same things. This concept has been a strong motivation for national governments around the world to standardize education and make it available for all children.

In the Philippine context of socialization through the social institutions, there are various approaches in socializing the students. Government owned schools are the most known way of accessing affordable education but these schools nowadays are very crowded. In the words of Federis (2006) in her online article entitled Bulatlat, “at present, the Philippines has the worst pupil-teacher ratio in Asia at 45:1”. Parents who want their children to be well-taken care of and receive the best attention from teachers find refuge in private owned schools. Private schools however are a bit pricy and the level of diversity among the students can be flat. Because public schools have more students in a class, children will be likely exposed to other children from different socio-economic classes which can broaden the social experience.

The private schools here in the Philippines are either religious schools or exclusive schools for a specific gender but in some cases they can be both. Although public schools have problems with academic performance, exclusive schools that are religious at the same time were found to have issues with tolerance. A study conducted by Josephson Institute Center for Youth Ethics and participated by 43,000 high school students in 2010 in The Ethics of American Youth: 2010 can attest to this claim. Students from exclusive religious schools confided that they have used “racial slurs and insults” and have bullied someone in the past because they belonged to a group different from theirs. These kids are being held in their own social bubble instead of mingling with the general population making them close-minded towards the feelings of other people.

Private schools here in Cebu are no different. Most of the top private high schools here in Cebu City are exclusive religious schools. Students from these high schools, however, will eventually have to proceed to mixed-gender colleges. We have a handful of this kind of students here in the University of the Philippines Cebu College. We have noticed that our friends from these high schools are “different” in a way. They are very witty and if you pound their heads into a book in order for them study, they can very well excel in class. However, they are easily distracted by the opposite sex. They never seem to outgrow the childish symptoms of having a crush: sweaty palms, racing heartbeats, butterflies in the stomach and that feeling that “takes your breath away”.

Our friends who came from exclusive schools inspired us to choose this topic to unravel the mystery behind their childish acts. We have decided to conduct this study regarding the level of socialization of students from exclusive schools by comparing them to a mixed-gender school. If our assumptions serve us right, then exclusive schools do have a faulty system in socially preparing our youth for the world outside their gates.

Statement of the Problem

This study aims to determine whether the type of school of the students varies their interaction with the opposite sex. The types of schools are exclusive school and mixed gender school. Exclusive refers to schools open only for one sex while mixed gender schools are open for both boys and girls. This study specifically aims:

1. To determine the correlation between the type of school and the levels of interaction with the opposite sex of the students.

2. To know how does the type of school affect the levels of interaction with the opposite sex of students from exclusive schools and students from mixed gender schools.

3. To identify which type of school develops higher levels of interaction with the opposite sex in its students.

Significance of the Study

Our study is an initial step to welcome innovations in the educational system in our country. We believe that the basis of learning does not solely depend on the academic lessons taught by teachers but also on the entire educational environment of the students. This includes the group of people the students are associated with as they go through the learning process.

The government institution can benefit from this research on the grounds that it will determine which type of school creates academically excellent graduates imbued with good character plus high social ability.

Our study will also help parents choose the better school for their children to ensure a bright future for them. Education is the greatest gift parents could give to their children. This will be a great advantage for them to surpass whatever problems they have to take. In the future they will be working for or will be dealing with other people.

In connection to the previous beneficiary, almost all occupations nowadays demand people who can deal with all kinds of personalities. No matter how low-earning or highly paid one’s job is, he or she should get acquainted with people to perform his or her task well. Companies of the industry will benefit by knowing which type of school will produce the best professionals of the future.

chap 4

Chapter IV

Research Methodology

This study is mainly concerned with the levels of interaction with the opposite sex of students from mixed gender and exclusive schools. The data will be gathered through a survey questionnaire distributed to students of the targeted schools. Conclusions will be drawn from the results of the analyzed data.

Research Design

This study is a qualitative research that attempts to accumulate existing knowledge regarding the governing principles of teenage socialization. At the end of this study, we would like to be able to explain the relationship between the levels of socialization of high school students in Cebu City and the type of school they are in. This research would utilize both descriptive and exploratory research methods. One of the most common type of descriptive method is the survey. We made use of the observations we had while interacting with people that came from exclusive schools. We then conducted an online survey among three different schools: Saint Theresa’s College, Don Bosco Technology Center, and Sacred Heart School- Jesuits. The utilization of exploratory research is to explain problems and causes of the phenomenon that happens only to exclusive school students. We also make use of existing literature to verify our observations and to come up with basic ideas for this research problem.

Sampling Procedure

The sampling procedure used is convenience sampling method. Due to limited time, it would me more preferable to use this non-probability procedure. We also have to consider that we are dealing with three schools and choosing our respondents randomly will help us accommodate the three schools.

Research Participants

The participants of this research will be randomly selected fourth year high school students from exclusive boys’ school, exclusive girls’ school, and mixed gender school here in Cebu City. For exclusive boys’ school, we decided to choose Don Bosco Technological Center, for exclusive girls’ school, we selected St. Theresa’s College, and for mixed gender school, we chose Sacred Heart School- Ateneo de Cebu. We chose these specific educational institutions because the social status of their students is more likely not far from each other. We limited our study to fourth year high school students only since we believe that this time of high school is the period where in students are more active in mingling with other people outside their homes and schools.

Research Instruments

We will use questionnaires as our research instrument. We will further divide the questionnaire into four portions. The first part covers the necessary information about the respondent. We will only need to know their age, sex, and the school he/she is attending. The second part of the questionnaire will be all about the respondent’s exposure to the opposite sex and how he/she is socially involved with the members of the other sex, the third part is the main body of our questionnaire because it will uncover the respondent’s experience when interacting with the opposite sex. This will determine which level of interaction with the opposite sex the respondent belongs. And lastly, the fourth part of our questionnaire will make the participant evaluate him/herself on which level of interaction with the opposite sex does he/she think he/she belongs.

Data Collection

We will distribute our questionnaire to 30 randomly selected fourth year high school students from our selected schools. There will be 10 students from each school. The distribution of questionnaires is expected to be accomplished within a week’s time.

Data Analysis

The data gathered will be analyzed. The participants’ answers from the first two parts of the questionnaire are the factors to be considered in the study. Their answers to the situational statements will be summed up and will be grouped according to which level of interaction with the opposite sex. These are low, moderate, and high level of interaction with the opposite sex. From this data, we will then conclude if there is a correlation between the level of interaction with the opposite sex and the type of school of the students.

Chapter III

Study Framework

Theoretical Framework

This study is based on two psychological theories dealing with the conditions of availability and non-availability of resources situated in an environment.

Relative Deprivation Theory

For our research, we use the theory of Relative Deprivation. This theory describes the experience of a person or group of people who are deprived of something they believe they must be endowed with. Deprivation is identified in two manners. There is what we call as absolute deprivation and relative deprivation. Absolute deprivation, usually used to illustrate poverty, is the kind of deprivation which is uniform through out the globe. Whereas relative deprivation roots from the individual realizations that other people have much more than what they have. Contrary to the absolute kind of deprivation, relative deprivation is not uniform globally. Basically, this is the subjective type of deprivation. Schaefer (1985) describes relative deprivation as inconsistencies between what one expects in life and what he/she actually gets. Glock (1964) classified five types of deprivation in accordance to the forms of strains experienced. These are physical, organismic, economic, ethical, and social deprivation.

Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory

Another theory used for the research is the Sociocultural Theory founded by a Russian psychologist Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky. In his theory, Vygotsky argued that the development of an individual can not be made possible by his or her own efforts alone. An individual’s surrounding influences are very important factors in his or her development. Surrounding influences mainly referred to the external social world of a person. The people to whom a person interacts with in his or her environment greatly affect his human development which includes cognitive and social development. During the development of this theory, three ways on how a person can learn from external influences were named. First is the Imitative learning which is done through simply imitating the people one is surrounded with. Second is Instructed learning. This is done by remembering and following rules and instructions imposed by authoritative persons like parents and teachers. And third of the three ways presented is Collaborative learning. This is done by a group of individuals who tries to understand and learn from each other. The term Zone of Proximal Development was also introduced. It is the difference between the level of learning a person can attain with the guidance of a more knowledgeable or skilled individual and the learning a person can attain by his own potential without any supervision. Vygotsky added that for a person to attain the highest possible level of learning, he or she must be placed in an environment with more knowledgeable and experienced people.

The framework starts with the two theories presented, Relative Deprivation Theory and Sociocultural Theory. Both theories are conditions situated in an environment. Theory of Relative Deprivation is the condition in which the environment lacks or does not have enough resources while Sociocultural theory is the condition in which the environment has advantages in terms of resources. The learning acquired from the surrounding people, places, things, and practices will have an influence on the person. It would be manifested in his/her actions, speech, and thought. This will contribute in building his/her personality. And in personality development, social development is included. Social development is shown by how the persons react and interact with the society around him/her.

Conceptual Framework

The concept from the theory of Relative Deprivation describes the condition in the environment in which the individual is deprived from resources. This is why we used the term “deprivation of needs” to represent the theory. On the other hand, Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory suggests that there is a significant difference when an individual is facilitated by a knowledgeable person as defined by the “Zone of Proximal Development”. From that, we arrive to the concept of “provision of needs”. It represents the presence of advantages in resources. Also in our Conceptual framework, we determine the respondents of our study who are randomly selected fourth year high school students in Cebu City. We chose this age group of students because this is the time in life in which young people builds up their self-identity through the help of external relationships with others. Basically, a person builds relationships with people from his/her own environment.

The conditions of the environment affect the individuals living in that environment. Thus, the study’s independent variable and dependent variable are identified. The conditions of the environment are the independent variable while the students’ human development specifically their growth in the social aspect is the dependent variable.

Our conceptual framework begins with the conditions which are provision and deprivation of needs. These conditions are applied in separate environments. One environment is provided with needs and another environment is deprived from needs. The individuals in each environment specifically high school students are affected by the conditions in the environment. The two conditions in the environment may result to different qualities of social development of the high school students.

Operational Framework:

We explain more clearly the details of our research. The environment we are referring to is the type of school of the fourth year high school students in Cebu City, namely exclusive and mixed gender schools. For exclusive schools, we identify them as the group deprived from the need of interacting with both sexes, thus, they only interact with the same sex. Students from St. Theresa's College and Don Bosco Technology Center are the respondents for this group. On the other hand, we identify mixed gender schools as the group provided with the need of interacting with both sexes. The participants of this group are students of Sacred Heart School- Ateneo de Cebu. As mentioned in the previous frameworks, the environment affects the development of a person particularly in the social aspect. To measure their social development in terms of the students’ level of interaction with the opposite sex, we categorized the students’ level of interaction with the opposite sex into three categories— low, moderate, and high.