I started my journey as a teacher in the Philippines in 1988, the year South Korea hosted the Summer Olympics.

Those years I spent in the academe, 24 years in the Philippines, and 12 (now going 13) years here in South Korea taught me much about the teaching profession – more than those I learned from my undergraduate and graduate courses. My experiences as a classroom teacher and as a school administrator enabled me (and they still do) to look at issues, problems, and disputes using the lens of the one teaching and that of the one formulating and implementing school policies.  Being in both positions made me understand how it feels to be in charge of both the teachers and students.

Those more than 30 years in 8 different schools in 2 different countries made the following very clear to me: that it is not easy to wear the hat of a teacher; that teaching is not just another job; that teaching is not just a means of livelihood but a way to serve; and that everything schools do, from the simplest activities to the most complicated policies, should be student-centered  – because the students are the reasons schools exist.

I often reflected on teaching as a profession and education in general, which resulted in essays and research works.

This is where I put them (the essays I wrote on education and some of the research works I have completed here in South Korea). I also added this section to the dissertation and thesis I wrote as requirements for my Ph.D. and Master’s degrees.

In the university where I completed my Ph.D. and Master’s, the research papers students must complete are called differently –  dissertation for Ph.D. and thesis for Master’s.

The other studies listed in the subsections identified that I began my journey as a teacher in the Philippines in 1988 — the same year South Korea hosted the Summer Olympics.

The years I’ve spent in academe — 24 in the Philippines and 13 (and counting) here in South Korea — taught me more about the teaching profession than my undergraduate and graduate studies ever did. My experience as both a classroom teacher and a school administrator gave me a dual lens: I’ve seen education from the perspective of the one teaching, and from the perspective of the one crafting and implementing school policy. Having stood in both positions taught me what it feels like to be responsible for teachers and students alike.

More than 30 years across 8 schools in 2 countries made a few things clear to me: that wearing the hat of a teacher is never easy; that teaching is not just another job; that teaching is not merely a means of livelihood, but a way to serve; and that everything a school does — from its simplest activities to its most complex policies — should be student-centered, because students are the reason schools exist in the first place.

These reflections on teaching and education, over the years, took the form of essays and research papers. This page is where I’ve gathered them — the essays I’ve written on education, along with research I conducted here in South Korea, including the dissertation and thesis I wrote for my Ph.D. and Master’s degrees, respectively. (At the university where I earned both degrees, the culminating research paper is called a dissertation for the Ph.D. and a thesis for the Master’s.)

The remaining sections below include studies I presented at international conferences and later published in SCOPUS-indexed journals — journal articles are typically longer and more developed than their conference-presentation counterparts. Each page includes links to the journals where the papers were published, or to the conference websites where they were presented.

This section of my website is organized as follows: below (with links) are those I presented at international conferences and subsequently published in SCOPUS-indexed international journals. Papers published in international journals are usually longer than those presented at international conferences.

The pages allotted for the papers provide links to the international journals where some of the articles were published and to the conferences’ websites where they were presented.

This part of my website is divided into the following subsections:

My Essays on Education

Papers Published in Journals

Papers Presented in Conferences

My Master’s Thesis

My Ph.D. Dissertation 

Perspective Articles, Academic Papers & Unpublished Papers

My website also features the following section:

Personal Essays

Most of the articles in this section are my reflections on education.

You can check my published works in the links below:

Research Gate

Google Scholar