Senior High School Students’ Experiences and Reflections on Ilokano Culture and Heritage Studies

Abstract

This study aimed at exploring the Senior High School (SHS) students’ experiences of and reflections on Ilokano culture and heritage studies. This qualitative research involved twenty-five (25) purposively selected SHS students as participants. They were asked to write a reflective essay about their experiences in their qualitative research journey and their reflections on these experiences by answering five open-ended questions. The content-analyzed data showed that Senior High School students found qualitative research as a challenging and demanding task yet rewarding, remarkable, and memorable. The major difficulties encountered by student-researchers are related to recruitment, financial and resources constraints, work relationships with other researchers, and data collection, analysis, and interpretation. Moreover, it was concluded that students deemed qualitative studies as path to learning new things and (re)discovering one’s identity, culture, and heritage. Qualitative research journey yielded positive transformations in students and motivated them to come up with initiatives and advocacies in promoting Ilokano studies, culture, and heritage.