Participation in YES-O Programs and its Impact on Science Learning: Basis for EcoQuest Mission Passport

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This study assessed the pupils’ participation in the implementation of the Youth for Environment in Schools Organization (YES-O) programs and their effects on their learning progress as a basis for the development of the EcoQuest Mission Passport. It used the descriptive-survey research method in which data were collected through an adopted questionnaire from 316 grades four to six pupils in 20 schools. Results showed strong pupil participation in clean-up drives, tree planting, and water-saving practices. In contrast, seedbank, biodiversity, and waste management initiatives were less participated in due to resource constraints. Nonetheless, the programs had a positive influence on science learning by enhancing pupils’ understanding of environmental concepts, instilling pro-environmental values, and encouraging sustainable practices. To address gaps, the study recommends the EcoQuest: YES-O Mission Passport, a science activity journal designed for active documentation, performance-based assessment, and evaluation. This initiative supports Republic Act No. 9512 on environmental awareness and strengthens the integration of YES-O with the science curriculum to foster scientifically literate and environmentally responsible learners.

Workplace Bullying, Well-Being, And Job Performance Among Nurses in a Selected Hospital in Laguna

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Workplace bullying has been widely recognized as a significant occupational concern in healthcare settings due to its potential impact on nurses’ psychological well-being and job performance. This study examined the relationship between workplace bullying, nurses’ well-being, and job performance among staff nurses in a selected tertiary-level hospital in Laguna, Philippines. Grounded in Conservation of Resources (COR) Theory, Self-Determination Theory (SDT), and the Theory of Work Adjustment (TWA), the study aimed to determine the levels of workplace bullying, nurses’ well-being, and job performance, as well as the relationships among these variables.

The study utilized a descriptive-correlational research design. Data were collected from 80 staff nurses selected through purposive sampling from a total population of 100 nurses. A self-constructed questionnaire, validated by experts and tested for reliability using Cronbach’s alpha, was used to measure workplace bullying (work-related, person-related, and physically intimidating bullying), nurses’ well-being (psychological, emotional, and social well-being), and job performance (quality of nursing care, productivity and efficiency, and patient safety and compliance with standards). Weighted mean and Pearson’s r were employed for statistical analysis at a 0.05 level of significance.

Findings revealed that workplace bullying was experienced at low levels in terms of work-related bullying (WM = 2.0) and person-related bullying (WM = 1.9), and at a very low level in terms of physically intimidating bullying (WM = 1.7). Nurses’ well-being was rated high across psychological well-being (WM = 3.1), emotional well-being (WM = 3.0), and social well-being (WM = 3.1). Job performance was rated high to very high, with very high levels in quality of nursing care (WM = 3.3) and patient safety and compliance with standards (WM = 3.4), and high level in productivity and efficiency (WM = 3.1).

Correlation analysis indicated no significant relationship between workplace bullying and nurses’ well-being (p = 0.52), and no significant relationship between workplace bullying and job performance (p = 0.88). However, a statistically significant relationship was found between nurses’ well-being and job performance (p = 0.000049), suggesting that higher levels of well-being are associated with higher levels of job performance.

The findings imply that while workplace bullying is minimally present in the selected hospital, nurses’ well-being plays a critical role in sustaining high job performance. The study recommends the implementation of well-being enhancement and preventive organizational strategies to maintain performance standards and promote long-term workforce sustainability in hospital settings.

Humor: Lightening the Load of Selected Single Female Breadwinners

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In Bowen’s Family Systems Theory, the family is viewed as an organism.  Since a change in one part results in changes in others, the individual’s functioning must be considered in the context of relationships.  Research has identified humor among family strengths that enhance resilience.  As humor is beneficial in stress management and interpersonal relationships, it is essential in handling pressures, especially for breadwinners who provide for their families. In the Philippines, breadwinners are often male and married, but some single females assume the breadwinner role. These women face financial and societal pressures since the traditional family cycle devalues singlehood as an alternative life choice. Many studies focus on humor, breadwinners, or singlehood, but little is known about how single female breadwinners use humor to cope. Thus, this descriptive phenomenological study leads to greater depth in understanding the experiences of single female breadwinners.  Seven were recruited by purposive sampling. A family member of each breadwinner also validated the breadwinner’s use of humor. Semi-structured interviews were used to gather data that were subjected to thematic analysis. Based on the breadwinners’ stories, five themes emerged: Hurdling Family Crisis, Uniting Family Members, Managing Pressures, Overcoming Social Norms and Recognizing Influences and Opportunities.  Findings highlight how humor lightens the breadwinners’ load.  The use of humor influences their thoughts, feelings and actions which affect family dynamics positively.  This study fosters recognition and support for single persons integral to families.

Assessment of Classroom Professionalism of Teachers in Cabitan National High School: Basis for a Professional Development Program

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This descriptive study assessed the level of classroom professionalism among teachers of Cabitan National High School. All 51 teachers participated through complete enumeration. A validated 20-item self-assessment tool measured five domains of professionalism: professional responsibility, teaching commitment and ethics, classroom management and learner engagement, professional relationships, and continuous professional growth.

Findings revealed that 52.94% of teachers were Proficient and 47.06% were Highly Professional. No respondents were classified under Developing or Needs Improvement levels, indicating a generally high level of professionalism. Results align with the standards of the Department of Education, Philippines through the Philippine Professional Standards for Teachers (PPST). However, the dominance of the Proficient level suggests the need for continuous professional advancement.

Based on the findings, a professional development program titled “Project RISE: Reinforcing Instructional Standards and Excellence in Teaching” is proposed to further enhance teacher competencies.

Integrating School Heads’ Performance Level and Leadership Experiences: A Convergent Mixed Methods Analysis on their Strategic Functions

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This study employed a convergent mixed methods research design to determine the strategic leadership performance and experiences of school heads in integrated schools. The respondents included 188 teaching and non-teaching personnel from 15 integrated schools. Quantitative data were analyzed using frequency, percentage, and weighted mean, while qualitative data were examined through thematic analysis. Career Stage 1 school heads demonstrated “very satisfactory” performance, while Career Stages 2 and 3 achieved “outstanding” performance. Their leadership practices include alignment of school vision, mission, and goals with DepEd priorities; data-driven decision-making; transparent resource management; shared leadership and governance; and collaborative school improvement culture. Challenges are overload in dual-level leadership, resource and infrastructure constraints, complexity of balancing diverse needs, administrative workload and overlapping activities, and balancing decisions with DepEd directives. The integration of the findings revealed that leadership performance increased with career stages, and strategic leadership competence develops with professional experience and leadership roles grounded on values to stronger strategic planning and implementation. These findings serve as the basis in the development of a leadership handbook. This study recommends strengthening policies, professional development, and institutional support for school heads in integrated schools.

Towards an African Epistemic Rebirth: Balancing the Values of Science and African Cultural Values

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The study explores “towards an African epistemic rebirth: balancing the values of science and African cultural values” explores the enduring tension and potential harmony between Western scientific rationalism and indigenous African epistemologies. Anchored in an exploratory design, the study adopts a qualitative methodology relying on secondary data drawn from philosophical texts, African cultural studies, ethnographic reports, and contemporary discourses on decolonial epistemology. The analysis interrogates how colonial and postcolonial intellectual legacies have marginalized African ways of knowing, privileging positivist and materialist paradigms over relational, communal, and spiritual epistemic orientations embedded in African traditions. Findings reveal that Africa’s epistemic crisis stems from a dual alienation first from the imposition of Eurocentric science as the only legitimate knowledge system, and second from the internal erosion of traditional cosmologies under modernization pressures. However, the study identifies a growing intellectual movement advocating for epistemic pluralism one that situates scientific inquiry within African value systems emphasizing harmony, communal wellbeing, spirituality, and respect for nature. This synthesis is not anti-science but pro-balance: it calls for a knowledge ecology where empirical rationality and indigenous wisdom mutually reinforce social progress and ethical responsibility. The paper concludes that Africa’s epistemic rebirth requires a dialogical integration of science and culture, where scientific education, innovation, and policy are grounded in African philosophical worldviews. It recommends that universities and research institutions adopt intercultural epistemology frameworks, promote indigenous knowledge systems (IKS), and support curricula that valorize African languages, ethics, and cosmologies alongside modern science. Such reforms will restore Africa’s intellectual sovereignty and foster sustainable development rooted in its cultural identity.

Manager’s Management Style, Employees’ Satisfaction and Employees’ Productivity at North Park Noodle House

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This research study aimed to examine the manager’s management style, including the parameters such as the autocratic, consultative, democratic, and laisse – faire, at North Park Noodle House. Additionally, it explored the relationship between manager’s management style , and employees’ satisfaction and productivity. The study sought to determine whether there were significant relationships between the manager’s management style and the level of employees’ satisfaction, as well as between the manager’s management style and employees’ productivity. Furthermore, it examined the connection between employees’ satisfaction and employees’ productivity. This study employed a descriptive-correlational research design, focusing on the manager’s management style, employees’ satisfaction, and employees’ productivity as the key variables. The findings revealed a significant relationship between the manager’s management style in terms of democratic, and laisse- faire and the level of employees’ satisfaction, while parameters such as autocratic and consultative showed that there were no significant relationship with employees’ satisfaction. Additionally, the results showed that the level of productivity was only influenced by the manager’s management style in terms of laisse – faire and the three other factors were not significant. Lastly, the study confirmed that employees’ productivity is also dependent on employee satisfaction, highlighting that higher satisfaction resulted to increased productivity.

Spiritual Conversion as an Inward Pilgrimage Toward Filipino Family Transformation: A Phenomenological Study

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This study aims to explore the factors that influence family dynamics, growth, and transformation during spiritual conversion. By recounting participants’ lived experiences during and after spiritual conversion, these experiences contribute to shifts not only in one’s inner perspective but also in family relationships and the overall quality of family life.
A descriptive phenomenological approach was used to investigate the meanings individuals attribute to their lived experiences of spiritual conversion while acknowledging the complexity of their relational contexts. This enabled the articulation of the essential structures underlying the experiences of individuals who underwent spiritual conversion and the subsequent changes that unfolded within their families.
Seven (7) participants, along with a family member serving as a corroborator, shared their narratives of spiritual conversion. Their family members were subsequently invited to validate the narratives and describe how the individual’s spiritual conversion was consistently lived in their family relationships. The emerging framework highlighted the unfolding process of spiritual conversion in the individual and its influence on every participant’s Filipino family, regardless of the Christian denominations they came from.
Findings indicate that a spiritual encounter with the sacred initiates a process of inner reorganization within the individual, which gradually extends to influence and improve the family’s relational system. Spiritual conversion, as an inward journey, reveals systemic relational change. This research offers a phenomenological understanding of a known but less-studied phenomenon: spiritual conversion, and how the unique spiritual experience may contribute to family adaptation and the transformation of the Filipino family within the Philippine cultural context.

“Authorship of One’s Life”: A Narrative-Oriented, AI-Assisted Intervention for Self-Realization in Crisis-Affected Ukrainian Adults Aged 35–55

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Self-realization in mid-adulthood is increasingly disrupted by prolonged societal crises, yet structured, evidence-grounded intervention programs that target the narrative and motivational dimensions of this process remain scarce. This study reports the development and preliminary efficacy testing of “Authorship of One’s Life,” an eight-week, narrative-oriented psychological program that integrates structured group and individual sessions, an artificial-intelligence conversational assistant, and a reflective podcast component for Ukrainian adults aged 35 to 55. A quasi-experimental pre–post design (with sequential participant stratification) with a three-month follow-up was employed, involving 52 participants assigned to an experimental condition (, comprising Reactive and Fragmented narrative profiles) or a control condition (, Adaptive profile). The program was structured around four progressive narrative therapy stages – trust building, problem externalization, re-authoring, and re-membering – drawing on Innovative Moments theory to scaffold narrative transformation across sessions. Outcomes were assessed using five validated psychometric instruments measuring meaning in life, basic psychological needs satisfaction, personal growth initiative, self-reflection, and an original scale of realizational flexibility, administered at four time points. Significant pre–post gains were observed in the experimental group across all primary outcomes, with effect sizes ranging from moderate to large (Cohen ), and gains were maintained at three-month follow-up. Analysis of session transcripts demonstrated a theoretically predicted shift from early-stage to advanced narrative transformation markers. The program demonstrates preliminary efficacy as a scalable, structured intervention for crisis-affected adults.

Digital Leadership of Public Elementary School Heads: Basis for the Development of Capability Building Program

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As technology evolves how schools work, school leaders must be able to lead in a digital world. This study was conducted to see how well school heads are managing digital tools and what problems and challenges they encounter. The goal was to use this information to create a capability training program that truly helps them improve. The researcher used mixed methods with a sequential explanatory design that combined quantitative and qualitative methods. The first stage used quantitative methods to gather the data through a survey, and the second used qualitative methods gathering detailed responses from the interviews. The results showed that school heads believe they are doing a very good job. They gave themselves high scores in areas like setting a digital vision (3.99), using technology (4.05), digital communication (4.04), managing resources (4.04), and staff training (4.01). Overall, they feel they are practicing digital leadership to a great extent. However, the study also found that school heads face real problems. These include the lack of knowledge and expertise in technology, falling behind on new trends, and facing resistance to change. They also deal with practical issues like poor internet and the challenge of teaching parents how to use digital tools. Based on these findings, the study suggests that schools may start a digital mentorship program or capability-building program instead of just conducting workshops. This program would provide effective mentoring and better materials and infrastructure to help school heads overcome the challenges experienced by the school heads.