School leaders in the midst of reforms: Crisis and catharsis in the Philippine education system

This chapter argues that the Philippine education system is besieged by crippling challenges typified by increased drop-out and out of school youth, high student-pupil ratio, teacher shortage, lack of resources, relatively low teachers’ salary, a dysfunctional bureaucracy and systemic corruption. To address these lingering issues, fragmented waves of education reform initiatives have been promulgated. One particular stakeholder in the education system—school leaders—find themselves wedged by systemic challenges on the one hand and disparate reform efforts on the other. The implementation of Republic Act 9155 (RA 9155) “Governance of Basic Education Act of 2001” also known as the Principal Empowerment Act manifests the dilemma of school leaders as they find themselves in fundamental disjunctures between the continuity of crises and the promise of change

It came up to here:learning from children's flood narratives

The growing body of literature that seeks to understand the social impacts of flooding has failed to recognise the value of children’s knowledge. Working with a group of flood-affected children in Hull using a storyboard methodology this paper argues that the children have specific flood experiences that need to be understood in their own right. In this paper we consider the ways in which the disruption caused by the flood revealed and produced new – and sometimes hidden – vulnerabilities and forms of resilience and we reflect on the ways in which paying attention to children’s perspectives enhances our understanding of resilience