#FilAussieDay: Former PNU president reflects on the establishment of RCTQ
Dr. Ester Ogena was just starting her term as president of the Philippine Normal University (PNU) in 2011 when bilateral discussions between Australia and the Philippines identified applied research on teacher quality as a priority area for cooperation. In this short video, we share Dr. Ogena’s insights as she looks back on how the friendship of the two countries helped her vision for PNU become a reality through the establishment of RCTQ.
DR. ESTER B. OGENA:
The coming in of the University of New England to PNU was very important especially it was at the beginning of my term. I saw the importance of the partnership in terms of capacitating PNU in research.
Because the National Center for Teacher Education is a major mandate of the university, it was important that the faculty members be trained on research. And the partnership provided for that important element.
Because the partnership was one to one between the faculty of UNE-SiMERR and the people assigned at RCTQ, that kind of partnership allowed PNU to grow in terms of research, especially on areas that they had focused on for example on curriculum audit, in the development of professional standards for teachers.
That link between the faculty members of SiMERR and our faculty members assigned to RCTQ helped a lot in terms of building the capacity of PNU on research. They’ve been doing research that would support policy development and i was happy that in 2017, DepEd finally approved the PPST which basically used the joint research of RCTQ and SiMERR. That was the high point of RCTQ.
Partnerships like the one offered by the Australian government for RCTQ and SiMERR was essential and critical at that point.
https://www.rctq.ph/?p=4345FeatureFilAussieDay,Philippine Normal University
