The Educational Development Center (EDC), based in the northeastern United States, is an international nonprofit that works on projects with the goals of “enhancing learning, promoting health, and fostering a deeper understanding of the world.” With 325 projects that it manages in 35 countries around the world, the EDC is a wealth of research and resources. One of these projects is a collaborative effort among Dr. David Sloan Wilson of Binghamton University, the EDC, and Search Institute’s Dr. Arturo Sesma, using the Developmental Assets Profile (DAP) to work with out-of-school youth in the Philippines.
In search of a survey tool not based on academic outcomes, Wilson learned about Search Institute and the DAP on the internet. Together, Sesma and Wilson developed a version of the DAP that is relevant to students and youth in the Philippines. Working specifically on the island of Mindanao, Sesma and Wilson hope to learn more about the school-age population of children on the island, nearly half of whom do not attend school because of the effects of war, poverty, inter-clan fighting and ethnic marginalization.
The survey first had to be carefully translated into Filipino. “The first item on the DAP says something like, ‘I stand up for my beliefs,’” said Sesma of the survey items. “When it was originally translated, it came out as “When I literally stand up for my beliefs,” which is not what we wanted to communicate,” said Sesma, standing up to emphasize his point.
After translating both the language and the ideas of the survey, Sesma traveled personally to the Philippines to administer the DAP to a preliminary group of roughly 100 students. “Basically, this first test was a pilot test,” concluded Sesma. Results from the pilot group that took the survey helped Wilson and Sesma decide whether it was even possible to translate the values and ideas in the survey into the Filipino culture. However, with positive results coming back from the first 100 surveys, the two researchers plan to implement a much larger data collection, administering the DAP to perhaps 700 students. After several more trials to verify the test’s validity, the survey results will available for use by community members.
Wilson hopes to be able to use the results of the DAP to help leaders in Filipino communities, called barangays, understand where the strengths lie in their youth. He wants to encourage the barangay captains to mobilize their communities to create a more positive environment for youth who are not in school. “We hope that all local children will receive a basic education that is of high quality,” says Bill Potter, one of the lead EDC staff members involved in the Philippines project. “We want to increase the number of children who are involved in learning, whether inside or outside of school.” So far, results have proved successful.
1“Educating Children in a Conflict Zone: Muslim Mindanao Reforms its Education Sector,” April 2007, Accessed December 2007, at http://main.edc.org/
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