How Do I Learn You? Towards Designing an Approach in Unlearning Negative Habits

Abstract

How Do I Unlearn You? Towards Designing an Approach in Unlearning Negative Habits. Objectives: The study intends to explore and understand the unlearning process, as grounded from the experiences of teachers and students of Edukasyon sa Pagpapakatao (Values Education in the Philippines) towards developing a new approach in teaching the aforementioned subject area. Methods: Interviews were conducted to 33 respondents from a private Catholic school, and transcripts were analyzed through the techniques of thematic analysis and grounded theory. Findings: The adolescents’ negative habits, as well as teachers’ facilitation practices generated substantial themes such as: (1) need for a strong sense of self; (2) difficulty of unlearning due to various “blocks”; (3) instruments to unlearn; and (4) role of teachers as empathic individuals. These codes then led to the final product of the study as E.L.S.A.’s approach to unlearn (Empowering the Self, Letting Go, Starting a New Life, and Action), which may be utilized as schools’ pedagogical framework in producing classroom-based materials in facilitating values formation. Conclusion: The idea of unlearning is not an experimental process or behavioral modification. It only explored the concept and process of unlearning, but did not necessarily aim to make unlearning take place on the psyche of the students.

Keywords: Unlearning negative habits, edukasyon sa pagpapakatao (values education), teaching approaches, adolescence, thematic analysis.

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.23960/jpp.v9.i2.201902