From Rejection to Resilience: Lived Experiences of Teacher Re-Applicants in the Philippine Public School Hiring Process
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.54536/ari.v4i2.8278Keywords:
Lived Experiences, Professional Growth, Teacher Re-Applicants, Teacher Recruitment, Transcendental PhenomenologyAbstract
Recruiting teachers is a major process that impacts the educational system by ensuring only qualified candidates enter the teaching world. Furthermore, many applicants trying to find work in the education field encounter many struggles. This study used the transcendental phenomenological approach to investigate the experiences of teacher re-applicants in the Department of Education located in Magsaysay District, Misamis Oriental Division. The researchers chose twenty-five participants that had been through several hiring processes and interviewed them. After collecting data, the researchers utilized Moustakas' phenomenological method, which contains a number of steps. After analyzing the data through those steps, it was found that there are five major themes that participants stakeholders experiencing reapplications went through: (i) resilience and perseverance as the strengths that were helping individuals during their job search, (ii) difficulties related to emotions, work, and processes that harmed the applicants' health, (iii) possibilities for personal and professional development through the process of having several reapplications, (iv) obstacles of external nature, such as tough competition, small number of vacancies, problems with money and the long waiting time for the results of the applications, and (v) the development of the framework describing the Re-applicant Teacher Resilience and Professional Growth that helps to understand the importance of the process of applying for the job repeating a few times. It can be summarized that even though reapplications for the job seem painful and challenging emotionally and logistically, they provide the opportunity to learn and change professionally.
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