Designing and validating a college readiness test addresses the absence of standardized Philippine-based College Readiness Test (CRT) congruent with the College Readiness Standards (CRS) set by the Philippine Commission on Higher Education (CHED). It also resolves the varied and arbitrary indices used by Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) to measure the preparedness of K to 12 Filipino graduates to enter college. In this regard, this study establishes the validity and reliability of the CRT to measure the combination of knowledge, skills, and reflective thinking necessary for the K to 12 graduates to be admitted and to succeed without remediation in the General Education courses in HEIs. Using multi-stage sampling in a select province of the Philippines and with due consideration of the district, type of school, and academic tracks offered in senior high school, the study has generated that the 200-item CRT has desirable difficulty index (65.64), reasonably good discrimination index (0.22), and large functioning distractors (68.91% distractor efficiency). Notably, there is a significant positive relationship between discrimination and difficulty indices as well as the distractor efficiency and difficulty index of the CRT items. Also, the CRT is reliable as it possesses inter-item consistency (r=0.796). Thus, it is a valid and reliable instrument to measure the college readiness of Filipino K to 12 graduates with its features of being contextualized, gender-fair, and criterion-referenced.

Purpose: Higher education institutions in the Philippines have been encouraged to do and publish research. Thus, this study aimed to unravel the lived experiences of 12 teacher education facultyresearchers in a public university in Cagayan Valley, Northern Philippines with regards to writing, presenting and publishing research articles. Research Methods: The method employed was the phenomenological inquiry through an in-depth semistructured interview. Data were transcribed, read repeatedly, and subjected to content analysis. Findings: Findings revealed that personal (additional learning, self-enrichment, and prestige) and professional (knowledge generation and dissemination, career advancement, and building linkages) reasons inspired teacher education faculty-

<span>Guided by the lens of Bourdieu, this study examined the relationship of the students' economic capital (parents' monthly income and students' weekly allowance) and cultural capital (parents' highest educational attainment and students' community involvement) to their college readiness. The study utilized a descriptive-correlational design, and data were collected from 6,626 K-12 graduates enrolled in one state-university in Cagayan Valley Region, Philippines. The results reveal that the respondents have parents who have income below the Philippine poverty threshold level and have obtained a secondary level of education. They, too, are college-unready, implying that the competencies they obtained from their basic education need further enhancement. Moreover, economic and cultural capital becomes significant resources that are valuable in explaining the college readiness of Filipino Senior High School (SHS) graduates. Those who come from families with higher economic and cultural capital tend to have higher college readiness. Remarkably, the low economic and cultural capital of the students possibly explains their lack of college readiness. As they have less economic and cultural capital, they tend to have fewer competencies to capacitate them in hurdling tertiary education. Hence, these disadvantaged students generally struggle to achieve more and to be successful in life</span><span lang="IN">.</span>

This study challenges the basic assumption that college readiness is accounted to senior high school (SHS) graduates’ cognitive abilities. It proffers that certain non-cognitive personality traits like grit may influence the college readiness of SHS graduates in a non-Western context. The study used descriptive-correlation design to examine the relationship between grit and college readiness of 7,533 K-12 graduates enrolled in one public university in the north-eastern part of the Philippines. The results reveal that K-12 graduates admitted in the respondent-university are “mostly gritty,” and a more significant proportion of them are college-unready. The students' grittiness is exemplified in the Filipinos' grit-related concepts such as sigasig (persistence of effort) and tiyaga (constancy in work) that are pursued because of their concept of “relational self.” The test of the relationship shows that grit has a positive influence on the college readiness of SHS graduates. This finding proves that cognitive traits may not be a good factor in making SHS graduates admitted and successful in college. Essentially, some non-cognitive traits like grit are as vital as intellectual abilities in influencing college readiness. Given these results, it is imperative that educators and school administrators of the K-12 program need to develop further not only the intellectual abilities of the students under their care but also to give equal emphasis and development among elementary and secondary students as it is a valid and essential personal trait to better prepare them for a college education.

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