Neo-Narratives in the Third Space: An Attempt at Re-imagining a Post-Spectator Philippine Social Studies Classroom

This paper aims to demonstrate that Philippine Social Studies could and should move from a typical one-question-one-answer, spectator democracy experience towards being a rich site where historical, and socio-cultural issues, social narratives, and a new reading of knowledge and society may be highlighted. It used the concept of the “third space” as a pedagogical frame inspired by Bhabha’s (1994) notion of an uncertain, blurry area which results from the interaction of two cultures and from Jones’ (2011) work on reframing education in the third space. This is attempted in the Gawad Lampara, a student documentary festival of the University of the Philippines High School Iloilo. This is a collaborative cross-disciplinal activity in their Social Studies and Filipino language and literature classes. Data from written reflections, interviews, and focused group discussions reveals the students’ deliberate attempts to grasp and make sense of the content they learned from their lessons by situating them along the socioeconomic and political realities they perceive and experience in a form of a short documentary. In the process of working together to offer their voice in a form of a neo-narrative, they surface historical and socio-cultural issues, uncertainties, conflicts, and contradictions that are rarely highlighted in a typical Social Studies class. Given a suitable context, social studies may be able to invite and enable both teachers and learners to move beyond just knowledge acquisition, and towards the emergence of a more engaged and critical way of learning and experience in this subject area.