Finding Local Studies for a BEEd or BSEd Thesis: DepEd E-Saliksik, PNU Journals, Open Education Journals and Repositories (2026)

The key finding for a BEEd or BSEd student: Philippine education research is spread across at least five kinds of sources, and no single one holds it all. DepEd’s E-Saliksik portal holds DepEd studies, journals such as The Normal Lights hold peer-reviewed work, open-access directories list education journals published in the Philippines, and your own college repository holds precedent theses.

Structure your Chapter 2 on Tesify

Which sources hold Philippine education research?

What does DepEd E-Saliksik offer?

E-Saliksik is described on its own pages as the Department of Education Research Portal. Its menu organises education research by theme, with the themes Teaching and Learning, Governance, Human Resource Development, Child Protection, Inclusive Education, Disaster Risk Reduction, Gender and Development and Learning Continuity. It also organises research by geographical scope: National Research, then Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao regions down to the regional level, plus BARMM and External Research. Further sections list data and references, discussion papers, research bulletins and monitoring and evaluation reports.

For a BEEd or BSEd thesis, the useful move is to browse the theme that matches your topic, then the region where you will collect data. A study of reading intervention in Western Visayas, for example, is easier to justify as “local” if your Chapter 2 includes a regional DepEd study from the same area. Record the author or office, the year and the title, and check whether the item is a final study. Treat discussion papers and bulletins as context, not as your main empirical evidence.

Fresh data on topics, national figures and the statutes that make a topic citable are in education thesis topics supported by national data.

Which journals should you check by hand?

The Normal Lights is published by the Philippine Normal University, the country’s teacher education institution, and is indexed on Crossref with print ISSN 1656-4413 and online ISSN 2350-6733. Browse its issues for studies on teaching, curriculum and teacher education, then check the journal’s own page for access to full text.

Beyond that, the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) lists 43 journals whose publisher is in the Philippines as of October 2026, and at least ten of them carry an education subject label, including JPAIR Institutional Research Journal, the Journal of Education, Management and Development Studies from Camarines Sur Polytechnic Colleges, the Academia Lasalliana Journal of Education and Humanities from De La Salle University – Dasmariñas, and the Universal Journal of Educational Research from Saint Joseph College. DOAJ is a directory with inclusion criteria, so being listed is a useful signal, but you should still read each article critically and check the journal’s peer-review policy on its own page.

Where does Philippine E-Journals fit?

Philippine E-Journals hosts journals from Philippine universities and professional organisations and tags articles by discipline, including Education. It reaches many school-based and college-based studies that no single directory lists. Abstracts are open, but full text is often limited to subscribing institutions, so check with your library. For the cross-course ranking of sources, read where to find related literature for a Philippine thesis.

How do you use ERIC for foreign studies?

ERIC, the Education Resources Information Center, is a free index of education research with filters for peer-reviewed items and for full text available on ERIC. Use it for the foreign half of your Chapter 2. Combine your variable with the learner level, for example "reading comprehension" AND "elementary school", and add the word Philippines to look for Philippine studies indexed there. Open the abstract to confirm the setting before you tag a study as local.

What should you search for, exactly?

• Your main variable in two or three phrasings, such as “learning modality,” “modular distance learning” and “blended learning.”
• The learner level: “Grade 7,” “junior high school,” “elementary pupils.”
• The setting: the region, division or province, and the school type.
• The design: “descriptive correlational,” “action research,” “phenomenological.”

Search each variable alone first, then pairs. A pair that returns no local study is a gap you can state in Chapter 1, backed by the foreign studies you found.

A worked search for one BEEd topic

Take an illustrative topic: “reading comprehension of Grade 3 pupils in public schools.” Here is how the search might run.

1. List the terms. “Reading comprehension” may appear as “reading proficiency,” “literacy” or “reading performance.” “Grade 3” may appear as “primary pupils” or “early grades.”
2. Browse E-Saliksik by theme. Open the Teaching and Learning theme, then the region where your respondents are. Expected output: a short list of DepEd studies, regional or national, with titles and years to log.
3. Browse The Normal Lights and the DOAJ education journals. Look for articles on early-grade reading. Expected output: peer-reviewed local studies that name instruments and designs you can compare.
4. Search ERIC for foreign studies. Use the term combinations above, with the peer-reviewed filter. Expected output: foreign studies that give you theory and instruments.
5. Check your college repository. Look for previous BEEd theses on reading. Expected output: format precedent and a warning if the topic has been done in your college.
6. Tag and decide. If most sources study comprehension alone and none relate it to a variable you plan to use, that is your gap.

How do you tag and organise what you find?

Create a source log from day one. Each row has the author and year, whether the study is local or foreign, design and sample, instrument, main finding and where you found it. Tag the design too, because panels check that your related studies include the designs you plan to use. A sample log layout:

When the log has enough rows, write Chapter 2 by theme, not by author. How to turn a log into a review is explained in how to write a review of related literature.

How do you cite what you find?

Cite each source in APA 7 with the details you actually saw. For a journal article, give the author, year, title, journal, volume, issue and pages. For a DepEd study from E-Saliksik, give the author or office, the year, the title and the portal as the source, plus a link, and describe it as a report or study, not as a journal article. For a previous thesis, give the author, year, title, the degree, the institution and the place. If a detail, such as the volume or the pages, is not visible to you, do not guess it. Look again, or ask your librarian.

Which quality checks should you run on a source?

1. Is the study complete, with a stated method and sample?
2. Is the journal’s ISSN, publisher and peer-review policy shown on its own page?
3. Is the study recent enough for your manual’s rule?
4. Does the abstract match the full text?
5. Does the article name its instrument and report validity and reliability?

A note on accreditation: some Philippine journals state that they were accredited under the Commission on Higher Education’s Journal Accreditation Service, and the accreditation periods stated on journals’ own pages can be years old. If a journal’s accreditation matters for your thesis, check its current status with the journal or your library rather than relying on an old statement.

How do local studies connect to the rest of your thesis?

The studies you find feed three parts of the manuscript: the background of the study, which needs a local problem backed by a local source; the theoretical framework, which should match what local researchers have used, as discussed in which theoretical framework an education thesis should use; and the instrument, which you can adapt from a local study if you have the author’s permission. Examples of well-built questionnaires are in how to make a thesis questionnaire for BEEd or BSEd. If your outcome variable is a grade, see academic performance in a thesis and how grades are measured.

Frequently asked questions

What counts as a local study for a BEEd or BSEd thesis?

A study conducted in the Philippines, with Filipino learners, teachers or schools. A foreign study was conducted elsewhere. Check your research manual for how it defines the split.

Can I cite DepEd regional research from E-Saliksik?

Yes, as a source of local studies, citing author, year, title and the portal. Check whether the study is final and quality assured, and prefer peer-reviewed work for your main argument.

Is every journal in a Philippine e-journal collection peer reviewed?

Not necessarily. Check each journal’s own page for its peer-review policy, ISSN and publisher, and prefer journals indexed in a recognised directory.

What does DOAJ guarantee?

DOAJ is a directory of open-access journals that applies inclusion criteria. Being listed is a useful quality signal, but you still read the article critically.

Where do I find foreign studies for my topic?

ERIC is a free index of education research, and Europe PMC, Google Scholar and your library’s databases can add more. Tag each source as local or foreign when you record it.

How old can the studies be?

Follow your research manual. Many schools prefer recent studies for the main body, with older works kept for seminal theories or instruments.

Can I use a previous thesis from my college as a source?

Yes, if it is accessible and cited correctly, but treat it as weaker than a peer-reviewed article and never copy its instrument or text.

Do I need both qualitative and quantitative studies?

Include the designs relevant to your variables. A mix helps show both patterns and experiences, but your objectives decide what is relevant.