A FIFTH LOYOLA SCHOOL: THE GOKONGWEI BROTHERS SCHOOL OF EDUCATION AND LEARNING DESIGN

The Ateneo de Manila University just opened a new school.

In a memo released on the 23rd of May 2021, University President, Fr. Roberto Yap SJ, announced the establishment of the Gokongwei Brothers School of Education and Learning Design. GBSEALD will be the fifth Loyola School on the Ateneo de Manila campus.

The naming is in recognition of a substantial donation from the Gokongwei Brothers Foundation (GBF) to establish the Gokongwei Brothers Foundation Endowment for Educational Innovation.

Ateneo de Manila’s newest Loyola School signals a strategic partnership between two leading institutions–one that promises to make a lasting impact on Philippine education.

“We have high hopes for Ateneo’s new school of education,” Fr. Bobby Yap said. “Aside from offering topnotch teacher education and training programs, we see the school as making a real difference in Philippine education through high-impact educational research and creative strategic partnerships here and abroad.”

Ms. Bernadine T. Siy, Chair of the Ateneo de Manila Board of Trustees, noted the significance of the new school by saying, “The establishment of GBSEALD is Ateneo’s big step forward in fulfilling our education mission as a Jesuit institution. We hope to do our share in helping the country improve the education outcomes of more and more Filipinos in the coming years.”

The Gokongwei Brothers Foundation is led by its Chair, Lance Y. Gokongwei, who is also a member of the Board of Trustees of Ateneo de Manila; GBF President James L. Go, an original donor to the Foundation; as well as the Trustees of GBF representing their parents who endowed the Foundation, and who are also Ateneo alumni: Patrick Henry C. Go (AdMU ’91), Johnson Robert G. Go Jr (AdMU ’86), and Lisa Y. Gokongwei-Cheng (AdMU ’90). 

GBF chairman Lance Y. Gokongwei expressed his hope in the partnership by saying, “We believe that this endowment and strategic partnership with a trusted institution like Ateneo allows us to become a meaningful contributor towards helping transform Philippine education to meet the challenges of a continuously evolving world.”

GBF General Manager Lisa Y. Gokongwei-Cheng, who is herself an Atenean, added, “We are pleased and delighted to be collaborating again with Ateneo, this time through GBSEALD, as we work towards our goal of developing our teachers and educators, who are the shapers of our future citizens,”

A venerable history

The Jesuits were actually the first to offer teacher education in the Philippines when back in 1865, they set up the Escuela Normal de Maestros in a large rented house in Intramuros, Manila.

Over the next forty years, the Jesuit-run normal school–the first ever in the country–conferred the title of “Maestro” on more than two thousand of its graduates, who went on to serve as highly respected citizens all over the country, many of whom also became outstanding revolutionary leaders (Meany, 1982).

Authorized by Spanish Royal Decree, the Jesuit Escuela Normal effectively elevated the status of the teaching profession in the Philippines through the quality of maestros that it produced (Alzona, 1932).

Although the normal school was shut down in 1905, the Jesuits never paused in its mission to develop teachers for all levels of education, in both public and private institutions, through its graduate programs at the Ateneo de Manila University, not to mention the different Schools of Education in Ateneo de Cagayan, Ateneo de Davao, Ateneo de Naga, and Ateneo de Zamboanga.

A Unique School of Education

This year, 156 years after the inauguration of the Escuela Normal de Maestros, the Ateneo de Manila University reaffirms its commitment to Philippine education in a significant way precisely through the establishment of the new Gokongwei Brothers School of Education and Learning Design.

As its name implies, it is not envisioned to be “just another School of Education.” Its focus on learning design not only emphasizes that there is both a science and an art to learning and teaching, but also that learning today happens beyond the confines of formal education. Hence, the graduates that the school hopes to produce will include not only teachers in basic and higher education, but also other learning professionals such as online instructional designers, adult learning specialists, human resource practitioners, and even educational entrepreneurs.

The primary mission of the new school, however, is Philippine educational reform. Founding Dean, Fr. Johnny Go SJ, EdD, explained: “We want to work closely with the numerous groups already committed to addressing the learning crisis in the country. And we hope to do this by marshalling the multidisciplinary expertise and educational expertise that we are so lucky to have in the university and to build on the numerous efforts already being exerted by our different schools and centers in teacher education and training.”

GBSEALD will be offering an array of master’s programs in education this year, and will add its new cutting-edge undergrad and doctoral educational programs in the next year or two.

Dr. Marlu Vilches, Vice President for the Loyola Schools, put it best when she said: “In a world of great turmoil such as ours, there’s nothing more hope-giving than good education for a country’s citizenry. At the forefront of this vision is the Ateneo Gokongwei Brothers School of Education and Learning Design – solid in expertise, grounded in adaptive pedagogies, fired with the zeal of service.”

A dynamic and dedicated team will be assisting the GBSEALD Dean, Fr. Johnny Go SJ, in building up the new school. It’s virtually the same team that led the university’s efforts last year to migrate to online learning.

Three of them will head the academic departments of the new school:

• Curriculum, Pedagogy, and Assessment (Dr. Rhodora Nicdao, PhD);
• Educational Management and Leadership (Dr. Isabel Pefianco-Martin, PhD); and
• Catholic Educational Philosophy and Practice (Fr. Francis Alvarez SJ, PhD).

The following will serve as the Directors of its centers and programs:

• The Ateneo Teacher Center (ATC) with Director, Rita J. Atienza,
• The Ateneo SALT Institute with its Director, Galvin Radley Ngo,
• Pathways for Higher Education (PHE) with Director Solvie Nubla-Lee,
• The Ignatian Initiative for Teacher Excellence (IGNITE) with its Program Director, Jeraldine Ching-Wu, and finally,
• a new program named the Lily Ngochua Leadership Academy, in honor of the Gokongwei brothers’ only sister and started to train educational leaders especially in the public education sector.

Here’s an interesting–and significant–piece of historical trivia: The Escuela Normal was later relocated to Padre Faura Street–at the present site of Robinsons Place Manila (!).

Video by Jeremy Gemzontan

Special thanks to the following for the video footages and images:
* Paolo Abella
* Alvin Ylana
* Marco Lopez
* Niceprint, and
* Biblioteca Nacional de España

Alzona, Encarnacion (1932). A history of education in the Philippines: 1565-1930. First Edition. Manila: University of the Philippines Press.

Meany, James J. (1982). Escuela normal de maestros. Philippine Studies 30(4): 433-511.

Sumpaico, J. C., (2020). Philippine Jesuit Schools of Education: Heroic Institutions of Learning and Leadership in Mission. Doctoral Dissertations. 523 pp.