Awareness on Regional Amalgamation of Teaching Personnel in Higher Education : Views and Implications

As regionalism continuously shapes the economic and political landscape of countries within the Asia Pacific, strengthening awareness on the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) becomes pivotal in ensuring successful regional integration. Regarded as potent partners of higher education institutions, educators are expected to exhibit strong familiarity with the ASEAN to prepare their students for the challenges of regional integration. Hence, this survey type of research determined the awareness on ASEAN of teaching personnel of the five state universities in a region in the Philippines. The results revealed that the respondents were aware to very aware of the ASEAN charter, its economic, socio-cultural, and political integration, and the regional principles that seemed to reflect the initiative of their respective institutions toward internalization. The results also revealed variability among the responses of the respondents on ASEAN awareness when grouped as to their respective universities that are likely to be influenced by differences in school culture and ideology. This study calls for educational innovations to sustain and harness awareness on ASEAN of the academic community in response to the challenges of the regional integration