SURVIVING AND THRIVING: THE EDUCATIONAL JOURNEY OF JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL 4PS BENEFICIARIES

Education

ABSTRACT In terms of the ongoing global dialogue on poverty, conditional welfare, and educational justice this study highlights the lived educational circumstances of Junior High School beneficiaries of the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) in the Philippines. 4Ps is a conditional cash transfer program. While studies in macro contexts identify improvements in school attendance, they have given little attention to the experiences of 4Ps students who are negotiating structural inequities at the micro level. Utilizing Bourdieu’s theory of capital, Ungar’s multisystemic resilience framework, and Freire’s critical pedagogy, this phenomenological research study was conducted within a critical-interpretive paradigm. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews with twelve 4Ps student-beneficiaries in Agusan del Sur, Philippines. The data were analyzed using reflexive thematic inquiry. Findings reveal rich educational landscapes situated in a state of affective ambivalence, economic uncertainty, and moral commitment. The themes include: affective contradictions to schooling and scarcity; the ‘hidden curriculum of poverty’; the dialectical tensions of the 4Ps as hope and as limit; and the development of informal solidarities and faith-based agency of students. Instead of defining resilience as an individual quality of grit, this study rearticulates resilience as always relational and systemic and has to do with familial relationships, spiritual practices, and peer collaboration to leverage resources. Theoretically, this study has informed debates in political sociology, authoritarian studies, and educational policy studies by showing how conditionality and meritocratic frameworks reconstitute poverty as an individual deficiency. Practically, this study supports the need for comprehensive reforms that are participatory, trauma-informed, culturally relevant, and can draw from sociological perspectives that center marginal voices in policy contexts. This study has the potential to contribute to global conversations on the ethical reframing of educational governance bounded within neoliberalism. Keywords: educational equity, 4Ps, conditional cash transfer, resilience, Bourdieu, critical pedagogy, qualitative inquiry

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