Travelogue as Supplementary Learning Tool Towards Students’ Historical Thinking Skills

The study utilized experimental-developmental quantitative research design through the use of teacher-made and expert-validated survey questionnaire, pretest and posttest to find the effects of researcher-designed travelogue as a supplementary learning tool in improving the historical thinking skills of fifty (50) Grade 7 students in a public high school in San Pablo City. Results showed that as to the learners’ attitude toward learning styles, visual, auditory, and kinesthetic modalities sometimes apply to them. As to the level of interest, the students were generally interested in the topics for Araling Panlipunan 7. Scores of the respondents as to historical thinking skills were generally also shifted from the satisfactory, very satisfactory ranges to the outstanding range. This is true for sourcing, corroborating, contextualizing, close reading and explicit instruction. Statistical tests for relationships and differences also reflected significant difference on the historical thinking skills of the learners implying that the use of travelogue has improved the skills of the learners and only visual related to explicit instruction and auditory to corroborating. This concludes that the attitudes of the learners toward learning styles partially relate to some of the historical thinking skills.


Introduction
Social Studies, Makabayan, or as it is known today as Araling Panlipunan is one among the learning areas of almost all of the learners in the Philippines. It lays most stress on dealing with the development of social awareness, encompassing on its teaching all the core values of the Department of Education -Maka-Diyos, Maka-Kalikasan, Maka-tao and Maka-Bansa. It contributes to the development of a total individual that is holistically prepared and is aware, knowledgeable, and critically minded in analyzing different social issues and concerns locally and globally (Tejada, 2017). Furthermore, teaching Araling Panlipunan entails the use of integrated approaches that enables the learners to personally process each, and every idea discussed in the class and helped them practice wide range of values and life skills.
In the Philippines, there have been a revamp in the educational system. From a face-to-face learning modality were learning happened inside the classroom, when the pandemic hit the world of education, was shifted to a distance learning modality. In an attempt to still give learners, the best education that they needed, the educational system must also go forward to cope up with the need of the new normal setting of education. And with this, online distance learning, blended learning and modular distance learning emerged consequently.
Online learning is a kind of learning modality were one take courses online instead of in a physical classroom. In doing so, many online platforms are available for educators and learners to utilize and engage in such type of learning. It requires basically of an internet connection for one to be able to have this kind of learning modality. On the other hand, blended learning are combinations of many different modes of leaning, including the online and modular distance learning. Among the three popular learning modalities in the Philippines, the modular distance learning is the most used of all. In modular distance learning modality, learners were given set of modules for them to study, with the guidance of their parents or guardian at home. These modules are basically of a heavy text-based content, making it not appealing to the eyes of learners in general. As among the less fortunate in terms of technological advancement in education, most of the learners opted to choose modular distance learning during pandemic. Educators are very much aware of the materials used in line with this modalitymodules that are heavily bombarded with text.
This study aimed to find ways to engage students in the learning process while developing different individual skills in teaching certain topics in Araling Panlipunan 7 through the creation 120 | International Journal of Educational Management and Development Studies, Volume 3 Issue 4 and introduction of a travelogue. It is also conducted to find ways to effectively engage learners in the teaching-learning process under the distance learning modality using visual travelogue as a supplementary learning material and consequently improve individual skills of learners, specifically their historical thinking skills.

Capturing the Attention of Students in Class
Some psychologists claim the typical student's attention span is about 10 to 15 minutes long. Some, if lucky enough, gets longer. It is natural for student attention levels to vary according to motivation, mood, perceived relevance of the material, and other factors including learning styles. As cited on the article 'Impact of Teaching Time on Attention and Concentration' published on August 2014, most of the students lose attention and concentration during lengthy teaching learning activities.
Ben-Ari (2012) introduced visual programmable interactive media with scratch to support the development of computational thinking skills. He also introduced games-based learning, such as scratch, and game-based construction that utilizes visual manipulation to engage children at the primary level with computer programming concepts. With Scratch, users can program interactive stories, games, and animations. It helps young people learn to think creatively. Similarly, Stolee and Fristoe (2011) used Kodu Game Lab as part of their visual tool to introduce children to programming in early ages. Kodu is 3-D visual programming tool/platform that is suitable for kids which can be used to teach creativity, problem solving, as well as programming. Several studies introduced visual programming platform, MIT App, to increase interest and skills of learners in computational practices. A visual programming platform, MIT App, enables individual to create and to design Android apps and games which can also be used in various fields. The App Inventor platform teaches students how to program mobile apps, and the material is suitable for middle school, high school, and college courses.
According to , humans have the power to remember things that caught visually in memory for a much longer period. Most appreciate visually appealing materials presented in different ways. Interestingly, knowledge and skill imparted by the help of those materials would have retained to date in memories. Therefore, visual learning has proved as an important and effective process. For example, when people lost keys at home, they tend to close their eyes and imagine the location of the keysand this has proved to be working for almost all the time. This is how the effect of visual images to remember things faster which happens in day-to-day life.

Travelogue and Travel Literatures
Travelogue came from two distinct words, "travel" and "monologue". Travelogue as many dictionaries suggest is a compilation about the places visited and experiences that have been encountered by a traveler. Others define it as an illustrated talk describing the experiences of and places visited by a traveler that may come in a form of a movie, a book, or even just a simple catalogue. A travelogue concludes a journey, finishes it and makes it complete. It is not just a way of writing down impressions; it is a creative transformation of all that have seen, experienced and learned into something new and unique, something that can be shared.
Travel literature typically records the experiences of an author touring a place for the pleasure of travel. An individual work, may it be an own personal travel or of other people's travel is oftentimes called a travelogue. A travelogue is simply a person or other person's account of a journey to another country or place. It can either be of a written report with many factual details or a narrative story about personal impressions and experiences that is supported by images.
As visual learning helps store information longer, it makes communication quicker and simpler, making difficult to understand and text heavy topics easy to grasp by the learners.
Travelogue will act as a catalyst in stimulating the imagination and cognitive skills of the students and may eventually help them to connect familiar materials to unfamiliar ones. Incorporation of travel writing or travelogue into a theoretical tourism subject was indeed an effective way to enhance student learning. It helped students link the theoretical content of the subject and real-life and the travel writers' description between cultures and helped them learn about other cultures as well (Aboe, 2020). Travelogues have long been recognized as a useful resource for travel literature, destination image creation and promotion, geography and historical learning, and tourism education (Pan & Ryan, 2007).
Travel Writing or Travelogue is an old canon of literature that deals with nature writing, adventure writing, exploration writing, guidebooks and many more. Even the Picaresque form of novel had elements of travel writing in it. It is an enormous job as one has to be an effective user of language and at the same time be a keen observer to portray and display analytical data. People 122 | International Journal of Educational Management and Development Studies, Volume 3 Issue 4 try to see a new world through the writing and impression of a writer who serves to be an informer, advisor, and guide (Mishra, 2014). Schur (2013) argues that travelogues are effective tool in teaching history in class. As historians have an incredible array of travelogues written at various times in history, reading samples from travelogues and related chapters in textbooks enable students imagine themselves in the role of a traveler with a particular purpose, that is, to understand and to see what the writer of the travelogue have seen along his or her way.

Historical Thinking Skills: Thinking Like a Historian Method
Historical thinking skills is defined by many education resources as a set of reasoning skills that students should learn as a result of studying social studies or history. It refers to the following skills as coined up by Weinberg (2001): sourcingemboldens learners to measure how the author's perspectives and motives for writing affect their interpretations of events; corroboration encourages learners to classify opposing views and testimonies; contextualizationencourages learners to comprehend the complete picture of what is happening on the phase of the historical event; close Readingencourages learners to absorb the text deliberately and profoundly by constructing words and sentences for meaning; and explicit instructionfocus on modelling skills, guided practices, and providing feedback (Culminas- Colis et al., 2016).
Historical thinking skills is a very important skill in modern day education because it requires a variety of learning tools that are able to capture the different capacities of the students in their interpretation of the past and their historical skills (Carrasco & Martinez, 2016). According to Raiyn (2016), it is a creative process made by historians to interpret sources from the past and generate historical chronicles. There are six key concepts that need to be considered when doing this namely; historical relevance, sources, change and continuity, causes and consequences, historical perspective, and the ethical dimension of history. This suggests a learner to possess a series of skills that need to be developed inside the classroom.
To be able to independently analyze primary sources, it is very important for students to gain skills of historical sense making, that is, to be able to think historically, and to be able to construct from the "confused tangle", of what is history, a straightforward and most probable account for what may have happened for events from the past (Cowgill & Waring, 2017). Students need to be equipped with the skills necessary for reading, writing, and analysis to be able to properly understand and convey the stories of the past, in both educational and public spheres (Nordgren, 2016).
In order to think historically, Waring (2011) suggests students must be given opportunities to create their own authentic questions, utilize a variety of sources, to have the skill set to properly examine, read, and determine the context for original sources, be able to consider alternative perspectives, find sources to corroborate and question their hypotheses, and construct their own narratives. According to the AP U.S. History Curriculum Framework (2014), learners best improve their historical thinking skills by means of investigation and reflection of the past, particularly through exploration and interpretation of the different primary and secondary sources in writings and through historical argumentation in writing. Furthermore, these skills can also be developed by educators though engaging learners in open-ended research and writing assignments and by providing them with visually enticing facts of history.
Historical thinking skills are essential for learners to be thinking like a historian. It renders more highlight on the way history and its details be treated and analyzed. According to Waring (2011), these skills are very much needed in having a correct and appropriate understanding of what happened, why it happened and how significant these events or people are. Mishra (2014) enumerates that sourcing, corroborating, contextualizing, close reading and explicit instruction all belong to historical thinking skills.

Research Design
The research employed a quantitative method of research including developmental and experimental method of research by means of developing a researcher-designed travelogue and a pre and post-test to check the effectiveness of the designed travelogue in the teaching-learning process. Developmental research follows a systematic design of study, development and evaluation of instructional programs or materials, and evaluation of changes over an extended period of time. On the other hand, experimental research involves a strict adherence in a scientific research design that includes formulating a hypothesis, identifying a manipulative and measurable variable that is completed within a controlled environment.

Respondents of the Study
The respondents of the study are the Grade 7 students of an integrated High School referred to section Calibato under the modular distance learning modality. In this class, there were 25 males and 25 females.

Research Instrument
The study utilized a questionnaire in gathering data and the researcher-designed travelogue validated by the Araling Panlipunan Master Teacher. The questionnaire includes the profile of the respondents in terms of age and gender. It also includes their attitude towards different learning styles (visual, auditory, and kinesthetic) from which the respondents are inclined to. Questionnaire on assessing students' level of interest in learning Araling Panlipunan was also used in this part, together with a pre-test in assessing the students historical thinking skills prior to the exposure on the visual travelogue.
The study also used pre and post-test composed of 30 multiple choice items. It covers the following topics on Asian Studies under the Araling Panlipunan 7 Most Essential Learning Competency for quarter 3: Week 6 -Bahaging Ginampanan ng Nasyonalismo sa Pagbibigay Wakas sa Imperyalismo sa Timog at Kanlurang Asya; Week 7 -Ang mga Pagbabagong Pangekonomiya, Antas ng Pag-unlad at Neokolonyalismo sa Timog at Kanlurang Asya; and Week 8 -Mga Kontribusyon ng Timog at Kanlurang Asya sa Kulturang Asyano. Each correct item in the test was given a score of one. The passing score was based on the standard grading system of the school. This was used to know the level of comprehension of the Grade 7 students towards the subject Ararling Panlipunan 7 in terms of their various historical thinking skillssourcing, corroborating, contextualizing, closed reading, and explicit instruction, before and after the introduction of the self-designed travelogue.

Research Procedure
a. Survey. Several tools to gather important information and data were implemented on this study. Students who have access on the internet were prescribed to use an online data gathering platform particularly the Google Docs in answering learners' profile (age, gender, interest in learning Araling Panlipunan 7 and their attitude towards different learning styles) while for those who do not have internet connection, the traditional pen-and paper method was used. b. Travelogue. After a thorough checking of the travelogue for its content reliability and errors, it was then introduced to the selected grade 7 students. It was used in the study primarily as a supplemental material in teaching Araling Panlipunan 7, quarter 3. The content was anchored on the topics that need visual representations and an easy-to-grasp information of the lesson. The travelogue was distributed to the learners on a one-time basis, on their 6th week of receiving their weekly learner' packet from the school. Parents, guardians and the learners were advised that the travelogue for each learner-respondents suffice the whole three-week coverage of their lesson in the learners' packet. Simple instructions were also incorporated in the travelogue for the learners to be able to follow the connection between the topics in the lesson and in the travelogue. Group chats, text messages, and other forms of communication were also employed to ensure that learners managed the use of the travelogue in relation to their lesson in Araling Panlipunan.

Statistical Treatment of Data
Several statistical tools were used to present, analyze and, and interpret the data gathered.
Frequency distribution and percentage will be used to describe the general information gathered from the profile of the respondents. Mean and standard deviation were employed to determine the perception of the respondents towards their interest in learning Araling Panlipunan and their learning style preferences. Two-tailed test was used in determining the differences between the post-test and pre-test while Pearson-r product moment of correlation was utilized in determining relationships of the travelogue and students' performance in Araling Panlipunan 7 in terms of their historical thinking skills.  Table 1 shows the summary of all the respondents' attitude towards the three learning styles namely visual, auditory, and kinesthetic. Based on the data, the visual learning style got the highest overall mean of 2.15 followed by the auditory (mean=1.99) and the kinesthetic learning style having the least over all mean of 1.89. Although all the learning styles has variation on their overall mean, all of them falls under the verbal interpretation "sometimes applies to me" (1.51 to 2.50 mean). Furthermore, the combined overall means of the three-learning style (1.98), also falls under the same verbal interpretation, which suggests that respondents find the learning styles not much related on the way they understand or learn things.   Table 3 shows the in historical thinking skills before and after the use of travelogue.

Findings and Discussion
In terms of sourcing, the skills of an individual towards identifying the relevance of a documents author and its creation, the pretest and posttest scores show that out of 50 students there are only 16 students who got an outstanding score on their pretest. Comparing to their scores on posttest after providing the travelogue, the scores exponentially increased, having an outstanding score from 46 students.
In terms of corroborating, the congestion of the scores is found in 80 to 84 up to the 90 and above score ranges. The same percentage of scores for the satisfactory bracket is found in the 74 and below range. In general, the scores suggest that there is a certain percentage of learners who, prior to the exposure to the material, are already performing outstandingly. Posttest scores, however, reveal that most of the respondents are already able to corroborate with other learners.
All scores fall under satisfactory to outstanding. These findings are consistent with Berkeley and Barber (2015) that when students are more comfortable with what they are asked to do, they are more likely to excel in it. Specifically, the travelogue has caught the attention of the learners and was also able to sustain it more than just conducting classes or answering modules.
In contextualization, the lessons are made to adapt to the natural environment the learner has. It may be related to the local setting of the school, the situation of the learner at home or with the students' personal experiences. When lessons are localized it becomes highly relatable to learners. As a skill, contextualizing is made by learners in their heads. They try to anchor lesson objectives and learning opportunities to their personal experiences and thus the existence of a meaningful connection was established. This in turn makes learned content easier to recall (Guevarra, 2020). Since it is a skill that demands learners to think more deeply, the low scores of the respondents signify that they find it hard to make connections between what is learned in the module and their daily experiences or other relevant experiences along the way. They find the lesson completely independent of their daily encounters in life. But it is also important to note that before the use of the travelogue, there are also students who can perform such skills. This number of students significantly increased after the use of the travelogue. In fact, 94.00% of the respondents were able to perform outstandingly and there were only 3 who performed very satisfactorily. According to Tinong (2018), contextualizing meaning from any lesson as viewed by learners is a plainly difficult task. It involves critical thinking and which is seldom used by learners in modular distance learning. Considering the outstanding scores of the respondents, it may be further inferred that travelogue, or its use, can make learners use their other historical thinking skills.
In terms of close reading skill, a historical skill that centers itself on the thought of the texts and the language where it is written, it focuses more on the messages being relayed by the document. Initially, the learners are performing satisfactorily, very satisfactorily and outstandingly. This means that even before the use of the travelogue, some of them are able to grasp what is written in the learning modules. However, there are still students who are struggling with this skill. They read texts, and can understand what it says but are misled by the thoughts of the sentences. After the use of the material, the scores of the respondents are mostly found in the outstanding bracket. This goes to show that they can already get the messages in the material more precisely and more accurately. This may be attributed to the characteristic of the travelogue that uses less texts, and therefore only the most essential information is present. These are consistent with the findings of Suarez (2018), who found in his study that shorter phrases are more preferred by secondary learners. He compared the level of understanding of secondary learners in Araling Panlipunan using storylines with long selections and synopsis-based literature which are relatively shorter. It revealed that the students who used synopsis-based literature retained more information.
The results further show that there are 20 students who already developed explicit instruction skills before exposure to the use of travelogue, 6 of them performed very satisfactorily, 16% performed satisfactorily and 32% had scores below expectations. In the posttest, majority (98%) of the respondents had outstanding scores and only 1 scored satisfactorily. Yarbrough   These findings lead to the conclusion that before the use of travelogue, there were students who were able to answer the questions outstandingly because they already have developed skills.
There were also students who failed to meet the expectations because their skills are yet to be developed. Based on the values of the mean, the test scores are relatively far and the posttest scores are more homogenous. By homogenous, based on the value of the standard deviation, the scores are closely knitted to each other. This therefore drives the assumption that the learners with low level skills were able to catch up to the skills of those who initially performed outstandingly.
Findings are congruent with Suarez (2018) where the use of specific learning materials and teaching strategies are capable of developing learning skills, which may vary from one discipline to another and may be developed by specific strategies depending on the nature of the subject and the technique.
The travelogue was designed for learners to grasp its content effectively. It uses mostly images or pictures that are related the topic being discussed on the learners' modules or the learners' packet. Use of text were minimized and simple instructions and explanations were incorporated on the travelogue to avoid long-time reading of text that was experienced by learners using their modules or learners' packet. As such, this kind of materials that was used in the travelogue, less text-based-supported by images content, lead the significant increase on the students' scores on their post-test.
For the test of relationship shown in table 5, the values reveal that in general, the profile of the respondents do not significantly relate to their posttest scores in the historical thinking skills test. As to age, it has no significant relationship to all the historical skills. This implies that age is highly unlikely tied to historical skills of the learners. The same can be said for sex and the learners' attitude towards kinesthetic learning. As to the attitude of the learners in visual learning, it has significant negative correlation to explicit instruction. This means that learners who have high attitude toward visual learning have low scores in explicit instruction. One of the possible reasons is that, since explicit instruction focuses on modelling, guided practices and providing feedback, students find it hard to be guided and provided with feedback because the material focuses on visual representations which they prefer. Meanwhile, learners' attitude toward auditory learning showed significant negative correlation to corroborating. In Derilo (2019), corroborating is a skill that tends learners to ask questions. However, the travelogue focuses on the description of illustrations which made it rather difficult to tie the skill to the learning preference.

Conclusion
This study aimed to determine the level of interest of the learners, their attitude toward learning styles and their historical skills. The study used descriptive-experimental research design focused on students' perception on the learning styles and its effectiveness in improving the historical thinking skills of the students.
From the data gathered and interpreted, respondents were found to be generally interested in all the lessons in Araling Panlipunan 7. The pre-exposure tests scores were generally 132 | International Journal of Educational Management and Development Studies, Volume 3 Issue 4 concentrated on the scales interpreting to Did Not Meet Expectations, Fairly and Satisfactory ranging from below 74 and 80 to 84. After the use of the travelogue, the scores shifted to the 85 to 89 and 90 and above ranges which interpret as Very Satisfactory and Outstanding. This is true for all the Historical Thinking Skills that were tested. Significant relationships were found between visual and explicit instruction and auditory and corroboration. All other learning styles have no significant relationship to the historical skills. The scores of the respondents before and after exposure to the travelogue were significantly different in terms of sourcing, corroborating, contextualizing, close reading and explicit instruction. All scores for the different skills are in favor of the post test.
Based on the findings of the study, it is concluded that if a material can further have the desired qualities of a supplementary material, specifically tapping on visual and auditory in terms of explicit instruction and corroboration, it is likely that the learners will have a higher level of historical thinking skills. The use of travelogue has developed the level of historical thinking skills of the student respondents. It is effective in developing the said skills for the learners.