Welcome to the third issue of Silliman Journal for 2016 which begins with Gina Bonior’s “Through Bronfenbrenner’s Eyes: A Look at Grade 1 Teachers’ Enactment of a Reading Instruction Program in Remote Communities in the Philippines”. Urie Bronfenbrenner was a Russian-born American developmental psychologist mostly known for his ecological systems theory of child development. Gina uses his bioecological systems theory and his process-person-context-time model as a backdrop for collecting narratives from Grade 1 teachers and showed them employing various strategies to effectively exercise their agency within the “complex reciprocal interaction” among the various layers of interrelated systems within a period of dynamic curricular changes in the Philippines, the K-12 reform initiative. The findings also suggest that despite the various structural constraints that impact teacher enactment of the program, teachers find creative ways to position themselves socially and politically to contextualize the program and meet their goal—that of making each child a reader in the mother tongue by the end of Grade 1. Then, another English instructor, Lady Flor Partosa describes “Connecting Home and the Diaspora through Hip Hop” via a study that brings Deep Foundation’s song “Children of the Sun” to Filipino students enrolled in Philippine Literature classes at Silliman University. The students responded to the song by watching the video and reading the song lyrics. The author found “the following perceptions of the respondents about the song:1) the overall message is to proclaim that the artists are Filipinos, 2) the artists view the Philippines as having a long history of struggle for independence, and 3) the respondents connect themselves to the country by identifying with heroes, popular culture icons, Filipino qualities and physical attributes as well as pointing out the problem of colonial mentality.” The author seeks to encourage more exploration on how to connect the diaspora and home—Filipino Americans and Filipinos—both in the fields of research and the Philippine literature classroom. The third paper, from the psychology discipline, is also about home— literally, the Filipino family system—and, in particular, the role of the scapegoat in family dynamics and interaction. The study takes off from a previous study on the tagasalo (caretaker) role among siblings where a sibling quite unlike the tagasalo is theorized as taking on the scapegoat role. It is hypothesized that the sibling who might be “singled out for disfavor” fulfills an important role in family systems. Eleven respondents described this sibling; the authors suggest that deferential parental treatment is advisable over preferential parental treatment. This paper is then followed by the “Use of Facebook by a Science Political Party: A Uses and Gratification Study of Agham Partylist in the Philippines” by Kristine Araguas and Serlie Jamias. In conducting a case study on political communication, the authors found not surprisingly, that, contrary to the expectation of Facebook users seeking sciencerelated and development information, they are rather more interested in entertainment, social empathy, and emotional release. The full-length articles are rounded off by “Gender Meanings and Inclusion of Girls in Primary Education among the Ta-oy Tribe in Saravan Province, Lao PDR” by Khounkham Douangphachone and colleagues from the University of the Philippines-Los Baños, Laguna. Using feminist theories highlighting standpoint theory as anchor, this study used interviews, surveys, and focused group discussions to investigate the meaning of gender in 13 villages in the Ta-oy District, Saravan Province, Lao PDR. Almost half defined gender as “men and women who are working in solidarity in the farm”—the reason why girls doing household chores is prioritized over school participation. Given that fathers among the Ta-oy tribe play a major role in inhibiting girls’ participation in school, school officials at the local levels need to address this concern to ensure compliance to the development goal of universal access to primary education.