Paper Title
A Phenomenology of ICT Scarcity: Lived Experiences of Instructional Leaders in Philippine Public Schools

Abstract
Educational policies are formulated particularly on the area of Information and Communication Technology in Education. These policies largely consider various factors like financial, geographical, political, religious, and socio-cultural similarities and differences among educational contexts, settings, teachers, students, and educational leaders. Amidst the widespread use of information and communication technology, instructional leaders of the Philippine Basic Education, particularly the public schools are still experiencing scarcity of this technology. Through hermeneutic phenomenology of Van Manen, this study aims to holistically understand how instructional leaders lived through the phenomenon of scarcity of ICT in Basic Education in selected public schools in the country. From five key informants who are principals, head teachers, and master teachers, a rich description of the experience provides the structure of the phenomenon under study. This phenomenological study extracted interwoven themes that surround ICT scarcity. These themes are “Facets of Scarcity: Are These Enough for Us?”, “Cohorts of Scarcity: Are They for Us or Against Us?”, and “Initiatives in Scarcity: Can These Sustain Us?” These captured the essence of the experienced phenomenon that besets various public elementary schools in the country today. The experiences of key informants suggest that the phenomenon of scarcity is in a see-saw reality which is a balancing act between ICT utilization and integration and that of ICT scarcity. ICT scarcity carries the burden of different aspects and dimensions of scarcity, captured in the theme “facets of scarcity.” Scarcity, which is an important concept in economics, is a vast reality that can never be outweighed, unless educational leaders do something to strike the balance—the “initiatives in scarcity.” Key words- ICT, ICT problems, instructional leaders, technology, computer, Internet, and ICT in Basic Education