Educational innovations for empowering teachers in ... - QScience.com

O PE N ACCE SS

Global Innovators Conference 2013 College of the North Atlanic-Qatar, 4-7th April 2013

Educational innovations for empowering teachers in acomplishing better education in Indonesia 1 Gadjah Mada University

Bulaksumur, Yogyakarta Indonesia 2Titian Foundation as an Implementing Partner of ROTA, part of the Qatar Foundation, Doha, Qatar 3 Gunadarma University, Jakarta, Indonesia * [email protected]

http://dx.doi.org/10.5339/ qproc.2013.gic.11 © 2013 Ramdhani, Ancok, licensee Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Journals. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution license CC BY 3.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Neila Ramdhani1,2, Djamaludin Ancok2,3

Abstract An assessment of Indonesian teacher competence, conducted nationally in 1999, indicated that there were less than 25% of teachers meeting the national standard requirement. To address the pressing need of improving their competence, the Ministry of National Education (MONE) issued Regulation No. 16/2077 on teacher competence certification. The Teacher Quality Improvement (TQI) program was invented to address the requirement in accordance with the regulation. TQI focuses on facilitating teachers to be inspiring teachers and equipping them with capacity to implement a sound teaching method. The TQI Program consists of two types of innovation; first, the innovation of training method, and second, the innovation in recruitment process of training participants. The former aims at improving teachers in three areas of competence, namely personality, social, and pedagogy competencies. The training method utilizes an experiential learning approach involving cognitive, affective and psychomotor aspects. It uses learning tools such as game, video, story-telling and group discussion. The duration of the training is two weeks, five days a week, and each day it lasts from 8.00 am to 10.00 pm. Based on a study aimed at assessing the effectiveness of the program, it was found that the TQI program is effective in improving teacher competence. The innovation in recruiting training participants is carried out through creating a ‘buy-in’ of the program by inviting school headmasters to attend a ‘one-day seminar on a new paradigm in teaching and learning’. The purpose of the seminar is to inform school headmasters about the benefits of the TQI program for school quality improvement, and how the TQI program can improve teacher competence. During the seminar, school headmasters are introduced to the program outline, training methods applied, duration of the training, and trainers involved in the program. In order to make sure that participation in the training will not harm a teacher’s career (considering that a participant should be absent from teaching his/her classes for two weeks), headmasters are informed that the program has been approved by the Indonesian Ministry of National Education (MONE) and the credit received from the participation can be counted for the teacher certification, which enriches the teacher’s portfolio. The second step of creating a buy-in TQI program is the implementation of ‘three-day school-headmaster workshop’. The participants of the workshop are school headmasters who participated in one-day seminar. It aims to provide school headmasters with more detailed knowledge and practices in applying the new paradigm in teaching and learning. Knowing more about the benefits of the TQI program, they are expected

Cite this article as: Ramdhani N., Ancok D. Educational innovations for empowering teachers in acomplishing better education in Indonesia, QScience Proceedings 2013, Global Innovators Conference 2013:11 http://dx.doi.org/10.5339/qproc.2013.gic.11

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to be interested in it and to send their teachers to join the program. The third step is to send TQI program staff to approach school-headmasters who have participated in previous steps at school, offering them the opportunity to send their teachers to join TQI program. The new approach of recruiting participants has been a success story for this program. More than 1500 teachers have participated in the TQI Program. Keywords: teacher competence training, education innovation, experiential learning methods.

Background The quality of education in Indonesia is lagging behind that of developed countries. Based on the report of Education Development Index published by UNESCO (2011) in the year of 2008 Indonesia ranked number 69 out of 127 countries listed in the report. There are many factors causing this level of quality. Among those are poverty, lack of school infrastructure, and low level of teacher quality. Based on a national teacher competence assessment conducted in 1999, aiming to assess the national teacher competence in 1999, it was found that out of 1,455,507 elementary school teachers only 51% of them fulfilled the national standard requirement. In 2012, MONE conducted another survey and found that the highest score of Teacher Competence Test was achieved by teachers from Yogyakarta region, however this score was still lower than minimum score required (Tempo, 2012). In addition to the aforementioned data, there have been more cases of teacher abuse and maltreatments toward students reported by media. Despite the fact that teacher competence in general is low, developing teacher competence is not of prime importance in the MONE program. In the last ten years, the Ministry of Education of Indonesia has changed the national curriculum three times. In 2004, MONE changed the early previous curriculum, with competence based curriculum (KBK). In 2006, MONE changed KBK into Education Unit Level Curriculum (KTSP), and then in 2013 national curriculum was changed into the 2013 national curriculum based on subject matter groupings. However, the change in curriculum was not followed up by preparing teachers for adoption of the new curriculum. The incompetence of teachers in delivering learning process becomes one of major issues that need to be addressed in order to improve the quality of education. TQI is a program that aims to improve teacher competence. It is a strategy that is very important in the effort of improving education quality. There have been research findings indicating that one standard deviation increase in teacher quality is associated with a 0.1 to 0.2 standard deviation improvement in student academic achievement (Rivkin, Hanuskek, & Kain, 2005).

Teacher Quality Improvement Program In responding to the pressing need to improve teacher competence, Titian Foundation in collaboration with ROTA of Qatar Foundation, has initiated a Teacher Quality Improvement program. The program focuses on facilitating teachers to be inspiring teachers, and equipping them with capacity to implement a sound teaching method. In addition, it also develops teachers’ internal motivation and needs so that they will be proud of their profession. Following the competence requirements imposed by the Ministry of National Education, a qualified teacher should possess four areas of competence, namely the personal, social, pedagogical and professional competencies. Figure 1 shows the four competencies based on the MONE's Regulation No.16/2007.


Figure 1. Teacher’s Competencies based on the MONE’s Regulation no. 16/2007 The regulation is in line with the concept of human competence proposed by Spencer & Spencer (1993) who argue that there are two broad categories of competency, namely hard competency and soft competency. As stated in the regulation, professional competence that comprises proficiency in arithmetic, language, mathematics, social science basically belongs to the hard competency as defined by Spencer & Spencer. While the other three, which are personality, social and pedagogy, belong to the soft competency. TQI Program focuses only on these three areas of soft competency since they are rarely taught in teacher training program of the Ministry. Meanwhile, the professional competence in understanding subject matters is not included in TQI Program since it has been adequately provided by MONE’s teacher training program.

Personal competence According to the Regulation no. 16/2007, a competent teacher should have adequate personal competence. Some traits and behaviors shall represent the ability to show a pleasant and mature personality such as ethical, caring, warm, highly motivated, inspiring, behaving in a good manner, creative, innovative, calm and being a good role model. In addition, teachers should also be proud of their profession. This module is aimed at changing the way teachers express themselves in class by adopting a new way to replace the old one. Most teachers in Indonesia express themselves in class and out of class in the following tones: cool, reserved, unfriendly, authoritarian, and distant from their students. In dealing with students such expressions can make a school become an unpleasant place for most students. In order to improve personal competence, TQI program includes the following modules in the implementation:


1. understanding the role of emotional intelligence in teaching and life, 2. how to understand one self and others; 3. how to motivate one-self and students (3) how to be creative teacher, and to make students creative and innovative.

Social competence Indonesia is a country of many different ethnic groups and languages. Teachers who work in Indonesia should understand this diversity. In addition to knowing differences in learning styles, cognitive ability, and motivational differences, teacher should also understand the different cultural backgrounds of students and their parent socio-economic classes. It is the reason why in the Regulation no.16/2007, teacher should have a social competence. Social competence is characterized by the ability of teacher to show their understanding of the diversity in students such as learning style, cognitive and personality differences. Teacher with a good social competence should also be able to communicate effectively with fellow teachers, students and their parents. In addition, teachers should have social and cultural sensitivity since their students come from many different ethnic groups with very different habits and customs. Teachers are required not to be discriminatory toward students of different culture, religion, and ethnicity. The module of social competence consists of: 1. understanding others to help teachers to learn differences of students’ learning styles, different cognitive abilities, and to know the concepts of multiple intelligence; 2. effective and emphatic communication to facilitate teachers to communicate in a positive tone and to apply a non-violent communication; 3. effective conflict resolution techniques, aiming at facilitating teacher with strategy and tools to solve conflict with a win-win solution strategy; 4. synergy and collaboration with other people. This sub-module facilitates teachers in building a good teamwork with students, parents and school committee members).

Pedagogical competence Pedagogical competence is the ability of teacher to manage classroom and to deliver subject matters (i.e. mathematics, language, history, social science) effectively in accordance with students’ cognitive and emotional development. In order to make a learning process fun and enjoyable, TQI Program provides teacher with knowledge and practices about how to manage classroom effectively and enjoyably. Several teaching techniques and tools are developed for this purpose such as exercises, games, educational instruments and socio-drama. For example, learning English can be fun if primary students are asked to sing and to play with toys while memorizing learning materials. In the training teachers are also trained to develop teaching media using materials that are available in their school environment and appropriate to the local culture.

Two aspects of Innovation in TQI Program TQI Program involves two aspects of innovation in educational training program. One aspect is innovation of training method and the other one is innovation in recruiting the participants of training program.

Innovation of training method Student motivation to learn a particular subject matter is influenced by to what degree students like certain teacher. If they like a teacher, then they tend to also like the subject matter taught by the teacher. This argument is in line with theory of response affective model formulated by Byrne & Clore (1970), where a positive feeling about a certain objects will lead to liking of a neutral object surrounding the object. Therefore, the effort in teacher training program should be focused on how to make a teacher favorable for the students.


Teacher training programs conducted by the Indonesian Ministry of National Education for improving teacher competence mostly address the cognitive aspects without touching the affective and psychomotor aspects of training. These two are left as concepts only. There is no special attention on developing non-cognitive aspects such as motivation and attitudes. In fact, teachers’ ability to motivate themselves is a very important aspect of success in teaching. Whenever teachers have high motivation, then they will be motivated to do the best in performing the duties of their profession. Teachers who perform in high spirit and enthusiasm must be able to motivate their students to be hearty and passionate in learning. In addition to have a very good pedagogical competence in teaching, teachers should also know how to motivate their students. According to the argument proposed by Bloom, Engelhart, Furst, Hill, & Krathwohl (1956) a good teaching technique is the one which covers cognitive, affective and psychomotor. Since teaching techniques is part of pedagogical competency, therefore competent teachers should have the ability to touch three aspects as proposed by Bloom et.al. Bloom's Taxonomy divides educational objectives into three "domains, which are cognitive, affective, and psychomotor. These domains are also described as knowing/head, feeling/heart and doing/hands (Orlich, Harder, Callahan, & Trevisan, 2004). Within these domains, learning at the higher levels is dependent on having attained prerequisite knowledge and skills at lower levels (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001). The goal of Bloom's Taxonomy is to motivate teachers to focus on all the three domains, creating a more holistic form of education (Krathwohl, 2002). In order to touch all aspects (cognitive, affective and psychomotor) therefore training technique should utilize experiential learning approach that enables teachers to intensively create emotional involvement and psychomotor activities. The experiential learning approach enables teachers to get involved emotionally with any stimulus to be used in training, which eventually will create a feeling of meaningfulness in holding profession as a teacher. The cycle of experiential learning is shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2. Experiential learning cycle In applying experiential learning method, teaching activities involve an array of learning stimuli such as games, video clips, activity sheets and story-telling materials. Video clips are used for several purposes such as improving teacher motivation and pride of the profession. Some video clips are also used to teach teachers about wrong behavior in teaching students.


After watching videos teacher are requested to reflect and understand what they have learned and to what degree they are involved emotionally. Similarly games and other exercises are used to stimulate participants in order to be involved in cognitive, affective, and psychomotor experiences. The training program is an intensive program with duration of two weeks, Monday to Friday, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., except for Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday the program ended at 10 p.m. This long and intensive program is implemented in order to make participants totally involved and immersed in training process that lead them to enlightenment of new experiences. Following the two-week TQI Program, another program called teacher assistance is designed to help teachers to apply the knowledge and practices they have obtained during the training. It consists of coaching and mentoring teacher participants to implement the new approach of learning. This phase is aimed at assisting teachers to implement skills they have obtained during the previous phases of trainings. In the implementation of this phase, Titian Foundation staff who work as TQI field facilitators sit in classrooms and help teachers to apply their newly-obtained skills. The coaching and mentoring program for teachers cannot be applied to headmasters and school supervisors since they do not teach in class. To assist school headmasters and school supervisors, this program are disseminated through Teachers Working Groups, which have been created by the MONE.

Impacts of training in improving teachers’ competencies In order to measure the impacts of TQI on the improvement of teacher competencies, a series of studies aimed at knowing the effectiveness of the program were conducted. One study was conducted to assess the quality of training program. Valid and reliable instruments were developed to measure the quality of training program. (1) Scale-1 consists of seven items to asses perception of teachers on benefits of training, This scale has been validated with α = .630; (2) Scale-2 covers six items to measure teacher’s perception of instructor competence, α = .601, and (3) Scale-3 consists of seven items for measuring teacher’s perception of training aids, α = .772. Based on the assessment utilizing those three scales it was found that the TQI training program fulfills the requirements as a good training program. Following this assessment then another study was designed to measure the impacts of the program on the improvement of teachers’ competencies. The respondents of the study were 63 teachers having participated in TQI program and 189 students from these teachers’ schools. Instruments were developed for this purpose. Three instruments were developed to assess (1) teacher motivation in teaching, α = .923; (2) teacher mastery of subject matters, α= .773; and (3) teacher ability in managing of classroom, α = .813. The data was analyzed using two-way mixed model analysis of variance with pre-post for similar groups, and two different groups. It was found that the training program has significantly improved teachers’ perception of their own competencies after joined the program. Its impact of on the improvement of teachers’ competencies is significant at p < .01. Teacher perceived themselves as more competent compared to pre-test (M pretest = 48.27 and M posttest = 77.52. Similar results were also showed by the students (M pretest = 75.66; M posttest = 86.07). These results indicate that teachers have evaluated their own behaviors much more in positive way after joining the TQI program compared to before joining the program. Similarly, the students have evaluated the behaviors of their teachers much more favorably after their teachers joined the program compared to the evaluation before joining the training. They liked their teacher better after their teacher joint TQI program. In addition to quantitative assessment, participants were also requested to give their comment on their experiences of joining the TQI program. The following are some examples of their testimonies.


“Thank God, I was given an opportunity to join TQI Program. From all training programs I have experienced, TQI is the best one, and this is exactly what I need and look for. Experiences from TQI training would enable me to be an excellent teacher, and school headmaster”. (Rini Sakarini, teacher of Junior High School 2 Galur, Kulon Progo). “I have participated in many training programs of the Ministry of Education for improving teachers’ competencies; The Ministry’s training programs only teach theories without real application of them. TQI program is the best and complete, since it offers not only theory but also the application in classroom through simulation during training program. (Mujiono, teacher, Junior High School 1 Klaten) “TQI Program is a great and extraordinary program. It is a big surprise for me to join it. It makes me realize there are so many wrong things I have done to my students. TQI teach me about the right ways to treat and to teach students. Thank you so much to all instructors of TQI Program.” (Wajiana Luthfi, Teacher, Junior High School 1, Banguntapan, Bantul)

The innovation of participant recruitment An excellent training program will not give a positive impact on improving teacher competencies unless there is a group of participants to join the training program. Therefore, there should be a way to create a demand to join the training program. Teachers in Indonesia are mostly civil servants who are tightly controlled by rules and regulations. Especially in schools with a little number of teachers, the load of teaching is very heavy. Hence, it is not easy for teachers to participate in any training program that takes more than a day. If teachers want to join a particular training program to improve their competencies, they should obtain permit from their school headmaster. School headmasters will allow teachers to join teacher-training program if they see the benefits of a training program for improving teachers’ competencies. Since TQI Program is organized by a non-government organization, not owned by the MONE, it is not easy to recruit teachers to join TQI program. Therefore, special efforts should be conducted to convince school headmasters and teachers about the benefits at joining TQI program. The first step effort is to create a ‘buy-in’ of TQI program by inviting school headmasters to attend ‘one-day seminar on new paradigm of learning’. This seminar is aimed at informing the purpose of teacher quality improvement program, and how the program can improve teacher’s competencies, which in turn will improve school quality. During the seminar, school headmasters are introduced with the TQI program outline, training methods applied, duration of the training, and trainers involved in TQI program. In order to make sure that participation in the program will not harm a teacher’s career (since he/she should be absent from teaching classes for two weeks), Titian Foundation informs the participants that the program has been approved by the MONE and that the credit received from the participation can be counted for teacher certification, which enrich teacher’s portfolio. Since the very beginning of establishing TQI programs, the team of TQI Program development regularly maintains the communication with the MONE. About 500 school headmasters and school supervisors have attended one-day seminars. Second step is the carrying out of ‘a three-day workshop for school headmasters’. The participants of this workshop are those having attended in one-day seminars, who are interested in knowing more about TQI program. More or less 100 participants joined the workshop. The goal of the workshop is to provide these school headmasters with new paradigm of learning in the changing world. This information is very important to make TQI program successful. If school headmasters understand ‘the concept of new paradigm in learning’, they surely will make positive response to the teaching method applied by teachers who have joined the TQI Program, and they will be willing to send teachers from their school to participate in two-week TQI Program. This effort proved to be successful. School headmasters who joined the second


step activity were enthusiastic to send their teachers to join the two-week Teacher Quality Improvement training program. Third step activity is to sell the TQI program directly to teachers in order to create willingness in them to join the program. Titian Foundation staffs come to schools and inform teachers about the TQI programs and provide information about program and the benefits of the program for improving their competencies as teachers. Those interested will usually be given permit by headmasters, since the headmasters themselves have already understood the program and its benefits for improving teacher’s competencies. During 4 years of TQI program there have been 700 school headmasters, 1,500 teachers participating in the program. Therefore, the indirect beneficiaries of this program will be at least 240.000 students.

Acknowledgement: TQI program is funded by Vodafone through Reach out to Asia of Qatar Foundation, implemented by Titian Foundation, Indonesia.

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