1

The Continuous Improvement Learning Programme

for English Language Teachers:

An Indonesian Experience

Bambang Yudi Cahyono

State University of Malang

Abstract

The two types of education for teachers, pre-service education for prospective teachers and in-service education for teachers, differ in their contribution to teachers’ professional development. While prospective teachers are able to develop their knowledge and expertise intensively in teachers-training colleges, teachers rarely have opportunities to develop their professionalism through in-service training programmes. Regardless of teachers’ awareness of the importance of professional development, these programmes may not be accessible for various reasons such as availability, quota for participation, financial consideration, and geography. Drawing on the fact that not many teachers have access to in-service training programmes, an initiation for such programmes conducted at a regional level would help develop teachers’ professionalism. This chapter presents the results of the application of a teacher-training innovation for developing English language teachers’ professionalism in Indonesia through the “Continuous Improvement Learning” (CIL) Programme. It also discusses teacher reflections after one year of introduction of the programme.

Introduction

As part of their professional duties, teachers are required to develop their knowledge and expertise in the subjects they teach at school. There are two types of education for teachers’ professional development: pre-service and in-service. Pre-service education is prepared for prospective teachers, whereas in-service education is for those who have worked as teachers.

In Indonesia, the responsibility to prepare secondary school teachers through pre-service education is taken by the Lembaga Pendidikan Tenaga Keguruan (LPTK) or teacher-training colleges such as Institute of Teacher Training and Education (IKIP), Faculty of Teacher-Training and Education (FKIP), which is a part of university, and various faculties in universities which provide both teacher-training and non teacher-training education. As a provider of pre-service education, teacher-training colleges have a set of curricula which aims to prepare students to be qualified teachers. For example, at the English Language Education Programme of State University of Malang, a university which has a double mandate to provide teacher-training and non teacher-training education, prospective English teachers are required to take between 140 to 160 credits in order to complete their undergraduate (bachelor) education. The courses offered include general courses, courses on basics of education, English major courses, and thesis writing courses (Widayati & Anugerahwati, 2006).

In terms of English major courses, teacher-training colleges have the flexibility to provide various subjects to meet the need of the society. For example, in order to improve the ability in oral communication, intensive course (IC) programme has been introduced to students of the English departments of a number of teacher-training colleges in Indonesia (Djiwandono, 1999) and this programme was found to be successful (Cahyono, 2002). Some other teacher-training colleges have provided subjects to meet the demand for teachers of English for young learners (e.g., Sutarsyah, 2004) and for the use of English in business market (e.g., Rusli, 2004).

The responsibility to develop teachers through in-service education is normally taken by institutions such as teacher-training colleges, government offices of education at local and provincial levels, and the Musyawarah Guru Mata Pelajaran (MGMP) or subject teachers’ forum. Private institutions or English language learning centers may also have contributed to the development of English teachers’ professionalism through various activities. For example, the Regional English Language Office of the US Embassy based in Jakarta has a regular roundtable discussion on ELT-related areas. The 84^th programme was conducted on 30 January 2008 at the RELO Centre with a theme of How to engage Indonesian teachers and students in creative and fun writing practice (RELO RTD mailing-list, mail posted by Kun Herrini, 31 January 2008). Likewise, ELT Indonesia, a network of English language teachers in Indonesia with its central office in Malang, East Java, has conducted a workshop series on English language teaching. The 10^th workshop which involved 35 teachers of English was carried out on 26 January 2008 on the topic Project based English language learning (www.geocities.com/eltindonesia1/workshop10, 31 January 2008).

A number of research studies show that teachers’ participation in various forms of in-service programmes contributed to their professional development (Agustina, 2008; Ghozali, 2008; Prihantoro, 2008). For example, Ghozali (2008) reported that English teachers, who attended an in-service training on translating the teachers’ knowledge of what of the new curriculum into knowledge of how to implement it, claimed that they have made progress as a result of the training. Regardless of the significant contribution of in-service training programmes to teachers’ professional development, not all teachers have the opportunities to attend in-service training programmes after completing their education in teacher-training colleges. Such in-service training programmes may not be accessible to many teachers for various reasons such as availability, quota for participation, financial consideration, the specific nature of the programme (e.g., in-service training on the use of self-access centre which is not directly related to teachers’ day-to-day needs or not applicable because schools do not normally have self-access centre), and geography. Although teachers need to keep up with the development in their field of study, in reality they do not necessarily respond quickly to the development. For example, the introduction of the Competence-Based Curriculum for all subjects, including English, in secondary schools in 2004 was not followed by immediate responses of teachers to understand what it was all about and how to implement the curriculum. Whereas, as stated by Septy (2005), English teachers need to have knowledge of “English language curriculum” and skill in “designing lesson according to the English language curriculum” in order to qualify for a service appointment. Accordingly, efforts in developing teachers’ knowledge of the new curriculum and how to apply it are of paramount importance (Yuliasri, 2006; Yuliasri & Haryanti, 2006).

Considering the fact that not many teachers have access to in-service education programmes, an initiation for an in-service education programme conducted at a regional level would be an advantage for teachers’ professional development. The establishment of such a programme is relevant to the national government’s spirit in distributing power to regional areas as it is evident from the issue of the Act of Regional Autonomy. This chapter presents the results of a case study on the application of a teacher-training innovation for developing English language teachers’ professionalism in an Indonesian town of Jombang in East Java through the “Continuous Improvement Learning” (CIL) Programme. The CIL Programme was a collaborative programme between the Institute of Education and Learning Development of State University of Malang and the Regency Government of Jombang. The programme was implemented in 2006 and attended by 40 teachers from public and Islamic junior high schools in the town.

The term “continuous improvement learning” has been adopted and developed from the term “continuous improvement” (CI), with additional term “learning” to contextualise the use of CI in the area of learning and education. CI was originally based on Kaizen, a fantasy currency, used in the Kaizen Games. Kaizen, a Japanese term, means “change for the better” or commonly expressed as “on-going improvement”. Philosophically, Kaizen aims to avoid discarding things, meaning that in dealing with something it is important to recycle or reuse things and to present them in a better form (Imai, 1997). CI has been used in various contexts. In trade and business field, CI is used to refer to a programme aimed to “foster teamwork, create a positive work environment, improve quality, and increase customer satisfaction” (Gaunt, 2005: 5). Gaunt (2005), reminding of the Kaizen philosophy, stated, “the driving reason to implement CI should be to reduce waste and cost to improve profitability” (p. 5). Mabrouk (2007) added that CI provides the front-line work force to “improve operations without the need to obtain approval from higher up” (p. 1). In the same vein, Bryce (2007) pointed out that “the burden of responsibility for improving skills in your chosen profession rests with YOU, not your employer” [p. 1, sic.]. Referring to the notion of CI and its application in work environments, the CIL programme is basically used to empower English teachers to seek opportunities to improve themselves. The remainder of this chapter describes the CIL programme and its implementation, and teachers’ evaluation and opinions about the programme.

The CIL Programme and Its Implementation

The purpose of the CIL programme for the Indonesian teachers of English was to help teachers develop their professional duties in order to attain a point where teachers can improve their own learning continuously. The implementation of the CIL programme was divided into four stages. The programme started with the training and workshop session which explained the general description of the CIL programme and its purposes in helping teachers develop their professional skills. This session also provided teachers with knowledge of the curricular aspects of their jobs and how to implement them in the classroom. The second stage of the programme, the real teaching, provided teachers with opportunities to practice what they have learned in the training and workshop session in addition to their own teaching experience. The paper presentation session served to be a forum for reflection of what teachers have learned and practiced. A conference closed the series of stages and gave motivation to teachers to keep on improving their learning to support their professionalism. These four stages are discussed further in the remaining part of this section.

Stage 1: Training and Workshop Session

The participating teachers were invited to attend a training and workshop session in a special venue away from their schools. The training and workshop stage of the CIL programme lasted for one week. The materials of this session covers general issues important for teachers’ development which include educational policies (Head of Education Office, 2006), principles of action research (Mukhadis, 2006), and more specific issues such as the Competence-Based Curriculum (CBC) 2004 and various curricular aspects. The topics presented in the training and workshop session include the following:

¨ The policy of education in Jombang Regency

¨ Developing teachers’ professionalism through action research

¨ Analysing the English (Competence-Based) Curriculum 2004

¨ Creating Innovative language learning and teaching process

¨ Developing teaching and learning materials

¨ Choosing and using media for teaching and learning

¨ Assessing English language learners’ learning

¨ English lesson planning

With regard to the aspects of the CBC in particular, the teachers were required to produce a number of documents and to decide instructional components that are important for the purpose of teaching and learning. Following the presentation of the analysis of the English Curriculum 2004 (Fachrurrazy, 2006), participants were involved in a workshop on the development of syllabus. Based on other materials presented in the training and workshop session (Cahyono, 2006; Iragiliati, 2006; Laksmi, 2006; Suryati, 2006; Widayati, 2006), the participants were also assigned to make a model of English teaching and learning that will be applied in their classroom, a sample material for teaching and learning, a set of Instructional media to teach the sample teaching and learning material, and an instrument to assess the students’ learning. Additionally, the teachers were required to produce a lesson plan that will be used in the second stage of the CIL programme. The lesson plan was developed on the basis of the other documents and instructional components.

Stage 2: Real Teaching

In the real teaching stage, which lasted for seven weeks, the teachers went back to their schools to apply what they had learned. In the last two weeks of their real teaching, they were invited to gather in a chosen school to teach students in this school Each teacher was given two teaching periods for two weeks (50 minutes for one teaching period in each week) to teach according to the lesson plans they have prepared.

When teaching, the teachers were observed by facilitators in order to see how they teach and apply their lesson plans in the classroom. The facilitators were those who presented papers and trained the participants in the training and workshop session. An observation format was used by the facilitators to evaluate the teachers’ teaching performance. The observation format, developed in the format of Likert-scale with four values ranging from “poor”, “fair”, “good”, to “very good”, had ten aspects measuring competences in:

¨ Introducing the lesson

¨ Presenting the materials

¨ Asking questions to stimulate thinking

¨ Designing and using instructional media

¨ Implementing teaching and learning strategies

¨ Using content and language knowledge

¨ Managing the classroom

¨ Allocating time for teaching and learning activities

¨ Assessing students’ learning

¨ Concluding and closing the lesson

The observation format (see Appendix 1) also has a special space that can be used by facilitators to comment on various aspects which may not be covered in the list. These comments were used as a basis for feedback given to the participants after competing the real teaching.

The results of the facilitators’ evaluation of the real teaching were computed with values ranging from 1 to 4 given to the four scales: 1 (poor), 2 (fair), 3 (good), and 4 (very good). The total scores for the ten items were then summed and multiplied by 2.5 to get the maximum score of 100 for all items. The results of the computation show that many of the teachers (29 teachers) gained scores falling in the “good” category (scores between 62.5 to 87.5) and over one-fourth of them (11 teachers) gained scores falling in the “very good” category (88 and above). The result of this analysis suggests that the teachers have attempted to do their best in the real teaching by trying to achieve the maximum results in the ten measured competences.

Stage 3: Paper presentation

Following the real teaching stage, the teachers were asked to write a paper to be presented in the paper presentation stage which was conducted in a chosen day three weeks after the real teaching. Topics for presentation could be based on their teaching experiences or on action research conducted in the teachers’ classroom. From all the papers that were submitted, four best papers were selected for presentation. The four topics presented are as follows:

¨ Action research as a means to achieve teachers’ professionalism

¨ Using instructional media to develop students’ English competence media

¨ Developing students’ ability in learning nouns, adjectives and verbs through listening to English songs

¨ Using picture series to develop students’ writing ability

The first two papers were written by a group of teachers working collaboratively, while the other papers were written and presented by individual participants. The papers were presented in a plenary session attended by all participants. Some of these participants were given roles as moderators and note-takers.

Stage 4: Conference

In the final stage, one-day conference, the teachers attended lectures on the importance of maintaining “continuous improvement learning” and on the issue of certification programme (a national programme which is aimed to certify teachers as professionals with financial rewards to be received regularly in addition to their monthly salary. In order to pass the certification programme, teachers have to be assessed in terms of their knowledge and professional skills, personalities, and portfolios).

Teachers’ Evaluation and Opinions about the CIL Programme

During the course of the CIL programme, attempts were made to get feedback from the participating teachers regarding the programme implementation. In the end of the training and workshop session (Stage 1), a questionnaire (see Appendix 2) was distributed to teachers. Items in the questionnaire were developed according to the topics presented in the training and workshop session. The teachers were asked to evaluate whether or not the topics presented in the training and workshop session were useful. Five options presented in the form of Likert-type scales were provided, varying from “very useless”, “useless”, “neither useless nor useful”, “useful” and “very useful”. Following the paper presentation (Stage 3), four teachers (2 male and 2 female teachers) were chosen randomly and interviewed to investigate their opinions about the CIL programme and how it affects their teaching.

Teachers’ evaluation of topics of the CIL programme

Data gained from the teachers showed that the CIL programme was a promising model to help teachers reach the “continuous improvement learning”. The results of the data analysis of the questionnaire that was responded by 28 teachers showed that the training and workshop materials were considered useful. Table 1 presents the frequency distribution of responses falling within the combined categories of “useful” and “very useful.” These two favourable responses were combined because they directly show the usability of the topics in the training and workshop session.

Table 1: Frequency Distribution (f) of Responses on the Usability of Topics of

the CIL Programme Falling within the Combined Categories of

“Useful” and “Very Useful” (N=28)

_____________________________________________________________________

Topics f %

_____________________________________________________________________

The policy of education in Jombang Regency 18 64
Developing teachers’ professionalism through action research 18 64
Analysing the English (Competence-Based) Curriculum 2004 22 79
Creating Innovative language learning and teaching process 27 96
Developing teaching and learning materials 22 79
Choosing and using media for teaching and learning 24 86
Assessing English language learners’ learning 26 93
English lesson planning 26 93

_____________________________________________________________________

The table suggests that all of the topics were useful. However, the teachers thought that instructional and curricular materials were more useful than general issues such as educational policy and action research.

Teachers’ Opinions about the CIL Programme

The interview data showed that the CIL programme was highly appreciated by teachers in Jombang. Some questions were asked to the teachers attending the programme and their answers were recorded. Among the questions asked to the teachers, three questions are worth-mentioning here because they relate to the degree of success of the CIL programme and its implementation. Other questions were basically asked for social purposes. The three questions concern whether or not the teachers liked the CIL programme, whether the programme has affected their English language teaching, and what the teachers thought the most interesting parts of the CIL programme.

When asked whether or not the teachers like the program, in general, they considered the CIL programme good and useful. Teacher 1 said, “I think this programme is very good because we got more knowledge about the preparation of our teaching and we do the real teaching”. Teacher 2 stated, “I like it very much because we need to improve our competence, especially in English.” Teacher 3 confirmed, “Yes, I like this programme so much. I can have some information, some knowledge, and also experience from the other friends that can … improve my teaching in my school.” The teachers’ responses show their focus of interest in various stages of the CIL programme. While Teacher 1 emphasized the training and workshop session as well as the real teaching stage, Teacher 2 was more impressed by the training and workshop session which was delivered in English than other stages of the CIL programme. Teacher 3 was more elaborative than the other teachers in answering the question as gaining experience from other participants and effects of the programme on teaching were emphasized.

The teachers that were interviewed also thought that the CIL programme would affect them in some way. For example, responding to a question on whether the program has influenced their teaching, one teacher’s opinion as follows represents what many other teachers have stated: “Yes, sure. I always try everyday to teach my way of teaching in class because I realise my teaching methodology is not enough for improving our students” (Teacher 4). However, one teacher, Teacher 2, stated that the CIL programme would not affect her way of teaching due to the unfavourable condition of her class. This teacher said, “Not really, because the method here is too idealistic, not suitable with my class.”

With regard to the most interesting parts of the CIL programme, teachers had different opinions. Teacher 1 said that the topic on language teaching media was interesting, as she stated, “Media is the most interesting thing because I may get an idea on how to make good media which are very useful for teaching and learning.” Another teacher, Teacher 3, said that real teaching and paper presentation (seminar) were good. This teacher said, “I think real teaching is good enough, and seminar like this you can change our mind and can improve our way of thinking about teaching English.”

In addition to the results of the analysis, it is worthwhile to inform that about eighteen months after the implementation of the CIL programme, on 31 January 2008 the author contacted Ms Evita Anggraeni, a teacher from a public junior high school in the downtown of Jombang who participated in the CIL programme and asked whether she thinks that the CIL programme has been advantageous. She wrote:

The knowledge from the CIL programme is very beneficial. The facilitators were all okay. I felt that I got a lot of improvements after the CIL programme, compared to my earlier knowledge. Now, I am eager to learn and learn. I attended other training opportunities after the CIL programme, including the one managed by the Institute of Quality Assurance in Education at the provincial level. I felt confident because I had been a participant of the CIL programme. Sometimes I help other colleagues in my school environment.

The results of the analysis of the teachers’ responses to the questionnaire and of the interview transcripts showed that the CIL programme was welcomed by all the participating teachers. While teachers were likely to have different opinions regarding the most interesting part of the programme, they uniformly thought that the program was good. The data also revealed that the CIL programme would affect the teachers in some way, especially when there is a supporting environment in the classroom or at school. The result of correspondence conducted months later with a teacher also suggested that the CIL programme was effective in motivating this teacher to continue improving her skills and expertise in English language teaching.

It is interesting to note that from the outset, the CIL programme was initiated top-down from the Regional Government of Jombang to the teachers in the town. However, the teachers responses have shown their great interest in professional development programmes such as the CIL programme. To give a stress on the importance of the teachers’ personal attitudes toward their professionalism, I would like to highlight what Pettis (2002) has pointed out. She said:

Going to the occasional workshop because it is organized for us, or because we are funded by employers, although mutually beneficial to a degree, is not enough for our own and our profession’s well-being. Each of us, I believe, must be personally committed to seeking out additional opportunities to learn and develop. (p. 396)

Thus, regardless of the top-down nature the CIL programme for teachers from Jombang, teachers’ questionnaire and interview responses as well as Ms Evita’s statement, may be indications of their positive attitudes toward improving their professional competence. If this is the case, the idea of continuous improvement to a certain extent has been successfully introduced to the teachers participating in the CIL programme.

Conclusion

Drawing on the examination of the CIL program, the establishment of the four stages of implementation is conceptually and practically sound. The training and workshop session serves as a bridge connecting teachers’ prior knowledge of various aspects of English curriculum and its implementation and the new curriculum as well as recent trends in English language teaching methodology. The real teaching session provides teachers with opportunities to apply the new curriculum with better insights regarding instructional components. The paper presentation session encourages the teachers to do one more step beyond day-to-day teaching activities by reporting what they have experienced or by writing about a relevant topic of their interest. The conference was not directly related to teachers’ duties in the classroom, but it is still important to provide teachers with knowledge of what happens in the national system of teachers’ professional development and how they can contribute to the system by developing themselves as professional teachers.

In addition, the teachers’ responses to the questionnaire and their opinions expressed in the interview showed that the CIL programme was useful for teachers and their professional development. The purposes of the CIL programme could be achieved due to the shared roles between the local government of Jombang and the institution in charge of designing the content of the programme. The CIL programme reflects the success of the policy of the local government of Jombang in adopting an in-service training program important for teachers’ professional development in the regency. It is advisable then that the continuous improvement learning programme be adopted or developed by policy makers and especially by other local or provincial governments in the country. The implementation of a programme like this will ensure the distribution of the autonomy in the provision of in-service education for teachers of English language in Indonesia. More importantly, such programmes may help develop teachers’ personal commitment to their own ongoing professional growth.

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Appendix 1

OBSERVATION FORMAT FOR REAL TEACHING ACTIVITIES

Teacher: _________________________________________________________

School: _________________________________________________________

_____________________________________________________________________

Part I: Teaching Activities.

Choose a suitable option. What do you think of the teacher’s performance when:

1. Introducing the lesson?