High School English Teachers’ Voice in Competency Standard and Professional Development:

Grounded Research

 

 

Ashadi

Yogyakarta University of Technology &

Sanata Dharma University

 

 

Our national education in general and English education in particular, has got various criticisms in many aspects such as, the content of the curriculum, teaching-learning process, materials, teacher competency as well as their professionalism. This article is based on a preliminary study on teachers' competency in relation to their professional development. It is very essential because the role of the English teacher is believed to be very significant to influence the success of students' English mastery especially at the high school level. Therefore, high school English teachers need to really understand what competency is required from their profession. Issues in this area is getting hotter as the government enacted National Education System laws followed by relevant government regulations on education standardization and teacher certification.

 

The study attempts to generate the grounded theory of teachers' competency and their own perspectives of professional development among active MGMP members and non-MGMP teachers which will be useful for curriculum designers, material developers, policy makers and the whole education stakeholders. It is necessary to scrutinize their factual problems to have a deep understanding on their criticized performance. The underlying belief is that they work in an intercorrelated system where their competency and professionalism are in questions.

 

It is in progressive qualitative approach and it employs observations, interviews and focus group discussions as the main data collection instruments. Participants of this study, few high school English teachers and students around Yogyakarta, were selected purposively to represent maximum variation. Relevant documents, written statements and other artifacts serve as secondary data. These data were analyzed systematically through coding process and constantly compared during the course of the study to form significant sub-categories. These sub categories of data are dug deeper and narrowed with relevant literature to form a pattern/grounded theory. Triangulation of methods is also carried out to validate the data and for the sake of research reliability.

 

Initial conclusion shows a pattern of English teacher competency and professional development subcategories significant for policy makers and the participants' own development and English education in general. Through this pattern we can see that when competency is in demand, teachers should improve themselves through professional development programs. However, it is also found at this initial stage that there should be coercive power and external motivation in forms of punishments and rewards. It is difficult to expect a full internal motivation from every teacher in competency improvement and professional development as not all of them are intrinsically driven to become teachers. Other issues such as the ineffectiveness of the current teacher assessment (DP 3) and the need for regular evaluation also emerge during this stage.

 

Ashadi. (2006, December). High school English teachers’ voice in competency standard and professional development: Grounded research. Paper presented at the 54th TEFLIN International conference, Salatiga, Indonesia.

 

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