Tanti Sukmahidayanti, 2015
ABSTRACT
Abstract: Many English teachers in Indonesia had difficulty in utilizing instructional
media in classrooms. The difficulty was caused by the thought of good media were expensive. Therefore, this study aimed to describe the teacher’s preparation and to explain how the teacher utilized the instructional media in the classroom. This study used qualitative case design and employed observation, interview and data analysis to obtain the data. The result of this study showed that the teacher did two kinds of preparation in utilizing the instructional media, reading the materials and choosing the media. In utilizing the media, the teacher utilized the provided media in the school and did not utilize it optimally due to several challenges, such as limitation of time, difficulty in selecting media, lack of media availability, and teacher’s negative belief towards instructional media and the system. In conclusion, instructional media utilization was not optimally done by the teacher and it needed to be improved. Therefore, the teacher needed to participate in a training program to optimize the teacher’s instructional media utilization.
Keywords: instructional media, utilization of instructional media, teyl
ABSTRAK
Abstrak: Media merupakan slaah satu hal yang penting guna menciptakan pembelajaran
yang efektif, terutama pembelajaran bahasa Inggris di sekolah dasar, mengingat karakterisktik anak-anak usia dini. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk menggambarkan dan menjelaskan bagaimana seorang guru di sekolah dasar menyiapkan dan menggunakan media pembelajaran di dalam kelas. Penelitian ini menggunakan studi kasus kualitatif dan menggunakan observasi, wawancara dan analisis dokumen. Hasil dari penelitian ini menunjukan bahwa guru tersebut melakukan dua macam persiapan dalam menggunakan media pembelajaran, yaitu pendalaman materi dan pemilihan media. Dalam penggunaan media pembelajaran, guru tersebut hanya menggunakan media-media yang tersedia di sekolah seperti waktu yang terbatas, sulitnya memilih media yang tepat, terbatasnya media yang tersedia, dan pemikiran negatif guru terhadap sistem yang ada dan media pembelajaran. Sebagai simpulan, mengajar bahasa Inggris di sekolah dasar membutuhkan persiapan yang besar, terutama dalam penggunaan media pembelajaran. Karena itu, disarankan bahawa guru bahasa Inggris di sekolah dasar sebaiknya memahami prinsip-prinsip mengajar untuk anak usia dini dan prinsip-prinsip penggunaan media pembelajaran.
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
This chapter presents a highlight of this study. This chapter consist of seven sections, which
are background, statement of problem, purpose of the research, scope of the research, significance
of the research, clarification of terms and organization of paper.
1.1Background
Teaching English to young learners is considered necessary needs in Indonesia especially in
big cities (Rodliyah, 2009). Many parents compete to make their children learn English as younger
as they are. The issue is how the school deals with this phenomenon and how they could provide
the students with effective and efficient learning. There are many factors influencing the effective
and efficient teaching-learning. Two of them are the media and the characteristics of the students.
Media is defined by Cambridge Advance Learners Dictionary as a method or a way of exploring
and expressing something. Smaldino et al., (2006) argue when media is used for instructional
purposes and utilized to canalize teacher-students communication, it categorized as instructional
media. Nevertheless, the utilization of the instructional media seems not effective in teaching
English to young learners in Indonesia (Mutohhar, 2009). The effectiveness of media is not about
the teachers utilize media or not in the classroom, but it deals with how the teachers optimize the
utilization of the instructional media in the classroom.
According to a study conducted by Mutohhar (2009), many elementary school teachers in
Indonesia deliver their material in such a way but makes the students still bored, not enjoying the
learning process. Many of the teachers only utilize the provided media in the schools and utilize it
to show the materials only without transferring the knowledge in attractive ways to the students.
This phenomenon appears because some of them think that a good media is expensive media and
sophisticated media which needs cost much money. Whereas, Mutohhar (2009) argues that a good
Effective instruction is a result of a systematical planning design. According to Reiser and
Dick (1996, p. 3), effective instruction is “the instruction that enables students to acquire specifies skills, knowledge, and attitudes.” It means an effective instruction is a series of materials, activities and media which can facilitate students to acquire the objectives of the lesson. This series cannot
reach the effectiveness if one of the elements do not work together.
In making the effective instruction, choosing instructional media is one of key principles in the
effective instruction. Reiser and Dick (1996, p. 68) define instructional media as “the physical means by which instruction is delivered to students”. In line with this, Scanlan (n.d) states that “the instructional media which encompasses all the materials and physical means an instructor and teacher might use to implement instruction and facilitate learners' achievement of instructional objectives”. In other words, a media is used to help the teacher in delivering the materials and teaching in classroom to help the students to achieve the objectives. There are many variety
instructional media which can be utilized in the classroom. Some of the instructional media
commonly used in the classroom are whiteboard, books, realia, pictures and computer-based
technology.
Instructional media itself has several benefits for teacher. One of the benefits in using
instructional media is motivating students, for example, by presenting young learners with interesting images, teacher can gain their students’ attention (Reiser and Dick, 1996). Interesting images also can courage students’ curiosity to learn or to involve in the learning process. Other benefits of using instructional media are (1) solving the lack of learners’ experiences, (2) bringing things that couldn’t be brought to the classroom, such as places, animals, big things, etc. (3) creating possible interaction between learners and environment, (4) integrating the experience
from the concrete things to abstract ones (Rusli et al., 2009). Looking at those benefits,
instructional media will be very useful for teacher to teach English to young learners when the
teachers utilized it optimally.
As mentioned before, in creating effective instruction, the use of instructional media is
necessary. However, most teachers do not show the awareness of the instructional media
to engage and avoid boredom of the students (Musthafa, 2010). Since using only one type of
instructional media seems will not engage students in learning process, the teachers will need
several instructional media to make the learning becomes effective and meaningful for the children
(Kasihani, as cited in Mutohhar, 2009).
Regarding to the use of instructional media, there are several studies that have been conducted.
One of the studies is conducted by Abdo & Semela (2010) taken place in Gedeo Zone, Southern
Ethiopia. The paper portrays several factors in term of the instructional media use, such as the
availability of media resources in their school, their manageability of classroom task and the
administrative support and encouragement provided by the school which comes to result that there
is infrequently use of instructional media among primary school teachers.
Another research focusing on the use of instructional media was published by SMART
Technologies Inc. (2006) which compiled several observations from Australia, United Kingdom
and United States of America which used interactive whiteboards as the object. From the paper,
positive effects from interactive whiteboards emerged; (1) interactive whiteboards engaged students’ motivation, (2) it had ability to accommodate a variety of learning style and it also helped teachers to have efficient preparation.
In Indonesia, the use of interactive instructional media in teaching English to young learners,
was conducted by Kaosar (2011). This research reveals two main conclusions about the use of
video (interactive instructional media used in the research) in teaching vocabulary: (1) video increased students’ vocabulary mastery; (2) video was positively responded by the students.
Teaching English to young learners does not only talk about how good the media that is used
by the teachers. The other important element that needs to be considered is the characters of young
learners. While looking at the their age, students in elementary school (up to the age of about
eleven) are still in an intellectual stage (Brown, 2001) of what Piaget (as cited in Brown, 2001)
called concrete operations. In this stage, children start to apply logical thinking yet they cannot
generalize their understanding (Pinter, 2006).
with. It means if the teachers only give them explanation, they are likely to pay no attention the
materials.
Another characteristic of young learners that is important to be considered is their attention
span. Musthafa (as cited in Aini, 2013) defines attention span as is the amount of time in seconds the children are working on task without distraction. Relating to children’s attention span, Harmer (2007, p. 38) argues that young learners “have a limited attention span”, if they are not given
interesting activities, they can lose their attention easily. In line with Harmer, Musthafa (2010)
states that young learner have only 15-20 minutes to pay attention to their activities in a row.
Research on the use of instructional media in teaching English to young learners is conducted
by Aini (2013) in Kuningan, Jawa Barat. From her research, she found that the use of instructional
media by the teacher needs to improve which was proven from lacking availability of instructional
media and also lacking of utilization of various instructional media in the schools.
Looking at the problems and benefits of instructional media and how the instructional media
has been utilized in previous research, this study intends to conduct a study about the utilization
of instructional media in teaching English to young learners for an English elementary school
teacher in an elementary school which has A grade for level accreditation but it is located a
suburban area in Bandung to see how the teacher prepares, utilizes media and reflects his teaching perception on the use of media in the classroom. This study also tries to uncover the teacher’s philosophy on teaching English to young learners.
1.2Statements of Problem
This research is used to answer the following questions.
1. What kind of preparation does the teacher have in utilizing instructional media?
2. How does teacher utilize the instructional media in the classroom?
1.3Aims of Study
The purpose of the research are:
1. to describe what kind of preparation that teacher has in utilizing instructional media; and
2. to explain the process of an English teacher in an elementary school utilize the instructional
1.4Scope of the Research
Based on the aforementioned problems, the scope of this research is to explain the process
of an English teacher in an elementary school utilizes the instructional media in teaching,
includes the description of problems teacher faces while utilizing it and how the teacher deals
with the problems.
1.5Significance of the Research
This study is expected to be significant in several parties. First, it is expected to give deeper
information about how teacher utilizes the instructional media in the classroom for young
learners. Thus, this study explores on the teacher’s perception on instructional media for
teaching English to young learners.
Finally, this study is expected to be meaningful both for teachers and young learners
through the information which will encourage teachers to improve the media utilization which
will lead to meaningful teaching learning in classrooms.
1.6Clarification of Terms
To prevent some misunderstanding of the research, there are several terms that need to be
clarified:
1. Young Learners
Young learners are defined by Kalendova (2008) as children from the first year of formal
2. Instructional Media
According to Reisser and Dick (1996, p. 65), instructional media is “the physical means by which instruction is delivered to students”. In line with this, Scanlan (n.d) states that instructional media is media which consist of the materials and physical means that might
be used to implement instruction and facilitate leaners’ of instructional objectives. It may
encompasses traditional materials such as chalkboard, slides, flash card, real object,
handouts and newer materials such as computers, DVDs, CD-ROMs, and internet.
3. Teacher’s Philosophy
Dawson et al., (2012) in Teaching Philosophy Statement defines teacher’s philosophy as teacher motivations that relate to teacher’s view about effective learning and how it has effects to students’ learning.
1.7Organization of Paper
The paper is presented into five chapters:
CHAPTER I : This chapter is an introduction which covers the background of the study,
statement of problem, the purpose of the research, the significant of the research, research
methodology, clarification of terms and organization of paper.
CHAPTER II : This chapter discusses the background and the foreground of the study which covers instructional media, teaching English to young learners and teacher’s philosophy.
CHAPTER III : This chapter discusses the design of research methodology of this study.
This chapter covers research design, research site and respondent, data collection, reliability and
validity, procedure of study and data analysis.
CHAPTER IV : This chapter presents the findings of the study from the observations,
interviews and document analysis. It also presents the discussions of the research findings.
CHAPTER V : This chapter presents the conclusions of the research. This chapter consists
CHAPTER III
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
This chapter discusses the design of research methodology of this study. This chapter
covers research design, research site and respondent, data collection, reliability and validity,
procedure of study and data analysis. This study aims to investigate teacher preparations in
utilizing media and how teacher utilizes instructional media to teach English to young learner
in his classroom.
3.1Research Design
To find out the process of how teacher utilized the instructional media, from the preparation
until the problems that he encountered and how teacher dealt with it, this study used case study
method. Because it captured the real situation of elementary schools regarding the use of media.
Yin (2003: 4) argued that case study method is “preferred strategy when ‘how’ or why questions
are being posed, when investigator has little control over events and when the focus is on a
contemporary phenomenon within some real-life context”.
To be more specific, descriptive case study was employed in this study. According to Case
Study Module, descriptive case study is a type of case study which was used to present a complete
portray of one case. Moreover, qualitative method was employed to portray data which were used
to gained by three techniques in collecting data which covered by observation, interview and
documents. After collecting the data, those data were analyzed to answer the research questions.
3.2Research Site and Respondent
The study was conducted in one elementary school in Bandung. The location of the school was
at suburban area. The school had A for school accreditation level. The school had 12 classes, which
facilitated grade 1 until grade 6 to learn and according to the teacher, the buildings was renovated
this year. The condition of the school was not really different with some elementary schools in
Bandung. The size of the classrooms were not inadequate, some of the classrooms were bigger
Inside the classrooms, there were a big whiteboard in front of the class and a notice board on
other side of the wall. Each classroom had a cupboard which was fulfilled by unused books.
Mostly, each classroom had 20 tables with 40 chairs for 40 students. In the classroom that the
teacher taught, there were 37 students. Although in the interview the teacher stated that the school
had projectors, there was no provided projector in the classroom. The white board was the only
instructional media in the classroom. There was also no picture or poster on the classroom wall
which could be utilized as media in the classroom.
Respondent of this study was a specialist teacher in the research site. According to Slattery &
Willis (2009, p. 12) specialist teacher is a teacher who only teaches English in several classes. The
teacher was a male. Before graduating from English education in one private university in Bandung
for years ago, he took management informatics but he never graduated due to financial matter. He
started to teach in Elementary school since 2006 as a class teacher. He used to be a computer
teacher and English teacher, in 2008, he officially became a specialist teacher who taught English
only. Teaching at this school was his first experience in teaching English to young learners
formally. He had taught English in a course before, but he did not teach any longer in that course
due to the time management. He preferred to teach at school because of career reason. He was still
as honorary teacher and did not hold any position at school besides being an English teacher at the
moment.
3.3Data Collection
Due to the study which employed qualitative research, in gathering the data, this study
employed three kinds of instruments: observation, documents and interview. Those multiple types
of data are the varied nature of qualitative data which can help the writer to establish the
complexity of the phenomenon (Creswell, 2008: 212).
3.3.1 Observation
According to Frankael & Wallen (2012), to know how people act in a real situation,
observation was the right method to find out about it. In this study, to get information about how
teacher utilizes his instructional media in classroom, classroom observation was employed. In
doing classroom observation, overt observation will be employed. Overt observation, according to
teacher will be observing. It is used to avoid misunderstanding about what writer tries to search in
this study with teacher’s view about the presence of writer in his classroom. In observing the
classroom, writer employed non-respondent observation, where participating in the observation is
a forbid act for the writer to get portray of real situation (Frankael & Wallen, 2012, p. 214) and
took role as complete observer who “is probably least likely to affect the actions of the group being
studied”.
In doing the observation, writer employed one instrument which was used to facilitate the
writer in observing the teacher, observation sheets. The observation sheets were used to find out
the instructional media used by the teacher in teaching English in classroom and what the roles of
the instructional media used by the teacher and how the teacher utilized the instructional media.
The types of instructional media referenced to Harmer’s classification of instructional media (see
chapter II) and the roles of the instructional media referenced to Gagne’s suggestions of the
instructional media roles (see chapter II).
The observations itself was taken three times of teaching learning process. The reason of taking
three times of teaching learning process was the writer wanted to see the dynamic of the utilization
instructional media used by the teacher. It was used to find the relation between teacher’s
philosophy and how it related to instructional media used. All of the observation was conducted
in sixth grade class. There were several reasons in choosing only one grade classes to be observed.
First, it was because the teacher only taught formally in sixth grade. The school only provided one
meeting a week for English subject and it was only for sixth grade. According to the teacher, this
was happened due to curriculum changing which was happened this year in the school. In addition,
the other grades, from second grade and fifth grade were not provided English as subject, it more
became extracurricular at school. Due to several reasons, English as extracurricular at school did
not run yet.
Second, in the school there were some teachers who taught English, but most of them were not
from English educational background. Most of them were class teachers who taught many subjects
and English was not their background. The only English teacher which came from English
Last, it was because of limitation of time. If the writer observed the other grades, second grade
until fifth grade, it would take a very long time because there was no certainty from the school
when the teacher can teach English in those grades.
3.3.2 Interview
Another instrument which employed in this study is interview. Interview was a technique used
to get deeper information from the respondent about respondent’s perspective of some issues
which was being studied (Sugiyono, 2012). In interviewing respondent, one-one-one interview
was employed. One-on-one interview was “a data collection process in which the writer asked
questions to and recorded answers from only one respondent in the study” (Creswell, 2008, p. 218). This was used to get the data quickly and allowed respondent to share the personal
experiences and opinions in detail (Mc Intyre, 2012).
There were two ways of interview, semi-structure interview and informal interview.
Semi-structure interview was categorized as in-depth interview (Sugiyono, 2012). This interview was
employed due to its advantage to gain qualitative information (Laforest, 2009) from the teacher
about his perception, in this case teacher’s personal philosophy and how it relates to the
instructional media which he used (the reason why he chose the instructional media and his
consideration about it). It was also used to get information about the problems that he faced while
utilizing instructional media and how he solved it.
The semi-structured interview itself was prepared to take about sixty-minutes. Laforest (2009)
stated that “sixty-minute interviews are perfectly acceptable, to make sure that that neither the
interviewer nor the respondent lose their concentration.”
Another way of interview used in this study was informal interview. Informal interview was
used to find out about teacher’s plan with instructional media he chose and the materials that he delivered in classroom. In addition it was used to check the information obtained from the
observation, whether it was consistent or not with his plan.
The semi-structured interview and informal interview were done in different time.
Semi-structured interview was conducted after three observations, while the informal interview was done
before and after each observation. Both of the interviews were used Indonesian, it was purposed
English in interview with the participant were a barrier to get the answers that the writer intended
to get. Furthermore, some the processes were written down in notes and some interview processes
were recorded by the researcher then the recordings were transcribed.
In doing the interview, there were questions that were asked to the teacher. Some of the
questions were adopted and some were made by the writer. However, because of the in-depth
interview, those questions could be developed as many as needed.
List of questions of semi-structured interview were:
1. What preparation does the teacher do before class?
2. Does the teacher spend special time to prepare instructional media for each materials/
meeting?
3. What are teacher’s considerations in choosing the mostly used by the teacher?
4. Is the instructional media important to achieve the learning objectives?
5. How do your students’ characteristics influence your preparation in designing or selecting
instructional media?
6. What kinds of the media provided by the school?
7. Why does the teacher use the instructional media?
8. Does the mostly use the teacher use the instructional media provided by school or
teacher-made?
9. Does the teacher have any problem in designing and selecting the instructional media?
10.What are problems faced by the teacher in utilizing media?
11.How does the teacher solve those problems?
12.How do the students respond to the instructional media prepared by the teacher?
The content of informal interview before the classroom observation:
1. What is the material of the lesson?
2. What are instructional media used for teaching learning process?
3. Why do the teacher use the instructional media to teach that materials?
4. What are the consideration while utilizing the instructional media for that materials?
For the informal interview after the observation, the writer confirmed the information which
3.3.3 Document analysis
The last instrument used in this study was documents. In qualitative research, documents could
be a one of valuable sources of information (Creswell, 2008). In this study, documents were
analyzed to give explanation about the preparation that teacher did before utilizing his instructional
media in classroom and to help the writer know whether the teaching learning process goals were
accomplished as the teacher’s plan or not in using the instructional media. Furthermore, Creswell
stated that:
“Documents represent a good source for text (word) data for a qualitative study. They provide the advantage of being in the language and words of the participants, who usually given thoughtful attention to them they are also ready for analysis without the necessary transcription that is required with observational or interview data”. (Creswell, 2008, p. 223)
In analyzing documents (in this case, teacher’s lesson plans) to measure teacher’s preparation
in utilizing media, a rubric was used to help the writer to analyze the preparation that was done by
the teacher. A rubric, according to a definition which was provided by Eberly Center Teaching
Excellence & Educational Innovation is a scoring tool that provides the performance expectations
for a work and it usually contains of descriptions about the components that are listed on the work.
The rubric that was used to measure teacher’s preparation was adapted from two rubrics of lesson
plan, Alverina University Rubric for Lesson Plan. This rubric for lesson plan was employed due
to its complexity and its scoring clarity which is very useful in checking teacher’s preparation
through lesson plans.
3.3Procedure of Study
In conducting this study, the writer conducted research procedures as follows.
1. Preparing the Instruments of this Study
Before conducting the study, the writer designed the instruments used to do this study.
There were three instruments of this study, observation form, interview questions and
documents. Observation form was created to help the writer in observing the instructional
media utilized by the teacher and the form was designed to be employed in three
observations.
Interview questions were designed to obtain information from the teacher about how
interview questions were employed in semi-structured interview and informal interview.
The last instrument was documents..
Documents in this study were teacher’s lesson plans. The documents were asked from the
teacher to obtain additional information about the preparation and the utilization of media.
2. Administering Preliminary Observation
Preliminary observation was conducted by the writer to the teacher of the elementary
school, which became site of this study. The writer conducted interview whether or not the
teacher use media in teaching English to the students.
3. Administering Pilot Study
Before conducting the primary study, the writer examined the instruments whether it was
understandable or not. In this research, the writer administered pilot study.
4. Administering Primary Study
Primary study was the actual study that the writer did in the research site. In this stage, the
writer obtained the information needed to answer the states questions by doing
observations in three consecutive observations (3 meetings) and interview in the research
site.
3.6Data Analysis
All of the data collection used in the research were result in different data. Classroom
observations and documents were result field notes. While one-one-one interview was transcribed
to be analyzed.
Those data were analyzed in several steps. Creswell (2012, p. 237) had divided the steps into:
(1) collecting data, (2) preparing data for analysis, (3) reading through data, (4) coding the data
and (5) coding the text for description and text for themes to be used in the research report.
In collecting the data, writer gathered the data from classroom observation, documents of
participant and one-one-one interview. After collecting the data, those are prepared to be analyzed
by organizing them into interview data and field note. Then, these data were transcribed.
The next step after organizing data, writer read the data to get general sense of the data
information of the study. In addition, the data were also coded for description to be used in the
research report.
After analyzing the data in several steps, those were analyzed by writer. All of the data from
the observation, documents and interview were organized to answer the research question.
3.7Concluding Remarks
This chapter has presented the design of research methodology of this study. This chapter
has covered research design, research site and respondent, data collection, reliability and
validity, procedure of study and data analysis. This study aims to investigate teacher
preparations in utilizing media and how teacher utilizes instructional media to teach English to
CHAPTER V
CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS
This chapter presents the conclusions of the research. This chapter consists of two parts,
conclusions and suggestions that is expected to be some of use for the future research.
5.1Conclusions
The research had attempted to answer questions related to teacher’s preparation in utilizing instructional media and the ways the teacher utilized instructional media in teaching English
to young learners. The elaboration of each point was given below.
First the teacher did two kind of preparations in utilizing instructional media which were
still not optimum. The preparations dealt with preparing the materials and selecting the
instructional media, which he did a night before teaching and only read from one source, the
course book. These preparations were intended to master the materials and create the
appropriate activities to involve the students in teaching learning activities. The teacher
succeed in mastering the materials but in terms of creating varied activities, this decision was
not wise. By only spending a night before teaching, the teacher tended to create the same
activities in every meeting. Whereas, with his material mastery, he could involve his students
more through varied activities.
Second, the ways teacher utilized instructional media in the classroom are depended to the
types of instructional media he used and the utilization was not optimized. There was a little
variation in the media utilization. Whereas, he could utilize the media more if he spent more
time to create meaningful teaching learning activities and spent less time overthinking other
factors which were irrelevant to the teaching and learning activities.
Teacher’s perception on teaching English to young learners was also reflected during the
observations. By utilizing the only provided media, the teacher tried to achieve his goal in
teaching which was encouraging his students to communicate in English simply. By utilizing
5.2Suggestions
There are several suggestions that probably can be useful for the further studies. These
suggestions are divided into two parts, suggestion for English teachers and for further
researchers who are interested in the same field.
Several recommendations for English teachers who are interested to utilize instructional
media in teaching English to young learners are: (1) teachers are recommended to spend more
time in preparing the instructional media before teaching, so the utilization of instructional
media in the classroom will be more optimum; (2) teachers are suggested to think creatively in
utilizing the instructional media, so the teacher could create more activities to build meaningful
teaching – learning; (3) teachers are suggested to take a training program to improve their
ability in selecting or designing instructional media to facilitate them in delivering the materials
attractively.
There are some suggestions for further researchers who are interested in investigating the
utilization of instructional media in teaching English to young learners: (1) the further
researchers are suggested to choose another level accreditation of school, so that the researcher
could see the difference of media utilization by other teachers; (2) lastly, the further researcher are suggested to use teacher’s journal to acquire deeper information about how the teacher perceives instructional media in his/her teaching, so that the researcher could see the deeper
