Wirman Kasmayadi1, Kumaidi2, Sumarno3
[email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]
1Institute of Quality Assurance Education in Province West of Nusa Tenggara
2Faculty of Psychology,Muhammadiyah University of Surakarta,
3Graduate School, State University of Yogyakarta Abstract
Teachers as professionals have the functions, roles, and a very important position in educational success. The consequence is teachers have an obligation to implement continuing professional development. This study aimed to evaluate the implementation of the national policy on teacher professional development in a sustainable ways.
This research was conducted in public and private senior high schools in the Mataram city. The number of 285 teachers of all subjects participating in the survey which was focused on the development activity of the professional and performance of teachers. Data were collected by questionnaire has been validated by Focus Groups Discussion (FGD) techniques and Second Order Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) using 8.80 lisrel program, by which the instruments fulfill construct validity as well as the reliability (coefficient α > 0.70).
Based on the results of descriptive statistical analysis, this study found that: 1) the professional development activities of teachers showing four profiles, namely a) updating knowledge or skills is generally high; b) scientific publications/ innovations generally very low; c) reflective activity generally moderate and d) collaborative activity is generally high, while 2) the performance of teachers is generally quite well demonstrated by the success in the classroom and professional efficacy. In an effort to increase the success implementation of this policy, it is recommended to schools and stakeholders to develop and support the professional development of teachers is needed in order to improve the quality of learning. These findings have implications for career improvement and development efforts as well as the professionalism of teachers.
Key words: Evaluation of policy implementation, continuous professional development, teacher professionalism
1. Introduction
Teachers have very important role for the success of education, that’s why governor’s policy to support the professional career for teachers are always developed. One of the policy is teachers should be able to develop their proficiency continuously in order to make teacher more professional in doing their duty. This is in line with the condition of western country’s education that reported by (Day & Sachs, 11:2004), where at the beginning teachers are hoped to always develop their skill in their career, so they could fulfil the need of the students and those who have another interest. Therefore, the continuous professional development of teacher should be an important step to increase the quality of the teacher, the quality of students learning, and the quality of the school.
Related with the teacher participation in continuous professional development activity, western countries have adopted some different policies. As an example, United State of America has regulated that teacher should continue their education fully to update their license, and the newest national education reformation about the investment in professional development to increase the quality of school and student’s learning outcomes (Jaquith, Mindich, Wei, & Darling-
Hammond, 2010). Although there are a lot of countries have adopted the standard of continuous professional development for teacher, access and teacher participation are having a different result from one country to another (Darling-Hammond, at al., 2009; Jaquith et al., 2010). In Europe, policy that regardless to teacher participation about the continuous professional development of teacher is also different. For example, England and Germany explicitly oblige teacher to getting involve in professional development activity; in Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Spain, the continuous professional development in optional, but this is affect the career advancement and the salary. It is contrary with what happen in France, Ireland, Sweden, and Netherland, proficiency development is a professional duty, but the participation is optional, and it do not affect teacher’s career or salary (Scheerens, 2010).
In line with the policy of teacher quality development in America, Europe, and Asia, so Indonesia’s government by the National education reformation have determine the basic change in an attempt to foster and develop teacher professional career. Based on the minister of state regulation and Bureaucratic Reform No. 16 2009 about teacher functional position and its credit number: and the regulation from minister of education and culture
No. 35 2010 about the technical guidelines for the implementation of teacher performance assessment, since 2013, government have assessed teacher’s performance and oblige them to join the continuous proficiency development. Where the credit number from this activity is recognized as one of the main element in teacher’s career development. Except this activity number of credit, there are some other guiding and tasks that are relevant with the school function as the requirements to increase the teacher’s functional position.
2. The Continuous Professional Development for Teacher.
The term of continuous professional development for teacher are recently come out in many relevant literature, such as teacher development, education and position training, staff development, career development, human resources development, professional development, continuing education, and long life education (Bolam &
McMahon, 2004). These terms sometimes have an overlap meaning and have defined in many different way by the writers. In this research, we follow the definition by Day (2004:219), it is: the development of proficiency as an effort that consist of all of the study experience that happen in such a real activity which directly or indirectly planned to give benefits for person, group, or school, and to contribute for the education quality in class.
Therefore, proficiency development cover all activities that fulfil the teacher’s need or institution’s need. Teacher, school, and student will get the benefit from this process. This definition sees the function and character separately, but it still have relation within the aspect, such as the function, the relation of a person and a group in the development activity. First, the continuous professional development for teacher probably have a different function, oriented with the maintenance, improvement, or change. Teacher should learn continuously so they be able to update their knowledge and skill with the new trend, and learn new strategy, technic, and method to fulfil the new class challenge (Cheetham&Chivers, 2001); to repair self and change their school to be a learning society (Stoll, BOlam, McMahon, Wallance, &
Thomas; 2006); and to give a respond about the change of education (Fullan, 2007).
Second, the function of continuous professional development is emphasize that there is a symbiotic relationship between individual’s and organization’s need. In professional learning community, they focus to the student’s learning, many values and perspective, collective responsibility, inquiry professional reflective, collaboration, also group and individual learning (Stoll et al;2006), teacher responsible with their own action and get the knowledge that they want, skill and list of activities to increase their
participation in school environment. By participating in varied professional activity, teacher are stimulated their proficiency development and their school development, so teacher give a significant contribution to develop education practices. Besides, in case of educational innovation, learn from the teacher, working team, and organization are affected with the education result (Miedema&Stam 2008). Third, the discussion about PKB in detail and substantial will be provided in the next chapter.
3. The Activity of the Continuous Professional Development for Teacher.
The activity of continuous professional development that have done by teacher, in active and voluntary in their career, could be divided into three groups: update the knowledge and the skill, experience reflection, and collaboration with colleague (Timperley et al, 2007). Meanwhile, some activities of scientific publication, and innovative work are carried periodically and according to the needs. The research that related with those activities prove that the three groups of activity are effective to improve the quality and teacher practice (Cheetham&Chivers, 2001;
Timperley et al., 2007). Teacher participation in many PKB activities are very essential with the assumption that focused in content that related with the learning activity, such as learning material, a general pedagogical knowledge, and pedagogical content knowledge (Verloop 2001).
Activity in updating their knowledge and skill, particularly when they are in education process, teacher develop their personal practice knowledge (Van Driel, Beijaard, &Verloop, 2001). Shortly, it is a practice knowledge that ask teacher to integrated their experience knowledge, formal knowledge, belief, general pedagogical knowledge, and pedagogic knowledge. After the beginning of this teacher education, experience knowledge is still happen very often implicitly (Zanting, Verloop,
&Vermunt, 2001), expanded by the development of teaching practice, but the basic formal knowledge is still constant, updating them periodically to reflect social development and the innovation in education.
Besides, the activity in updating the knowledge is supporting other professional activities, such as reflection, because a good theoretical knowledge is a need for a meaningful condition (Verloop, 2001).
According to CheethamnadChivers (2001), activity to update knowledge is a basic related to an important particular knowledge and as a reference in reflection and collaboration. In this study, reading activity (such as, professional literature, a book that recently issued, education site in the internet) and training (such as special training, seminar, conference, training, consultation inside or outside school) as a teacher activity that should be used to update their knowledge and skill.
Reflection of this professional activity reflect the particular form of thinking, implemented to handle a confusing situation (problem) to understand the problem better. Schön (1983) says that this form as a “reflection-on-action” and define as an intentional process, and aimed to consider the knowledge that already exist, belief, opportunity, idea, and action. In the other side, “reflection-in- action” is a process of badly unconscious that the expert develop and repair it from the knowledge and experience. Reflection is a serious professional activity and very important as development of professional activity, because it helps teacher to make tacit knowledge or implicit and explicit belief, so they get the control from their routine action in the class and can make change if it is necessary (Schön 1983). Some teachers are probably doubtful to involve themselves in a reflective activity (Runhaar et al, 2010; Schön 1983), because they afraid if the information that have been reflected can affect their image and show their weakness. The pressure of an active characteristic and problem solving in the reflection, that’s why we are focused this research in reflection-on-action. Teacher that involved in the reflection process in action (reflection-on-action) conscious for identifying some problems that issued in looking for the way out that give a big affection and meaningful to the students, it is a “reflective practitioners”. A reflective practitioners can be done individually but the benefits from the feedback to the team and students, or by doing a practice research individually, or cooperate with colleague.
Finally, a collaborative activity that is handled by teacher’s colleague whether inside or outside the school is a professional development activity that is very effective (Bakkenes et al., 2010) which cover;
(1) supporting and beneficial to share, reducing stress and help improving confidence (Cheetam&Chivers, 2001); (2) feedback, a great number of new idea and new challenge (Kwakman, 2003), (3) improving the spirit for cooperating; (4) having a bigger commitment to change the practice;
and (5) as a place to shape the learning environment so that it can influence student’s achievement directly or indirectly (OECD, 2009’
Westheimer’2008)/ in this research, there are two different collaborative activity for teacher (OECD, 2009), they are: exchange activity (such as, discussing about teaching problem, exchanging teaching material) and professional collaboration (such as, prepare the education materials together, team teaching).
Scientific publication activity and innovative or also known as profession development have been a point in credit number which is obliged for the teacher as a requirement in grading their career.
The latest regulation based on the Minister Utilization of state apparatus and bureaucratic
reform are obliged teacher to have a credit number based on their position level so they can be go to the next grade/level. That’s why the continuous professional development through the scientific publication activity have been the need for the teacher in order to develop their career and professionalism.
As a learning person, teacher should be responsible and participate actively in three activities, whether it is facilitated by external or part of their job. Where, those activity are related one another so activity to updating their knowledge and skill is very important as a basic to be a reflection and collaboration activity. Collaborative activity can give feedback to teacher performance so it can improve the reflection. In other side, these three activities have a different characteristics so it can be the compliment from one to another. But, teacher might be varied according to their participation in every professional development activity.
4. Research Method
This research was taken in Mataram, Nusa Tenggara Barat Province and it involved teachers in all subjects in senior high school. There were 285 teachers participate this research. The data was gathered in March to April 2015 through fulfil the survey instrument evaluate implementation the continuous professional development for teacher.
This evaluation instruments covered some items about activity to update knowledge and skill (9 items), activity of scientific publication/innovative works (21 items), reflective activities (13 items), and collaborative activities (14 items). While to measure some aspects that related with teacher performance cover the class efficacy (27 items) and professional teacher efficacy (37items). Every statement had some alternative answers from the lowest was 1 and the highest was 5. The score measurements were 1=never, 2=rarely, 3=sometime, 4=often, and 5=always.
Instrument evaluation validity covered content validity and construct validity. Content validity was questioning whether the points in the instrument have measured the level of agreement in the questions that related with the content and context in the continuous profession development. This validity used focus groups discussion (FGD) technique involving expert scoring with the evaluation background. Public policy, and education practitioners, construct validity analysis used Second Order Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and helped by Lisrel 8.80 program. The trial of every aspect in construct validity used CFA to know whether the measurement of the model to the evaluation aspect is suitable. The construct validity trial result showed that it had fulfilled the criteria the suitable scoring in model measurement, it is p-
value in Chi-Square (χ2) > 0.05 and RMSEA <
0.08.
The testing of instrument reliability was done by using internal consistency reliability approach, which is croncbach’s alpha method. Based on the criteria of reliability Croncbach’s alpha > 0.7, can be described that all evaluation aspect implementation the continuous profession development policy for teacher in senior high school in Mataram have fulfilled the requisite of measurement tool reliability so this questionnaire instrument is strongly rely and have a good reliability. That’s why, it can be concluded that evaluation instrument in continuous profession development policy implementation for teacher in senior high school in Mataram was valid and reliable.
The next data analysis were done by using descriptive quantitative method, it was done by drawing and defining data from every evaluation aspect. This analysis was helped by SPSS for Windows program through interpretation and distribution of respondent data in every evaluation aspect with the aim to get the profile of every aspect or evaluation variable.
The results were distributed by tabulating in the distribution category table. We used this table to get the profile in every evaluation aspect policy implementation the continuous profession development for teacher. We arrange this table by grouping the total score in every evaluation aspect based on the maximal expectation score (Xmak), minimum expectation score (Xmin), average level (Mi) and ideal standard deviation value (SDi), ideal average (Mi) every aspects were defined based on the addition of highest score expectation (Xmak) and minimum expectation score (Xmin) divided by 2). While the ideal standard deviation value (SDi) was defined by the distance score (the maximal expectation score decreased by the minimal expectation score) divided by six. Next, the data are grouped in five category, they were (1) Mi - 3SDi <
score ≤ Mi – 1.8 SDi was the lowest category; (2) Mi – 1.8 SDi< score ≤ Mi – 0.6 SDi was the low category; (3) Mi – 0.6 SDi< score ≤ Mi + 0.6 SDi was average category; (4) Mi + 0.6 SDi< score ≤ Mi + 1.8 SDi was high category; and (5) Mi + 1.8 SDi<skor ≤ Mi + 3SDi was the highest category.
5. Result
5.1 The Activity Profile of the Continuous Professional Development for Teacher Some aspect to measure teacher activity to update their knowledge and skill in the continuous professional development, they were (1) the activity of reading and looking for the recent information from internet and any other information sources; (2) the activity of developing curriculum, teaching material, or learning method/strategy, also teaching
result measurement tools; (3) the activity of participating in training, workshop, seminar, or MGMP collectively or individually.
The result of the analysis of updating knowledge and skill for teacher got the maximal expectation score 95, minimum expectation score 19. While the empirical average score was 69 and ideal average was 57, also standard deviation value was 12.7. Then, the analysis of distribution category showed that the highest empirical average is 69.12%, and 13.68% was under the average, while 17.19% was beyond the average. So, the conclusion was the profile of teacher activity in updating knowledge and skill in the continuous professional development for senior high school teacher in Mataram was in the High category.
Aspect to measure the activity of scientific publication or innovative works of teacher in senior high school in effort of continuous professional development, they were (1) becoming the speaker in scientific seminar, training, and workshop; (2) giving a publication of the research result report through scientific accredited journal; (3) giving the publication of popular scientific article through scientific accredited journal; (4) making a learning book and non-learning book based on ISBN standard; (5) make a learning module; (6) making a translated works; and (7) modifying and/or making a visual aid or helping tools in learning process.
The result of the analysis of activity aspect on scientific publication or innovative works for teacher got the highest expectation score 105, and lowest expectation score was 21. Meanwhile, the empirical average score 30.96 and ideal average 63.
The ideal standard deviation 14. The next was the analysis of the category distribution. It showed that the highest empirical score was 30.96 it is the lowest category that was defined by most of the teacher as a respondent it was 82.46%, and the highest was 17.54% is beyond the average. In short, the profile of activity in scientific publication or innovative work for teacher in continuous professional development for senior high school student in Mataram was in the lowest category.
There were seven aspects to measure teacher’s reflective activity in continuous professional development for teacher; (1) reviewing the teaching learning affectivity; (2) reviewing teaching learning problems; (3) watching the teaching learning process in peers; (4) giving feedback about the teaching learning process in peers; (5) reviewing the result of teaching learning supervision; (6) asking the students to give feedback about the teaching learning process; and (7) analyzing the measurement of student learning result as the repairmen and as the follow up of the teaching learning process.
From the result of the analysis of the reflective activity aspect of teacher, we got the highest expectation score which was 65; the lowest