Educafl 2022. Vol 5 No 1
Doi: https://doi.org/10.21776/ub.educafl.2022.005.01.03
Classroom management problems faced by pre-service teachers of english education program in senior high schools
Rizki Fajar Jayadi Universitas Brawijaya [email protected]
Indonesia Sugeng Susilo Adi Universitas Brawijaya
[email protected] Indonesia Agus Gozali Universitas Brawijaya
[email protected] Indonesia
Article Info ABSTRACT
Article history:
Received : April 25, 2021 Revised : January 30, 2022 Accepted : January 30, 2022
This research was intended to find out the kinds of problems, and how pre-service teachers deal with the problems relating to classroom management. This study use quantitative descriptive method where the data of this study were gathered through the interview and questionnaire as the instruments of data collection.
This study involved 56 students of English Education Program in FIB UB who conducted pre service teachers in Senior High School in academic year 2019/2020 as subject of the study. The participants were chosen by using random sampling technique in which the sample was chosen randomly, specifically, the participants were chosen by considering their experience while pre-service teaching in Senior High School. This study used survey design as the method. 17 problems have been revealed relating to the classroom management which were additional item from the respondents and divided into two categories.
Keywords:
Classroom management, pre service, student teachers
Corresponding Author:
Rizki Fajar Jayadi Universitas Brawijaya [email protected] Indonesia
Sugeng Susilo Adi Universitas Brawijaya [email protected] Indonesia
Agus Gozali
Universitas Brawijaya [email protected] Indomesia
1. INTRODUCTION
English Language Education Program (ELEP) of Universitas Brawijaya (UB) is an institution which obliges their students to do the pre-service teacher program as it is one of the courses in this study program. They can learn about the strategies in teaching task and non-teaching tasks as preparation to be professional teacher. Pre service teachers is intra-curriculum materials of educational training program conducted by the study program including educational tasks, either in the form of teaching practices or other educational activities in order to obtain the requirements to be qualified teacher.
Preservice teachers of English Language Education (ELEP) Program FIB UB are required to be involved in real teaching learning process in some schools in Malang and Batu as teacher for one semester. They have to practice the knowledge and skills they have acquired in class to prove that they are suitable and capable to be professional teachers. [4] Koca (2016) states that new teacher will find the difficulty in motivating and implementing programs to students. Pre service teachers also need to consider three aspects of teaching as stated by [5] Arends (2007:24) They are:
leadership teacher provides leadership to their students through planning, motivation, and the facilitation of learning, second is instruction is the most important aspect of the teacher’ work is providing face-to-face instruction to students in classroom and organizational in addition to working with students, teachers are also expected to work with other adults in the school setting for the purpose of the school wide planning and coordination.
Therefore, in conducting pre service teaching, students deal with numerous activities conducted by the real teacher. They have to make syllabus, lesson plan, and other teaching equipment before teach the students. Teaching students in a real school environment is more complex than teaching in micro teaching class that they have conducted as part of their practice in University. Senior High school students at school have their own characteristic in learning which are likely to become a challenge for pre service teachers.
Pre service teachers usually endure numerous problems during their teaching practice such as making lesson plans, problems in teaching skills, problems in providing the media for teaching learning process and problems in classroom management. Among these problems, the writer is interested to investigate the problem of classroom management. Thus, based on writer’s experience during pre-service teachers, he became aware that classroom management also gives a specific contribution in building an effective teaching-learning process. For the students, lack of effective classroom management may cause an ineffective learning activity. For the teacher, it cause unhappiness and stress and eventually lead to individual failure in offering the knowledge to the students. [6] (Kelly : 2003) states that classroom management is an important concern of every teacher; experienced or novice, man or woman, old or young. Student teachers (STs hereafter) of English report to be experiencing a handful of problems related to Classroom Management [7]
(Merç, 2004). According to [8] Luo, Bellows, and Grady (2000), for many graduate teaching assistants, controlling classroom environments can be overwhelming. Even teachers with 25 years of experience can still face Classroom Managements problems [9] (Jayadi, 1991). When the component of a foreign language classroom is added to the setting, the situation becomes even more problematic and uncertain [10] (Burden, 1999).
Although classroom management is offered as a theoretical course in most of the faculties of education, it has been a difficult issue for the novice teachers to handle with the classroom management problems in practice [11] (Stars, 2005). [12] Caughen and Fine (2013) report that classroom management is one of the most challenging issues for novice teachers. Especially, when the classroom management problems are linked with the language teaching methods and strategies, the situation gets even harder.
Classroom management influences the teaching-learning process, including English in the class. [13] Nunan (2000: 189) says that in the teaching and learning process, classroom management plays an important role to establish and 2 maintain workable system in the classroom.
Furthermore, he states that classroom management can be used to organize and manage the class.
[14] Van Tartwijk (2011) explains that classroom management will enable the teaching-learning process to take place effectively.
Related to the explanation above, it can be said that classroom management have a big impact in learning process and also managing classroom management is not easy even teachers with 25 years of experience can still face Classroom Managements problems [15] (Burden & Byrd, 1999).
Furthermore, the researcher is interested to doing this research to help pre-service teachers or the students of FIB UB to know the kinds problems they may encounter during pre-service teachers and provide more information about how to deal with the problems relating to classroom management. This can help them to better prepared when conducting pre-service teachers. The result of this research is hoped to be useful for the pre -service teachers and all parties involved in implementation of the pre-service teachers.
Classroom Management Dimension
Teacher as a leader needs prepare everything necessary in teaching-learning process in classroom. It can be materials, media, technique, or even the rules in class which have to be managed before class started. Classroom management can be defined as a set of strategies that a teacher creates and maintains in order to establish effective learning environment and promote positive students behavior in classroom [16] (Johnson, 2018). Classroom management may include:
planning and preparation of materials, decoration and organization of the classroom, the formation and enforcement of rules and procedures as well as establishing and maintaining good teacher- student relationships [17] (Mary and Rosalind, ).
[18] Harry K. Wong in Starr (2005) states that classroom management is the practices and procedures that allow teachers to teach and students to learn. He defines two aspects that linked to the classroom management they are; classroom procedure which concern in how to get things done, and classroom discipline that concern in how the students behave.
According to Doyle (1986 cited in [15] Burden and Byrd 1999:162) classroom management refers to ”action and strategies teachers use to maintain order in classroom”. Jones (1996 citied in Burden and Byrd 1999:162) also states that classroom management linked to numerous key questions come to mind about classroom management and control. There are: How is order established and maintained, how can the school year begin effectively, how can the classroom be organized, what rules and producers are appropriate and how can the students be held academically accountable.
Teaching-learning process in school is generally conducted in the classroom. So, well managed classroom becomes an important factor for teachers and students to obtain the learning objectives. Arends (2007:203) states that “unless the classroom management issues can be solved, the best teaching is wasted, thus making it possibly the most important challenge facing beginning teachers”. If a teacher unable manage the class well, students will become uncontrolled or even disrespectful of the teacher in teaching learning process. Furthermore, no apparent rules and procedures guide behavior make a chaotic circumstance in teaching-learning process.
The importance of classroom management is also stated by [17] Mary and Rosalind (2003),
“we saw how effectively teachers could transform their drab and dreary classroom into stimulating places of learning and convert waste materials into useful aids”. They state that a classroom can be so important because this is a stimulating place for students in learning. In addition, schmucks (2001 cited in Arends 2007 : 146) who believes that a positive learning communities are created by teachers when they teach students important interpersonal and group skill.
According to Arends (2007:171) the most difficult aspect in the first year of beginning teacher is in the classroom management and discipline. Beginning teachers continue to feel insecure although a rich knowledge base on classroom management has been developed. They have to work out with student’s misbehavior in making a positive environment in teaching process. In leading the students, ordering, giving, rules, organizing and maintaining the students in the classroom is the most challenging things that the teacher will face in teaching their students. Teacher commonly face numerous issues or misbehavior from the students in the classroom.
A related study about classroom management was conducted by Akarshu (2012) who surveyed about problems in classroom management encountered by new TA (teaching assistant).
The purpose of this study was to explore and discover classroom management problems encountered by undergraduate science teaching assistants (TAs). The study was conducted using a stratified random sampling from a list of over 450 TAs employed by the university during our set time period. Next, Cezmi and Toprak (2013) analyze the problems of classroom management among migrant students in Turkey. They state that “Classroom management is of unique importance in terms of creating a positive classroom climate for effective learning and teaching and failure to ensure such an atmosphere may create various problems that teachers need to tackle “.
They use qualitative method and purposive sampling as their sampling technique. 63 teachers working in school selected as target study group were asked for an interview and 55 of them volunteered for an interview. Moreover, Luo, Bellows and Grady (2000) in their research entitled
“classroom management issues for Teaching assistants” analyzed problems in classroom management among TA teaching assistant) in United States with one of four research questions their research is “What are the most common classroom management problems experienced by TA?” They surveyed all of international and U.S.TAs (N=749) who were instructing undergraduate students during the spring semester of 1997 at UNL (University of Nebraska-Lincoln) through mailed survey questionnaire.
2. METHODS
The quantitative descriptive method was used in this research. The research aims at find out some information about pre service teachers problems relating to classroom management by identifying the problems relating to classroom management and analyzing ways taker dealing with problems. First of all, the pre service teachers were given some checklist of questionnaires in order to know the kinds of problems occurred during the pre service teachers. The results of questionnaires were calculated in percentage and divided into two categories. The data were collected through questionnaire and interview. The questionnaire is the first instrument to know then percentage of problems faced by the pre service teachers students. This method helps the researchers to calculate the dominance of the problems in pre service teachers program. The questionnaire is adapted from Akarshu 2012, Cezmi and Toprak 2013, and Luo, Bellow and Grady (2000). The researchers translated the instrument from Turkish Language to English The questionnaire was in English because all the respondents were form English Department. The researcher chooses to adapt and is not adopting the instrument because some of the questions are not necessary to be asked to the students and the researchers want to make a suitable questionnaire by adding and changing some statements.
3. RESULTS/FINDINGS
The main problems relating to classroom management that pre service teachers faced in teaching English to Senior High School are students make too much noise in class, student’s lack of interest in lesson and, student’s inability to understand the lesson which selected by 56 students (99,9%) with 99,9% frequency for each. Following the three problems above are student’s not paying attention selected by 52 respondents (92,2%), and students coming late to class selected 50 respondents (88,4%).
The researchers asked students about how to deal with the problems relating to classroom management, their feelings, and how the Senior High School students react to the solution in order to know whether the technique is effective or not. The following explanation was the student's responses to the questions being asked in the interview. For the first question interview about what kinds of problems the pre service teachers faced relating to classroom management the respondents reported that they usually race the problems relating to classroom management on the category of the students discipline in classroom which also reinforced the pre service teachers respond in the questionnaire. From those problems, almost all respondents agree that the major problem arc
"students make too much noise in class", following with "student's lack of interest in lesson,
"student's inability to understand the lesson" and "students' not paying attention". These responds almost confirms the result found from the questionnaire because there is one major problem from the questionnaire which did not mentioned in the interview session that is "students coming late to class".
Referring to the third question of the interview about the pre service teachers feeling about the problems found that numerous pre service teachers feel surprised with the problems relating to the classroom management, they think that there is a significant difference between teaching English in senior high school and teaching English in micro teaching class. They also feel annoyed, angry, sad, disappointed and inconvenient in the classroom in dealing with those problems. On the other hand, three pre service teachers are accustomed to the senior high school student's behavior because some of them are already teaching English as private teacher.
Regarding the fourth question in the interview, all pre service teachers agree if those problems to relating classroom management affect their teaching-learning activity. They claimed that those problems give negative effect because it caused students not to give an attention to the teacher's explanation. Moreover, students who did not listen to their teacher will not understand the material given. Furthermore, the, teacher has to repeat the explanation and it will waste the time. In conclusion, teaching-learning activity will not be efficient if those problems still appear during the class.
Relating to the fifth questions about the solution given by the pre service teachers, they have different answers. A number of them gave a solution and the rest did nothing to overcome the problems. For the first major problem "students make too much noise in class” , every pre service teachers seem to have their own ways to solve the problem. 50% of them shouted aloud to the students in front of the class. Moreover. 19.2% of them also asked their students to come and do some tasks in front of the class as a punishment on the other hand, 30.7 of pre service teachers were silent and gave a chance to the students to talk until the students quite by themselves. Senior high school students have the same reaction to those techniques, students remained quite for only a short period of time and they get noisy again at the end. Linked with the second problem
"students' lack of interest in lesson" found 80.7% of pre service teacher students overcome the problem changed their teaching techniques to make learning environments more attractive to the students' through game and songs.
Moreover, the senior high school students give positive reaction and. Pre service teachers claimed that this method is effective to increasing the student's interest in lemming, 3.8% of pre service teachers prefer to motivate the students by give an advice to the students and the 15,3% of them did nothing to solve this problem. Referring to the third problem "Students inability to understand the lesson" found 73% of pre service teachers do apperception or repeating the previous lessons to make sure tilt' students understand before they give the next materials to the students. By a pre service teacher trying this strategy, PPI, students claimed that most students became better in understanding the lessons even not sufficient as their expectation. Moreover, 3.8% of pre service teachers offered personal consultation to weak students and the rest of pre service teachers do nothing, to overcome the problem. For the fourth problem "students' not paying attention" found 88.4% of pre service teachers offered a solution by shout louder to take students attention in classroom and asked the senior high school students who not paying attention to do some tasks given by pre service teachers in front of the class, and 11.5% of pre service teachers did nothing to overcome this problem. From the solutions given above, none of them was effective. The students gave similar reaction by paying attention for a while and return to ignore the teacher during the teaching- learning activity. The last fifth problem is "students coming late to class" found that 88.4% of pre service teachers try to warn and threat the senior high school student by scoring but none of solutions for those problems were effective.
Pre service teachers frequently repeat their teaching techniques because those techniques only work for a period of time. Moreover, they assumed and realized that those techniques were not effective to overcome those problems except "using games and songs" the majority of pre service
teachers claimed that this solution was effective to increase the students motivation or make the senior high school students interested in the lessons. For the last question in the interview about the suggestion, pre service teachers suggest that the next pre service teachers have to be well pre prepared before entering the classroom. They have to prepare everything starting from the materials, lesson plan, techniques, physical and emotional. Also, they suggest that pre service teachers have to make a consistent character from the beginning and act like a real teacher in the school, as subject number 3 stated in her interview: "Being friendly is ok, but don't let yourself be their friend, but make yourself be a friendly teacher" she wants to say that if you are the students friend, you will be treated as a friend, not a teacher.
The researchers classified 17 problems relating to classroom management from the findings into two categories of problems. They are: "classroom discipline" and "classroom procedure" that linked to the classroom management issues. The major problems relating to classroom management that can be seen in the findings are the problems in category of classroom procedure as "students' lack of interest in lesson (99.9%), and students' inability to understand the lesson (99.9%) Meanwhile, the problems relating to classroom management that categorized into the students discipline are likely to be the minor problems as "students answer cell phone or uses text message in class (34.5%) and students fall asleep in class (30,7%)”.
These findings are in line with Cezmi and Toprak (2013) major problems relating with classroom management where researcher has the same result from the first to the third number about major problems relating to classroom management. On the other hand, findings about major problems relating to classroom management are likely different from Alkharsu (2012) and Luo, Bellows, and Grady (2000) who claimed that the first major problems was "students comes to class unprepared" while the findings from this study which supported by Cezmi and Toprak is
"students make too much noise in class"
Based on the interviews, the writer divided all pre service teachers into two groups of students.
First is "students who try to find a solution to overcome the problems (SFS)" and second group is
"students who do nothing to overcome the problems (SDN)". For the first major problem relating to management "students make too much noise in class" found 69.2% of SFS and 30,7%, students who try to find solution to solve the problems by giving punishment, shout louder, make a strange sound by hitting in classroom and games. For the second major problem "students' lack of interest in lesson", to 84.6% of SFS and 15.3% SDN, SFS try to overcome the problem by changing their teaching techniques to make learning environment more attractive to the students' trough game and songs to motivate their student.
Furthermore, linked with the third major problem "students’ inability to understand the lesson'' found 76.9% of SFS and 23% SDN. SFS offered the solutions by apperception or repeat the previous lessons and give personal consultation- Referring to the fourth major problem "students not paying attention" found 88.4% of SFS and 11.5% of SDN. SFS prefer to shout louder or ask some students to do the task in the front of classroom to take students attention in classroom. In dealing with the fifth major problem relating to classroom management "students coming late to class", it was found 76.9% SFS and 23% SDN. SFS threaten their students by score and give a warning to overcome the problems.
The solutions given by the Pre service teachers of FIB UB who try to solve the problems dealing with classroom management are likely to different with the solution given by Cezmi and Toprak (2013). The suggested solution found from Cezmi and Toprak to solve the problems relating to classroom management were by increasing the students-parent relationship meanwhile, the solution from the SFS in this study pre fer in developing teacher-students communication in classroom.
4. CONCLUSION
From the analysis data and discussion in the previous chapter the writer found that there are 17
problems from the questionnaire which divided into two categories, they are; classroom discipline and classroom procedure in which became kinds of problems relating to classroom management pre service teachers face in their teaching practice. Furthermore, there are five major problems relating to classroom management faced by pre service teachers of FIB UB in teaching English to senior high school academic year 2019/2020. They are: students make too much noise in class, students' lack of interest in lesson, students’ inability to understand the lesson, students not paying attention and students coming late consecutively.
Moreover, some pre service teacher (SFS) try to solve the problems by developing teacher- students in these ways as follows: Teachers shout aloud/talking louder to the students , teachers make a strange sound by hitting an object in classroom, teachers ask the student to do some tasks in front of the class, teachers arrange an interesting teaching method (using game or song ) to attract the students, teachers motivate the students, teachers do apperception before starting new materials ,teachers give personal consultation and teachers threat the students by score pre service teachers feel surprised with' teaching environment. They said that real classroom in school is far from their expectation. Inconvenient feeling, not confidence and sometimes feel annoyed with the circumstances prove that they are not well prepared for pre service teachers.
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