REDESIGNING AND PROFESSIONALIZING TEACHER EDUCATION BY PILOTING ALTERNATIVES TO TRADITIONAL SUPERVISION: ADDRESSING THE CHALLENGES OF THE INDONESIAN CONTEXT
ABSTRACT: The redesign of
Indonesian teacher education is moving forward at a rapid pace and Indonesian teacher
educators are now in a position to augment the top down reform efforts of the
national government with redesign efforts from the ground up. Redesigning the
supervision of student teachers by addressing local problems with local solutions
is one way to do this. This article shares the redesign efforts of three teams
of faculty working at universities in the United States and explains how these
efforts might be adapted to the Indonesian context. Since local expertise is
essential in redesign efforts, it is important that Indonesian teacher
educators work together to create a mechanism for the redesign process. The
redesign of Indonesian teacher education is moving forward at a rapid pace as
unprecedented changes occur at both the national and regional levels. The size
of redesign is massive because of the large population, the size and nature of
the geographic area, the diversity of land and people, and the number of
private and public schools and universities. There are a number of resources
available to undertake such a large scope of work. Teacher educators who earned
Ph.D.s at home and abroad bring a range of expertise to the challenge and a
network of quality private and public universities exist. These institutions
have prepared quality elementary school teachers in the past but undernew
government mandates now have additional years to prepare teachers with the hope
of enhanced preparation and teacher quality. Despite reforms mandated from the
highest levels of government, some familiar challenges confront teacher
educators at the local level. Salaries for both teachers and faculty are low
and resources are stretched thin because faculty members’ teaching and service
loads are heavy. The nature of the partnership between universities and schools
poses some challenges. Additionally, while there is international support for
faculty preparation and other forms of partnership not everything that works in
other countries will work in the same way in Indonesia because of the much
larger scale of reform. Given this unique blend of large-scale reform, limited
resources, and limitations on the degree to which innovations in other settings
can be transferred to Indonesia, Indonesian teacher educators need to consider
their role in the redesign process. While governments design reform from the
top down, teacher educators need to consider how to design change from the
ground up. To undertake this work it will be helpful for Indonesian teacher
educators to redesign teacher education by piloting alternatives to traditional
supervision. Teacher educators will want to consider the role of quality
supervision in the preparation of preservice teachers and will need to consider
the importance of structure and culture in the redesign process.
Author: Adrian Rodgers
Journal Code: jppendidikangg110018
