TRAINING HIGH SCHOOL TEACHERS TO DESIGN CONSTRUCTIVISM CLASSROOM IN INDONESIA

Teaching English as a second language in non-English speaking country like Indonesia needs to be designed in order to make students easy to understand the English instructional materials. Teaching strategies, curriculum development, and designing instructional modules are the important components of educational system to improve learning outcomes. Training teachers to create constructivist classroom for ESL students at high school level in Indonesia is a systematic effort to prepare prospective teachers for the classroom experience and provide them to improve their teaching skills. The main purposes are to improve academic performance through better practice, empowering teachers, developing contextual classroom environment, and connecting learning program with the real world situation.

National education of the Republic of Indonesia through national educational law 2003, article 37 under the chapter of teaching foreign language in Indonesia stated that students at high school level are hoped to able to communicate using foreign language especially English as an International language. To support this expectation, Persatuan Guru Republik Indonesia (Teachers Association for Republik of Indonesia) built Sanggar Peningkatan Kerja Guru (Workshop of Teacher Quality Enhancement) to train teachers for implementing curriculum, innovating methodology of teaching, and developing instructional materials. As an instructional designer, I would like to be involved to design instructional constructivist model and train teachers to create constructivist environment for the classroom setting. My operational goal is to encourage teachers’ performance comprising intellectual, psychomotor skills, verbal information, and attitudinal aspect to create and use constructivist classroom model to have better result of students’ outcome.

Desired Status

The purpose of training high school teachers to design constructivist classroom for ESL students in Indonesia is to have 95% of teachers at high school level are able to create and use the constructivist approach in order to support high school students’ ability in using English as a second language. 

Actual Status

Kompas’ report on July 2^nd 2003 indicated that 65% of students at high school levels couldn’t speak English very well although the average score of grammar was 7.5. 80% of students were very good in grammar rather than other skills such as listening, reading, speaking and writing. There was a relationship between the teachers’ approach (grammar oriented) that has been used since many times ago and the students’ outcome. The survey indicated that 60% of English teachers at high school levels did not know constructivist concept as well as its practical use in school environment. 

Need

Based on the general description as has been mentioned above, there is a big gap   between the expectation and the real condition of teacher’s performance and the students’ outcome that should be overcome. Training high school teachers of English may become a very good solution for the purpose of the teachers’ quality enhancement. The primary focus of the training is to increase 30% of teachers’ performance rate in practicing the constructivist model in the classroom setting so the high school levels of students’ achievement in using English as a second language in Indonesia can be increased as well. 

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