international journal of education vol. 13 no. 1, august-2020, pp. 8-17 ©2020 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: 10.17509/ije.v13i1.22587 8 self-made vocabulary cards and differentiated assessments to improve an autistic learner’s english vocabulary mastery adaninggar septi subekti english language education department, universitas kristen duta wacana, indonesia adaninggar@staff.ukdw.ac.id first draft received: 8 jan 2020 date accepted: 29 may 2020 final proof received: 15 june 2020 abstract as autistic learners exhibit different behaviours from their peers, they need differentiated instruction in learning. hence, to provide equal learning opportunities for a learner with autism based mainly on the principle of modification changing the expected standard performance of the autistic learner, this study employed differentiated instruction consisting of two treatments in vocabulary building class. they were the use of self-made vocabulary cards as the basic learning materials and differentiated assessments consisting of quizzes, mid-semester assessment, and final assessment providing opportunities for recycle and repetition beneficial for vocabulary retention and learning in general. the findings indicated that the autistic learner showed satisfactory results on his mastery of bilingual (indonesian to english) word equivalence written in the vocabulary cards and thus obtained satisfactory scores in the corresponding assessments. he, however, still struggled in using the words he studied in grammatical and comprehensible english sentences. with teacher’s verbal step-by-step prompts, however, he could formulate simple grammatical sentences. based on the results, implications, limitations and suggested directions of future studies are presented. keywords: autism; differentiated assessments; differentiated instruction; modification; self-made vocabulary cards to cite this paper (in apa style): subekti, a. s. (2020). self-made vocabulary cards and differentiated assessments to improve an autistic learner’s english vocabulary mastery. international journal of education, 13(1), 8-17. doi: 10.17509/ije.v13i1.22587 introduction as the role of education in every individual's life cannot be denied and it has become one of the primary needs of individuals in the modern world (padmadewi & artini, 2017), all learners, including those with special needs, should obtain enough support system to strive (padmadewi & artini, 2017; sheehy & budiyanto, 2014). in many parts of the world, recognition and special care towards learners with special needs have been explicitly regulated in both developed and developing countries, for examples, thailand, malaysia, nigeria, the united kingdom, and the united states (e.g.: archibald & gathercole, 2006; dodge et al., 2014; kantavong et al., 2012; opartkiattikul et al., 2014; yahya et al., 2013b). this may imply that inclusive education where learners with special needs are greatly facilitated is becoming a new “norm” in modern education. it has also been stated in the universal declaration of human rights (lindahl, 2006). furthermore, several prominent empirical studies conducted by sheehy, budiyanto, and associates (e.g.: budiyanto et al., 2017; sheehy et al., 2017; sheehy & budiyanto, 2014) along with other studies (e.g.: solihat & yusuf, 2018; wardany & hidayatullah, 2018) on inclusive education in the indonesian educational context in recent years may suggest that the field of education for students with special needs in indonesia is getting more attention from practitioners in the field. among many learners with special needs are learners with autism or autistic spectrum disorder (asd). as autism is manifested along a broad spectrum, the symptoms and characteristics of autism present themselves in many learners in a variety of combinations, which range from mild to severe (dodge et al., 2014; kluth & darmody-latham, 2016; suparno et al., 2010). hence, some learners with autism may be quite high functioning in the mild condition whilst some others may not be as functioning if their symptoms are more severe (kluth & darmody-latham, 2016). thus, depending on the severity of the symptoms, these learners are less likely than their normal peers to start conversation, appropriately respond to the conversational turn and be able to understand the emotional states of others (dodge et al., 2014; kluth & darmody-latham, 2016; phillips, 2016). whilst they may be able to decode any information, they may have subekti self-made vocabulary cards and differentiated assessments 9 difficulty to understand what they read and make inferences from texts (vacca, 2007). similarly, on vocabulary level, whilst for example, they can name all colours in english, they may be unable to use them for communication (padmadewi & artini, 2017) as they likely have deficiencies in organization and coherence whilst speaking or writing (vacca, 2007). in relation to the urgency to provide inclusive education for learners with autism, language learning is one of the educational areas that have yielded various recent empirical study concerning special instructions for these learners (e.g.: amant et al., 2017; baker et al., 2018; chan & lo, 2016; lindsey-glenn & gentry, 2008) implying the necessity of special education in this field in recent years. among areas of language learning such as listening, reading, speaking, writing, grammar, and vocabulary, vocabulary learning may be the basis to develop language mastery and communication (thornbury, 2002) and thus learning vocabulary is imperative to learners with autism and it can be a starting point to develop their language proficiency (wood et al., 2010). in general, vocabulary is paramount to language learners and plays a critical role in the formation of both spoken utterances and written texts (alqahtani, 2015; maximo, 2000) and as such it is very essential for successful second language (l2) use (maximo, 2000). however, vocabulary teaching has so far not been very responsive to this important role of vocabulary in l2 learning (thornbury, 2002) and teaching vocabulary is often considered difficult by many teachers as at times teachers are not confident about how to best and most effectively teach it (alqahtani, 2015; de groot, 2006). besides, despite some empirical studies in the field of vocabulary teaching, vocabulary is still one of the least researched area in language learning (hunt & beglar, 2005). why vocabulary teaching is not really popular may be attributed to the assumption that specific vocabulary instructions are not really necessary as vocabulary learning is often thought to happen by itself (moir & nation, 2008). however, as learning vocabulary is very essential for the development of learners’ all language skills, vocabulary teaching should never be neglected (thornbury, 2002). whilst vocabulary teaching in english as second language (esl) classrooms is already a challenge, the existence of learners with autism in esl classes may give another challenge (baker et al., 2018) because even though they are able to learn (yahya et al., 2013a), they need special instruction to remedy the deficiencies (baker et al., 2018). a recent empirical study in the field of special education in the indonesian esl setting was conducted by padmadewi and artini (2017). through observations and interviews, they found that the use of visual media through co-teaching and “buddy programmes” could help a learner with autism in learning english more effectively (padmadewi & artini, 2017). specific on vocabulary learning, studies in malaysia found that helpful practices such as the uses of the first language (l1) and pacing instructions helped elementary school students with autism to learn sight vocabulary better (see yahya et al., 2013b, 2013a). despite the possible contributions of these studies, however, such studies specifically in the indonesian esl setting are, to the best of my knowledge, not available despite the importance of vocabulary in l2 learning and the possible challenges to teach it to learners with special needs. hence, more studies in the field on vocabulary learning in the indonesian context are urgently needed. including learners with autism in a regular class may not be an easy task because these learners may face extreme learning challenge and thus experience a sense of failure if they are to follow regular curriculum instructions (padmadewi & artini, 2017). hence, when including such learners in regular classrooms, teachers need to adjust their teaching by providing differentiated instruction, which is the instruction provided for learners based on their different needs in the same class (baseggio, 2018; ford, 2013). it can be done by modifying learning content, modifying the learning process, and modifying the end or expected result (dodge et al., 2014; ford, 2013). it does demand commitment, padmadewi and artini (2017) warned, but its use can offer the most effective treatment for learners with autism in class where they can experience learning opportunities suitable with their abilities (ford, 2013). furthermore, in response to the call to provide opportunities for my student with autism to thrive in regular classroom and to relay the messages of acceptance, empathy, respect, care, and recognition towards learners with autism in general (ford, 2013), i gave differentiated instruction to my student with autism in vocabulary building class. the instruction includes the use of self-made vocabulary cards and differentiated assessment. to fill the gap in literature attributed to the scarcity of empirical studies on special education in the esl setting, therefore, this article is intended to investigate to what extent the use of selfmade vocabulary cards and differentiated assessment can help the student with autism in learning english vocabulary and how this student is facilitated in learning english vocabulary through these two treatments. method research design and participant this study used observation on an autistic learnerparticipant’s performance when given differentiated instruction in the forms of self-made vocabulary cards and differentiated assessments explained further later. this participant’s performance was also measured using comparison of his scores and the mean scores of the class in several quizzes. benny (pseudonym), the participant, was a male student with autism at the age of 22. he studied at an english language education department (eled) of a university in java, indonesia. he was, at the time of the treatments, a third semester student in the first semester of 2018/2019 academic year. he voluntarily participated in this study and visibly international journal of education vol. 13 no. 1, august-2020, pp. 8-17 ©2020 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: 10.17509/ije.v13i1.22587 10 showed his enthusiasm during the process. additionally, his mother was aware of the study and responded to it positively. there was a meeting with his mother upon the conclusion of this study to discuss benny’s progress as well. i taught him in intermediate grammar class in the previous semester through which several prior lay observations on his autism symptoms could be obtained. when he was confident about or liked certain topics of discussion, he would talk much in english despite ungrammaticalities and inappropriate dictions, even too much without paying attention to the listeners or his peers who had started showing disinterest. his reading aloud skill was quite good and he could, to some extent, retell what he had read in english in the indonesian language provided that he was given ample time for preparation. from these two characteristics, it could be stated that this student was categorised into a high functioning learner with autism (vacca, 2007). he, however, always had difficulty in putting words he knew into comprehensible english sentences, let alone grammatical sentences (see also yahya et al., 2013b). furthermore, this student, just like typical learners with autism who have difficulty processing auditory stimuli (padmadewi & artini, 2017; yahya et al., 2013b), also experienced difficulty in understanding too many verbal instructions. just like an autistic participant in kim's and roberti's (2014) study, benny would likely have difficulty when being told a series of commands at a time. hence, instructions should always be made simpler and conveyed step by step unless he would be overwhelmed. despite his limited ability, as observed, he had the spirit to show his best academically. “[if i do not perform well], i am afraid i cannot join graduation ceremony on time” he would put it on many occasions sharing his worry whenever he performed poorly in class. therefore, providing differentiated instruction that could help him best and thus boosting his motivation and confidence in learning can be very strategic. setting the treatment was conducted in vocabulary building class in the odd semester of 2018/2019 academic year. this class, by default, was taken by semester one students. there were 28 students, including benny, in the present class. the other students, who were mostly new university students, were given explanations on benny’s conditions and on differentiated instruction specifically given to him. the class was conducted once a week every monday in 16 meetings, including two assessment days. benny, retook the class as he obtained an e (below 55/100) a year before when did not receive any differentiated instruction and received exactly the same one instead. differentiated instruction for the student participant treatments conducted for the student with autism in vocabulary building class was in accordance with the principles of accommodation and modification in education for students with special needs (baseggio, 2018; dodge et al., 2014; ford, 2013). accommodation refers to some changes teachers make that affect how learners with special needs learn materials, mainly to help them work around or overcome their disabilities in learning (dodge et al., 2014; ford, 2013). modification means changes that teachers make on what is required to be studied or learned by the students with special needs (baseggio, 2018; dodge et al., 2014; ford, 2013). in other words, teachers modify learning contents, learning process, and the end or expected results (dodge et al., 2014; ford, 2013). an example of modification is allowing a learner with special needs not to do the same level of work as his or her regular classmates. in other words, “modifications change the standard for the student; they change what the student is expected to master” (dodge et al., 2014, p. 31). bearing these two principles in mind, with the principle of modification being more prominent, i conducted two treatments to facilitate the student participant with autism and these are the use of self-made vocabulary cards and differentiated assessments. self-made vocabulary cards every other week, all students in vocabulary building class were to make ten vocabulary cards at home based on specific topics assigned at the beginning of the semester. the mastery of their self-made vocabulary cards was assessed in review assessment conducted every other week in which they would meet me one by one. the use of vocabulary cards was considered beneficial when learners themselves made them and they contained key elements about the target word (sheridan & markslag, 2017). in total, there were six review assessments assessing learners’ mastery of their self-made vocabulary cards. benny was also required to make his own cards and join review assessment. he, however, was required to make cards whose total number depended on his commitment the week before. so, instead of required to make ten cards for each topic, he made a commitment as to how many cards he was able to make and master and he should try to keep this commitment. differentiated assessments another assessment conducted in vocabulary building class was biweekly quizzes in which learners were required to do a 100-item matching test where they should match indonesian words or phrases on the left and the english equivalent on the right. in total, there were five quizzes. the year before, in the 2017/2018 academic year when benny took the class for the first time as a first semester student, he did not receive any differentiated assessment. at that time, the same with the other students, he was required to do exactly the same quizzes and ended up scoring very low. he reported obtaining 17, 25, 28 or somewhere around that out of 100. he reported that he had difficulty in matching all the words within the given time as he would suddenly feel overwhelmed and his eyes hurt when seeing so many items he could not handle. as such, in the present subekti self-made vocabulary cards and differentiated assessments 11 study’s vocabulary building class, he was expected to master the self-made vocabulary cards as all the words he wrote in the cards would come out in the quizzes. the same as the biweekly quizzes, there were mid-semester assessment and final assessment in which learners were expected to do 100-item matching test. as for benny, following the same pattern he had for his biweekly quizzes, he would need to master all the words he wrote in his vocabulary cards as these words would all come out in the assessments. with regard to the grading, i made a differentiation for benny. the maximum score he could obtain for the mastery of his vocabulary cards in biweekly review assessment was 100/100, the same as that of the other students. this was based on the consideration that the load of study work they did was relatively the same. however, the maximum score he could obtain in the quizzes, mid-semester assessment, and final assessment was 64/100 whilst his peers doing 100-item matching tests could obtain the maximum score of 100/100. this was made based on the consideration that the other students needed to study and master a lot more words than benny did. however, despite being differentiated in scores, benny was still in an advantage as the score of 64 was the highest score for a c enabling him to pass the class whose passing grade was 60 (the lowest c). benny might not have been able to attain even this level just like what he did in vocabulary building class the year before in which he scored lower than 30/100. the sequence of the treatments for benny can be observed in figure 1. figure 1 the sequence of the treatments findings and discussion the use of self-made vocabulary cards and review assessments with the reference of several key points for effective vocabulary cards proposed by nation (2001), each of the vocabulary card contained, on one side, an english word or phrase, its phonetic transcriptions, the part of speech, the picture, and the use of the word or phrase in a sentence, and the indonesian meaning on the other side to promote retrieval when learners were studying it (nation, 2001). figure 2 the layout of learners’ vocabulary cards (left: side one, right: side two) the use of pictures in the cards was based on the idea that they could help learners understand the concept of unknown or unfamiliar words and help make them more memorable (alqahtani, 2015; wamalwa & wamalwa, 2014). besides, with regard to benny, the student with autism in this class, the requirement of pictures in the vocabulary cards was meant to optimise his visual processing strength typical in autistic learners (lindseyglenn & gentry, 2008; padmadewi & artini, 2017; phillips, 2016). the sample layout can be seen in figure 2, whilst the sample of the contents of each vocabulary card benny made could be seen in figure 3. [an english word or phrase] [part of speech] [the use in a sentence] p ic tu re [the indonesian meaning equivalent] international journal of education vol. 13 no. 1, august-2020, pp. 8-17 ©2020 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: 10.17509/ije.v13i1.22587 12 figure 3 a sample of benny’s vocabulary cards (left: side one,right: side two) in general, benny showed a satisfying performance in terms of his diligence in making vocabulary cards. he started with ten cards in the first review assessment on 3 september 2018 because it was the default number of cards required from all students. at the end of the assessment, i praised him on his mastery on the cards and asked him whether he felt overwhelmed with the number. he willingly challenged himself to make twenty cards (doubled the number his classmates should make). i praised him for his bravery on stretching his limit and gave him feedback not to make cards from red papers because they were slightly difficult to read. at the end of the semester, he obtained 95.83/100 for the category of completeness of vocabulary cards, which means that he, throughout the semester, had made his vocabulary cards based on the previously set criteria (see figure 2) and had never missed any review assessments on which the cards’ completeness was also assessed. his score was slightly higher than the class mean score, on 92.77/100, which may imply that despite his making more cards than any of his classmates, he could show diligence, consistency, and persistence. the cards he had made during the semester could be observed in figure 4. figure 4 benny’s vocabulary cards throughout the semester benny’s own volition in increasing the number of vocabulary cards he made is worth commenting. despite many experts’ reiteration that autistic learners are likely to have little experience in "expressing personal preferences, making decisions based on those preferences, and assuming personal responsibility” (dodge et al., 2014, p. 28), benny to some extents clearly exhibited his strong will to succeed in this class and a sense of responsibility to fulfil his commitment. this attitude may be attributed to his being a high functioning autistic learner and his sensing the teacher’s encouragement through the differentiated instruction. furthermore, the review assessments conducted six times during the semester were intended to assess learners’ mastery of their self-made vocabulary cards on the given topics orally. here, students handed their cards to me and i assessed whether they mastered the words they themselves had written. this assessment included the english equivalents of indonesian words, their part of speech and their use in sentences based on the part of speech. for example, the word “coach (verb)” means “to train”. hence, an example of correct uses in sentences would be “guardiola coached barcelona several years ago”. “guardiola was barcelona’s coach” would be an incorrect example as the word “coach” in this sentence is a noun. students making sentences using the target word allowed them to make a connection between the target word and their experiences and to train them to use the target word in communication (sheridan & markslag, 2017). the sample sentences students made orally in the review assessments did not have to be the same as those written in their cards. figure 5 shows the situation of the second review assessment with benny on 17 september 2018. figure 5 review assessment 2 with benny (right) subekti self-made vocabulary cards and differentiated assessments 13 with the procedure of review assessments aforementioned, benny seemed to have unstable, yet generally improving performance during the semester. he seemed to have a very high spirit in increasing the number of vocabulary cards he had to make. he was very enthusiastic about proposing a higher number of cards every other week. in terms of his mastery on his cards, however, some points need to be commented. first, generally, he exhibited excellent memory of words he wrote in his cards. this was the same as an autistic participant in ting's (2014) study in taiwan in which he could memorise all the spellings of the given words without mistake, amplifying the reiteration of the superior memory of many autistic learners (see also yahya et al., 2013a). in the present study, in all review assessments but the fourth and the fifth, benny could state all of the english equivalents of the indonesian words he wrote and the parts of speech. he, however, did not seem to be well-prepared in the fourth assessment, did not quite finish the previously promised thirty cards, and struggled with the meaning equivalents and parts of speech he was generally good at previously. he insisted himself make forty cards in the fifth assessment despite my warning that it might be overwhelming. he did struggle in finding the english equivalents of some words in his cards, but his performance was, in general, better than the previous one and he seemed to be more prepared. in the last assessment, he committed himself to memorise forty words and he performed quite well especially in meaning equivalents and parts of speech. this result may confirm sheridan's and markslag's (2017) idea that even though managing vocabulary cards is timeconsuming and labour-intensive, it contributes to the amount of deep processing attributed to eventual vocabulary retention, in this case, seen from benny’s good performance. secondly, benny had difficulty in putting words or phrases he wrote in the contexts or sentences. this could be seen from his vocabulary card sample in figure 6. figure 6 benny’s card sample showing serious grammatical mistakes as can be seen in figure 6, benny wrote “the tall building of skyscraper”, a phrase with a rather confusing meaning. he probably meant to write “the tall building is a skyscraper.” there were other examples in which he wrote confusing “sentences” in his cards and these included “the boy is very silliness,” “he is so wildness,” “in the body is that ribs,” and “my armpit is a smell awful.” this finding was not surprising as learners with autism generally display deficiencies in organization and coherence whilst speaking or writing (vacca, 2007) let alone in their l2. due to his inability in formulating grammatical and comprehensible sentences in his vocabulary cards, during the review assessments, i helped him formulate sentences by orally prompting in the indonesian language and give instant error corrections. the following excerpt was taken from the recorded second review assessment in which i, the teacher, assessed benny’s mastery on his cards on 17 september 2018. teacher : now [make a sentence using] ‘menara’ (meaning: tower). benny : they are visit in the tower. teacher : they… (giving an instant correction) benny : they (repeating the teacher) teacher : visit… benny : they visit… the tower. teacher : okay. now [make a sentence using] ‘istana/puri’ (meaning: castle) benny : the king and the queen… (thinking) teacher : very good (giving encouragement) benny : to coming in the castle. teacher : the king and the queen blah blah blah coming… kurang apa (meaning: what does it lack)? benny : mmm… ‘are’ teacher : good. please repeat. benny : the king and the queen are the… teacher : are… (giving an instant correction) benny : are coming to the castle. teacher : very good. as seen from the later part of the excerpt, benny could finally formulate a grammatical and comprehensible sentence “the king and the queen are coming to the castle” only after receiving several verbal prompts in the indonesian language and some verbal encouragements. he could also formulate such sentences as “they still have childish nature,” “the air is inside the windpipe," and "there is bleeding in the nostrils" among others after receiving such help. regarding the use of the indonesian language, this may suggest the positive effects of using l1 for spoken instructions for students with autism, who have impairment in communication and comprehension (seltzer et al., 2004), as they generally understand auditory instructions less than their regular listeners (padmadewi & artini, 2017; yahya et al., 2013b). even though not specifically referring to learners with special needs, swain and lapkin (2013) asserted that the use of l1 in l2 classrooms could help learners when they are dealing with complex ideas. besides, teachers teaching students with special needs in malaysia also reported the effectiveness of the use of malay (their autistic students’ l1) in helping these students learn in english class (yahya et al., 2013b), implying the international journal of education vol. 13 no. 1, august-2020, pp. 8-17 ©2020 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: 10.17509/ije.v13i1.22587 14 prevalence of l1 use to teach l2 to students with autism. furthermore, regarding the immediate correction on benny’s errors in formulating his sentences, whilst it is fully acknowledged that immediate error correction has been reported to instil language learners’ anxiety inhibiting learning (subekti, 2018, 2020), teachers’ immediate error correction may also contribute positively to autistic learners’ language development (see also yahya et al., 2013a). as seen in the excerpt, the latter was likely the case. however, yahya et al. (2013a) asserted, this error correction should be conveyed in a positive and warm attitude to help autistic learners feel secure necessary for learning to take place. benny scored quite satisfactorily in the spoken review assessments indicating his fair mastery on his vocabulary cards. the mean of his score was higher than that of the class despite his making more cards than his classmates in each occasion. he obtained 82.83/100 whilst the class mean score was 76.79. this achievement indicated that the treatments of giving him the freedom to choose the number of words he could learn was quite successful in driving him to focus his attention on things he could handle and thus perform well because of his more intense preparation. his scores and the corresponding mean scores of the class can be observed in table 1. table 1 benny’s six review assessment results on his mastery of vocabulary cards no dates topics names of assessment benny’s cards benny’s scores class mean score 1 3 sept 2018 daily routines review assessment 1 10 cards 100 79 2 17 sept 2018 around the house review assessment 2 20 cards 80 85.1 3 1 oct 2018 body and movement review assessment 3 25 cards 90 78.3 4 29 oct 2018 education and career review assessment 4 30 cards 67 76.8 5 12 nov 2018 sport and leisure review assessment 5 40 cards 60 78.1 6 26 nov 2018 communication and technology review assessment 6 40 cards 100 79.9 mean scores 82.83 76.79 differentiated assessments based on the vocabulary cards benny’s vocabulary cards were not only assessed in the six review assessments aforementioned, but also in three differentiated assessments, five quizzes, the midsemester assessment, and the final assessment. as previously mentioned, benny could only obtain the maximum score of 64/100 for these assessments. unlike his classmates who did 100-item matching test in each of the assessment, benny did matching tests, materials of which corresponded to the materials which he made previously in his vocabulary cards and which were assessed in review assessments. this was what nunan (2004) referred to as recycling the language. based on the idea that repetition leads to better understanding (nunan, 2004), recycling the materials benny wrote in his cards for all these assessments was aimed at maximising his learning opportunity, albeit limited in quantity, considering his limited ability to cope with the class “regular” demands. benny’s scores, despite all being under the class mean scores, indicated that he could achieve almost perfect attainment based on the standard required from him. he scored perfectly in quiz 1, quiz 3, quiz 5, and the final assessment, which may suggest that he really was showing his best efforts to perform well in class. table 2 shows his achievements in the assessments. subekti self-made vocabulary cards and differentiated assessments 15 table 2 benny’s scores in differentiated quizzes, mid-semester and final assessments no names of assessment dates number of items/words benny’s scores class mean scores 1 quiz 1 10 sept 2018 10 64 72.86 2 quiz 2 24 sept 2018 20 56.32 68.87 3 mid-semester assessment 8 oct 2018 55 58.88 87.86 4 quiz 3 5 nov 2018 25 64 59.66 5 quiz 4 19 nov 2018 30 51.2 75.62 6 quiz 5 3 dec 2018 40 64 72.76 7 final assessment 10 dec 2018 60 64 73.18 despite being differentiated in terms of the maximum score he could obtain, benny’s achievement improved much compared to his achievement in the same class he took the previous year in which he always scored lower than 30/100 in such assessments. this improvement could indicate that benny could learn more words and learn them better when he was given more opportunities to focus his attention more specifically to words he himself wanted to learn more and to sharpen his knowledge on those words through repetitions manifested in assessments to boost his confidence as well as motivation to perform well in his vocabulary learning. during the process in which vocabulary cards and differentiated assessments were implemented to facilitate his vocabulary learning, benny may steadily develop a sense of achievement and “i can do it” attitude, which may also contribute to the improvement in his vocabulary mastery. as the biggest responsibility in widening one’s vocabulary mastery is on the individual himself and it requires one’s own interest and motivation (alqahtani, 2015), teachers providing assessments that could channel and boost the motivation and interest of learners with autism is considered strategic and desirable. teachers expecting too much too soon from such learners may not be working. here, teachers’ patience and step-by-step guidance, optimising autistic learners’ potentials and interests and getting around their limitations, are paramount in facilitating autistic learners in their l2 learning. conclusion the results of the treatments for the student with autism reported in this study may suggest some important points. first, learners with autism need teachers who are supportive, understanding their limitations and at the same time giving them opportunities to experience the process of learning in the “best” possible ways in accordance with their conditions optimising their potentials and getting around their deficiencies (see also yahya et al., 2013b). hence, any differentiated instruction given to autistic learners should not solely be viewed as a way to make them pass their classes they otherwise could not pass. furthermore, learners with autism can also be taught to assume certain responsibility or commitment. teachers’ support giving them reassurance can play a critical role in building their confidence to fulfil certain commitments they have made previously. additionally, that the learner participant’s mother responded positively to the teaching innovations/treatments given to him, as previously mentioned, may indicate parental support, acknowledging the uniqueness of learners with special needs and at the same time trying any possible ways to help them learn better. this openness could have a critical role as well. despite the possible contributions of this study in the field of education for learners with autism in the esl setting, there are some possible limitations that should be acknowledged. first, the categorisation of the student participant with autism into a high functioning autistic learner was based on my own observation as a language teacher, a layperson in psychiatry, based on exhibited recurring observable behaviours of the autistic learner. hence, this categorisation may not be as accurate as that made by professionals in the field of psychiatry. secondly, i, before conducting this study, had very little experience in dealing with learners with autism other than teaching the student participant in the previous semester. hence, the treatments i did may to some extents be bounded to have some limitations attributed to my little experience in the field. the differentiation in terms of the maximum score the autistic learner could obtain in certain assessments, even though could be considered helpful in helping him obtain higher scores he otherwise could not obtain, could also be seen as a weak point of the treatments because it may suggest a certain degree of discrimination which is obviously against the principle of inclusiveness (chan & lo, 2016). furthermore, there are several suggestions for future studies on learners with autism in the field of esl teaching in the indonesian context. first, despite the notable improvement on the autistic learner’s achievement in various class assessments seen in this study, the treatments conducted had not optimally international journal of education vol. 13 no. 1, august-2020, pp. 8-17 ©2020 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: 10.17509/ije.v13i1.22587 16 helped him use words he had known in grammatical and comprehensible english sentences. hence, conducting a further study on differentiated instruction specific in grammar classes where he or other autistic learners could learn how to structure ideas in more comprehensible ways can be worthwhile. secondly, investigating the perceptions and beliefs of classmates of learners with autism in an inclusive classroom may also yield interesting findings as classmates could play an important part in helping learners with autism to succeed in their learning (kavanagh, 2018). finally, considering the critical role of teachers in inclusive classrooms in affecting the quality of instruction (cassady, 2011; yahya et al., 2013b) and the rarity of empirical studies on teachers’ beliefs and practices in teaching students with autism in the esl setting, indonesian esl practitioners are encouraged to investigate various aspects in the field further. acknowledgement i would like to thank directorate general of learning and student affairs, ministry of research, technology, and higher education (belmawa ristekdikti) of the republic of indonesia facilitating me to conduct 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(2013b). instructional practices in enhancing sight vocabulary acquisition of esl students with autism. procedia social and behavioral sciences, 93, 266–270. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2013.09.187 international journal of education vol. 13 no. 1, aug-2020, pp. 37-43 ©2020 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: 10.17509/ije.v13i1.24488 37 modeling the relationships among psychological immunity, mindfulness and flourishing of university students. eman khaled essa faculty of education, damanhour university, egypt emmankhaled2@gmail.com first draft received: 7 may 2020 date accepted: 1 aug 2020 final proof received: 21 aug 2020 abstract the aim of this study is to examine the relationship among psycho-immunity, mindfulness and flourishing of university students. to achieve this a battery of instruments was applied to 140 faculty of education of damanhour university students. the study tests a model for analyzing the effects of psycho-immunity and mindfulness on psychological flourishing. the findings of the study show evidence in favor of the influence of psycho-immunity and mindfulness as factors in the prediction of flourishing. finally, the results assert the importance of psycho-immunity and mindfulness in achieving flourishing. keywords: psychological immunity; psychological flourishing; mindfulness. to cite this paper (in apa style): essa, e. kh. (2020). modeling the relationships among psychological immunity, mindfulness and flourishing of university students. international journal of education, 13(1), 37-43. doi: 10.17509/ije.v13i1.24488 introduction university education is considered one of the most crucial phases in students’ life, as one of the most fundamental goals of the higher education institutions is to prepare their students to face their professional practical life, especially in the case of students who are going to be teachers in the near future. recently there is an obvious interest in helping them foster their positive views and enhance their potential abilities as this can reflect on the effectiveness of their teaching and therefore on their students. as gable and haidt (2005) suggest that educational psychology should focus more on building the best qualities in life. one of the most important influence of positive psychology may be understanding how to achieve psychological flourishing (seligman & czikszentmihalyi, 2000). psychological immunity refers to psychological protecting system that is defending psyche similar to the real immune system is shielding the physical body. the main function of that system is to enable individuals to manage stress (oláh, 2005). as he refers to pis as “a multidimensional and integrated unit of personal resilience resources and adaptive capacities that provide immunity against damage and stress” (oláh ,2019p.1). some researchers such as lindstorm and eriksson (2005), and olah (2005) suggest that people with effective pis share similar personal characteristics; for example, they are able to manage the situations and they have control over the element of these situations as they can apply coping strategies effectively. in addition, they can adapt easily with the new situations and they can make use of almost all the resources available in a stressful situation. the concept of pis integrates the various qualities of coping personality into an integrative system based on the ideas of positive psychology which focuses on the strengths and abilities rather than inner defects and weaknesses of the personality (olah & kapitány-fövény, 2012). according to oláh (2005) and oláh et al., (2012). (pis) contains three subsystems: monitoringapproaching subsystem, the creating-executing subsystem and the self-regulation subsystem which interrelate with each other so as to enable the individual to attain a flexible adaptation and personal development. as explained by gombor (2009), the monitoringapproaching subsystem directs the individuals’ attention to the physical and social environment around them. it supports them in exploring, understanding and controlling their environments, through directing their focus on expecting positive results of their efforts. it embraces different domains such as positive thinking, sense of coherence, control, social monitoring, and others. while the creatingexecuting subsystem incorporates abilities that can assist in managing the surroundings in a demanding or a stressful situation. it embodies the individual’s ability to adapt with both internal and external environments in order to achieve their goals. in order to achieve this different trait are included in that essa modeling the relationships among psychological immunity, mindfulness and flourishing of university students. 38 subcategory such as creative self-concept, problem solving, self-efficacy. (gombor,2009). the self-regulating subsystem on the other hand comprises potentials that control cognitions, attention, and emotions that results from disappointment, distress or failure. as it promotes the suitable functioning of the other two subsystems by working on controlling and stabilizing the emotional reactions of individuals as gombor (2009) suggests. flourishing is defined as living within an optimal range of human functioning, performance, generativity, and growth (fredrickson & losada, 2005; larsen & prizmic, 2008). other researchers referred to flourishing as living through main features of psychological functioning such as “relatedness, optimism, self-acceptance, feeling competent, having supportive and rewarding relationships, contributing to the happiness of others, being respected by others” (diener et al., 2010, p. 144). they also claimed that flourishing comprises both psychological, social wellbeing and social-psychological prosperity. individuals with a high level of flourishing have emotional stability, as they can interact positively in both private and social life, and they rarely suffer from psychological problems (michalec, keyes & nalkur, 2009). flourishing enables individuals to have more active social interaction, be more open towards their life, and to be more effective community members. (huppert, 2009; michalec et al., 2009). moreover, individuals with high levels of flourishing tend to have adaptive coping strategies more than those who were languishing or depressed (faulk et al., 2013). studies in the field have shown that flourishing is positively related to psychological, emotional, and social well-being (keyes, 2002), positive emotions and mindfulness (catalino & fredrickson, 2011). also, it was linked with high environmental control, positive relations with others, purpose-oriented behaviour, personal development (telef, 2011), self-acceptance, autonomy, and low level of loneliness (diener et al., 2010). other studies focused on the relationships of flourishing with signs of cognitive well-being, such as comprehending abilities in diverse features of life (gokcen et al., 2012). as for mindfulness, it specifies paying attention during an experience or a situation (self-regulated attention) and adopting of a particular attitude towards that experience or situation (bishop et al., 2004). this kind of self-regulated attention provides an intensive observation and awareness of the individuals’ thoughts, feelings, or reactions the whole time (keng et al., 2011). this orientation contributes to the individuals’ previous knowledge with an inquisitive and tolerance stance (bishop et al., 2004; feldman et al., 2007; neff & germer, 2013). in the same context, hayes and feldman (2004) and keng et al. (2011) suggest that mindfulness is a very significant psychological concept; it is considered as an important indicator of flourishing. according to that broad effect it may be acceptable to suggest that having higher levels of mindfulness plays an important role in defending people against psychological problems to the extent that they can experience higher level of flourishing. according to langer (1997) mindfulness has four main subdomains which are novelty producing, novelty seeking, engagement and flexibility. the first one refers to the ability of the individual of improving a new perspective to deal with the surrounding environment, while the second focuses on devoting one’s abilities on looking for new motivational aspects all the time.as for the third domain, it refers to a high level of awareness and participation in whatever situations that face the person. regarding the last domain, it focuses on the ability of accepting and coping while focuses on only what really matters in the individuals’ life. mindfulness seems to enhance the skill of recognizing, and thus individuals are able to take enough time to reflect on problems and bad experiences in a relatively realistic way without triggering negative emotional conditions related to the situation. this gives them the opportunity to reflect a deeply and reach alternative coping resources or strategies (shapiro et al., 2006). in addition, mindfulness may alleviate the consequences on wellbeing and flourishing. equally, individuals who have low levels of mindfulness are more likely to react in some more negative ways that lead to depression instead of coping and this may damage their approaches of flourishing (thomas, 2011). considering the relationships of psychological immunity system, mindfulness, and flourishing with positive mental health indicators, it seems possible that flourishing may be enhanced by mindfulness and thus it also may help to improve flourishing. in the light of the reciprocal relationships between mindfulness, coping competence, and flourishing with adaptive and maladaptive constructs which have been demonstrated by previous studies, mindfulness may influence flourishing via coping competence. the goal of this study is to explore this mediating effect as well as the associations of mindfulness, coping competence, and flourishing. in this study it was hypothesized that as mindfulness increases, flourishing may increase or vice versa and that coping competence may have a mediating role in this relationship. method participants the recent study addressed a sample of (140) students of the third year in the faculty of education. students were randomly selected after briefing them about the study, and their approval of participation was obtained. the study used three questionnaires: the mindfulness questionnaire, flourishing questionnaire, and the psychological immunity system (pis). each of them was administrated to students during lecture time by the responsible lecturers at that particular time after explaining the concepts and clarifying any doubts according to the clarifications given by the researcher. international journal of education vol. 13 no. 1, aug-2020, pp. 37-43 ©2020 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: 10.17509/ije.v13i1.24488 39 measures langer mindfulness scale it consists of 19 items and 4 subscales; namely, novelty producing, novelty seeking, engagement, and flexibility. the self-report scale designed to assess the level of mindfulness. items are rated on a 5point likert scale from 1 (almost always) to 5 (almost never). studies highlight a high internal consistency as cronbach's alpha range from (0.82 to 0.87), and good test-retest reliability (pirson et al., 2015). in the recent study the consistency measured by two methods the first one cronbach's alpha which reached (0.89). while the other method was the test retest which reached (0.90) for the total mark. flourishing scale (fs). the fs (diener et al., 2010) measures psychological and social well-being. it is a brief 8-item measure that consists of items on social relationships, having a life of purpose and meaning, engagement and interest in activities, self-respect and optimism, and feelings of competence and ability in meaningful activities. flourishing scale is based on the respondent’s subjective perspective and it ranges from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree), and the total score is the sum of all scores, with higher scores indicating higher levels of flourishing. (diener et al.,2010) conducted a principal factor analysis which showed a single factor, so there are no subscales. they also found good reliability at 𝛼𝛼 = .87. construct validity was determined through convergence with similar scales and discrimination from scales measuring different constructs. in the present study it obtained reliability of (0.87) and internal consistency at (0.89). which are considered good indicators to be used in the study. psychological immune system inventory (pisi) the instrument was prepared by (oláh et al., 2012) and it is meant to measure the level of psychological immunity of the individual. it consists of 80 items that stand for 16 different factors. these 16 subscales are comprised into three subsystems based on their main psychological functions. these subsystems are: the monitoring-approaching subsystem which includes positive thinking, sense of coherence, sense of control, sense of self growth, change and challenge orientation, social monitoring, and goal orientation. the creating-executing subsystem (2) includes creative self-concept, problem solving, self-efficacy, social mobilizing capacity and social creating capacity. the self-regulating subsystem (3) contains synchronicity, impulse control, emotion control and irritability control. the items are simple statements that the participants required to respond to on a 4-point scale;1 – completely does not describe me to 4 – completely describes me. in previous research, the cronbach’s alpha ranged from (.62 to .80) for all sixteen subscales, and the questionnaire also has a quite high convergent and discriminant validity (oláh, 2005). the cronbach’s alpha values found in this study are presented below in table (1) table 1 reliability of pisi subsystems subsystem cronbach’s alpha monitoring approaching subsystem (mas) 0.80 creating executing subsystem (ces) 0.82 self-regulating subsystem (srs) 0.85 total 0.86 results to answer the first question: what are the levels of psychological immunity among the sample of the study? regarding the levels of (pis) the means and standard deviation for the subsystems and the total score were measured, as presented in table (2) table 2 means and standard deviation of pis category mean std. deviation level monitoring approaching subsystem (mas) 3.97 0.963 high creating executing subsystem (ces) 2.04 1.033 low self-regulating subsystem (srs) 4.02 0.732 high total 3.89 0.986 high according to the data analytical done for the scales that were applied in this study, if the means of scores are below (2.3) the level is considered to be low, if the mean is between (2.42-3.71) the level is average while it refers to high level if comes in the range of (3.72-5). as the data in table 2 shows, the total level of (pis) of the sample of the study is at average level. as for the subsystems, the data reveals that (srs) came at the highest level amongst the three subsystems, while the subsystem (ces) came at the lowest level. regarding the second question “what are the levels of mindfulness of the university students? means and std. deviations were calculated as shown in the following table. table 3 means and std. deviations of mindfulness category mean st.deviation level novelty producing 3.32 0.854 average novelty seeking 3.36 0.850 average engagement 3.32 0.862 average flexibility 3.51 0.712 average total 3.33 average essa modeling the relationships among psychological immunity, mindfulness and flourishing of university students. 40 as presented in table 3, the level of mindfulness among the students were average on both the subcategories and the total mark. in addition, it seems that the sub-category flexibility ranged higher than the other categories. regarding the main question asking, “what is the relationship among the mindfulness, psychological immunity and flourishing according to the direct and indirect relationship?” the recent study proposed a theoretical model that suggests that mindfulness is positively related to psychological immunity system which in turn has predictive power of flourishing, thus playing a mediator role between mindfulness and flourishing. that means that the direct effect of the mindfulness on flourishing differs from indirect effect with psychological immunity as a mediator. table 4 the goodness of fit parameters for the complete meditation model χ2 df p cfi nfi tli resea 1.14 0.572 0.991 0.961 0.993 0.0606 an initial analysis of the resulting parameters indicates that the model fit the empirical data in an acceptable way. regarding the direct effects of mindfulness and (pis) on flourishing it can be presented as in figure (1) obtained by path analysis. it seems that all sub systems of (pis) and subcategories of mindfulness has a direct effect on flourishing and that flexibility has the strongest effect on flourishing while the effect of (psi) sub system (mas) was not significant. as regards the direct effects of (pis) on mindfulness all paths were significant. figure 1 direct effect of mindfulness and (psi) on flourishing as illustrated in figure (1) the model shows a direct impact of both psychological immunity and mindfulness on flourishing as subcategory (flexibility) came with the highest impact. this implies the direct correlation among the three variables of the suggested model. discussion this research aimed to investigate the mediating effect of psychological immunity system and mindfulness on flourishing. the findings showed that there were significant relationships among these variables. as proposed in the theoretical model of the study, results verified that the relationship between mindfulness and flourishing was partially mediated by(pis), which means that, as mindfulness surges in this model, flourishing also rises and (pis) has a mediating role in that escalation. according to those results, in having a high level of psychological immunity, students will also have higher levels of monitoring approaching creating executing self-regulating in addition to high levels of novelty producing, novelty seeking, engagement and flexibility and thus they may have better flourishing level, which agrees with the findings of previous studies (bohmeijer et al., 2015). likewise, mindful students experience more positive affect (brown & ryan, 2003), as they are less sensitive to emotionally threatening stimuli (creswell et al., 2007), tend to be more optimistic, to endorse more positive self-views (aspinwall & richter, 1999), and to engage in more active coping strategies (i.e., problem solving) (weinstein, et al., 2009). thus, students with high level of mindfulness to perceive themselves as a "flourished” as referred by (ryan & frederick, 1997) and to have stronger psychological immunity system. the results show that mindfulness affects flourishing both directly and indirectly via (psi). people who have higher level of mindfulness are more likely to be high in flourishing. implications of these findings show that mindfulness and psychological immunity system play a key role in supporting psychological well-being presented in flourishing. thus, educators who are dealing with students in the university level may need to focus more on these psychological variables to help university students to have better psychological and mental health and increase their flourishing levels. furthermore, mindfulness-based interventions (e.g., segal et al., 2002) may be effectively used by educators and counselors to raise the awareness of individuals to understand and attend to stressful thoughts and emotions they may face during their educational life (schroevers & brandsma, 2010). however, future research should consider other cognitive and emotional variables that may moderate the relationships of mindfulness with flourishing. another implication of these findings is support for prior researches that indicated the positive effects of mindfulness and flourishing on academic performance, which draw the attention towards intervention training programs that can help students developing their international journal of education vol. 13 no. 1, aug-2020, pp. 37-43 ©2020 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: 10.17509/ije.v13i1.24488 41 levels of mindfulness. as this can contribute not only to their flourishing levels and pis but also to their academic and learning outcomes. conclusion this research contributes a better understanding of the causal relationship among three important psychological concepts that affect university students ‘life. the findings of the study show evidence in favor of the influence of psycho-immunity and mindfulness as factors in the prediction of flourishing. this leads to the suggestion that to enhance pis and mindfulness could be highly beneficial for flourishing as the direct effect of the mindfulness on flourishing differs from indirect effect with psychological immunity as a mediator according to the obtained results. these findings may lead the way for further studies 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(2009). a multimethod examination of the effects of mindfulness on stress attribution, coping, and emotional wellbeing. journal of research in personality, 43, 374-385.https://doi:10.1016/j.jrp.2008.12.008. international journal of education vol. 11 no. 1, august 2018, pp. 68-77 ©2018 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v11i1.12836 68 investigating rural students’ strategies in english learning sofyan a. gani1, khairisman2, iskandar abdul samad 3 english education department, teacher training and education faculty, universitas syiah kuala, banda aceh, indonesia sofyangani@unsyiah.ac.id 1 ; hairisman.tnm@gmail.com 2 ; iskandar.abdul.samad@unsyiah.ac.id 3 first draft received: 06 may 2018 accepted: 31 july 2018 final proof received: 31 aug 2018 abstract the students’ strategies in learning english attract many efl researchers’ attention. the objective of this study was to find out rural students’ strategies in english learning. the study was conducted in three different senior high schools in teunom sub-district of aceh jaya regency. the research used a quantitative method by employing survey design. the modified strategy inventory for language learning (sill) questionnaire developed by oxford was used as an instrument to obtain required data. the population of this survey was all classes in the three schools. three classes of each school were randomly chosen from tenth, eleventh, and twelfth grades. therefore, 136 students of nine classes became the sample of this research. the collected data were analyzed through a quantitative procedure by using a statistical formula to find the percentage of each statement. the results showed that the students employed a variety of strategies in learning english. the most common strategy employed was metacognitive followed by social, affective, memory, cognitive, and compensation.. keywords: student’s strategies; rural students; english learning to cite this paper (in apa style): gani, a., s., & khairisman, & samad, i. a. (2018). investigating rural students’ strategies in english learning. international journal of education, 11(1), 68-77. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v11i1.12836 introduction in the last three decades, the focus in the field of second language acquisition has shifted from teaching method to learner characteristics. it has become obvious that the success in language learning depends more on individual learners. therefore, learning emphasizes less on teachers and more on students. concurrently, a shift of researchers’ attention has changed from the product to the process of language learning (oxford, 1990). since that, many researchers have put more focus on researching learners’ individual factors related to the success in language learning. this change can be ascribed to strategies that learners apply in learning a target language. thus, language learning strategies (llss) have been recognized as one of the most important elements in language learning (oxford, 1990). furthermore, the growing awareness of the learners’ behaviors in language learning has contributed to the learner-centered approach in learning a language (ellis, 1994; skehan, 1991). besides, learning strategies are considered to be goal-oriented behaviors since the learners employ a specific action or behavior, either consciously or unconsciously in order to facilitate learning to be easier and more enjoyable (kayaoglu, 2013). to date, a number of studies have revealed that successful learners use a variety of strategies appropriately for both productive and receptive tasks, while less successful learners use the strategies monotonously and inappropriately for the given tasks (mokhtari, 2007). in addition, successful language learners employ more strategies than less successful learners do, and it becomes one of the differences between successful and less successful learners (hong-nam & leavell, 2006). the interest in llss emerged in order to investigate the behaviors of a successful language learner with a view to teach these behaviors to the less successful learners (chamot & el‐dinary, 1999; grenfell & harris, 1999). furthermore, since researchers believe that language learning strategies can be taught, many strategy trainings were done in order to train less successful learners with the strategies that successful learners have. o’malley, chamot, stewner-manzanares, mailto:sofyangani@unsyiah.ac.id mailto:hairisman.tnm@gmail.com mailto:iskandar.abdul.samad@unsyiah.ac.id http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v11i1.12836 gani, a., s., & khairisman, & samad, i. a. investigating rural students’ strategies in english learning 69 russo, and kupper (1985), for instance, carried out a strategy training of esl high school students. the effectiveness of the study revealed that metacognitive group performs better than cognitive group in all language aspects such as listening, speaking and vocabulary. in addition, the same study also conducted by prokop (1989) on high and low reading score students. the finding of this study suggested that the high score students increase their strategy use effectively. in the same way, students who possess low score before also switched their ineffective strategies to the effective ones, even though as not effective as the high score students yet. he then concluded that learning strategy instruction can positively help the low score students in achieving the task objectives. in indonesian context, students at least are familiar with two languages since they have a variety of vernaculars. therefore, it seems that indonesians can effortlessly master a new language. however, it does not imply learning english is easy for indonesians since most of them find english a very challenging language to learn. initially, the objective of learning a language is to communicate effectively and efficiently. in indonesia, english is an obligatory subject starting from junior high school to senior high school, but starting from july 2016, in a new curriculum, it also being a compulsory subject in the elementary level. roughly estimated, indonesian students had learned english for six years at formal phase. even though they spend a great deal of time in learning english, it is not a guaranteed that they are proficient in english, especially in communication skill. schools mostly stress english on the subject rather than on proficiency level, especially schools in rural areas. furthermore, self-awareness of the importance of english has been absent from most indonesians, if not all. thus, students view english as only a matter of subject that must be taken. in addition, practicing english in public area or even in school is considered imperious. yet, the vernacular or bahasa indonesia is accepted all the time at any occasion. such condition can easily found in the rural area. it is a common obstacle in learning english, particularly for countries whose first language is not english. regarding the language learning outcomes, there have been significantly differences between students in rural and urban areas, especially in indonesia. regardless of the methods used in teaching, learners’ factors also contribute in forming themselves to be good or poor language learners such as by employing strategies in learning a language. therefore, this study is intended to investigate rural students’ strategy use in learning english. studies on national origin have been conducted by researchers of this area, and national origin has been considered as one of the factors which can influence learners’ chosen strategies. politzer and mcgroarty (1985) in their work of investigating asian and hispanic students found that hispanic students engage more in a number of communication strategies than asian students. the hispanic students also reported that they have a greater use of interactive strategies as compared to japanese and chinese students. the authors of this study then theorize that ethnicity might have a strong influence to some effective strategies employed by students. in addition to cultural background, o’malley et al. (1985) in a study of asian and hispanic students revealed that asian students were consistence in using repetition while learning vocabulary. on the other hand, hispanic students enjoy exploring new strategies and had a better performance in the posttest than asian’s. similarly, phillips (1991) and mullins (1992) did several studies to identify whether or not national origin can influence the chosen strategies. phillips (1991) identified that asian university students preferred to use compensation, metacognitive and social strategies. also, mullins (1992) who used sill as the instrument to investigate university students in thailand reported that metacognitive, compensation and cognitive strategies were more preferable than other types of strategies. meanwhile, there have been no studies examining selection of learning strategies by efl learners in certain geographical setting. therefore, the present study would fill in the gap by investigating efl rural students’ strategies in learning english. definitions of learning strategy strategies in language learning have long been connected with effective language learning (e.g. green & oxford, 1995; hsiao & oxford, 2002). as a result, it is claimed that good learners use a lot more strategies than less skillful learners do (ehrman & oxford, 1990; green & oxford, 1995). o’malley and chamot (1990) consider strategies as consciously employed techniques by learners to enhance their improvement in language learning. “conflicting views” is the word used by cohen (1998, cited in kausar, 2012), while ellis (1994) uses the word “fuzzy” in defining language learning strategies and provides some characteristics of the strategies. he then characterizes strategies as (1) the general approaches along with specifics actions employed by learners in language learning, (2) strategies are problemorientated, (3) strategies directly contribute to the learners with the information that they can process, (4) strategies are consciously applied by learners in their efforts of language learning. in addition, weinstein and mayer (1986, cited in ellis, 1994) define learning strategies as learners’ behaviors and thoughts used during learning process which can influence their encoding process. similarly, rubin (1987, cited in ellis, 1994) views learning as learners’ action that contributes to the language system development and directly affects learning. in the 1990s, researchers also provide various definitions of learning strategies. o’malley and chamot (1990), for example, see learning strategies as special behaviors that learners employ in order to ease the learning, comprehending and retaining new knowledge. learning strategies also defined as specific actions used by the learners to be able to learn faster, easier, more selfinternational journal of education vol. 11 no. 1, august 2018, pp. 68-77 ©2018 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v11i1.12836 70 directed, more enjoyable, more effective and more transferable to the new circumstances (oxford, 1990). according to macaro (2001), the arising of various definitions of learning strategies is mainly depended on researchers’ interest or sphere. similarly, mcdonough (1995, cited in macaro, 2001) provides a number of terms which used interchangeably with learning strategies such as language skills, a mechanism to compensate, action plans and language processes. however, the exact definition of language strategies seems to be no consensus among researchers. apart from the terms and definitions above, this study adopts the definition of learning strategies provided by oxford. it is because the definition has been widely used by many researchers and it is the most applicable definition. classification of learning strategies learning strategies, referring to chammot and kupper (1989), are classified into cognitive, metacognitive and socio-affective. cognitive strategies encompass behaviors, actions or techniques employed to ease learners in knowledge acquisition. metacognitive strategies are techniques the learners use to control their process of learning through planning, monitoring, evaluating and modifying (rubin, 1981). socio-affective strategies are techniques the learners use such as by asking for clarification, cooperating, imitating and repeating. rubin (1981) classifies learning strategies into direct strategies and indirect strategies. the direct strategies are divided into clarification or verification, memorization, monitoring, guessing, practice and deductive reasoning. in addition, the indirect strategies are divided into seeking opportunities and practices. ku and chang (2011) provide another dimension of learning strategies. they categorize learning strategies into motivation, attitude, anxiety and information processing. in addition, o’malley, chamot, stewnermanzanares, russo and kupper (1985) in their research divided learning strategies into cognitive, metacognitive and social. nevertheless, learning strategies can also be classified differently. as oxford (1990) divides learning strategies into two general categories. they are direct strategies, which directly involve the language learned requiring mental processing, and the indirect strategies, which provide indirect support through planning, evaluating, focusing, controlling anxiety, seeking opportunities, and cooperation. the direct strategies are grouped into memory, cognitive, and compensation strategies, while the indirect strategies are grouped into metacognitive, affective and social strategies. in the present study, the researcher uses oxford’s classification of strategies. they are 1) memory strategies: involving how language is remembered by the learner such as by using pictures, sound similarities and key words, 2) cognitive strategies: concerning the acquisition knowledge about language by the learners like synthesizing, note-taking and reasoning, 3) compensation strategies: enabling students to handle their limited knowledge, e. g. guessing from the context, using gestures or circumlocution, 4) metacognitive strategies: managing learning process by learner, for example by monitoring self-mistake, evaluating task and identifying self-preference and need, 5) affective strategies: regarding students’ emotions and feelings such as rewarding oneself, deep breathing and identifying self-anxiety level, and 6) social strategies: concerning learning by interacting with others, for instance through clarification, asking question and look for conversation partner (oxford, 1990, p. 8). factors influencing learning strategies studies on language learning strategies revealed that the choice of particular language learning strategies has been linked with a number of variables such as gender, learning styles, cultural background, national origin, motivation, language proficiency, attitudes and beliefs about language learning (e.g. phillips, 1991; oxford & burry-stock, 1995; yang, 1999). most of the studies were done to get a better understanding about individual differences for better language learning achievement. gender and learning styles gender variable has been shown by many studies can influence the strategies chosen especially related to social strategies. politzer (1983) investigated university students and found that men use less social strategies compared to women. similarly, green and oxford (1995) investigated english learners in puerto rico and revealed that women used more learning strategies that men. in this study, women frequently used cognitive, affective, memory and social strategies. in the same line, osanai (2000) reported that the gender differences do affect the strategies chosen by learners. based on the study of esl university students, he concludes that female students use learning strategies more often than male students especially in terms of social and affective strategies. in contrast, other studies also report that male students use more strategies or there is differences on the strategies chosen related to gender. as an example, tran (1988) conducted a study among vietnamese refugees for english acculturation and learning strategies. in this study, he uncovered that male refugees employ more strategies than female refugees for their language skills improvement. the same finding also revealed by wharton (2000) who studied bilingual university students in singapore. this study presents the greater use of language learning strategies by male students that tent to use metacognitive, memory and cognitive strategies. the overall findings above have indicated the existence of gender differences in language learning strategies. most researchers came to the conclusion that the differences in strategies use by language learners might also formed by other variables such us life experience, socialization and learning style (wharton, 2000; osanai, 2000; green & oxford, 1995; tran, 1988; politzer, 1983). even though these studies have shown that women are the greater use of gani, a., s., & khairisman, & samad, i. a. investigating rural students’ strategies in english learning 71 language learning strategies, a decisive conclusion has not been achieved. in addition to language learning style, it is also considered as an important variable which can determine the chosen strategies on language learning. the connection between learning styles and the learning strategies is claimed to be in existence and the learning styles may be further correlated with current cultural values (liang, 2009). further, oxford (2003), proposed that learning style can make language learners feel more confident in choosing the most appropriate learning strategies in the given tasks, and of course it will lead them to perform well in the target language. in addition, many studies prove that learning style do influence the strategies chosen by the learners (e.g. chamot & keatley, 2004; ehrman and oxford, 1989). for instance, extrovert learners have preference of social strategies, while introvert learners will frequently use metacognitive strategies to support their learning process (ehrman & oxford, 1989). motivation and attitude motivation has been long linked with language learning strategy choices. some considerable evidence prove that motivation is able to influence students in determining their learning strategies in which lower motivated students use less strategies compared to high motivated students (chamot & kupper, 1989; oxford & nyikos, 1989; khamkhien, 2010). as outlined by gardner (1985), motivation is the main source which contribute to one’s language learning. specifically, dornyei (2001), one of the well-known experts in this field, claimed that motivation is able to explain why people choose to do something and how long they will sustain the activity to pursue the goals. a number of studies regarding motivation and strategy choice show that motivation takes an important role for language learners in determining the strategy choice. for example, ehrman and oxford (1989) stated that students who learn a new language for the jobrelated reasons used more and variety of strategies especially in terms of communicative skills. in particular, prokop (1989) investigated the types of motivation of german university students and revealed that students who possess high instrumental motivation often use more types of language learning strategies appropriately to the given tasks. in a related study, oxford (1993) in her study of japanese high school students reported that the level of students motivation strongly influence to the strategy use in which the more students motivate in learning, the more variety of learning strategies they use. in relation to the attitude, researchers have also found the relationship to the learning strategies. according to bialystok (1978), he suggested that language learning strategies might be empowered by aptitude and attitude variables. then, bialystok (1981) made clear that the strategies chosen by students in learning a second language determined by students’ attitudes, not by their aptitude. similarly, o’malley and chamot (1990) in his study of strategy training surprisingly revealed that one of instructors in the study had to stop the training program since he indicated that the students had the negative attitudes together with the lack of motivation. . methodology research design the present study used the quantitative method with the survey design. the researchers conducted a survey at three different senior high schools. they were sma 1 teunom, smk 1 teunom and man aceh jaya which all of them located in teunom district, aceh jaya regency of aceh province. the participants of this research were 136 students of the three different senior high schools in teunom district, aceh jaya. strategy inventory for language learning (sill) questionnaire developed by rebecca oxford was employed in order to get the data about students strategies used in learning english. data analysis the data elicited from students’ responses to the sill was checked for validation carefully. then, the data was categorized based on the liker’s scale point to be inputted into the computer and then analyzed quantitatively using microsoft office excel 2013. the next stage was analyzing the data in a statistical descriptive way which consisted of percentage. lastly, the results of descriptive statistics were tabulated in the table and analyzed qualitatively. results and discussion results sill is a questionnaire used in this research to investigate students’ strategies in learning english. the sill divides strategies into memory, cognitive, compensation, metacognitive, affective and social strategies. thus, the results of this research are presented according to the strategies. memory strategies the sill items number 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 focus on finding students strategies which are memory-related in retrieving information such as by using images, sounds or locations of the information itself. table 1 memory strategies 1 2 3 4 5* 1 i use new english words in a sentence so i can remember them 10.3 10.3 38.2 31.6 9.6 international journal of education vol. 11 no. 1, august 2018, pp. 68-77 ©2018 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v11i1.12836 72 2 i look for new english words in either online or offline dictionary 4.4 5.1 23.5 50.7 16.2 3 i use flashcards to remember new english words 23.5 18.4 35.3 14.7 8.1 4 i review english lessons often 8.1 7.4 30.9 24.3 29.4 5 i remember new english words or phrases by remembering their location on the page or on the board 13.2 12.5 32.4 28.7 13.2 *1 = never true of me, 2 = almost never true of me, 3 = somewhat true of me, 4 = almost always true of me, 5 = always true of me according to table 1, 31.6% students mentioned that they usually used sentences to remember the new english words easily. however, 50.7% students revealed that they usually review the lesson they have learned. in addition, the same result pointed that most students (41.9%) remember the location of the words to help them remember. interestingly, many students with the percentage up to 50.7% stated that they usually use a dictionary to deal with new english words either online or offline dictionary. however, 23.5% of respondents reported that they never use flashcards as one of the strategies to remember a new english word. cognitive strategies this category of sill addresses questions about students’ strategies which encompass numerous techniques, for example, note-taking, practicing in a naturalistic setting and outlining. students’ responses of this category are presented in table 2. table 2 cognitive strategies 1 2 3 4 5* 6 i say or write new english words several times 8.8 9.6 32.4 28.7 20.6 7 i watch english language tv shows, movies or videos spoken in english 14.0 7.4 27.9 32.4 18.4 8 i like reading english articles 11.0 9.6 27.9 25.0 26.5 9 i write notes, messages, letters, or reports in english 29.4 12.5 33.1 14.7 10.3 10 i try not to translate word-for-word when i read english articles 30.9 21.3 27.2 11.8 8.8 *1 = never true of me, 2 = almost never true of me, 3 = somewhat true of me, 4 = almost always true of me, 5 = always true of me regarding cognitive strategies, the results of surveyed students disclosed that almost half of them remembered new english words by saying or writing them repeatedly (49.3%). conversely, 29.4% of them never used english for their notes, letters, messages or reports. with regard to practicing in a naturalistic setting, 50.8% students liked to watch english tv shows, movies or videos. also, 51.5% of respondents reported that they usually read english articles. however, most of the students were eager to translate word-for-word in understanding the sentences. 52.2% of the students responded that they usually translate word-for-word when they read the english articles. compensation strategies in this category, the questions asked are intended to analyze students’ strategies used to overcome limited knowledge such as by using synonyms, gestures or pause words while speaking. the result of this part can be seen in table 3. table 3 compensation strategies 1 2 3 4 5* 11 to understand unfamiliar english words in reading, i make guesses 26.5 20.6 33.1 16.2 3.7 12 when i can’t think of a word during an english conversation, i use gestures gani, a., s., & khairisman, & samad, i. a. investigating rural students’ strategies in english learning 73 23.5 11.8 29.4 26.5 8.8 13 i try to guess the other person will say next in an english conversation 27.2 16.2 27.2 22.8 6.6 14 i read english without looking up every new word 22.1 19.1 25.0 22.1 11.8 15 if i can’t think of an english word during conversation, i use a word or phrase that means the same thing 12.5 12.5 33.8 33.8 7.4 *1 = never true of me, 2 = almost never true of me, 3 = somewhat true of me, 4 = almost always true of me, 5 = always true of me guessing is usually a very common strategy used by language learners to handle their limitations, but the data of this study present that 47.1% of the students were low in use of guessing strategy. also, 43.4% of the students were low in frequency use of guessing what will come next in a conversation. similarly, most surveyed students (42.2%) rarely used the context in order to comprehend the english readings, while many of them still focused on word-by-word. however, using gesture during the conversation was used by 35.3% of students if they could not think of the words to speak up. the last item of this category is the most frequently used strategy with up to 41.2% of students claimed that they usually used a word or phrase that has the same meaning to overcome their limitation of vocabulary knowledge. metacognitive strategies the five items of this category concern finding information related to students strategies in managing their learning process, for example by monitoring mistakes, focusing, arranging study space and schedule, task evaluating and identifying learning style preference and paying attention. the full report of students’ responses is presented in table 4. table 4 metacognitive strategies 1 2 3 4 5* 16 i try to find as many ways as i can to practice my english speaking skill 6.6 6.6 19.9 34.6 32.4 17 i notice my english mistakes and use that information to help me do better 5.1 6.6 23.5 34.6 30.1 18 i pay attention when someone is speaking english 1.5 2.2 16.9 33.8 45.6 19 i plan my schedule so i will have enough time to study english 26.5 14.7 26.5 13.2 19.1 20 i look for opportunities to read as much as possible in english 24.3 15.4 27.2 23.5 9.6 *1 = never true of me, 2 = almost never true of me, 3 = somewhat true of me, 4 = almost always true of me, 5 = always true of me in terms of practice, as shown in table 4, 67% students of the study reported their high efforts of looking for a chance to practice their english as many as possible. also, 64.7% of the students usually reviewed their own mistakes in order to improve their english. in addition, most of the students with 79.4% reported that they paid much attention to someone who is speaking english. however, the time management for studying strategies was low in use with only 41.2% of them compared to 32.3% of those who have a high frequency of use. similarly, few of the surveyed students looked for opportunities to read english a lot. this kind of strategy used only by 33.1% of them. affective strategies all of the questions in this category deal with students’ emotions and feeling to the language learning task such as identifying the self-anxiety level and rewarding oneself for good performance. students’ feedbacks to this category are available in table 5. international journal of education vol. 11 no. 1, august 2018, pp. 68-77 ©2018 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v11i1.12836 74 table 5 affective strategies 1 2 3 4 5* 21 i try to relax whenever i feel afraid of speaking english 9.6 7.4 25.0 30.9 27.2 22 i encourage myself to speak english even when i am afraid of making a mistake 2.2 6.6 22.1 30.9 38.2 23 i feel relief and proud when i do well in english 19.1 14.7 30.1 19.1 16.9 24 i notice if i am tense or nervous when i am studying english 7.4 8.1 31.6 38.2 14.7 25 i talk to someone else about how i feel when i am learning english 22.1 14.0 27.9 19.1 16.9 *1 = never true of me, 2 = almost never true of me, 3 = somewhat true of me, 4 = almost always true of me, 5 = always true of me at this category of strategy, as the data showed in table 5, most students reported their high percentage use almost for all subcategory items. for example, 58.1% students either “almost always” or “always” stated that they overcome their afraid feeling of using english by trying to relax. in addition, whenever they were afraid of making mistake in speaking, they usually kept pushing themselves to speak instead of remain silence with up to 69.1%. with the slight difference of frequency used, 36% of them felt relief and proud when they did well in english such as in speaking, reading or writing. high frequency of used strategy was also reported by students with 38.2% “almost always” and 14.7% “always” by noticing their own anxiety when they are studying or using english. in relation to the feeling in learning english, they reported their medium use of this strategy with the percentage of 27.9%. with a small difference in percentage (22,1%), they also claimed their low use of this strategy. social strategies the sill items in this category emphasis on identifying students strategies by involving with others such as asking for clarification, questioning and culture exploring. responses to these items are reported in table 6. table 6 social strategies 1 2 3 4 5* 26 if i do not understand something in english. i ask other person to slow down or say it again 5.1 7.4 24.3 30.1 33.1 27 i ask someone (teacher or friend) to correct my mistakes when i speak english 3.7 6.6 19.1 27.9 42.6 28 i practice english with other students 13.2 2.9 24.3 29.4 30.1 29 i ask questions in english 16.9 9.6 33.1 22.8 17.6 30 i try to learn about the culture of english speakers 27.9 8.8 28.7 16.9 17.6 *1 = never true of me, 2 = almost never true of me, 3 = somewhat true of me, 4 = almost always true of me, 5 = always true of me communicate with others is one of the best ways to improve the fluency in learning a language. it is also experienced by students in this survey, as can be seen in table 6, in which 59.5% of students claimed they use this strategy frequently in order to sharpen their communication skill. however, 33.1% of students reported their medium use of asking questions in english. in terms of receiving feedback from others either from teachers or friends, 70.5% students confirmed their high use of this strategy in order to improve their speaking ability. in addition, negotiating while conversation takes place usually happen in order to receive the information well. as data in the table 6 shows that 63.2% of the students either “almost always” or “always” used this strategy to receive complete message from interlocutors by asking to slow down the speaking speed or even asking for repetition. however, learning english speaker cultures fell to the medium use of strategy with 28.7%. in addition, it has a slightly gani, a., s., & khairisman, & samad, i. a. investigating rural students’ strategies in english learning 75 difference with 27.9% of them who reported their low use of this strategy. discussion based on the findings, the data showed that the most common strategy used by the students was metacognitive followed by social, affective, memory, cognitive, and compensation. however, in this study, the researchers only focus on discussing the three most common category strategies employed by the students. the most-preferred strategy used by the senior high school students in teunom district was metacognitive strategies, which involve managing learning process such as monitoring their own mistakes, focusing and finding ways to use english. the same findings also found by others researchers (khalil, 2005; kausar, 2012). however, this strategy was the least in frequency use amongst iranian students (abedini, rahimi & zara-ee, 2011). the reason mentioned by the researcher was due to iranian classrooms being more teacher-centered, where the teacher is the only person who can speak in the class. at this point, students have less opportunity to speak as one of the ways to practice their english. in addition, this finding contradict to the oxford’s (1990) claim in which “metacognitive strategies are extremely important, but the research shows that the learners use these strategy sporadically and without much sense of their importance” the second most popular strategy employed by students in teunom district was social strategy which involves questioning and asking for clarification. the current findings support wharton’s finding (2000) who studied japanese and french learners’ strategies in learning english. in the present study, the majority of students preferred to ask their teacher or friend to correct their mistakes while speaking and asked for clarification when they did not understand something in a conversation. the preference of this strategies might reflect the methods used in the teaching and the ways of english learning in the classroom which probably teacher encouraged students to engage more while teaching-learning took place. it is, however, different from what has been found by li (2010) and kausar (2012), where social strategies were the least used strategies by students in their research. in addition, a good number of students also reported that they usually practiced their english with other students. affective strategies fell to be the third most strategies used by students in this study. yet, most of the previous research found that this type of strategies as the least frequent used (oxford, 1993; hong-nam & leavell, 2006; mokhtari, 2007; lai, 2009). however, in the present study affective strategies emerged as the third most popular strategies used by the students. it indicated that most students in the study aware of their emotions and feelings when learning english such as how to relax and encourage themselves to use english even when they are afraid of making mistakes. conclusion the present survey research was conducted in three different senior high schools in the teunom sub-district of aceh jaya regency. this research was done for the purpose of investigating rural senior high school students’ strategies in learning english. as proposed by hong (2006), knowing students’ strategies is essential in order to help students approach the learning appropriately. also, strategy plays a significant role in forming someone to be a poor or successful language learner. senior high school students in teunom subdistrict employed numerous strategies in learning english, where metacognitive appeared to be the most preferred. focusing became the highest used strategy in the current research. based on the findings, the students also favored employing social strategies such as asking someone to correct their english mistakes. in addition, the students also used their emotions and feeling to help them avoid nervousness such as trying to relax when using english even though they were afraid of making mistakes. some suggestions can be attained for english teaching and learning, especially at senior high school level in teunom. first, it is noteworthy that teachers aware of students’ strategies used in learning english to provide appropriate teaching and learning practices. second, the teachers should provide activities which present learning communicatively rather than linguistically. in addition, knowing their own preferred strategies would be very helpful for the students in order to 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(1999). the relationship between efl learners’ beliefs and learning strategy use. system, 27(4), 515-535. database connection failed! 36 international journal of education, vol. 8 no. 1 december 2014 the effects of value creation model and excellent services on the upi image and competitiveness towards a research-based teaching university ratih hurriyati abstract the law number 12 of 2012 concerning higher education (uupt) stipulates that all legal body state universities (pt bhmn) to be changed into state university legal body (ptn bh). the change provides opportunities to seven ptbhmn to design new statutes. the model of ptn bh is similar to pt bhmn except that ptn bh’s financial system must follow public service body (blu). basically, it is a strategic policy although complex problems often arise in its implementation. with its blu status, upi has not yet met criteria of self-directing, selfmotivating, self-regulating, self-supporting, self-assessing and self-decision making in orderto respond to challenging situations, as it is a rigid, and set-forth-by-government regulation. the problem lies in how to put upi in its role and position as pt pkblu effectively and efficiently while also giving accountability and competitiveness. this is not easy. it takes a paradigm change and unconventional managerial strategy. today, the number of private universities is increasing and each of them offers advantages. indonesia university of education must always be ready to compete with other universities, both private and state universities. however, compared to other state-owned universities, indonesia university of education is still left behind. therefore, this research will focus on indonesia university of education’s competitiveness. to find out how upi can improve its competitiveness to be a research based teaching university, the writeris going to focus on a value creation model, excellent services, and upi’s image which are influencing the improvement and enhancement of competitiveness. the units of analysis of the research are graduate students from 40 departments at indonesia university of education. to find out the influence of each proposed indicator, the research employed sem analysis, in which each variable was tested by a measurement model. the results show that a value creation model, superior services, institution’s image, and upi’s competitiveness can lead upi to be a research-based teaching university. keywords: value creation model, superior services, institution’s image, and competitiveness service body (pkblu). this has led upi to transform intoa state university with financial management based on the general service body based on the government regulation. basically, it is a strategic policy although complex problems often arise in its implementation. with the blu status, upi hasn’t met criteria of self-directing, selfmotivating, self-regulating, self-supporting, self-assessing and self-decision making to respond to this challenging regulation, as it is a rigid government regulation. the problem is how to put upi in its role and position as pt pkblu effectively and efficiently while also having accountability and competitiveness. a university as an institution that provides educational services, plays 1. introduction 1.1. background on the 31st march 2010, the constitutional court (mk) granted judicial review appeal of law number 9 of 2009 concerning the educational legal body by mk decision number 11-12-21-23-136/ puu-vii/2009. finally, the controversial law of educational legal body (uu bhp) is unconstitutional based on mk’s decision. after the revocation of uu bhp, the government stipulated government regulation number 66 of 2010 in lieu of government regulation number 17 of 2010 concerning education management and implementation to be ptn (state university) with financial management based on general 37 ratih hurriyati, the effects of value creation model and excellent services important roles in society. a university can change society’s mindset; has an obligation to educate the people; and more importantly, must be able to bring advancement in every aspect of its country through its graduates. a university is related to the people’s intellectual and skill development. indeed, such factors determine who controls all things as globalization advances and the world becomes “smaller.” marketing in educational services is not new but it is interesting to study since it is related to the function of educational institutions. the importance of such function must be realized by the formal institution that will improve its quality in providing services. acknowledgment of an organization can be measured by the image of the organization. durianto(2004:10) suggests that image is an asset and liability related to a brand, name or symbol that can increase or decrease the value of a product or service. (2004:4). one way to see the equity of a university brand is by looking at the following research results. the following is a list of universities in indonesia categorized as the world’s top universities according to cybermetrics lab. the rank is determined based on their existence on the internet. indonesia has 26 representatives in the world’s top 5,000 universities from of 16,000 universities surveyed and ranked. the ranking only measures how much a university utilizes the internet. however, it must be noted that best universities in the world also has an excellent webometrics rank . the list is presented below. table 1.1 higher education best in the world based on webometrics 2013 indonesia rank world rank university name top south east asia 1 249 universitas gadjah mada 8 2 277 institute of technology bandung 9 3 365 university of indonesia 10 4 898 institut teknologi sepuluh nopember 26 5 1024 bogor agricultural university 27 6 1031 indonesia university of education 28 7 1186 universitas sebelas maret 31 8 1237 gunadarma university 33 9 1310 diponegoro university 36 10 1323 universitas sriwijaya 37 source: http://www.webometrics.info/about.html. data above from webometrics updated in january 2012 webometrics surveyed 20,372 universities around the world, 352 universities in indonesia were among the 20,372 previously, there were 149 universities from indonesia. meanwhile, 35 universities in indonesia were among the top 100 south east asian universities. based on the research, indonesia university of education is only 5 of the universities in indonesia. therefore, its competitiveness and equity value are considered low. according to hill and jones (2009:191), competitiveness is an organization’s ability to formulate a strategy in order to exploit opportunities, by optimizing investment return. in the meantime, porter (1994:1) suggests that competitiveness is the heart of an organization’s performance in a competitive market. an organization that has a competitiveness must have a highlyconsidered image. image is a value-added given to a product or a service. this value is reflected 38 international journal of education, vol. 8 no. 1 december 2014 in how consumers think of, feel about, and act upon brand, price, market share, and profitability of a company. image is an intangible asset with a psychological and financial value for the company. (kotler, 2012:335). creating an image is not easy. one aspect that influences an image is how far an educational organization provides satisfaction to the consumers so that they will think highly about the organization’s products or services. one way to gain such a good image is by providing excellent or premium services to the consumers. essentially, premium services are based on business people’s effort to provide their best services as a sign that they care about their consumers or customers. (barata, 2006:25). alma(2010:46) suggests that: “educational institutionsessentially aim to provide services. people who are being serviced want to get satisfaction from the service...” value creation is one of the indicators that affects image improvement. the value is related to the benefits gained by consumers.. usmara: (2003:113) suggests that: “recognizing customers’ satisfaction is important. however, satisfaction alone is not enough. satisfied customers are not necessarily loyal customers. they may abandon you when your competitors create a new product with superior value.” based on that statement, customers’ value is an important aspect of customersction is important. however, satill contribute to a brand’s image. customers’ value is dynamic since it is affected by micro environment, competitive innovation, and the occurrence of a new market. since it is unstable, the customers’ value must be retained by creating adaptable value and providing a product or a service in accordance to the changes. based on the above explanation, indonesia university of education lacks of competitiveness since its image has not yet been strategically enhanced. image is an important matter to study because it is related to stakeholders’ trust. value creation and excellent service are solutions that can solve this problem in order to become a more research based teaching university. 1.2 research questions based on the above explanation, the problems of this research are formulated as follows: 1. how is value creation at indonesia university of education described ? table 1.2 2012 wcu ranking of indonesian universities rank university 1 bandung institute of technology 2 indonesia university 3 universitas gadjah mada 4 gunadarma university 5 indonesia university of education 6 diponegoro university 7 universitas sebelas maret 8 institut teknologi sepuluh nopember 9 airlangga university 10 bogor institute of agriculture source: www/4icu/daftar-rangking-universitas-terbaik-di.html 39 ratih hurriyati, the effects of value creation model and excellent services 2. how is excellent service at indonesia university of education described ?. 3. how is indonesia university of education’s image described ?. 4. how is strong isindonesia university of education’s competitiveness as a research based teaching university? 5. what is the effect of value creation, excellent service, and image on indonesia university of education’s competitiveness as a research based teaching university. ? 1.3. aims and purposes of the research based on the formulation of the problems, the aims and purposes of the research are as follows: 1. to describe value creation at indonesia university of education. 2. to describe excellent service at indonesia university of education. 3. to describe indonesia university of education’s image. 4. to describe indonesia university of education’s competitiveness as a research based teaching university. 5. to describe the effect of value creation, excellent service, and image on indonesia university of education’s competitiveness as a research based teaching university. 1.4 benefit of the research it is hoped that the research results will be valuable both theoretically and practically. theoretically, the research results are expected to provide conceptual contributions to research and science development in marketing, especially related to: 1. understanding about theoretical construction of value creation, excellent service, image, and competitiveness variables. 2. the causality relationship between value creation and image; and excellent service and image; that affect upi’s competitiveness as a research based teaching university. practically, the research results are expected to provide valuable information to relevant individuals, especially the study programs at indonesia university of education, about competitiveness and image affected by value creation and excellent service. 1.5. urgency of the research the law number 12 of 2012 concerning higher education (uupt) declares that all legal body state universities (pt bhmn) shall be changed to state university legal body (ptn bh). the change provides anopportunity to 7 ptbhmn to design a new statute. the model of ptn bh is similar to pt bhmn except that ptn bh’s financial system must follow general service body (blu). as a former pt bhmn, upi was preparing a new statute that must be completed in october 2012 to be approved as government regulation (pp). the development team completed the statute draft on october 2nd, 2012. the draft is in the socialization stage to gain input from society of academicians, alumni, and public. the draft and the input can be accessed directly. the socialization was conducted in all units at upi to gain input from the society of academicians. the socialization and discussion in every unit at the university were aimed to provide comprehensive input to the new statute. the socialization was expected not merely as formality, since this was related to the university’s future. there were several strategic values needed to be considered by all individuals so that upi would not have to face other transitions in the future. therefore, upi will be able to concentrate on more strategic development programs. the development of strategic programs can be created through the creation of superior value, service and image of upi of as a research-based-teaching university can be achieved 40 international journal of education, vol. 8 no. 1 december 2014 2. literature review 2.1.state of art of value creation and service excellence in improving the university’s image value creation is an activity that can improve a value of a product or a service. value creation refers to a process that provides benefits to the customers and business; and it is the most important process in running a business by involving the majority of employees to create a product, service and positive results for stock holders. figure 1 value creation consists of a five-phase process kotler keller 2012 ;215 1. offer-market development. at this stage, the brand develops into a product or a service based on needs and market research. 2. demand creation. when there is a need while no service is provided, the brand manager must generate a demand. 3. sales conversion. at this stage, consumers start to focus on a brand in the process of purchase. companies attempt to create customer’s satisfaction. 4. satisfaction fulfillment. at this stage, consumers transform purchases into satisfying purchases. product supply focuses on expectation fulfillment, solving problems, and providing customers’ satisfaction. 5. strategic development. at the fifth stage of value creation, the brand manager must evaluate the brand existence in the future. based on the above stages, it can be concluded that value creation must be in accordance with the needs and market demand to gain customers’ satisfaction. this includes focusing on how the value can be delivered to the customers. the following is the framework of value creation. the framework is started by searching value wanted by stakeholders. the next step is approving and developing the approach, and concludes with delivering value by implementing the company’s promises. in this research, value is created by adapting values or indicators in value chain, value shop, and value network. in value chains, a company is expected to gain materials, to deliver service, to create service; and then to market, sell, and serve consumers in the process of the service delivery. adapting value creation through the value chain activity means that the company must always work based on standards in order to be able to deliver a product to the customers. in the value shop, the company must always work to create value by solving customers’ and clients’ unique problems. the process starts by identifyingproblems, finding appropriate solutions, and controlling and evaluating the solutions. the essence of value network is to 41 ratih hurriyati, the effects of value creation model and excellent services build relationships. “more connection with customers means higher value creation to be delivered to the customers.” (gottschalk, 2007:6)through value chain, a company can improve its image. image is an asset and liability of a brand, name, and symbol; and can increase or decrease the value of a product or service of a company to customers (darmadidurianto, 2004:4). kotler keller 2012:335 suggests that an institution’s image is an added value of a product and service. value is reflected in how consumers figure 2 framework of value creation figure 2 framework of value creation kotler keller 2012 ;331 value identification value proposition value delivery find stakeholder value agree to and develop the approach execute the promise 3. brand image (name, symbol) perceived quality brand association brand awareness other proprietary brand assets brand loyalty delivering value to the customers by strengthening: • interpretation of information process • confidence in delivering • customers’satisfaction delivering value to companies by strengthening: • marketing program effectiveness and efficiency • brand loyalty • price/profit • brand expansion • sales improvement • competitive advantage figure 3 the concept of image source: darmadi durianto (2004:5) 42 international journal of education, vol. 8 no. 1 december 2014 think of, feel about, and act upon a brand, a price, a market share, and profitability of a company. image is an intangible asset with a psychological and financial value for the company. the concept of image is shown infigure 3. from the figure we can conclude that customers’ value creation is an important component to build brand equity. building brand equity can be achieved by improving: 1. interpretation/information process of a product or a company; 2. confidence in delivering value to the customers; 3. customers’ satisfaction. in addition, image can add value to the company. value can be added by improving: 1. effectiveness and efficiency of a marketing program 2. brand loyalty 3. price/profit 4. brand expansion 5. sales improvement 6. competitive profit value is not the only aspect that influences the image. service excellence is a very important part to improve an image, since excellent service will lead to good perceived quality, as explained below: perceived quality is the customers’ perception of overall quality of a product or a service, in relation to the expected goal. in addition to shaping an image, value creation and excellent service can affect competitiveness of a company. this is shown by the following figure: source: longenecker, moore, and petty (2003:31) competitive advantage unique service price/ value customer convenience customer experience notable product atributes figure 4 the basics of competitive advantange source: longenecker, moore, and petty (2003:31) the competitiveness of an organization may be affected by: 1. service; 2. value/price; 3. consumersce;iveness 4. consumersce;iveness of 5. good product. image of a company can also shape competitiveness. as explained above, image is an asset and liability related to a brand, name, and symbol, that can increase or decrease the value of a product or service (durianto, 2004:4). image is an intangible asset with a psychological and financial value for the company. (kotler, 2012:335). when a company’s asset or psychological value is high, the company has more competitiveness. image is a set of beliefs, ideas, and perceptions of a person to an object (kotler, 2009;406). a university’s image can be defined as a set of beliefs of individuals about that university (landrum et. al. (1998) and arpan et. al (2003) in helena alves and ma’rio raposo, 2010: 73-85). to be a part of the global society, universities in indonesia must be able to become world class universities. yavas and shernwell (1996), landrum et al. (1998) in parameswaran and glowacka (1995) found that universities need to retain or develop a unique image to create competitiveness in a competitive market. image affects students’ willingness to submit 43 ratih hurriyati, the effects of value creation model and excellent services an application. university’s image is also important when a benefactor is considering giving a donation or when a company is selecting an organization to conduct research and development. according to dowling (1988), a company does not only have one but several images. however, literature related to a university’s image as perceived by students and how this image affect their behavior are limited. (helena alves and ma´rio raposo, 2010:73-85) image is a set of beliefs, ideals and perceptions of a person about an object. the person’s attitude and action upon the object depend on the object’s image (kotler, 2009: 406). a university’s image can be defined as a set of beliefs of individuals about a university (landrum et. al. (1998) and arpan et al (2003)). therefore, the image of a university is one of the factors in increasing competitiveness. this is one of the key elements of intangible resources that will be a source of sustainable competitiveness of a company. the image is gained through an accumulation of abilities and experiences that the university shows as its best performance to the stakeholders. the image of a university is shaped based on several components. the components are: ”he image of a university is shaped based on several components. the components are:ness. this is one of the key elements of intangible resources that will be a social activities, program of study and size”(huddleston, 1982:365 in alma, 2007:377) according to volkwein and grunig in alma and hurriyati (2008:116), an image of a university is measured by considering financial resources, faculty credentials, student test scores, external funding, and rating and rankings. keaveney and hunt (1992) state that in order to harvest benefits from a commercial company image, cognitive and affective components must be included since they provide understanding and measurement of image. additionally, stem and krakover (1993) emphasize that image is shaped subjectively through a system related to designative and evaluative perceptions or, in other words, cognitive and affective components. components that shape a university’s image in this research are based on components proposed by asuncion placio, gonazlo and perez (2002:486-505). the components are:1. cognitive component the indicators for this are: research paper published internationally; the number of foreign lecturers teaching in the university; the quality of process of teaching and learning; international reputation of the university; rank of its specialty; supporting facilities of career counseling; facilities for students (such as computers, library, transportation, etc); and so on. 2. affective component the indicators are:willingness to attend programs, such as double degree, fullbright, sandwich, etc in the university; international rank of the university; students’ appreciation of the university; students’ ability to interact with the social and cultural environment in this university. delivering quality through excellent service will positively contribute to the customer’s satisfaction when it is managed appropriately. delivering quality through excellent service will also provideadded value, such as particular motivation, for the customers to build a long term mutual relationship with the company. such emotional relationship will enable companies to understand their customers’ specific needs and expectations. in turn, companies will be able to improve customers’ satisfaction since they will optimize customers’ positive experience and minimize or eliminate customers’ negative experience. (fandy tjiptono, 2008:83). quality is clearly the key 44 international journal of education, vol. 8 no. 1 december 2014 to value creation and customer satisfaction (kotler and keller, 2009:170) customers’ satisfaction will affect an image of a company or organization. this is in line with anderassen’s (1994) suggestion in his research on consumers’ orientation that an image is an important factor related to customers’ satisfaction and loyalty. this experience strongly affects the image (selnes, 1993). consumers who have positive experience will be satisfied with the service they have received and will have positive attitudes toward a product. the consumers’ attitudes reflect future purchases in the form of repurchasing or telling of the experience to others. according to manickas et. al. (1997) and ryan (1999), all positive decisions will affect image positively. customers’ satisfaction and loyalty are also affected by image (yi, 1992). according to oliver and linda (1981), bolton and drew (1991), and foraell (1992), image has a substantial impact on customers’ satisfaction. helgesen and nesset (2007) suggests that students’ satisfaction will positively affect their perception of the university’s image. andreassen and lindestad (1998) verifies that a company’s image affects customers’ satisfaction, particularly when customers have little knowledge about the service it provides (alves and raposo, 2010:73-85). ivy (2001) and fram (1982) states that to improve its image and positioning, the university must emphasize the importance of teaching staff, orientation of students’ tendency; and conduct a survey and a study concerning public opinion about the university, as a determinant factor in optimizing the university image (asuncion beerli palacio, meneses and perez, 2002:486-505). 2.2 the impact of a value creation model and excellent service on upiitioning, the university must emphasize the importance og university porter,(1998; 3) an expert of management strategy, has proposed a competitive model called the 5 forces model. the 5 forces are (1) threat from a substitute of a product or a service, (2) threat from a new competitor, (3) competition intensity, (4) bargaining power of buyers or customers, and (5) bargaining power of suppliers. brandenburger and nalebuff in the mid 90s proposed an extension of porter’s 5 forces model, to a 6 forces model. by using game theory, they added the complementary factor, or the 6th force. basically, the 6th force is a complement of a competitor which in the previous model is represented by potential entrants and product substitute or imitation product. industry rivalry suppliers (suppliers power) buyers (buyers power) potential entrants (as competitors) product substitute (from competitor) complementor figure 10 six forces competitive model 45 ratih hurriyati, the effects of value creation model and excellent services an organization or a company can put itself in a competitive position by giving a pressure to a competitor and/or playing a complementary position. among those who can be a complement (or complementary force) is the government. this does not necessarily mean that the government is a competitor, but the government can play its part in the competition. for example, one can propose a cooperation with the government to develop a particular program (such as special programs for teachers). therefore, the organization can use this complementary force to provide a more beneficial situation in the context of business competition. further, such unique and binding proposals to the complementary force will be difficult to be imitated by competitors. a complementary force is not necessarily the government. in particular cases, a complement can be other companies. for example, intel corporation and microsoft have been long known as complementary users. both companies run their businesses in different technological domains. however, their products complement each other to be offered to the customers.this force also explains the occurrence of co-opetition strategy, or a combination of competitive and cooperative. it was brandenburger dan nalebuff who made co-opetition popular through their book in 1997.in this concept, a joint strategy is agreed to turn a competitor into a partner for the sake of cooperation. examples in real life are toyota and daihatsu when they made products such as avanza and xenia. other strategic alliances are cooperation between singapore airlines and lufthansa airlines. similarly this can also be applied in the context of higher education competition. some universities have conducted a strategic alliance with other overseas universities. these are the examples of co-opetition. in view of their business domain, other universities, even though located overseas, can be business partners. with its strategic position as a historical state university and its highly regarded reputation, upi can adopt the strategic alliance model. initiative to build educational cooperation with other popular universities from developed countries and double degree programs can be a great power for upi.please see figure 11 to see how upi is perceived in the context of competition and in the general process that occurs in every institution to create products to be offered to customers. there are two services provided by upi: (1) higher education service, of which the customers are students who are enrolled at upi; (2) expertise service, of which the customers are industries that need expertise help. in terms of production process, the former has inputs, in the form of student candidates; and outputs, in the form of graduates. the latter has inputs, in the form of real problems in industries; and outputs, in the form of solutionsto the problems. both services are related to each other. expertise service will enrich human resources at upi with skills and knowledge (particularly lecturers) that will eventually improve the quality of the higher education service. students are not only educated to gain theoretical knowledge, but also to gain experience related to real problems and their solutions in the real world. similarly, new knowledge from many resources for higher education purposes will generate more effective alternative solutions to be used for the purpose of expertise service. as upi is tasked to be an autonomous and well-developed university, upi needs to get as many customers as possible within its capacity, with best qualities. good quality customers will make it easier for the university to create high quality graduates. to reach the goal, appropriate promotion process is needed. promotion will be easier if upi has a high quality product. the value offered for the promotion is the value of the offered products. however, for promotion purpose, value other than relevant product 46 international journal of education, vol. 8 no. 1 december 2014 can also be promoted. in this case, several examples of values which are not direct values of a product are: (1) quality of graduates, (2) value of works or solutionsfor expertise services, (3) value of lecturers’ reputations, (4) value of students’ achievements and creativeness. such values must be integrated with appropriate promotion technique in a marketing management framework, and be implemented consistently.to conduct all of its activities, upi must be supported by a platform consisting of resources (human resources and other resources), infrastructures, and consistently-implemented good university governance. marketing management must be integrated with overall management. as a university, upi cannot escape from rules and regulations in indonesia. regulations concerning education in indonesia are set forth by the government through the department of national education. these regulations are effective for all universities in indonesia. in terms of upi as a state university, the government has a dual role: as a regulator and as an owner. this dualism must be well-implemented proportionally so that upi will get what’s best for the university. 3. research method research design based on the type of the research, which is descriptive and verificative, the methods employed in this research are descriptive survey and explanatory survey to explain the relationship between variables through hypothesis testing. a research that employs descriptive survey and explanatory survey figure 11 upi as the corporate model which produces products 47 ratih hurriyati, the effects of value creation model and excellent services is conducted by gathering information from the population directly in the field (empiric) using questionnaires. the questionnaires are used to reveal opinion from the population about the topic of the research. the development method used in this research is cross-sectional. according to asep hermawan (2006:45), m the sectional research is also called eone snap shotaresearch. it is research that gathers data at one particular time.” operationalization of research variables there are four variables in this research: 1. value creation variable as the first exogenous latent variable (x1). it is called exogenous latent variable because it is a cause variable that cannot be observed directly. it also explains and influences other variables, such as image and competitiveness variables. 2. service excellence variable as the second exogenous latent variable (x2) that affects brand equity and competitiveness variables. 3. image variable as the first endogenous latent variable (y) is an intervening variable. it is called intervening variable because it affects the direct relationship between exogenous latent variables (x1 and x2) and second endogenous latent variable (z). 4. competitiveness variable as the second endogenous latent variable (z). it is called endogenous latent variable because it is affected by x1 and x2 influences on y. population, sample and sampling technique a. population “population is a group or entity consisting of people, events, or objects, with a number of general characteristics.” population in this research is undergraduate students at indonesia university of education, classes 2012 to 2013. b. sample the sample size is based on slovin formula (husein umar, 2003:141) as follows: where: n = sample n = population e = sample error that can be tolerated. based on the formula, we can calculate the size of the sample form the population, as follows: = 39,04 is rounded to 40 study programs meanwhile, the size of data sources from the population is calculated as follows: = 99,62 respondents the minimum sample of this research is rounded to 100 respondents. however, based on several considerations, the writer adopted hier theory that the data shall be analyzed by using sem. based on this theory, the minimum sample size = the number of variables x 15. 18 x 15 = 270 c. sampling technique a sampling technique must be chosento get a sample that represents the real condition of the population. “samplingcan be defined as a process to select a number of units or elements or subjects from a population that represents a population to be studied. therefore a generalization or inference can be made related to characteristics of a represented population.” after gathering data from respondents, the writer took the sample based on probability sampling technique or random sampling. in probability sampling, every population element has an equal chance to 48 international journal of education, vol. 8 no. 1 december 2014 be selected as a sample. the characteristic of probability sampling is that one may determine each sampling unit from the population and that unit has a chance to be included in the sample. in a more simple case, each unit has an equal chance to be a sample. the writer used probability samplingbecause it is in line with silalahi (2006:237): qualitative researchers have two motivations to use probability sampling or random sampling. the first motivation is time and cost. the second motivation using probability sampling is accuracy. (the deviance level of a sample). in addition to probability sampling, simple random sampling was used because the population in the research is considered homogeneous. simple random samplingis defined as a sampling procedure aimed to convince that each unit in the population has an equal chance to be included in the sample. a sample must be representative. therefore, systematic steps to gain a representative sample are needed. the systematic steps are: 1. determining the target population 2. determining the particular location 3. calculating the time to be used in determining sampling 4. conducting the field orientation 5. determining the sample size validity and reliability testing data are very important for a research project since they describe variables and functions as a hypotheses determiner. therefore, data need to be tested. whether the data are accurate or not depends on the instrument of data collection. a good instrument must meet 2 requirements: validity and reliability. validity and reliability testing in this research were conducted by using spss software and lisrel data analysis technique the collected data from the questionnaires must be analyzed to make it meaningful for problem solving. the data were analyzed based on the following criteria: 1. each variable was classified into five alternative answers (likertariable was), where each option consists of five score criteria as follows: 2. the answer scoring was based on hybrid ordinally-interval scale that describes the rank of the answers. the rank of the answers are given scores ranging from 1 until 5. 3. total score = total variable x answer score score_variable = (density at lower limit) (descity at upper limit) (are below upper limit) (are below lower limit) data analysis technique using sem (structural equation modeling) kusnendi (2008:270) explains that sem is an analytical method aimed at testing measurement model and structural model of latent variables. based on the definition, there are three main characteristics of sem. 1. sem is a combination of interdependent and dependent multivariate data analysis techniques. it is a combination of table 3.5 scores of alternative answers of positive and negative questions alternative answers very high high somewhat high somewhat low low positive 5 4 3 2 1 negative 1 2 3 4 5 source: modified from hermawan (2006: 132) 49 ratih hurriyati, the effects of value creation model and excellent services confirmatory factor analysis and pat analysis. 2. variable analyzed is latent variable (construct), which is a variable that cannot be observed directly (unobservable), yet it is measured through indicators or manifested variables. 3. sem is not aimed to create model but to test or confirm theory-based model, which is a measurement model and astructural model. the following is the proposed construct structural model 4. research results a. the results show that value creation at indonesia university of education is high based on the value network indicator. this is because lecturers at departments/ study programs of indonesia university of education always retain a good x1 x2 z y figure 3.1 construct structural model remarks x1 = value creation x2 = service excellence y= brand equity z =competitiveness ξ1 ξ 2 η1 η2 ζ1 ζ2 figure 3.2 construct structural model model 1 η1 = гξ+ ζ1 model 2 η2 = гξ+ вη+ ζ2 relationship with their students. service excellence at indonesia university of education is high, since the majority of the respondents think that the service at their department/study programs is excellent. based on image variable, most of the students think that the image of the university is high, particularly when it comes to the brand awareness. in terms of competitiveness, the students also think that the university is very competitive, particularly related to value.b. va l u e creation in courses positively affects the increase or decrease in image of indonesia university of education. the higher the value creation, the higher the image of indonesia university of education. c. service excellence in every program of study affects the image of indonesia university of education, which means 50 international journal of education, vol. 8 no. 1 december 2014 an increase in service excellence will be followed by an increase in image. d. value creation positively affects the competitiveness of indonesian university of education, which means that the higher value creation, the higher the competitiveness of upi. e. service excellence also affects competitiveness. better service excellence will result in higher competitiveness. f. better image also will result in higher competitiveness. concluding remarks 1. the most influencing indicator in value creation is value shop. it means that the faster a department/study program identifies the problem, the faster it will solve the problem. additionally, the more intensively the department/study program evaluates the problem, the higher value creation that the university will have. however, in reality, value creation at indonesia university of education is more focused on good relationships (value network). therefore, indonesia university of education should improve its value shop in relation to controlling and evaluating problems and issues in its department/study programs. 2. the most influential indicator in service excellence variable at indonesia university of education is action. this is related to real or practical action in providing service to the students. this action has a more substantial influence since it is directly related to the students in the form of lecturers’ and administration officers’ performances. the example of this is how fast the university can provide for students’ needs. in reality, appearance is the most dominant indicator according to the students. therefore, lecturers and administration officers must emphasize their action, rather than their image profile. 3. in terms of image variable, awareness of brand, name, and symbol is the most dominant indicators. based on several theories, awareness is the lowest equity level. it is suggested that indonesia university of education should emphasize its brand association, particularly related to product and service quality improvement. this will balance the image and the quality as the leading and outstanding university. 4. the most dominant indicator in the competitiveness variable is value. meanwhile, the research results show product quality is the most influencing indicator. value must not be neglected. however, product quality has a more substantial influence. therefore, product quality must be emphasized in boosting competitiveness. in reality, indonesia university of education’s competitiveness lies in cost leadership. as we know, educational service generally has a great and crucial responsibility to educate the nation, particularly in terms of economic growth factors and developing the quality of our human resources. therefore, the 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(2010) pedagogical competence development and under the indonesian legislation of lecturer pedagogical competence, we investigated the efforts made by lecturers with a non-education background in a large indonesian university of education to develop their pedagogical competence. as many as 40 lecturers took part in our preliminary survey of lecturer pedagogical development, and 20 of them joined our interviews and focus group discussions. based on the results of the survey, interview, and focus group discussions, we gained a description of the efforts made by the lecturers in developing their pedagogical competence, their perceptions of the extent to which their university has facilitated their pedagogical development, and the perceived challenges. recommendations are drawn based on the results of the research to create a model of pedagogical competence development that is suitable for the lecturers and lecturers with a non-education background in general. keywords: lecturer; non-education background; pedagogical competence to cite this paper (in apa style): novianti, n. & nurlaelawati, i. (2019). pedagogical competence development of university teachers with noneducation background: the case of a large university of education in indonesia. indonesian journal of education, 11(2), 169-177. doi: 10.17509/ije.v11i2.15711 introduction unlike teachers, lecturers or teachers at the level of higher education in indonesia and elsewhere are not required to have a teaching certificate in order to be recruited to teach at the university. despite this different requirement, both teachers and lecturers are required to have four competencies as stipulated by the minister of national education’s regulation no. 16 of 2007. the four competences include pedagogical competence, personal competence, professional competence, and social competence. consequently, some faculty members do not have any formal training and education on pedagogy. meanwhile, pedagogical competence is important for a lecturer’s career (merkt, 2017) in addition to research skills. there has been ample research on the development of lecturers’ pedagogical competences with various foci. muñoz carril, gonzález sanmamed, & hernández sellés identified key competences that lecturers should have in teaching in the virtual world, and cardelle-elawar & nevin (2004) conducted a narrative inquiry into the development of lecturers’ pedagogical competence in virtual environment. spencer (2008) created a model of professional development for lecturers who teach pre-service teachers. some researchers investigated the establishment of programs for the development of lecturer pedagogical competence (olatunji, 2013) and whether or not lecturers have taken any formal pedagogical course or training and their opinions of the importance of such course (aškerc & kočar, 2015). some other researchers chose to examine lecturers’ pedagogical competence based on the assessment done by their students (yilmaz & tinmaz, 2016). a group of researchers also attempted to identify the need for pedagogical training for pre-service lecturers (robinson & hope, 2013; o’loughlin, kearns, laughlin, & robinson, 2017) however, most of the research seemed to treat lecturers with and without education background the same. meanwhile, lecturers with non-education background certainly lack the formal training and novianti & nurlaelawati pedagogical competence development of university teachers with non-education background 170 education on pedagogy. in addition, most of the research on the need for pedagogical training or education focused on the graduate students, not the teaching or in-service lecturers. to address this gap, we have conducted an investigation on how lecturers with non-education background develop their pedagogical competence. furthermore, we sought for the lecturers’ perceptions of the need for formal pedagogical course or training for lecturers with non-education background. pedagogical competence in the perspective of indonesian legislation because the research took place in indonesia, it is necessary to take into account the country’s regulations regarding lecturer pedagogical competence. according to article 28 paragraph 3 point (a), pedagogical competence in the national standards is defined as the ability to manage students' learning which includes understanding the learner; designing, and implementing, learning outcomes; and developing learners to actualize their potential. furthermore, as defined by law number 14 of 2005 concerning teachers and lecturers, pedagogic competency entails the ability of teachers and the learning process for students. regulation of the minister of national education number 17 of 2007 summarizes the 10 core potentials that must be possessed by lecturers and teachers that can help with specific lessons, such as the following: 1) understanding students’ physical, moral, spiritual, social, cultural, emotional, and intellectual aspects; 2) having a good command of learning theory and educational learning principles; 3) developing a curriculum related to the subjects taught; 4) carrying out didactic learning; 5) utilizing information and communication technology for the benefit of learning; 6) facilitating the development of potential students to actualize their various potentials; 7) communicating effectively, empathically, and politely with students; 8) assessing and studying the learning process and results; 9) utilizing results and evaluations for the benefit of learning; and 10) making reflective actions to improve the quality of learning. it is clear then that pedagogical competence is comprehensive, encompassing a teacher’s/lecturer’s ability in various aspects of teaching and learning that has to be developed in line with the development of time, such as technological advances, scientific revolution, etc. pedagogical competence and its development to put the present study in a broader context, it is necessary to include and take into account other definitions of pedagogical competence. olsson, martensson, and roxa (2010) have developed a model of pedagogical competence that is practical for this study. figure 1: a model of pedagogical competence international journal of education vol. 11 no. 2, february-2019, pp. 169-177 ©2019 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: 10.17509/ije.v11i2.15711 171 based on the pedagogical competence model developed by olsson, martensson, and roxa (2010) in figure 1, it can be understood that pedagogical competence is broader in scope than teaching skills. this great scope of what constitutes pedagogical competence is reflected as well in the indonesian legislations. the model further shows that teaching skills are part of pedagogical competence, which also involves practices and theories about teaching and understanding of students. teachers are required to be able to plan and observe the teaching process and ongoing learning. teachers are also required to understand student learning. in the context of higher education, according to merkt (2017), there are at least four dimensions of pedagogical competence development in higher education: personal development; institutional-based development that includes “continuing education and training programs, assessments, and the development of cultural contexts promoting quality” (p. 1); development of “legal and procedural frameworks regarding teacher aptitude in the relevant statutes governing institutions of higher education and the regulations covering professorships, post-doctoral programs and doctoral programs” (p.1); and development of competence-based national standards. merkt (2017) seems to suggest that stronger frameworks and regulations for the teaching profession in higher education are needed in addition to the commonly practiced personal and institution-facilitated development programs. in addition, standardization at the national level is needed, and indonesia is heading towards that direction, although admittedly more has to be done in order to meet the goal. method before conducting rigorous investigation into the case of lecturers’ pedagogical development, we distributed a questionnaire to all lecturers with non-education background in the university. the questionnaire consisted of 30 items that identified respondents’ age, education background, and length of teaching; respondents’ previous experiences of attending formal training on pedagogy; respondents’ efforts of developing their pedagogical competence; and their perception of how the institution has facilitated their pedagogical competence development. the questionnaire was developed by adopting that of mâţă, cmeciu, and ghiaţău (2013) with some adjustments based on the indonesian legislations concerning pedagogical competence and the university in which we were conducting the study. out of the 80 questionnaires distributed, only 40 were returned to us, and out of that 40 respondents, only 10 agreed to join a focus group discussion. based on the results of the questionnaire, we invited the 10 respondents to take part in a focus group discussion in order to further reveal their opinions on pedagogical competence, the need for pedagogical training, and the extent to which the institution has facilitated their pedagogical development. the discussion was also an attempt of finding out the lecturers’ perception of their pedagogical competence development. at the end of the study, we designed a model of pedagogical competence development based on the results of the survey, interview, and focus-group discussion. our design was also informed by literature review on pedagogical competence development, such as on the techniques or methods to develop lecturer’s pedagogical competence based on well-established theories and previous relevant studies. results and discussion demographic information of the participants based on the demographic survey, 55% or 22 of the educational non-background lecturers were in the range of 31-35 years old, and 30% or 12 of them were 41-45 years old. the smallest percentage was for the age range of 36-40 years and 51-55 years, with 10% (4 lecturers) and 5% (2 lecturers), respectively. because the majority of the non-educational background lecturers were in the range of 31-35 years, it is understandable if most of the lecturer respondents have just obtained a master's or master's degree. most of the respondents with non-education background or 30 (75%) completed master’s degree, and only 10 (25%) of them had taken a doctoral degree. the longest teaching period surveyed was more than twenty years for only one lecturer respondent. six respondent lecturers (15%) have taught for 16-20 years, 8 (eight) lecturers (20%) have taught for 6-10 years, and 10 lecturers (25%) have taught for 610 years. the last category, which is the majority category, is lecturers who have taught for 0-5 years with a total of 14 people (35%). in terms of field of expertise, generally the lecturers who participated in this study can be classified into several groups. the first group, which is the majority, is the engineering group (electrical engineering, civil engineering, and aerospace engineering). the second group is language and literature lecturers with a concentration of english, indonesian, and linguistics. the third group is the economics group (sharia economics, management, and accounting). the fourth group is mathematics and natural sciences (mathematics and chemistry). other groups consist of nursing, welfare education, information science and library study, islamic studies, and communication science. thus, it can be said that the respondent lecturers in this study represented almost all faculties at the university. development of pedagogical competence of the lecturers with a non-education background the research findings in this section focus on how lecturers with non-education backgrounds at the university develop their pedagogical competencies. factors that contribute to the development of pedagogical competencies of the lecturers were investigated. in general, there are two identified factors, namely internal factors and external factors. internal factors include initiative, self-motivation, and personal experience. external factors include support from peers, novianti & nurlaelawati pedagogical competence development of university teachers with non-education background 172 senior lecturers, superiors (head of study / cadet / dean / rector) and institutions to develop pedagogical competencies of lecturers with non-educational backgrounds. these factors are explained in more detail below. resources for teaching knowledge considering that the lecturers of the respondents did not have a formal academic background in the field of pedagogy, it is important to know how they learn to teach and what resources they use to help them in their teaching and learning. questions in this section require respondents to reflect on the process of obtaining pedagogical knowledge that shapes them to become the teachers they are. the responses to this question are summarized as follows: more than half of the lecturer respondents (55%) or 22 lecturers revealed that they modeled their teaching styles, techniques, and methods after their former lecturers. in other words, they are inspired by how their former lecturers have taught them. other resources of information for teaching are reading books on how to teach and copying the way other lecturers teach, which is 45% each. participating in training is also one of the sources of information that forms the teaching knowledge of the respondent lecturers (40%). other sources of information, such as watching videos of lecturers in teaching, improvising themselves, and learning independently helped shape the way they teach. participation in discipline-based groups and other relevant groups the next factor that must be considered in developing lecturer pedagogic competencies is participation in a group of lecturers who share similar field of expertise, commonly abbreviated into kbk in indonesian. this group usually holds discussions regularly to help each other develop pedagogical competencies of its members. the group is formed at the level of study program, but it is not infrequent for smaller groups of the same field of expertise from different universities gather in both formal and non-formal occasions. the survey results show that almost all or 90% of respondents join such groups according to their respective field of expertise. there are only two respondents who do not join such group. meanwhile, the lecturers who are members of the field of expertise group, when asked further about how often they participate in group discussions, revealed quite different answers. the highest group meeting frequency, as shown in figure 9, is a meeting conducted every semester. this frequency is followed by once a month (27.8%), and once a year (16.7%). the rest answered that they sometimes meet online, but not routinely. others said it is dependent on the invitation from the leaders of the group, which is uncertain. there were also those who revealed that the field of expertise groups at the university did not actively conduct meetings, so that the lecturer respondents attended the meeting held outside the university quite regularly. this survey also asks whether the respondent lecturers conduct scientific discussions that can help develop their pedagogical competencies outside the field of expertise groups in their respective departments or study programs. almost all or 95% (38 people) of the respondent lecturers are involved in non-formal scientific discussions in order to develop their pedagogical competencies. the frequency of non-formal discussions varies. more than half of the lecturers reported that they hold the discussion (30%) monthly and every semester. 15% of them (6 people) even hold non-formal discussions in order to increase this pedagogical competence for once a week. the rest do informal scientific discussions like this sometimes, if needed, depending on needs, and not necessarily. pedagogical competence development involving peers and seniors for this category, the respondent lecturers were asked about the pedagogical competence development activities that they do, involving peer and senior lecturers. for activities involving peer lecturers, the question is whether the lecturers observe the teaching and learning of another lecturer to learn how to teach. the results show that 70% or 28 respondents make observations of the teaching and learning processes in other lecturers’ classes to help develop their pedagogical competencies. half (50% or 20) of the lecturers who make observations in other lecturers’ classes revealed that they carry out this activity every semester. further interviews revealed that they do this to renew their pedagogical knowledge and skills each semester. in addition to developing pedagogical competence involving peer lecturers, we also asked whether they do any pedagogic competence development activities involving senior lecturers. more than half of the respondent lecturers (55%, 22) said that they are paired to teach with a senior lecturer, or as a teaching assistant, and 92.3% of the lecturers who serve as teaching assistants felt the effectiveness of the arrangement in helping to develop their pedagogical competence. further investigation revealed what these senior lecturers have done that the respondents perceived to be useful in helping them develop their pedagogical competence. according to the respondent lecturers, senior lecturers are especially effective in helping them develop material and manage the class; giving input on teaching methods and techniques; creating apperception techniques; using learning models, managing teaching materials/syllabus/course unit/ rps; giving examples and inspiration about things that are good and not good in teaching, so that the lecturers can avoid mistakes that senior lecturers might make; giving direction in teaching; providing additional knowledge about the disciplines studied; providing in-depth knowledge in the field of their expertise; helping international journal of education vol. 11 no. 2, february-2019, pp. 169-177 ©2019 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: 10.17509/ije.v11i2.15711 173 evaluate the way the respondent lecturers teach to then be discussed and given input for development. pedagogical competence development activities by study programs/departments/institutions the study program, department, or institution where the respondent lecturers work at must certainly contribute to the development of the pedagogical competence of the lecturers. therefore, the next question in the survey looks at the extent of the role of study programs, departments, or university in facilitating the development of pedagogical competence of their lecturers. the responses of the respondent lecturers to this question are quite varied compared to the same answer for other pedagogic development-related activities. more than half (55%, or 11 people) said they did not take part in training in pedagogical competence development held at the level of study program/department/faculty/university. after further investigation, this lack of participation was not due to the reluctance of the respondent's lecturers, but because the institutions did not provide any pedagogical competence development training. for less than half of the respondents (45%, 18) who participated in pedagogical competence development training at the level of study program/department/faculty/university, many of them attend this kind of training every semester (38.5%) , the rest (30.8%) do it once a year. meanwhile, other respondents revealed that such training has never been held in the place where they work. we also explored whether the respondent lecturers attend workshops or seminars that can help them develop their pedagogical competence. the responses show that as many as 65% or 26 lecturers have attended workshops or seminars, and the rest have not. when asked about the reasons underlying their participation, some cited their own initiative or encouragement from other parties, such as colleagues or study program/department, and others. the answers from the respondent lecturers are quite diverse. almost all or 62.5% of respondents participated in this activity on their own initiative. others, namely 18.8% and 12.5% attended workshops or seminars on the development of pedagogical competence at the encouragement of the head of study program/department/faculty/university and co-workers. respondents’ perceptions of their pedagogical competence development next, we investigated the perceptions of the respondent lecturers of the factors that support the development of pedagogical competence. we started by asking the lecturers about their perceptions of the effectiveness of several activities in helping develop pedagogical competencies using a likert scale (strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree, strongly disagree). the responses to this cluster of questions indicate that almost all the respondent lecturers (95%) agreed that the activities mentioned in the questionnaire helped them in developing their pedagogical competencies. we also investigated the perceptions of the respondent lecturers on the importance of training to develop their pedagogical competencies in several fields. again according to almost all respondent lecturers (90%), the activities that most need special training included making syllabus/learning planning, followed by preparing learning material (75%), conducting selfevaluation and student learning and communicating with students (each 60%), thesis proposal defense, and student academic guidance (50%). the activity which according to the perceptions of the respondent needs special training the least is the thesis proposal defense, which is only chosen by 6 lecturers (15%). finally, we asked the perceptions of the respondent lecturers on the efforts made by the study program/department/faculty/university where they work in helping develop their pedagogical competencies. the findings show that 65% of the respondent lecturers felt that the study program/department/faculty/university has facilitated the development of their pedagogical competencies. unfortunately, 35% of the respondent lecturers or 14 of them felt this was not the case. of the 65% of respondents who felt the institutions they work at has helped in the development of their pedagogical competence, cited the following types of assistance: providing opportunities for training or seminars, motivating to continue their studies; hold curriculum and sap preparation / renewal workshops; organize lesson study; provide information about related trainings; provide assistance in the form of material or training; help the program increase the capacity and professionalism of lecturers; preparing facilities; input for evaluating students; and make teaching materials. input from respondent lecturers for the institution: proposed model of pedagogic competence and discussion of the results finally, we investigated the expectations of the respondent lecturers for the institution at which they work in terms of their pedagogical competence development. this is really important, as the end goal of this study is to formulate a model of pedagogical competence suitable for lecturers with a non-education background. based on the results of the interview and focus group discussion, we found that the lecturers hope that the institution where they work at can help their pedagogical competence development by holding training, seminars, and workshops; holding intensive training and providing the opportunity to get a short course, especially in different universities, to learn the best and most up-to-date teaching techniques and methods for non-educational courses; facilitating the exchange of teachers to faculties/study programs/other universities both in/outside the country and internships at domestic or foreign institutions in an effort to develop practical knowledge that can later be shared with other lecturers and students; providing good and inspiring examples; providing support, both in the form of financial assistance to attend pedagogical competence training; explaining the direction of the curriculum; novianti & nurlaelawati pedagogical competence development of university teachers with non-education background 174 organizing training of learning models; providing good infrastructure and resource persons in their fields; and providing funds to participate in pedagogical competence training outside their university. before discussing the pedagogical competence development model that we have designed based on the results of the survey, interview, and focus group discussion, it is important to discuss the results in light of the context of the study and in comparison to those of relevant studies. one of the results of this study shows that a similar trend in university recruitment for teachers is found as well in uk universities (spencer, 2008). in spencer’s and our studies, we both found that while the universities regularly conduct induction or orientation process for newly recruited lecturers, no “initial teacher training” is offered. in our study in particular, the induction mostly focuses on the procedural knowledge and general regulations of working in the university, not offering any training on the teaching and learning process that the lecturers will conduct. the result of our study also corresponds to that of aškerc and kočar (2015) in slovenian context. similar to their study, we found that almost all of the lecturers perceived the need for particular training or education on pedagogy, but only a small number of the lecturers have actually obtained such training or education. another issue to highlight is related to the status of the university as an institution for teacher training and education. as mentioned previously, the study was conducted to lecturers with a non-education background in a large state university dedicated to education and teaching and learning in general. although the lecturers participating in this study agreed that their peers and seniors have greatly helped their pedagogical competence development in a way that they provide the lecturers with good examples and good advice, it should be underlined here that the respondents did not feel that the institution where they work at has sufficiently facilitated their pedagogical competence development. this is certainly an irony since the university is dedicated to the education and training of pre-service teachers, yet the university’s own lecturers do not perceive the university to have provided them the appropriate education and training needed for their pedagogical competence development. one possible reason why pedagogical competence of university teachers has not been given proper attention is that their career development is still primarily determined by their research achievements, especially for non-education universities (madhavaram & laverie, 2010; merkt, 2017). it is rather surprising then to find that the same phenomenon can also be observed in education universities as well. hence, education universities and the university under study in particular should start paying more attention to the lecturers that they have recruited, especially those who have no background in education, to make sure the best quality of education is delivered to students by its teaching staff, regardless of the academic background. partly in this light we then created a model of pedagogical development that may be suitable for the case of our study. figure 2: a model of pedagogical competence development of non-education lecturers • reflective teaching • enriching pedagogical (content) knowledge by reading books and other relevant sources • coaching • mentoring • field of expertise group discussion • non-formal discussion • observation (sit-in) in colleague/senior’s classroom • orientation (introduction to pedagogical competence) • training on making syllabus, lesson plan, and learning/teaching materials) • other pedagogical competence training (instructional evaluation student development, etc.) • seminar and workshop on pedagogical competence development • evaluation of lecturer performance (pedagogic competence) international journal of education vol. 11 no. 2, february-2019, pp. 169-177 ©2019 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: 10.17509/ije.v11i2.15711 175 the pedagogical competence development model of non-education lecturers as shown in figure 2 can be described as follows. the development of noneducational lecturers’ pedagogical competence can be divided into three forms, namely the development of pedagogic competence by the lecturers themselves, development of pedagogic competence with colleagues and senior lecturers, and development of pedagogical competence by institutions (university/faculty/ department/study program). these three forms of development must be mutually sustainable and carried out continuously throughout the academic career of the lecturers. the development of pedagogical competence of lecturers can be started from themselves, both before and after being appointed as a lecturer. this selfdevelopment can be done through activities called reflective teaching. reflection on teaching can be done by various methods, and one that is considered most appropriate is reflective journal or reflection carried out by recording the results of reflection in a diary or journal. reflective journals do not have a consistent definition because researchers use different terms for reflective journals (maarof, 2007). some people might refer to it as study notes, diaries, dialogue journals, or personal narratives (see maarof, 2007). some others might say that reflective journals are a way of telling experiences and events chronologically (wellington, 2000, in majid, 2008) and for building intellectual and affective skills in which authors explore their experiences to develop new understanding and appreciation (boud et al., 1985, in le & le, 2007). in addition, of course lecturers can always enrich their pedagogical knowledge by reading various relevant sources, including accessing sources of information about other pedagogies, such as the internet. the next form of development involves the role of a colleague or senior lecturer. some types of activities that can be carried out are by joining the field of expertise groups and other discussion groups, holding non-formal discussions with other lecturers regarding pedagogy. especially for development involving senior lecturers, guidance can be made by pairing new lecturers and senior lecturers, so that new lecturers can learn from the senior lecturers. the next method of development is mentoring. teacher mentoring is initially a program that is designed to help prospective teacher students before they enter the realm of teaching (morrison et al., 2009). however, now teacher mentoring is not only aimed at prospective teachers, but also teachers or teaching staff who have long taught, known as veteran teachers (ganser, 1996; koki, 1997). the teacher mentoring definition is quite diverse, as the term used to refer to this activity also varies. yee (2016), for example, uses the term peer coaching, there are also those who use the term peer mentoring, and some call it teacher peer mentoring. in essence, mentoring is: a nurturing activity, where they are more skilled or experienced in teaching, supporting, encouraging, and advising those who are less skilled or less experienced in teaching with the aim of increasing professionalism and / or personal development. (anderson & shannon, 1988, p. 40). teacher mentoring is thus carried out by fellow teachers who have the knowledge, skills, and most importantly different experiences. teacher mentoring has been widely applied in various settings, especially schools, because of its enormous benefits. according to huling and resta (2001), some of these benefits include: 1) can help improve professional competence; 2) providing space for reflection that is very important for teachers to be able to recognize weaknesses or weaknesses in the teaching process so far and strive to improve or improve the quality of teaching; 3) renewal in teaching knowledge and skills; 4) psychological benefits, such as increased self-confidence; 5) collaboration, namely improving good relations between teachers; 6) contributions to leadership. the third form of development of lecturer pedagogical competence is development involving the institution. as with other forms of development, institutional development must be carried out periodically and continuously. it starts with the orientation process of lecturers who have a noneducation background before starting to teach. the orientation process should be carried out at the study program level, with emphasis on technical matters, such as how to prepare a course unit or syllabus and lesson plan, how to prepare material for lessons, and so on. in accordance with the survey results, many lecturers with a non-education background conveyed the need for special training in how to evaluate student learning and evaluate self-learning and observe student development. therefore, special training needs to be carried out which can also be in the form of workshops that can help lecturers with their pedagogical competence. pedagogical training courses or ptcs have indeed been considered important by university teaching staff around the world, including in slovenia (veniger, 2016). to enrich and renew the pedagogical knowledge of lecturers, institutions are also advised to send lecturers to relevant seminars. facilitation from institutions is needed by lecturers, both in the form of non-material and material support, especially in terms of infrastructure. equally important from the lecturer pedagogical competence development model is periodic evaluation conducted by the institution. this evaluation can serve as a monitoring of the development of lecturer pedagogic competence as well as to measure the success of the pedagogical competence development programs that have been carried out by the institution. conclusions in this research we have attempted to find out how lecturers with a non-education background develop their pedagogical competence. the perceptions of the lecturers of the efforts to develop pedagogic competence made by the institution were explored, so novianti & nurlaelawati pedagogical competence development of university teachers with non-education background 176 that a model for developing pedagogical competence could be developed. the survey results were followed by interview and focus group discussion, and the overall results were then used as the basis to develop a pedagogical competence development model that is proposed to be applied at the university under study, in particular, and other institutions or universities in general hiring lecturers with a non-education background. in general, the competence development model takes three forms of development, namely selfdevelopment, development with senior colleagues or lecturers, and development by institutions. these three forms of development must work together and be carried out continuously. the model has not been pilottested, though, and we plan to do so in the near future. other researchers are welcome to test the model in their respective contexts. finally, it is important to note that our study had limited amount of respondents, and was only conducted in one university. hence, future studies on the same topic should include more respondents from several universities for more generalizable results. references anderson, e. m., & shannon, a. l. 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(2016). students’ view about pedagogical competence of lecturers. journal of higher education and science, 6(2), 209-219. international journal of education vol. 13 no. 2, dec-2020, pp. 105-112 ©2020 universitaspendidikan indonesia doi: 10.17509/ije.v13i2.23276 105 mathematical problem-solving behaviors of the routine solver jackson pasini mairing mathematics education department of palangka raya university, indonesia jp-mairing@math.upr.ac.id first draft received: 14 feb 2020 date accepted: 1 dec 2020 final proof received: 23 dec 2020 abstract the research refined the theories of students’ characteristics in solving mathematical problems and constructed a holistic understanding of their problem-solving behaviors. it aimed at describing the problemsolving behaviors of a routine problem solver. the routine bridged the gap between the expert and the novice. this research used a qualitative approach which was carried out in six stages. the research participant was rina (female, pseudonym), one of the 11th-grade students from one of the high schools in palangka raya city, central kalimantan, indonesia. the selection of the participant was based on certain criteria. the instruments were three mathematics problems and semi-structured interviews. the trustworthiness of the research was fulfilled through credibility, dependability, and transferability checking. the results showed that the routine could understand problems and was able to identify the known and the target. the routine only focused on developing a plan which was based on a lack of concepts, limited previous experiences, or limited strategies. problem-solving behaviors of the routine were between the expert and the novice. keywords: cognitive processes; mathematical problems; problem-solving behaviors; the routine solver to cite this paper (in apa style): mairing, j. p. (2020). mathematical problem-solving behaviors of the routine solver. international journal of education, 13(2), 105-112. doi: 10.17509/ije.v13i2.23276 introduction problem-solving is an integral part of and playing important role in mathematics learning. mathematics curricula of the 21st century address the ability to solve problems as the main goal at all education levels. there are two important roles of problem solving in mathematics classes. firstly, students can develop hots (higher order thinking skills) by learning to solve mathematics problems. secondly, students acquire positive attitudes, which are habits of persistence, curiosity, and confidence in unfamiliar situations by trying to solve problems (national council of teachers of mathematics, 2000; reiss & torner, 2007). the mathematics problem is different from a routine question. the problem is a challenging and unfamiliar situation in which the part of the solution is not immediately visible to students (mairing, 2018). students cannot find the answer to the problems by applying certain formulas or procedures directly. in other words, the solution is a series of non-algorithmic steps(reiss & torner, 2007). on the other hand, students can determine the answer to the routine question by applying some formulas or procedures directly. the solution path can be seen by the students immediately (posamenteir & krulik, 2009). therefore, the answer to a routine question is algorithmic steps. the students’ ability to solve problems could be classified as novice and expert problem solvers (sternberg & sternberg, 2012). the differences between the two solvers are characterized by schema, organization, the use of time, representation of the problems, work direction, strategy, automatization, efficiency, prediction of the difficulty, monitoring, accuracy of the solution, unusual problems confronting, and contradictory information handling. the experts need more time to understand and to represent the problems than to develop solution plans, compare to what the novices do. the experts also spend more time in defining problems and activating relevant prior knowledge than what the novices do (goldstein, 2011; gruwel et al., 2015). in the work direction, the experts use the means-end heuristic of forwarding, while the novices use a backward heuristic (sternberg & sternberg, 2012). the means-end is a problem-solving heuristic to reduce the difference between the known, and the target of problems (goldstein, 2011). if students move from the known to the target, they used the forward heuristic. conversely, they use the backward heuristic. the differences also occur in scanning, processing, organizing, and presenting information (gruwel et al., 2015). they are significantly influenced by mathematics knowledge, general intelligence, general creativity, or the verbal ability of the solvers (bahar & maker, 2015). some research specifically described the problem-solving behaviors of the experts. the experts mailto:jp-mairing@math.upr.ac.id mairing mathematical problem-solving behaviors of the routine solver 106 used a four-stage multidimensional problem-solving framework to solve the problems, namely orientation, planning, executing, and checking. the framework contained two cycles in which each cycle consisted of at least three of the stages. the planning phase contained sub-cycles namely conjecture, imagination, and evaluation (carlson & bloom, 2005). mairing (2011) conducted research aimed at describing the thinking process of two experts who were medalists of the mathematics national olympiad. the research result was described in four problem-solving stages of polya which were understanding problems, developing plans, carrying out the plans, and looking back (polya, 1973). the problem-solving behaviors of the novices have been described by mairing (2017). the novices did not understand the problem. they only copied information from the problems without constructing the mental images. their solution plans were based on the remembered formulas, even though the knowledge of the formulas was limited so the novices could not find the correct answers to the problems. furthermore, there were gaps between the experts and the novice that the experts had certain behaviors that the novices did not. at the stage of understanding the problems, the expert could construct mental images of the problems, while the novices could not identify important information about the problems, so they failed to construct the images. at the stage of developing plans, the experts’ plans were based on the meaningful problem-solving schema, while the novices’ plans were based on the limited formulas or the limited strategies. therefore, the experts could see the solution paths, but the novices could not see them. at the stage of carrying out the plans, the experts carried out the plans systematically so they could find the correct answers, while the novices did some mistakes in implementing the plans so they could not find the answers. at the stage of looking back, the experts checked the answers by substituting them to certain equations, or check the solutions rows, while the novices checked the formulas or the calculation only because of their limited understanding and plans (mairing, 2011, 2012, 2017). the other researchers classified problem solvers into three groups, namely the novices, the routines, and the experts (muir et al., 2008). such classifications should refine the theories of students’ behaviors in solving the problems, although the gaps between the experts and the novices raised some questions. were the routine’s behaviors between the expert and the novice? what were the behaviors of the routine when understanding problems, developing plans, carrying out the plans, and looking back? did the routine able to identify the known and the target of the problems? could the routine construct the appropriate mental images? did the plans help the routine to see the answers? how did the routine carry out the plans? did the routine look back on the solutions? if the routine did, how did the solver do it? if the routine did not, why did the solver perform it? therefore, this research was aimed at describing problem-solving behaviors of the routine. the theoretical framework of this research was polya’s stages. the stages were specifically used to solve mathematical problems. also, the other problemsolving stages (goldstein, 2011; pape, 2004; sternberg & sternberg, 2012) corresponding to polya’s stages. the results of this research could answer those questions and complement the previous research to construct a holistic understanding of students’ problem-solving behaviors. this understanding can help cognitive psychologists or mathematics teachers to develop theories, teaching methods, or learning plans intended to improve students’ ability to solve mathematics problems. method design of the research this qualitative research was conducted under an interpretative study paradigm. the main characteristic of the research was describing and interpreting a process from students’ points of view, namely behaviors of the routine as solving mathematics problems. furthermore, the research also identified recurrent patterns, namely the solution path of the routine based on the behaviors (ary et al., 2006). materials the instruments were three mathematics problems and semi-structured interview guidelines. these problems were related to polynomials concepts. the problems were: 1. if polynomial 𝑓𝑓(𝑥𝑥) is divided by 𝑥𝑥 + 1 and 𝑥𝑥 − 3, the remainings are −2 and 7 respectively. if polynomial 𝑔𝑔(𝑥𝑥) is divided by 𝑥𝑥 + 1 and 𝑥𝑥 − 3, the remainings are 3 and 2 respectively. let ℎ(𝑥𝑥) = 𝑓𝑓(𝑥𝑥). 𝑔𝑔(𝑥𝑥). if ℎ(𝑥𝑥) is divided by 𝑥𝑥2 − 2𝑥𝑥 − 3, the remaining is ... 2. if polynomial 𝑝𝑝(𝑥𝑥) is divided by 𝑥𝑥2 − 𝑥𝑥 and 𝑥𝑥2 + 𝑥𝑥, the remainings were 4𝑥𝑥 + 2 and 4𝑥𝑥 + 2 respectively. if 𝑝𝑝(𝑥𝑥) is divided by 𝑥𝑥2 − 1, the remaining is ... 3. if (𝑥𝑥 − 1)2 divide 𝑎𝑎𝑥𝑥4 + 𝑏𝑏𝑥𝑥3 + 1, then 𝑎𝑎𝑏𝑏 =. .. the questions in the guideline can be seen in table 1. international journal of education vol. 13 no. 2, dec-2020, pp. 105-112 ©2020 universitaspendidikan indonesia doi: 10.17509/ije.v13i2.23276 107 table 1 the interview guideline the stages the questions understanding the problem (the researcher asked the participant after reading the problem) 1. how many times have you read the problem? why? 2. what is the meaning of the writings/images/symbols? 3. can you retell this problem? 4. what is the known? 5. what is the unknown or the target? developing the plan (the researcher asked the participant before writing the solution) 1. what do you do first to solve the problem? then? (and so on) 2. do you have another plan? please, explain. carrying out the problem (the researcher asked the participant after writing the solution) 1. please, justify your writings. 2. are you having difficulties when solving the problem? please, explain. what is your idea to solve the difficulties? 3. is the solution following the plan? 4. do you check the solution steps? how to do it? looking back (the researcher asked the participant after justifying the solution) 1. are you sure the answer is correct? 2. is there another way to solve this problem? what is your idea? participant the researcher determined a research participant. the criterion was a student who had a fair ability to solve problems and was able to have both oral and written communication. the data of the ability was obtained by giving two problems, which differed from the problems posed to all students of a mathematics and science class of the 11th grade from one of the state high schools in palangka raya, central kalimantan, indonesia. the result showed that the number of the experts, the routines, and the novices were 1 (2.5%), 9 (22.5%), and 30 (75%) respectively. besides, the selection of the participant was also based on the suggestions given by the mathematics teacher regarding the student’s skills in both oral and written communication. the participant was rina (female), one of the nine students having a fair ability. the researcher asked consent from her parents to do indepth interviews at her house. procedures the research was carried out in six stages. first, the researcher determined the focus of the research which was the problem-solving behaviors of the participant at each polya’s stage. second, the researcher developed instruments to collect data, namely three mathematics problems, and semi-structured interview guidelines. third, the researcher chose the research participant that satisfied the participant's criteria. fourth, the researcher collected data by conducting in-depth interviews based on the problems. fifth, the researcher analyzed the data. the last, the researcher interpreted and verified the results of analyzing data (ary et al., 2006). data collection the data collection was done by conducting in-depth interviews with the participant based on the problems. the interviews were conducted in the participant's house. the researcher came to her home for four months to conduct the interviews. the interviews were recorded using audio-visual recorders and carried out based on polya's stages. firstly, the participant read the problems. she could write or draw her understanding on paper but had not been allowed to write the solutions. the reading activities stopped until the participant said “already” or “finished”. the researcher asked some questions to explore her understanding of the problems. secondly, the participant communicated her plans to solve the problems. thirdly, the participant wrote an implementation of the plans until she said “already” or “finished”. the researcher asked her to explain each row of her solutions. fourthly, the researcher explored the means of the participant to look back on the solutions by asking some questions. data analysis the data analysis was implemented in three steps. firstly, the researcher transcribed the interview recordings and reduced the data of transcripts by giving some codes. the codes consisted of five digits. the first and the second digits stated the problem number, for example, code m1 stated the line of the transcript from the first problem. there were three possibilities of the code, namely m1, m2, or m3. the third stated that the problem-solving stage, namely u, p, c, or l stated understanding, planning, carrying out the plan, or looking back respectively. the fifth and sixth codes stated the order of activities in each stage. for example, m2c12 stated that the line of the transcript from the second problem, the participant did the twelfth activity of carrying out the planning stage. secondly, the researcher interpreted the transcripts and codes. the interpretation was conducted by giving some meaning and explanation of the data. the method was to analyze words/phrases/sentences and constant comparison. the analysis was conducted by reading the interview transcripts, focusing on words/phrases/sentences that were significantly interesting, listing possible meanings of them that appeared in the researcher’s mind, and returned to the transcripts to determine the appropriate meanings (strauss & corbin, 1998). the comparison was done by comparing a certain category with others mairing mathematical problem-solving behaviors of the routine solver 108 so the researcher found some behaviors that had the same characteristics. thirdly, the researcher and the participant verified the interpretation by evaluating criteria for credibility, dependability, and transferability. the credibility of this research was satisfied by prolonged engagement with the participant for four months, persistent/consistent observations, triangulation, structural relationships, and member checks. the researcher sent the transcripts and summaries of the researcher’s conclusions to the participant for review. triangulation was done by examining the solution written by the participant, and the interview transcripts (the triangulation method), or checking the participant's solution of a problem against solutions of other problems (the time triangulation). the dependability was satisfied by making clear and detailed documentation of collecting and analyzing data (leaving an audit trail). the transferability was satisfied by providing a complete description of the research participant and the context of the research took place (bloomberg & volpe, 2008; lodico et al., 2006). findings and discussion the interviews were conducted for four months in the participant's house. the results of the interviews were transcribed and coded. an activity could be the problem-solving behavior of the participant if it appeared in all problems to be shown by the second digit code of the activity which was 1, 2, and 3. for example, the participant was able to explain the known and the target of problems. this activity got code m1u02–03; m2u01–05, m3u04-09, 11, 12 so it appeared as the participant solved the first, second, and third problems. the researcher used three problems because the participant could not determine the answer to the first problem. the participant created the incorrect answer to the second and the third problems. however, the participant performed the same behavior to solve all problems. in other words, the activity had coded m1xxx, m2xxx, and m3xxx. the problem-solving behavior from the routine based on polya’s stages is as follows. the stage of understanding the problems the participant was rina (female). rina read each problem 4 times for 3-7 minutes. she read repeatedly to understand the problems, and to develop the solution plans. rina said, “because i am confused about what to do first”. the participant could determine and explain the known and the target of the problems (m1u03–04, m2u05, m3u07–09). the explanation was not based only on the sentences in the problems. she used the previous schema in her mind. the following are the interview transcripts. researcher : what is the unknown? rina : the unknown is the remaining of ℎ(𝑥𝑥) is divided by 𝑥𝑥2 − 2𝑥𝑥 − 3 researcher : what is ℎ(𝑥𝑥) itself? rina : ℎ(𝑥𝑥) itself is the product of 𝑓𝑓(𝑥𝑥) and 𝑔𝑔(𝑥𝑥) (codes) m1u03 m1u04 researcher : okay, what is the unknown? rina : the unknown is the remaining of 𝑝𝑝(𝑥𝑥) if it is divided by 𝑥𝑥2 − 1 m2u05 researcher : okay, what is the unknown? rina : the unknown is 𝑎𝑎 times 𝑏𝑏 researcher : what is 𝑎𝑎? rina : 𝑎𝑎 is the coefficient of 𝑥𝑥4 researcher : then, what is 𝑏𝑏? rina : 𝑏𝑏 is the coefficient of 𝑥𝑥3 m3u07 m3u08 m3u09 the stage of developing the plans the plans were developed by the participant as she read the problems. she also read more than once to check the plans. she did the checking because of finding the difficulties to see the solution paths, and of finding correct answers. the participant was not sure about the plans, but she did not develop others (m1p18, m2p16, m3p13). she still focused to develop the initial plans. thus, one of the problem-solving behaviors of the participant was to focus on developing some limited plans to solve the problems, although she could not see the answers by using them. the limited plans were based on the lack of the concepts or limited solution strategies, namely substituting some values to the polynomial, stating the polynomial = divisor × result of division + remainder, eliminating the equations obtained, or horner division method. the participant could not see the correct answers using the plans, and found difficulties to determine them. therefore, she seemed hesitant and needed to read the problems repeatedly at least three times when explaining the plans (m1p12, m2p14, m3p11). the participant could not solve the difficulties. she planned the next steps while writing the solutions. the following are the interview transcripts. researcher : then ... rina : eh ... (thinking while reading the problem) eh ... (thinking while reading the problem), then ... (thinking while reading the problem) researcher : do you want to explain the plan again or to try to solve the problem? rina : i want to try to solve ... researcher : before writing the solution, the plan stops here, what are the obstacles? rina : the obstacle is ... eh ... researcher : okay, the plan stops here. can the plan find the (codes) m1p09 m1p10 m1p11 international journal of education vol. 13 no. 2, dec-2020, pp. 105-112 ©2020 universitaspendidikan indonesia doi: 10.17509/ije.v13i2.23276 109 unknown? rina : not yet researcher : is there another plan to solve this problem? rina : not yet m1p12 m1p18 researcher : could you find the answer by using the plan? rina : not yet researcher : it means the steps have not finished yet, so after that? rina : after that, eliminating between divisor eh ... between ... (becoming silent, her hands touch her mouth while looking at the problem at 15:00 to 15:53) between the first and the second divisors ... researcher : after eliminating, do you find the answer? rina : not yet ... researcher : are there the next steps? rina : (becoming silent while leaning chin with her hand from 16:00 to 17:04) researcher : previously, rina explained the plan but you can not find the answer, is there another plan to solve this problem? rina : not yet m2p12 m2p13 m2p14 m2p15 m2p16 reseacher : ok, after dividing by 𝑥𝑥 − 1, can you get 𝑎𝑎 times 𝑏𝑏 [the target] rina : not yet researcher : it means there are still some further steps, can you explain further? rina : eh ... by ... elimination researcher : what are the equations? rina : between ... uh ... between ... 𝑝𝑝(𝑥𝑥) and ... previously using the horner method, the one below is the result of division and the rest, meaning later eh ... (becoming silent and looking at the problem from 17:50 19:01) wanting to try writing ... researcher : is there another plan to solve it? rina : not yet m3p09 m3p10 m3p11 m3p13 the stage of carrying out the plans the participant carried out each plan for 17-42 minutes. she focused to write the solutions according to the initial plans. some parts of the solutions differed from the initial plans. the parts were planned while carrying out the initial plans. the participant could justify the solutions, but she did not realize that some parts of the solutions were wrong. at the first problem, the participant represented function formulas of 𝑓𝑓 and 𝑔𝑔 using the same variables namely 𝑎𝑎, 𝑏𝑏, and 𝑐𝑐, or stated the degree of function 𝑓𝑓 was 2, she said: if the remaining degree is 0, then a degree of 𝑓𝑓 can be 1” (fig. 1), at the second problem, she reused previous rows, namely 𝑝𝑝(1) = 6 and 𝑝𝑝(−1) = −2, even though the context was different. similarly, she used different facts for the remaining. she said: “because of 𝑥𝑥2 − 1 = (𝑥𝑥 + 1)(𝑥𝑥 − 1) so that the remainder of 𝑝𝑝(1) = 6 and 𝑝𝑝(−1) = −2 were also multiplied, therefore the remainder asked for the problem was 6 × (−2) = −12 (fig.2), at the third problem, she could implement the plan in the first stage, namely dividing 𝑝𝑝(𝑥𝑥) by 𝑥𝑥 − 1using the horner method. then, the result was divided again by 𝑥𝑥 − 1 using the method. however, there was an error that was not realized by the participant initially. she wrote 𝑎𝑎, 𝑏𝑏 + 𝑎𝑎, 𝑏𝑏 + 𝑎𝑎, and 𝑏𝑏 + 1, whereas the last term should be 𝑏𝑏 + 𝑎𝑎. the participant could write the result of the second division by the method, but the remaining was wrong because the previous was an error. the other error occurred at the solution line of 3𝑎𝑎 + 3𝑏𝑏 + 1 that was obtained from the remaining of the second division. the participant made the remainder of 3𝑎𝑎 + 3𝑏𝑏 + 1 was 0, but she could not explain the reasons she also made the remainder in part (a) of 0 (fig.3). the activities became her habit of solving problems. the following are the interview transcripts. researcher : okay, how do you get −1 here? rina : this is the remaining of 3𝑎𝑎 + 3𝑏𝑏 + 1 equals to 0, then i move to the other side [of the equation] researcher : but the remaining is not equal to 0, so why do you make it equal to 0? rina : because (while smiling) ... because ... (becoming silent) is equal to 0 (codes) m3c06 m3c07 the participant could not explain the difficulties of carrying out the plans. therefore, she was not sure about the solutions indicated by smiling or being silent when trying to explain them. figure 1 the solution of the first problem mairing mathematical problem-solving behaviors of the routine solver 110 figure 2 the solution of the second problem figure 3 the solution of the third problem the stage of looking back the participant did not look back on the solutions because she could not find the correct answer (the first problem), or she realized that the answers were not correct but having no other plans to find the answers (the second and the third problems). the following are the transcripts of the second and the third problems. researcher : are you sure that the answer is correct? rina : no ... (smiling) researcher : have you checked the solution? rina : no. (codes) m2l01 m2l02 researcher : okay, is it the correct answer? rina : actually, there is something wrong here (pointing to 𝑏𝑏 + 1 on the second horner). it should be 𝑏𝑏 + 𝑎𝑎, but written 𝑏𝑏 + 1 m3l08 the errors were not realized by the participant when carrying out the plans. it showed that she did not check the lines of the solutions. the research results were in line with those of previous research. the routine solver read the problems repeatedly to understand the problem. the solver could determine the important information of the problems, namely the known and the target. the information was used to develop the limited plans, but the plans could not bridge the known and the target. the solver carried out the plans which led to wrong answers. the solver looked back at the solutions, but the solver could not develop some alternative plans to get the correct answers (khasanah et al., 2018; setiawani et al., 2019). meanwhile, there was a difference between the results and that was found by sanjayaet al. (2018). they stated that some parts of the information could not be identified by the solver at the step of understanding the problem. based on the results, the solution path of the participant can be seen in fig.4. the path reinforced theories of the cyclic nature of problem-solving (carlson & bloom, 2005). figure 4 the routine’s solution path u p c l 4-7 times note: u = understanding problem, p = developing plan, c = carrying out the plan, and l = looking back the expert constructed the mental images to understand the problems and developed two plans for each problem. the novice could not understand the problems, and the solution plans were inappropriate (goldstein, 2011; gruwei et al. 2015; mairing et al., 2011; mairing, 2017; sternberg & sternberg, 2012). on the other hand, the routine could understand the problems, but devised limited plans. the plans are based on a lack of concepts, limited experiences, and limited strategies. also, the expert could justify the solutions and checked them. the novice made errors in implementing the plans. the novice also could not justify the solutions, and the novice was not sure of the answer. whereas the routine was able to justify the solutions, but the limited plans made the routine did not realize that some parts of the solutions were inappropriate. therefore, the problem-solving behaviors of the routine were between the expert and the novice. the different behaviors of the three solvers occurred because their cognitive processes were different. problem-solving could be seen as a cognitive process that integrates information processing, comprehension, reasoning, analogical transfer, cognitive styles, and attitudes to solve problems(botia & orozo, 2009). the differences could be explained international journal of education vol. 13 no. 2, dec-2020, pp. 105-112 ©2020 universitaspendidikan indonesia doi: 10.17509/ije.v13i2.23276 111 using a cognitive model of the problem-solving, namely decoding, representing, processing, and implementing (singer & voica, 2013). at decoding activities, the expert was able to transform texts in the problems into relationships between the data and the meaningful concepts (mairing et al., 2011). the novice failed to transform texts because the novice did not have concepts related to the problems (mairing, 2017). the routine was able to transform texts using appropriate concepts, but they were isolated, so the devising plans used limited concepts. the success of the transformation of the text was influenced by the reading behaviors of the solvers. research showed that the routine and the novice had the reading behaviors of dta (direct translation approach). the main characteristic of the behaviors was the students’ lack of evidence of the data transformation, relationships between the data, the problem context, and the related concepts. on the other hand, the expert had the reading behaviors of an mba (meaning-based approach). the main characteristic of an mba was to record and to organize the data in appropriate contexts to construct mental models (mairing et al., 2012; pape, 2004). at representing activities, the expert constructed appropriate mental models of problem conditions and related them to mathematics concepts and previous experiences to define and to represent the problems. in other words, the expert used analogical thinking (pretz et al., 2003). construction of the models could not be done by the novice because the novice did not have a problem-solving schema. whereas the routine constructed the mental models, but the routine devised limited plans. the limited plans were caused by a limited problem-solving schema. the problemsolving schema itself was a link between knowledge, namely the mental models of problems, the previous experiences, the meaningful understanding of concepts, and the understanding of strategies or approaches of problem-solving (cadez & kolar, 2015; mairing, 2018). conclusion the problem-solving behaviors of the routine filled the gap between the expert and the novice. in understanding the problems, the routine read the problems many times. the purpose was to think of solution plans. the routine could understand problems, and able to explain the known and the target based on appropriate mathematics concepts related to the problems. at developing plans, the routine only focused on devising a limited plan for each problem. however, the plans were based on a lack of concepts, limited previous experiences, or limited strategies. the routine was not able to see the answers using the plans. therefore, the routine planned the next steps while writing the solutions. at carrying out the plans, the routine focused on implementing the initial plans. the routine was able to reason the solutions. however, the limited plans made the routine unable to realize that some parts of the solutions were wrong. the condition made the routine not sure with the solutions or the answers. at a looking-back stage, the routine realized that the answers or the solutions were not correct so the routine did not look back at the solutions. the routine did not have other plans to find the correct answers. more studies in various contexts need to be carried out to construct a holistic understanding of problem-solving behaviors of the routines. the understanding will help cognitive psychologists and teachers to develop learning methods to improve students’ problem-solving ability. how do teachers improve the novices to become the routines? how do teachers increase the ability of the routines to become the experts? acknowledgments the researcher would like to thank the administrators of palangka raya university and sman 2 palangka raya for promoting and facilitating this research. the researcher also thanks the participant’s parents for allowing some interviews, so this research could be completed. references ary, d., jacobs, l. c., & sorensen, c. 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(1998). basics of qualitative research, tehniques and procedures for developing grounded theory. sage publications, inc. database connection failed! international journal of education vol. 11 no. 1, august 2018, pp. 27-34 ©2018 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v11i1.10891 27 an analysis of senior high school students’ mathematics competency in the free trade zone of riau islands province, indonesia desi rahmatina1, martaleli bettiza2 raja ali haji maritime university, tanjungpinang, indonesia desirahmatina@umrah.ac.id 1 , mbettiza@umrah.ac.id 2 first draft received: 03 may 2018 accepted: 31 june 2018 final proof received: 20 august 2018 abstract this study is intended to provide an analysis of the competency map of senior high school students in the final national exam (fne) for mathematics subject in the free trade zone (ftz) of riau islands province. sample was determined by examining secondary data in the form of 2014 final national examination (fne) results published by the education assessment center of the ministry of education and culture of the republic of indonesia in the ftz of riau islands province, namely batam, bintan, and karimun regencies. criteria of sample determination were schools with lower graduate competency standards (gcs) than the regency/city gcs, distribution of public or private schools, and distribution of school locations, with a total sample of 37 schools. the research was conducted by using descriptive statistical method to gain a description of the senior high school students’ competency in mathematics subject based on their fne scores. the results of this research can be made input and consideration for schools and government to improve the quality of education through analysis of the fne results. the research results show that low gcs achievements were found in geometry and trigonometry topics, especially in the skills of determining position, distance, and magnitude of angles involving points, lines, and fields in solid geometry. the mean percentage of gcs mastery in the ftz was 22.86%, with batam 26.02%, bintan 18.66%, and karimun 18.72%. the result of the interview shows that the low gcs is caused by the lack of teaching media in the visual forms or simulators to build students’ understanding and limited time allocated in teaching. the solution recommended to solve this problem is by applying ict-based learning to improve students’ understanding of geometry and trigonometry materials and also the use of video conferencing during mathematics teacher working group meetings. keywords: mathematics; free trade zone; graduate competency standards to cite this paper (in apa style): rahmatina, b., & bettiza, m. (2018). an analysis of mathematics results of senior high school national final examination in the free trade zone of riau islands province, indonesia. international journal of education, 11(1), 27-34. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v11i1.10891. introduction government regulation of the republic of indonesia number 32 year 2013 article 68 stipulates that the national examination is used as a basis for mapping the quality of education programs, consideration of the selection of the next level of education as well as the development and provision of assistance to educational units in an effort to improve the quality of education.” furthermore, article 69 states that every student must take the final national examination at the end of school level without any cost (paid by the government), and that final national exam participants will obtain a certificate of national examination results, which is issued by the national exam organizer. competency map identifies an individual’s weaknesses and strengths. jensen (2007) stated that mathematical competence is analytically spanned by a set of such mathematical competencies, and it is a very interesting challenge to try to come up with a suggestion for, and exemplification of, the elements of such a set. in education, assessment is a statement of a number of facts to explain a person's characteristics so that a final test is needed to evaluate these characteristics. and a final examination or summative test is a test given to students at the end of a course of study and given to assessment that is carried out for the purpose of reporting achievement at a particular time (pereradiltz & moe, 2014). for mapping in the context of developing the quality of education, schools and local governments will receive analysis of the results of the final national exam so as to provide an overview of the comparison of national exam results with other regions as well as comparisons at the national level. some researchers have conducted research on mapping the quality of education through the results of the final national exam as conducted by zulkardi, et al. (2011) who produced a map of high school students’ competency on each difficult subject on final national mailto:desirahmatina@umrah.ac.id mailto:mbettiza@umrah.ac.id rahmatina, b., & bettiza, m. an analysis of mathematics results of senior high school national final examination 28 examination. the map was generated using ppmp software version 2.4. according to luneta (2015) reported that geometry is difficult to teach as well as to learn, the majority of students did not understand of the basic concepts in geometry, students did not understand the questions and did not know what to do as a result of final grade 12 examination and most mathematics teachers do not seem to have the knowledge and instructional skills required to explain concepts in geometry. in addition, fabiyi (2017) surveyed 500 senior secondary school students in ekiti state, nigeria and recommended that the identified difficult geometry concepts in mathematics should be taught by using appropriate teachers’ method of instruction and instructional materials. and the research of pratiwi, et al. (2011) found that the factors causing low achievements among students include the level of competency tested on the final national examination being too difficult and students not mastering the conceptual basis and the variation of cases that may arise from the concept. the solutions offered in their research include improving teacher competence in studying curriculum, improving the teaching materials, and meeting the needs of learning facilities that support national examination. because there has been no research on the results of final national examination in the ftd of riau islands, herein we analyze the results of the final national examination for senior high school in the subject of mathematics in riau islands or kepri province. riau islands province is an archipelagic region, where 95% of its territory comprises of an ocean with 2,408 islands. the geographical position affects the speed and accuracy of the information received by the local governments from the central government. in this research, we will study the possible factors that cause the low of gcs in mathematics and then we will formulate solutions to solve the problems. method qualitative approach method was used in this research to analyze the mathematics scores of senior high school students in their national exam in the ftz. the primary data were obtained through interviews and questionnaires filled in by senior high school mathematics teachers and senior high school graduates in the ftz, and secondary data in the forms of fne scores published by the center of education assessment (ind. puspendik) of the ministry of education and culture of indonesia (moec, 2014). sample comprised of schools in the ftz, senior high school graduates, and senior high school mathematics teachers in the ftz. the senior high school graduates serve as respondents in this study to provide information about the problems experienced by them while in schools in terms of mastery of gcs. they were pre-service teachers or students of mathematics education department of maritime university raja ali haji academic year 2014/2015. the students were selected purposively on the basis of convenience of accessible data. these students were further selected based on their school origins, namely the schools located in the free trade zones. in addition to senior high school graduates, mathematics teachers were selected as respondents to obtain information about problems, causal factors, and solutions regarding gcs problems. the schools were sampled purposively, based on the following criteria: 1. graduate competency standard (gcs) is said to be problematic if the percentage gcs mastery is below that of the regional (riau islands province) or the national gcs. 2. gcs of the school is said to be problematic if the percentage of gcs mastery at the school level is below the average of gcs of the ftz. senior high school populations in the ftz are shown in table 1 and 2. table 1. the number of senior high schools in the ftz year 2014 no city/regency senior high school number of school public private 1 batam city 17 231 38 2 bintan regency 8 1 9 3 karimun regency 14 3 17 total 39 25 64 table 2. the number of school taken as sample no city/district senior high school number of school public private 1 batam city 7 14 21 2 bintan regency 5 1 6 3 karimun regency 9 1 10 total 21 16 37 source: education authorities of riau islands province after sample schools were established, the teachers who taught mathematics subject were randomly extracted from the sample schools for an in-depth interview of the underlying causes of the problems international journal of education vol. 11 no. 1, august 2018, pp. 27-34 ©2018 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v11i1.10891 29 of students’ low gcs on the subject of mathematics and discussion on the solutions to the problems. in addition to interview with math subject teachers, questionnaires were distributed to senior high school graduates who passed the final national examination in the free trade zones to get an overview of their schooling experience related to the achievement of gcs. results and discussion competency standard of mathematics subject for natural science concentration the mastery of gcs in each of the ftzs consisting of batam city, bintan regency, and karimun regency is shown in figure 2 and graduate competency standards (gcs) of the natural science concentration students are shown in table 3. table 3. graduate competency standards for natural science concentration no skills tested 1 using mathematical logic for problem solving 2 solving problems related to rules of number rank, root and logarithm, simple algebraic functions, quadratic functions, exponential function and graphs, compositional functions and inverse functions, systems of linear equations, equations and quadratic inequalities 3 determining the position, distance and magnitude of the angle that involves points, lines, and planes in solid geometry. 4 using comparison, functions, equations, identities and trigonometric formulas in troubleshooting. 5 understanding the concept of limits, derivatives and integrals of algebraic functions and trigonometric functions, and to apply them in problem solving. 6 processing, presenting and interpreting data, and being able to understand the rules of enumeration, permutations, combinations, opportunities of occurrence and being able to apply them in problem solving. figure 2. achievements of gcs for students of the natural science concentration from figure 2, it can be seen that the achievements of gcs for mathematics in the ftz were greater than the achievements of gcs for the same subject in the province of riau islands, but lower than the national gcs level. the achievement of gcs in the ftz compared to the achievement of gcs at the level of riau islands province and the national level is shown in figure 3. the figure shows that gcs achievement in batam exceeded the achievement of gcs of riau islands province, but was still under the national gcs. the highest percentage of understanding level for the first competence listed in gcs in the ftz is for using mathematical logic in problem solving, namely for 58.77% (batam city) and the lowest gcs mastery is for gcs determining position, distance, and angle which involves point, line, and field in three dimensional shapes for 18.66% (bintan district). 51.57 48.90 22.86 38.77 38.06 42.54 50.05 47.41 20.89 37.36 37.09 41.17 64.74 65.01 37.58 60.81 53.41 45.46 0.00 10.00 20.00 30.00 40.00 50.00 60.00 70.00 1 2 3 4 5 6 ftz provinsi nasional rahmatina, b., & bettiza, m. an analysis of mathematics results of senior high school national final examination 30 figure 3. comparison of senior high school gcs achievement of natural science concentration in the ftz competency standard of mathematics subject for social science concentration similar to the percentage of gcs mastery for natural science concentration, batam also gained the highest gcs for the social science concentration in the ftz, with the highest score for the ability to understand limit function, derivative, extreme value, and integral and apply it in problem solving (46.82%), and the lowest percentage of 30.5% was gained by bintan for the first competency listed in gcs, which is for using mathematical logic in problem solving. more details on the mastery of gcs for the social science concentration students are shown in in figure 4 and table 4. table 4. graduate competency standard for social science concentration no ability tested 1 using mathematical logic for problem solving 2 solving problems related to rules of number rank, root and logarithm, simple algebraic functions, quadratic functions, exponential function and graphs, compositional functions and inverse functions, systems of linear equations, equations and quadratic inequalities 3 understanding limits of functions, derivatives, extreme values, and integrals and apply them in problem solving. 4 processing, presenting, and interpreting data and understanding the rules of enumeration, permutations, combinations and probability and being able to apply them in problem solving. figure 4. achievement of mathematics in the gcs of the social science concentration in the ftz 58.77 52.38 26.02 40.83 41.04 43.71 46.37 43.38 18.66 32.99 32.18 45.08 40.11 44.77 18.72 37.48 35.04 39.1 51.57 48.90 22.86 38.77 38.06 42.54 64.74 65.01 37.58 60.81 53.41 45.46 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 1 2 3 4 5 6 batam bintan karimun ftz provinsi nasional 36.71 46.09 46.82 37.82 30.5 37.01 38.3 30.85 31.17 40.32 41.51 34.13 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 1 2 3 4 batam bintan karimun international journal of education vol. 11 no. 1, august 2018, pp. 27-34 ©2018 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v11i1.10891 31 figure 5. comparison of mastery of mathematics in the gcs for social science concentration comparison of the mathematics skills of the social science concentration students in the ftz, as illustrated in figure 5, indicates that the free trade zones obtained higher gcs level than the regional level only for the fourth competency listed in the gcs, namely processing, presenting, and interpreting the data and understanding the rules of enumeration, permutations, combinations and probabilities and being able to apply them in solving problems (35.70%). meanwhile, for the regional level, the percentage was 34.97%. however, gcs mastery in the ftz and regional areas was far below the gcs at the national level. based on the above descriptive analysis, it can be concluded that gcs is found to be most problematic among students of natural science concentration, namely on the skills of geometry. indeed, this particular topic has presented teachers and students with problems since 2013. data of riau islands provincial education department on the percentage of mastery of geometry material on mathematics problems on the 2013/2014 final national examination for senior high schools in the ftz of batam, bintan and karimun cities/regencies are shown in table 5. table 5. percentages of mastery on mathematical test of the 2013/2014 fne for natural science concentration in the ftz ability tested city/regency kepri province national batam bintan karimun students can calculate the distance from point to line on a geometry 42.69 27.32 31.87 36.58 49.14 students can calculate the distance from point to field in a geometry 61.46 22.09 37.68 49.46 60.07 source: education authorities of riau islands province based on data presented in table 5, the mastery of natural science concentration students on the topic of distance in solid geometry in the ftz was below the percentage of the national level, except for batam, where the percentage of mastery of students on the topic was 61.46%, which is above the percentage of mastery nationally of 60.07%. the result of mastery of the mathematics topics in the 2014/2015 final national examination in the ftz is shown in table 6. table 6. percentages of students’ mastery of mathematics problems in the 2014/2015 final national examination of the natural science concentration the ftz areas ability tested city/regency province national batam bintan karimun students can calculate the distance from a point to a plane 24.84 14.25 14.22 17.71 35.08 students can calculate the distance from a point to field in a space wake 27.19 23.06 23.22 24.06 40.07 source: center for education assessment of the moec table 6 indicates that the mastery of high school students on geometry was very low. the same is true for the percentage of mastery on the mathematics subjects in the national examination for senior high school with natural science concentration for the academic year 2013/2014, in which senior high school students in batam got a 34.15 43.04 43.99 35.70 36.76 43.81 44.22 34.97 54.97 59.53 60.94 45.28 0.00 10.00 20.00 30.00 40.00 50.00 60.00 70.00 1 2 3 4 ftz provinsi nasional rahmatina, b., & bettiza, m. an analysis of mathematics results of senior high school national final examination 32 higher percentage of mastery of geometry material at the regional level. senior high school graduate perceptions about mastery of gcs results on analysis of the opinions and perceptions of senior high school graduates in the ftz areas, in this case the pre-service teachers of mathematics education department of maritime university raja ali haji academic year 2014/2015 of their experience during their study in high school majoring in natural science on geometry material are shown in table 8. the question is: have you ever studied the topic of geometric distance in your school? if yes, tell us about the classroom learning experience. the senior high school graduates in the ftz responded that they have learned about the topic of geometric distance in senior high school. table 7 presents a background description of the respondents, and their perceptions and experiences are summarized in table 8. table 8. summary of students’ learning experience of geometry concept in school in the ftz areas high schools in the ftz university entrance exam learning experience at high school batam snmptn (national higher education entrance exam based on academic achievements) discussion about the distance between a point, a line and a field on a plane was taught at the end of the semester, and the teacher did not explain in detail because of time constraints with the school exam. obstacles encountered include the learning process that did not use media or supporting software, so it was difficult to imagine the object in question. in order to easily understand the concept, the explanation of solid geometry must use media or supporting application bintan sbmptn (joint entrance test for state universities) the media used in learning geometry were only the ruler and some common stationery. the teacher explained in one direction regardless of whether the student understood it or not, and without allowing dialogue or questions. karimun sbmptn during discussion on the three-dimensional geometry, i did not have a sufficient and precise understanding of distance in geometry. the teacher explained by using the cube, beam, and other three-dimensional objects, sometimes using lcd projector. the method used was the lecturing method, no group discussion. i had difficulties to imagine threedimensional objects when dealing with the questions based on the analysis in table 8, it can be concluded that the pre-service teachers (students majoring in mathematics education of the fourth semester iv) who just completed high school education in the academic year 2013/2014 lack understanding of basic materials on solid geometry, and had difficulty in reasoning and imagining the concept of distance in space. the lack of understanding and the low ability of students in working on problems related to solid geometry require a problem-solving model. there were even students who say that they skipped questions on geometry in the final national exam or sbmptn, especially on the topic of the distance between points, a point and a line, and between lines. results of mastery of senior high school students and the opinions of high school graduate about the topic of geometry as shown in the tables above become the reason why the authors are interested in examining more about the problems in teaching materials on geometry as part of the subject of mathematics in school. the authors went on reviewing the learning model and the teaching method used by teachers, the preparation and formulation of indicators of achievement of lesson plan, and the level of students’ understanding of the topic on geometry. the research was conducted in the ftz areas, as special economic areas, to find a suitable model in improving students’ understanding of solid geometry in the ftz regions. perceptions of mathematics teachers of the problems of gcs mastery respondents in this study, in addition to high school graduates, also included math teachers in schools in the ftz regions. the results of questionnaires and interviews with teachers are expected to provide an overview of the problem, the causes of the problem, and alternative problem solutions, especially on gcs, particularly on the topic of geometry. the results of questionnaires about the mastery of gcs distributed to the math teachers in the natural science concentration the ftz are shown in table 9. international journal of education vol. 11 no. 1, august 2018, pp. 27-34 ©2018 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v11i1.10891 33 table 9. summary of mathematics teacher's perceptions of the mastery of mathematics of natural science concentration students. competency tested problem problem-causing factors alternative solutions determining the position, distance, and magnitude of an angle that involves points, lines, and planes in space.  students have difficulty imagining the shape of the solid geometry to be solved, looking for distance and the large angles, points, lines, and planes in three dimensional shapes.  lack of learning media to make it easier for students to understand the concept to determine distance and point of angles, lines and space in threedimensional shapes.  three dimensional/solid geometry is a learning material that requires a means to visualize the shapes.  using learning software such as wingeom and geogebra. interviews with high school math teachers in the ftz gave results on a number of external factors as the causes of the low achievement of senior high school students’ gcs in the ftz regions. first is the low participation of students in completing tasks given by teachers and the large number of students skipping or doing homework at school. as a result, students are not sufficiently trained to solve math problems, thereby making it more difficult for students to work on the final national exam problems. second is students’ low attendance. this is caused by some students helping their parents in earning money to meet family needs, especially with students in bintan and karimun areas who generally have parents who work as fishermen. at harvest time, the senior high school students also help their parents, making them skip school. this low attendance affects the ability of students in mastering mathematics lessons, especially if the fish harvest time approaches the final national exam time. third is a lack of school facilities to support the achievements of gcs. some schools do not have a computer lab. as a result, students are not introduced to the use of mathematics learning applications, especially for the achievement of gcs geometry. presenting the material on geometry visually will facilitate students' understanding. fourth is teachers’ lack of mastery of appropriate learning methods to create active, creative, effective and fun learning). fifth is students’ low enthusiasm and willingness to perform tasks, as indicated by students not making their homework. as a result, it is difficult for teachers difficult to measure the level of students' ability in mathematics. sixth, teachers find it difficult to judge students’ ability from a given task because most tasks are solved by working with other students, not individually. seventh, the geographical position of riau islands province as an archipelagic area causes teachers to experience obstacles in attending mathematics teacher working group (ind. mgmp) activities due to the considerable distance perpetuated by the lack of public transportation and the requirement to cross the seas. the participation of the teachers in the subject teachers’ forum is very important to get the latest information on teaching materials and teaching methods. in the teachers’ forum, discussion on mathematics teaching problems in senior high school is often held. the lack of teachers participating actively in the subject teachers’ forum can lower the quality of teaching. the results of the study support the research conducted by zulkardi (2011), reporting that one of the factors that cause students’ lack of mastery of mathematics in the senior high school final national examination is the lack of opportunities or forums for mathematics teachers, such as the indonesian mgmp, for sharing and collaboration to make preparation for teaching and also to practice solving questions appropriate for all levels. however, in contrast to the present research results, the research by rasto, et al. (2011) found that the factors causing the low achievement of gcs of senior high school students in mathematics subjects was teachers’ lack of knowledge about learning models and strategies in teaching. as for the sub-topic of mathematics subject in which students had low mastery, particularly on solid geometry, the results of research conducted by kaniawati and ramalis (2012) instead revealed that the students had low cognitive ability to determine and resolve, especially the topics of algebra, equality and inequality, and trigonometry. the solutions based on the findings in the research, four solutions are formulated and offered to solve the problem of low gsc mastery among senior high school rahmatina, b., & bettiza, m. an analysis of mathematics results of senior high school national final examination 34 students in the ftz. first, regarding the low rate of students’ attendance and the high rate of students skipping homework, it is important to provide understanding to parents to pay attention to their children’s learning activities at home and do their homework. at least, parents should always remind their children to review the lessons at home. second, the teachers who cannot attend the teacher’s forum can ask for discussion materials from their colleagues who were present. third, subject teachers’ forum activities can be held through video conferencing to anticipate teachers who have problems with long distance and weather constraints that they fail to attend the meeting. fourth, schools should improve school facilities and infrastructure to support the achievement of gcs, such as providing a sufficient number of mathematics books and providing computer labs to implement ict-based learning process. in line with the geographical position of the ftz region which is close to asian countries (malaysia and singapore), the use of ict in learning can prepare of the student to work successfully in the 21 st century world. conclusions and recommedations the findings regarding high school students’ lack of mastery of the concept of geometry as the topic that has the lowest gcs mastery in the ftz necessitates a problem-solving model for the realization of active, creative, effective and fun learning. students’ competence in mathematics subject can be improved provided that there are integrated efforts from the school, teacher, and parents. schools can improve the learning facilities to support ict-based teaching and learning that can accommodate appropriate learning methods and media for the teaching of solid geometry which as is admitted by students requires high visualization. teachers should increase their active participation in the teacher’s forum in order to improve their knowledge and skills of teaching and learning. teachers should also turn to the technology of video conferencing to tackle with distance issue in attending the forums. finally, parents play an equally important role in encouraging their children to attend schools regularly, do homework, and pay more attention to their learning at home and in schools. acknowledgment the authors would like to thank the directorate of research and community service, directorate general for research and development at the ministry of research, technology and higher education that has supported this research through the competitive research grant scheme in 2016. references allen, g. d., & ross, a. (2017). pedagogy and content in middle and high school mathematics.. netherlands: sense publisher. dwiatmoko, a. i. g., gunawan, r., & rosa, p. h. p. (2015). statistical analysis of national exam score results of senior high schools in yogyakarta special region. jurnal ilmiah widya teknik. 14 (2), 1-7. fabiyi, t. r. (2017). geometry concepts in mathematics perceived difficult to learn by senior secondary school students in ekiti state, nigeria. iosr journal of research & method in education (iosrjrme), 07(01), 83–90. https://doi.org/10.9790/73880701018390 jensen, t. h. (2007). assessing mathematical modelling competency. mathematical modelling (ictma12) education, engineering and economics, 141–148. https://doi.org/http://dx.doi.org/10.1533/9780 857099419.3.141 kaniawati, i., & ramalis, t. r. (2012). analysis of map competence results of senior high school national examination in west java (survey in bandung and cimahi city). jurnal pengajaran mipa, 17(1), 77-85. li, y., & lappan, g. (2014). mathematics curriculum in school education. new york london: springer dordrecht heidelberg. luneta, k. (2015). understanding students’ misconceptions: an analysis of final grade 12 examination questions in geometry. pythagoras, 36(1), 1–11. https://doi.org/10.4102/pythagoras.v36i1.261 perera-diltz, d., & moe, j. (2014). formative and summative assessment in online education. journal of research in innovative teaching, 7(12), 130–142. pratiwi, y, et al. (2011). mapping and development of education quality in ponorogo and trenggalek districts. indonesia science & technology digital library. university of malang. puspendik kemdikbud. national examination results report. 2014. rasto, et al. (2011). analysis of national exam results competency map and the model for developing the quality of high school education in west java. article research results of the indonesian education university. rosa, p. h. p., & dwiatomoko, i. (2017). quality mapping of senior high schools based on national exam scores and absorption level: a case study at special region of yogyakarta. proceedings of the 2017 international conference on computer science and artificial intelligence. 253-258. santyasa, i. w.. (2009). development of research methods and module of development theory. paper presented in the training for teachers of kindergarten, elementary school, junior high school, high school and vocational school in nusa penida subdistrict, klungkung district, 12-14 january 2009. zukardi (2012). model of quality improvement of senior high school education in prabumulih city, ogan ilir regency and ogan komering ilir regency. proceedings of the national seminar on research results. sriwijaya university. database connection failed! international journal of education, vol. 8 no. 1 december 2014 74 inside the child care center: how to ensure quality child care practices zahyah hanafi, siti noor ismail college of arts and sciences universiti utara malaysia abstract ensuring staff display best practices when handling children at childcare center is a task that requires the management to instil knowledge of child development and develop the skills for maintaining childcare. this paper unfolds the initiative of a childcare manager who believes in the necessity of conducting research about staff skills and level of knowledge to ensure the quality of childcare service. therefore, a case study was conducted to identify the key areas of a quality childcare centre: staff relationships with children and peers, partnerships with families, programming and evaluation, children’s experiences and learning, protective care and safety, health, nutrition and well-being, and management to support quality. the questionnaire was adapted from the quality improvement accreditation system (qias) model and administered to all staffs at the center. this research discovers three areas that each of them (1) reflect staf ability to implement new knowledge, (2) need further training and guidance; and (3) need urgent consistent training and monitoring. furthermore, this study also presents discussion between the researcher and the manager to enhance staff development. keywords: quality improvement accreditation system (qias), childcare center management, quality childcare. introduction research into the quality of childcare center is seen as a requisite demand to ensure that the children are provided with a healthy environment in order to develop their potentials, well-being, and learning. research about quality of childcare center is also accepted as a method to improve early childhood provision for the future (sylva, siraj-blatchford, taggart, sammons, melhuish, elliot & totsika, 2006). when childcare providers implement quality practices, there are plenty of benefits that can be gained, as follows: (a) to enhance children’s cognitive, social (burchinal & cryer, 2003) and academic development (ishimine, wilson & evans, 2010); (b) to increase their emotional and social skills (landry et al., 2013); (c) to help children to be more social and positively engaged with their peers (vandell, 2004); (d) to provide a foundation for their school success (shonkoff & phillips, 2000); (e) to establish a basis for skill acquisition later in their life (heckman, 2006); and (f) to decrease children’s anxiety, and lessen the possibility to place them in special education classes (committee for economic development, 2006). generally, those aforementioned positive outcomes are linked to several aspects, namely: better quality programs (love et al, 2003; peisner-feinberg et al, 2001; sims, guilfoyle, & parry, 2005), quality teacher-child interactions (kontos & wilcox-herzog, 2001), qualified early childhood teachers (victorian children’s services regulations, deecd, 2009) and teacher leadership (sammors et al., 2002; sylva et al., 2003). thus, when childcare centers provide quality services to the children, it will lead to less negative behaviour and even eliminate social incompetency (howes, phillipis, & whitebook, 1992). zahyah hanafi & siti noor ismail, inside the child care center 75 objective the objective of this study was to identify the level of quality childcare practices in the childcare centre under investigation. thus, this study focused on areas that provided high, average or low quality practices. significants of the study the findings of this study will be used: (a) as a guideline to define and measure the quality of childcare practices provided by childcare providers in the center; (b) as an indicator of prevalent strength and weakness in the childcare program that is currently being used; and (c) as a source of reference to create in-house training and professional development. quality childcare center the quality of childcare is generally accepted as having two dimensions–structural quality (e.g. childcare provider’s level of education, experience and specialised training/qualifications, number of children in the group, number of childcare providers in the group) and process quality (e.g. staffchild interaction, language stimulation and the extent to which relationships between adults and children are warm and supportive) (nichd eccrn, 2000). these dimensions were found to be significant aspects in childcare quality that foster children’s overall development. however, for the purpose of this study, the process of quality practices will be the area of concern as the process will answer the objective of this study. furthermore, effective management is needed in every childcare center, whether the business is run by an agency, school, business, or family, and whether it is operated for profit or non-profit basis. the goal is to attain the desired objectives with the least expenditure of time, energy and money. one approach to assess quality management of early childcare centre, which has gained increasing popularity in australia is the quality improvement and accreditation system (qias). this accreditation system is used to assess the quality process of children’s experiences during their stay at the centre. this system covers the following items of quality areas: 1. staff relationships with children and peers; 2. partnerships with families; 3. programming and evaluation; 4. children’s experiences and learning; 5. protective care and safety; 6. health; 7. nutrition and well-being; and 8. management to support quality. method this is a case study conducted in a childcare center. it combines both quantitative and qualitative methods. the analysis of quantitative data used statistical package for the social science (spss) version 16, in order to obtain the mean descriptive for the level of quality management practices in the childcare center under study. interviews were done to support findings of quantitative data. the use of mixed methods approach provides a clearer picture of what has been implemented by the management and how much has been internalised and practiced by the childcare providers. thus, the findings from both methods offered a stronger platform to inform the management on the strengths and weaknesses of the current practices at the center. lastly, questionnaire was administered to the childcare providers while interview was done to the manager. quality improvement and accreditation system (qias) is used to gauge childcare centres in australia and has been reported to have higher standard of quality in formal childcare services than those reported for us and uk (harrison, 2008). qias was used as an instrument to assess the quality process of the children’s experiences during their stay at the centre. the qias items were adapted to fit into the malaysian context. the items covered the following quality areas: international journal of education, vol. 8 no. 1 december 2014 76 1. quality area #1 staff relationships with children and peers (10 items); 2. quality area #2 partnerships with families (4 items); 3. quality area #3 programming and evaluation (4 items); 4. quality area #4 children’s experiences and learning (10 items); 5. quality area #5 protective care and safety (6 items); 6. quality area #6 health, nutrition and well-being (8 items) and 7. quality area #7 managing to support quality (5 items). qias ratings for each quality area ranged from score of 1 = unsatisfactory, 2 = satisfactory, 3 = good quality, and 4 = high quality. however, for this study the scale was adjusted to: 1 = unsatisfactory, 2 = least satisfactory, 3 = satisfactory, and 4 = highly satisfactory. this adjusted scale was used to enable the childcare providers to understand the scale better. the quality area scores were combined to form an average qias score for each quality area. the overall quality area ranged from average to high: 1.00 2.50 = low, 2.51 3.50 = average and 3.51 4.00 = high. the instrument reliability was high, ranging from 0.84 – 0.94. the childcare center is situated in an urban area, run by a manager, seven childcare providers and a cook. the minimum qualification of the childcare providers is high school certificate. their qualification varies from high school to college degree. the center provides childcare services to 41 children, aged 2 months to 4.5 years old. result and discussion table 1 presents ranking of the quality areas according to the mean for each quality area. based on the analysis, the overall level of quality practices for the center was high (mean = 3.68). quality area 6, 5, 7, 4, 2 and 1 were rated high except for quality area 3 which was rated average (mean = 3.46). result and discussion quality area 1 staff relationships with children and peers the staff relationships with children and peers were combined but for this study we decided to separate these aspects into two subareas: staff relationships with children and staff relationships with peers, in order to gauge the level of specific relationships (table 1). the overall mean for quality area #1 of staff relationships with children and peers was high (table 1). however, when the relationship was split between children and peers, the ratings were different. staff relationships with children was high (mean = 3.67) while staff relationships with peers was high average (mean = 3.43). the high rating for staff relationships with children reflected that the childcare providers believed that they have close relationship with the children at the center. table 1. ranking of quality areas quality area no. of item mean value quality area 6 health, nutrition and wellbeing 8 3.79 quality area 5 protective care and safety 6 3.76 quality area 7 managing to support quality 5 3.74 quality area 4 children’s experiences and learning 10 3.71 quality area 2 partnerships with families 4 3.68 quality area 1 staff relationships with children staff relationships with peers 7 3 3.67 3.43 quality area 3 programming and evaluation 4 3.46 level of quality practices 3.68 ranking scale: 1.00-2.50 = low, 2.51-3.50 = average, 3.51-4.00 = high zahyah hanafi & siti noor ismail, inside the child care center 77 the following excerpt was the manager’s response about staff relationships with children: …in order for children to learn, they need to be able to have really good … they need to build that bond...that positive attachment with their careers…because if they don’t then they don’t feel safe, they don’t have that good relationship… they won’t be able to explore further…there won’t be bonding… bowbly’s theory of attachment… (manager) how do you build your staff relationship with children? (researcher) ... we encourage bonding between carers and children … not just through the activities …it is actually operational… you need to have that special time with the children… for example, when children first start… there’s the settling period… one practitioner will be assigned to the child… with the parents around, slowly they get to know each other, use to each other and so on… (manager) relationships will only be built when interactions between childcare providers and the children are created. this interaction may take a form of consistent inter-personal communication between the childcare providers and the children in the center, and this interaction will develop mutual understanding between them (liu-yan, 2008). during this interaction, childcare providers may offer emotional support, reciprocal communication, and cognitive stimulation which may act as scaffolding to enhance the child’s learning (ainsworth et al., 1978; olson, bates & bayles, 1984). the mean for the relationship between staff and peers was 3.43 (table 1), reflecting that the childcare providers believed that their relationship with their peers was just average. the reasons could be that the childcare providers did not communicate effectively among themselves to promote respect and they did not create a healthy working environment to promote understanding among themselves. however, the following excerpt is the manager’s response to address this issue: … i encouraged them to be open… i become their psychologist … …we always have briefing…i want the staff to know what’s happening … parents saying this…asking their opinion, how can we make it happen…yes… it’s important they have close relationships with each other… so they can work together, help each other… (manager) the manager believed that relationship between staff and peers was important. therefore, she has initiated several ways to ensure good relationship between the childcare providers. however, that was not what the childcare providers perceived. they felt their relationship was just average. therefore, this is the aspect that the manager needs to deal with. quality area 2 partnerships with families based on the findings, the overall mean for quality area #2 was high (table 1), reflecting that the childcare providers created a very good partnership with families. this strong partnership with families could have been achieved through efforts made by the manager, as revealed in the following excerpt: that relationship is important especially when they’re settling in… children are actually observing how we are interacting with their parents and if they see parents are trusting us they will have that trust in us too… that is why that is a sensitive period during the settling in…if this does not happen then the children will take a longer time to settle in… and also information from the parents is important so that we can give the right care for their children and also if there are little issues at all…it is so important to handle it right… international journal of education, vol. 8 no. 1 december 2014 78 having the relationship is where i can call them and talk heart to heart on what i’m doing and from there i’ll find out whether they’re happy and so on… and also supporting the parents for example in terms of information… support or anything that we can do (manager) the findings revealed that both manager and childcare providers had done well in ensuring that strong partnership between them and the parents. generally, staff and parents have similar goals and outcomes for the children. thus, creating a strong partnership will benefit both parties. this partnership was developed through active communication and consultation between childcare providers and parents. studies have reported that when mothers and childcare provider consistently communicate the child’s development, the interactions between childcare provider and the child and between mother and child will be increasing (owen, ware, & barfoot, 2000). others have emphasized that such partnerships are vital to the child’s well-being, development and progress (qias quality practices guide, 2005). this partnership is also linked to the development of child’s positive socialization skills (rentzou, 2011) and it can be the single factor that increases parent and community involvement in children’s education (magelky, 1990). quality area 3 programming and evaluation based on the findings, the overall mean for quality area #3 was average (table 1). this could be due to the childcare providers’ belief that the program did not reflect much of the center’s vision and mission and did not really nurture each child into a successful learner. in addition, there was not much emphasis on documenting the child’s learning. however, the manager stated the following response to address program and evaluation issues: yes. we do. basically, our program is learning through play. however, the day to day we teach will basically be set… activities will be based on six area of learning…the personal social emotional, the cognitive, knowledgeable understanding development and so on. …we have planning meeting so the teachers will give their opinion in terms of what activities that we think is suitable. once the topic is finished, we will have another meeting and... will... to evaluate how well it went. but our evaluation i think is quite weak… …so we evaluate how well it went, what can be improved and so on and is all written there by the practitioner and then after that is when we sit down and actually discuss about it together. the findings revealed that the childcare providers did not do the tasks as expected by the manager. therefore, she needed to focus on ensuring whether the expected program and evaluation are being well-comprehended or not. the childcare curriculum plays an important role in children’s development. high-quality programs create positive effects on children’s brain development, especially in language skills and also provide the basis for future school success (shonkoff & phillips, 2000). moreover, this instills in the children sense of perseverance and motivation in their lives (heckman, 2006). similarly, assessment is a necessary tool to gauge the progress of the child. through assessment, the childcare providers and parents will be informed of the child’s progress at the center (korjenevitch & dunifon, 2010) and this is where improvements can be made. quality area 4 children’s experiences and learning based on the findings, the overall mean for quality area #4 was high (table 1). both the childcare providers and the manager agreed zahyah hanafi & siti noor ismail, inside the child care center 79 that children needed a lot of experiences in order to learn, as reflected in the following interview excerpt: good practice is about allowing the children to choose activities and encourage them to join the activities. if they cannot or don’t want to join the activities, it’s ok they can choose another one, right. because it’s basically maybe that activity is very boring for them… ….for them to understand the concept of sharing… effect on their relationship whether they can play together or not. we have lots of ready steady go games, turn takings and things like that…sometimes we talk about who is your best friend, why do you like to be your friend… …we’ll be having like the jungle walk and hide-and-seek. it’s actually quite physically active but i don’t think it’s enough… the childcare center should be filled with rich resources such as educational materials and equipments to give children opportunity to explore and discover what are around. in addition, they should be allowed to play, interact with peers as well as adults in the center to enable them to learn social skills, increase their language proficiency, and share ideas and relationships (qias report, 2008, p. 37). therefore, childcare centers should create programs that will enrich children’s experiences and learning. liu-yan and pan (2008) also emphasized the role of ‘physical environment’ in the childcare center. thus, it is a necessity to create learning corners and play materials to get children involved in active play and learning. such an environment will support the development of children’s cognitive competency (vandell, 2004), create positive engagement with peers and less likely to have negative peer interactions (holloway & reichart-erickson, 1989; wishard, shivers, howes, & ritchie, 2003). quality area 5 protective care and safety the overall mean for quality area #5 was high (table 1), reflecting that the level of perception of the childcare providers towards protective care and safety at the center was high. this area was rated as the second highest among the seven quality areas. during the interview, the manager stated that: …or they’re climbing stairs… making sure that there… need to be somebody there. not to actually like helping them because they need to have that independence, they need to be able to do it themselves, but making sure that they are safe and if there is anything that they need to that they can act quickly… …and also that when anybody is coming to pick up the children and so on....if it’s a stranger they don’t allow that and they normally would call the parents because we have a set procedure for that… …we had activities where we allow the children to cut vegetables… but we are there holding their hands and so on… i know there are lots of people that will not agree with that... but this is the real world and they need that opportunity… basically every morning they will do the floor checks… the toilets checks and things like that we do that regularly, as a matter of fact we do have that toilet check timetable… protective care and safety of the children should always be the main consideration of the manager, childcare providers and families (qias, 2008). therefore, the childcare providers should believe that it is their responsibility to ensure that children are protected against injuries and accidents (lewis, dililloanswer & peterson, 2004; morrongiello, corbett, & bellissimo, 2008). however, most childcare centers tend to overlook the occupational health and safety issues of their childcare providers. even though international journal of education, vol. 8 no. 1 december 2014 80 there are few studies about investigating health and safety of childcare providers, but it does not mean that it is less important than the health and safety of children. if childcare providers experience health and safety hazards in the childcare center, this will have serious health effects on the children under their care. quality area 6 health, nutrition and wellbeing based on the findings, the overall mean for quality area #6 was high (table 1). in fact, this area was rated the highest among the 7 quality areas. during the interview, the manager stressed: …well, we actually have a very good food menu here. and you know, at one point, i even serve yoghurt to the children. we don’t even serve the children fish cake, fish balls or whatever. if we want to make fish cakes, we make the fish cakes using real fish and fish balls and things like that… …so when the children arrive in the morning, first we check their body temperature, we do the body check and let’s say their temperature is high, they are not allowed to be in the centre… well… through our activities… through the practitioners, good practitioners will make the children happy… i’m actually looking at our first aid training as well at the moment, and although food preparation as well so that they are aware about hygiene and transmitted diseases and things like that… managers as well as childcare providers’ knowledge and beliefs on heath, nutrition and well-being play a vital role in ensuring children to be healthy and happy at the center. the providers who believed that inculcating healthy eating habits and instilling positive and healthy behavior at mealtimes are among their responsibilities (moore et al., 2005; pagnini, wilkenfeld, ling, booth, & booth, 2007. such beliefs will have positive impact on children’s well-being. children will spend hours at the center, from the time the parents drop them on the way to work and fetch them on the way home from work. lack of knowledge on the effects of overeating and consuming unhealthy food may have negative impact on childhood dietary habits (mikkelsen & chehimi, 2007). quality area 7 managing to support quality based on the findings, the overall mean for quality area #7 was rated high (table 1). the manager pointed out: …yes, we have our policies, on even managing children’s behavior we have that. policies on admission, policies on sickness, polices on administration of medication, polices on our curriculum, yes we do have that… when asked on whether she provided the staff with written management procedures of this task [childcare center] (researcher), the manager responded: …yes we do. it’s actually written in their contract as well. it’s attached in their contract. but i’m actually reviewing it at the moment because there‘re a few things that needs to be taken out and put in. when asked whether parents were informed of how the task [childcare center] is managed (researcher), the manager responded: …yes, they are actually made aware of our policies when they are given handbook when they actually register. not just that, on the first day of their settling in normally i will spend time with them, talking to them to make them understand about our policies and so on. as a matter of fact, our admission form even it says that here zahyah hanafi & siti noor ismail, inside the child care center 81 are our policies, and parents has to sign saying that they acknowledge that but it’s probably something that needs to be reminded to them from now and then. thus, those findings showed that efforts were made by the manager to ensure that childcare providers and parents understand the policies and regulations set by the center. this is to ensure all stakeholders play their roles properly in order to support quality practices at the center. conclusion the study was done to gauge the levels of 7 quality areas that were proposed by qias as the indicators of a quality childcare center. the qias was used as the tool to conduct the study by the australian national childcare accreditation council inc. (2005) to accredit childcare centers in australia. the findings reported that the center has high quality overall practices (mean = 3.68). it was found that 6 quality areas were rated high and 1 area, quality area #3 programming and evaluation was rated average (mean = 3.46) by the childcare providers. even though 6 areas were rated high, but that did not mean that this center was above average in terms of quality. for a center to be accredited as “quality”, it should have high quality practices in all the identified quality areas. therefore, the management should examine carefully each quality area by referring to the mean of each item in each quality area. this would clearly reflect the specific practice of the childcare providers that needed attention so that planning can be done to ensure the center can sustain or seek to achieve higher ratings so as to hit the 4.00 mean mark. the following are the areas that were ranked average and the manager and the researcher discussed ways to improve these areas. below are the summary of the suggestions made. following are some specific areas that need to be improved in quality area #1 staff relationships with children and peers: quality area 1 comprised into 7 items for staff relationships with children. six of the items were rated high except for item number 7, which was rated average. the “staff treat all children equally” relationship item was perceived by the childcare providers as being average. thus, the manager realized that there is a need to instill awareness to the staff, in order to build positive effects in ensuring that the staffs should treat all children equally and irrespective of their parents’ socio-economic status, the child’s physic, and development. some of the suggested positive outcomes are: (a) providing immediate responses to a child’s need in order to build trusts and promote cooperation between the child and the care provider (ainsworth et al., 1978); and (b) creating responsive care providers to help children foster closer relationship with their care giver and this in turn may reduce behavioral and emotional problems (landry, 2013). quality area 1 on staff relationships with peers was rated average. there were 3 items with one item being rated high and the other two was rated average. the two items were: “staffs communicate effectively among themselves to promote respect” and “staffs create a healthy working environment to promote understanding among themselves”. therefore, the manager decided to increase activities in the center that required teamwork and joint decision making. in addition, there should be a more open and transparent discussion on particular classroom challenges, as this may promote collaborative behavior among the childcare providers and improve the quality of their practices. the next area that was rated average was quality area 3 programming and evaluation. there were four items but only one was rated high and the other three were average, namely: “the early childcare program reflects a clear statement of the centre’s vision and mission,” “each child’s learning is documented” and “the program nurtures each child to be a successful learner.” during the discussion, international journal of education, vol. 8 no. 1 december 2014 82 the manager explained that the center has its own vision and mission. however, it was not displayed nor disseminate to the staff. as such, the manager will give every staff and parents a copy of the center’s vision and mission. in addition, a copy will be framed on the wall in the childcare center that will be easily viewed. as for documenting each child’s learning, this exercise needs to be fully implemented at the center. currently the center does have templates on documenting each child’s progress but it is not done on a regular basis. therefore, there is a need to conduct in-house training on the process of documenting children’s learning. there is also a need to re-examine the program and ensure the center’s mission and vision should be clearly stated in the program. finally, the program must have elements to nurture each child to be a successful learner. the study managed to identify the level of the seven quality areas in the center. in addition, it also highlighted the exact area that needs further improvement so as to be rated high. the discussion with the manager has revealed the ways to enhance the childcare providers’ quality practices. references burchinal, m.r., & cryer, d. 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(2004). early child care: the known and the unknown. merrill-palmer quarterly, 50, 387-414. international journal of education vol. 12, no. 1, august 2019, pp. 9-15 ©2019 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: 10.17509/ije.v12i1.17776 9 instructional needs analysis and cultural values in online learning nadia hanoum1 hana silvana2 department of curriculum and educational technology, universitas pendidikan indonesia, bandung, indonesia 1nadia.hanum@upi.edu 2hanasilva@upi.edu first draft received: 15 may 2019 date accepted: 18 jun 2019 final proof received: 31 aug 2019 abstract in online learning, learners are not allowed to have face to face and direct interaction with their teacher and their peers. consequently, they have to be independent from their teacher in learning. from a cultural perspective, the nature of online learning is related to learners’ high individualism and low power distance between students and instructor, which is contradictory with indonesian cultural values of high collectivism and high power distance. this study aimed to analyze the cultural values and online learning preferences of indonesian students, identify the cultural issues resulted from the values and preferences, and determine the instructional strategies that could meet their learning needs so that learning effectiveness could be improved. this study employed a quantitative descriptive method and a questionnaire was used as the instrument to gather data from a group of students who took online learning via integrated online learning system (indonesian, spot) learning management system. the results suggested that indonesian students exhibited high power distance and low tolerance for uncertainty and were culturally more collectivist and feminine. these cultural values affected the process of online learning in three different areas, namely assessment, instruction, and communication. thus, a set of instructional strategies were proposed to overcome the problems posed by the learning culture of indonesian students so that online learning could be more effective. keywords: cultural values, instructional needs, online learning to cite this paper (in apa style): hanoum, n., & silvana, h. (2019). instructional needs analysis and cultural values in online learning. international journal of education, 12(1), 9-15. doi: 10.17509/ije.v12i1.17776 introduction unlike face-to-face learning, online learning eliminates teacher physical presence, which makes learning centered on students, put more attention on assessment and focus more on collective knowledge construction. (darmayanti, 2007; anderson, 2008). consequently, students need to adapt their attitude and behavior to the nature of online learning which may not be compatible with their cultural values. ess (2009, p. 20) pinpoints this problem by stating that “online learning technologies and techniques grounded in one culture will likewise reflect the cultural values and communicative preferences of that culture;” therefore, “when taken up by students in cultures shaped by different assumptions and values, such implementations generally fail.” since online learning is grounded in the western world view, certain adaptation should be made to accommodate learners coming from non-western countries (liu, et al., 2010). different cultures possess different cognitive styles (anderson, 1988). cognitive style refers to a learner's preferences in processing information, and one of its dimensions that affect the process of online learning is the differences between field-dependent and field-independent personalities (witkin, moore, goodenough, & cox, 1977 in ally, 2008). fielddependent students are more motivated by external supports such as instructor guidance and group work, while field-independents are internally motivated and prefer to learn on their own (witkin, 1977 in sanchez and gunawardena, 1998). given that online learning requires learners to be able to study without instructor’s physical presence which means limited instructor guidance, it is no surprise that learners with field-independent personalities coming from western societies or who hold western cultural values more easily adopt online learning because the design is based on western cognitive styles. the differences between field-independent and field-dependent students have been studied by several researchers. sanchez and gunawardena (1998) reveal that hispanic learners are fielddependent and collectivist, which are the characters of non-western cognitive styles. consequently, they demonstrate a strong need for feedback from the instructor and prefer collaborative to competitive activities. blanchard, razaki, and frasson (2005) report that while canadian and french learners are individualistic, brazilians and iranians are relatively collectivist. individualistic learners thus prefer to work mailto:nadia.hanum@upi.edu mailto:nadia.hanum@upi.edu mailto:hanasilva@upi.edu mailto:hanasilva@upi.edu hanoum & silvana instructional needs analysis and cultural values in online learning 10 alone than in a group and collectivist learners otherwise. in addition, liu et al. (2016) believe that learners from countries with higher individualism and lower power distance (australia, canada, usa, uk) are more likely to complete all the online learning activities (viewed video and solved quizzes) and place a higher value on dialogue and discussion in the learning process. on the other hand, learners from countries with lower individualism and higher power distance (china, india, singapore) are more prone to focus on assessment (quizzes) and exhibit less participation in discussion forum. the impact of cultural preferences on online learning has been observed in eastern countries such as iran, china, and indonesia. zhang (2007) suggests that in china the online learning focuses more on the course materials and pays minimum attention to learning support and services. as a result, learners cannot get the help and guidance they need from the instructor and are not motivated to participate in learning activities. in the same line, masoumi (2010) reports that in iran the implementation of online learning is based on instructivist principles characterized by instructor’s domination, learners’ high preference for extrinsic motivation, and lack of learner control in the learning process. in indonesia, sulistyo-basuki (2007) believes that the cultural factor that impedes the adoption and implementation of online learning is the preference for the oral tradition over the writing, which explains why indonesian learners prefer to communicate or interact directly with instructors and other learners than to communicate via the internet as required in an online learning environment. the same finding was also reported by silvana & hanoum (2016) who researched the implementation of moocs based elearning system in the higher education context. the study reveals that the online learning system built lacks interactivity, which is indicated by low learners’ participation in the discussion forum. this finding suggests that learners are not convenient to communicate in writing due to the rooted oral tradition culture. in the final analysis, learners from eastern cultures expect online learning to be teacherdominated (strong need to interact with instructor), are more dependent on social reinforcement (more collectivist), are more in favor of oral synchronous communication, and put a higher value on test scores instead of knowledge construction. therefore, to ensure the effectiveness of online learning in the context of eastern education, several instructional strategies need to be incorporated into online learning activities. hence, this research aimed to analyze indonesian learners’ cultural preferences in learning and their learning behaviors in an online learning environment, identify the cultural issues that could strongly affect learning effectiveness, and determine the critical adaptations that should be applied to the instructional design to overcome the issues. methods this research was designed as a descriptivequantitative study in the interest of obtaining databased results and comprehensive analysis on students’ cultural values in online learning to devise instructional design compatible with the culture. the data for this research was collected in october 2018 from a group of students taking a course via the integrated online learning system (indonesian, spot) of universitas pendidikan indonesia (upi). with a cluster sampling technique based on convenience, a total of 32 respondents were selected, consisting of 19 and 13 female and male students, respectively. the students were from the faculty of educational sciences and were in their second year, enrolling in an online course, the questionnaire used consisted of 20 closeended questions with a four-point likert scale, divided into two parts. the first part, which was adapted from hofstede (1980 in hofstede, 2011), aimed to gain insight into students’ cultural preferences in learning. the second part, which was adapted from liu, et al. (2010), was intended to see students’ online learning pattern in the aspects of assessment, interaction, communication, and collaboration. before the questionnaire was distributed, the respondents were asked for their consent and were informed that their responses would be kept confidential. the collected data was analyzed using descriptive statistics, in which responses were presented in percentage. results and discussion this section first presents the results of students’ cultural preferences in learning and students’ behavior in online learning. the results are then discussed in depth to understand how the cultural preferences affect the main aspects of online learning and provide some instructional strategies that can be used to help students learn effectively in an online learning environment. results the process of online learning requires learners to study independently and exhibit high motivation in learning although they cannot have face-to-face interaction with their teachers and their peers. from a cultural perspective, the nature of online learning is more compatible with low power distance culture and high individualism. given that indonesian people tend to show high power distance and low individualism, online learning is not compatible with indonesian culture. consequently, certain instructional design is needed to overcome the compatibility problem. before formulating an instructional design that can meet students’ instructional needs in online learning, it is necessary to analyze students’ preferences regarding cultural dimensions that can greatly influence the process of online learning. the term cultural dimension was first coined by hofstede (1980 in hofstede, 2011) who conceptualized it in four dimensions: (1) power distance: to accept or not accept equal distribution of power; (2) uncertainty avoidance: to feel comfortable or uncomfortable with uncertainty and ambiguity; (3) individualism versus collectivism: to prefer individual responsibility or group responsibility; (4) masculinity versus femininity: degree of preference for achievement, competition and material success. the four dimensions were then added with two other dimensions: long-term versus international journal of education vol. 12, no. 1, august 2019, pp. 9-15 ©2019 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: 10.17509/ije.v12i1.17776 11 short-term orientation (related to people’s efforts) and indulgence versus restrain (related to enjoying life). however, leidner and kayworth (2006) contended that out of the six cultural dimensions, only power distance, uncertainty avoidance, masculinityfemininity, and collectivism that impact the adoption of online learning. parris and linder-vanberschot (2010) also include the four cultural dimensions into their cultural dimensions of learning framework, divided into three categories: social relationships, epistemological beliefs, and temporal perceptions. power distance (equality vs. authority), individualism vs. collectivism, and masculinity-femininity (challenge vs. nurture) dimensions fall into social relationships category, while uncertainty avoidance (stabilityseeking vs. uncertainty-acceptance) falls into epistemological beliefs category. the students’ preferences on the four cultural dimensions are presented in table 1. table 1. students’ cultural preferences in learning cultural dimension statement percentage power distance instructor and students have an equal position. (no superiority or inferiority) 20% students have bigger responsibility than instructor in the learning process. 25% dialogue and discussion are important parts of the learning process. 40% individualism acting as an independent individual is an important thing for me. 40% learning how to learn (cognitive skills) is the most important thing. (individual development) 35% learning how to do (content knowledge) is the most important thing (social development) 45% masculinity i am a competitive person. 32% collaboration is more important than competition. 70% uncertainty avoidance getting correct answers is more important than the thinking process. 65% i am looking for other resources besides what have been recommended by the instructor. 30% table 1 shows that for power distance, 20 percent of the students agreed that instructor and students should have an equal position. in addition, the majority of students (75 percent) still held the view that the instructor had more responsibility for the success of their learning. this result indicated that students were so dependent on their instructor that during the learning process the instructor dominated the interaction. in consequence, students also admitted they did not feel the need to be involved in dialogues or discussions as essential parts in the learning process (40 percent). all in all, there was a high power distance between the instructor and the students, in which the students considered the instructor to be more powerful, and thus it was acceptable to be dependent on the instructor. in the case of individualism, the data indicates that students exhibited low individualism. only 40 percent of students agreed that acting as independent individual was an important principle. this is closely related to the number of students who viewed that social development was the most important aspect in learning (55 percent), compared to those who viewed individual growth as the most important (35%). in other words, the students were more collectivist and thus had a strong affinity with their group. with regard to masculinity, there were about 32 percent of students who thought of themselves as a competitive person or who enjoyed competitive atmosphere. additionally, the majority of students (70 percent) preferred collaboration to competition. these results imply that the students did not like a competition in learning, and therefore were not encouraged to obtain individual achievement because having collaboration was more comfortable. as for uncertainty avoidance, the data suggests that the students expected assurance in learning and avoided doing activities offering uncertain results. these preferences can be seen from the number of students who believed that getting the correct answer was more important than the thinking process needed (65 percent). furthermore, most students only used books recommended by the instructor and only 30 percent of students had the initiative to search for other resources in addition to what was recommended by the instructor. the above cultural values affected the online learning process, especially in the aspect of assessment, interaction, and communication. students’ preferences in those three aspects are described below. hanoum & silvana instructional needs analysis and cultural values in online learning 12 table 2. students’ online learning preferences aspects of learning activities percentage assessment i took all the quizzes. 96% i did all the reading assignments. 48% i had discussion with friends when taking the quizzes. 96% interaction i watched all the learning videos suggested. 60% i downloaded all the materials given so i could study them. 92% i looked for additional resources if i couldn’t understand the materials given by the instructor. 96% the online learning system encouraged me to actively learn the materials given so i could understand them without the instructor’s help. 52% communication i preferred asking question directly to the instructor instead of via online forum or email. 76% i preferred independent online learning to face-to-face meeting. 20% in terms of assessment, the majority of students (90 percent) took the quiz but only less than half of the total students (48 percent) did the reading assignments, indicating that the students put more priority in getting the right answer and did not give the thinking process conducted through reading activities the same priority. furthermore, most students (96 percent) also had discussions with friends when taking quizzes, which indicated that they had high collectivism. as for learning activities, more than half of the students (60 percent) watched all the learning videos and the rest (40 percent) did not watch the videos although it could help them understand the materials better. almost all students (92 percent) downloaded all the learning materials provided and looked for additional resources (96 percent) but only 52 percent of them actively studied the acquired materials. in communication process, the majority of students (76 percent) preferred to ask questions directly offline instead of online and consequently there was only a small number of students (20 percent) who favored online learning. discussion the high gap between instructor and students results from the large power distance in which there is imbalance of power distribution that leads students to see their instructor as a superior person who should be reliable in assisting during the learning process. thus, as subordinates, students expect to be told of what to do (hofsted, 2011). the students become so dependent on directions and instructions from the instructor in learning, making it difficult for them to be independent learners who take responsibility for their own learning. as a result, the effectiveness of online learning is greatly affected. this dependency can be seen from students’ learning activities, in which only 52 percent of them actively studied the materials on their own without feeling the need to have face-to-face interaction with the instructor. furthermore, the number of students who favored online learning is very small (20 percent), which indicates students’ tendencies to put the instructor as the most responsible person for their learning success instead of themselves. students’ collectivist culture is highlighted by their dependency on their groups, even when they are required to work individually. this was shown when they took quizzes, where almost all students (96 percent) did the quizzes in groups so they could discuss the answers. if they did not know the answer, they were not worried because they could get the answer from their friends. their friends were willing to give them the answers because in a collectivist culture, harmony should always be maintained and relationship prevails over task (hofsted, 2011). therefore, although the instructor required them to work individually, they did not abide by the rule because if they did not cooperate with their friends, the harmony and relationship among them would be disturbed. moreover, preferences for content knowledge instead of cognitive skills suggest that they considered social development more important than individual development (hofsted, 2011). hence, students depend much on their social environment (teachers and friends) rather than on their own abilities. as argued by witkin (1977 in sanchez and gunawardena, 1998), non-western societies are more field-dependent in which they are more likely to be motivated by external supports such as instructor guidance and group work compared to fieldindependents who are internally motivated and prefer to learn on their own. this high dependency brings several consequences which will eventually decrease the effectiveness of the learning process. first, they do not feel the need to prepare well for quizzes or exams, especially if the quizzes and the exams are administered online and without supervision. consequently, their understanding of the materials will not improve, and their score will not be as high as those who study hard. second, as students rely on their friends to get a good score, they do not feel the urgency to improve or develop as an individual and become diffident on their own abilities to solve problems both in and outside the class. masculinity/femininity in learning is manifested in students’ tendency toward competition in the class (hofsted, 2011). the data showed that the majority of the students did not like competition or competitive atmosphere and chose collaboration over competition. this suggests that in the context of learning the students are culturally more feminine. hofstede (2011) states that in feminine culture, men and women should be modest and caring, which explains why in learning students favor collaboration instead of competition. unfortunately, unless the collaboration is conducted in groups with a clear assignment for each international journal of education vol. 12, no. 1, august 2019, pp. 9-15 ©2019 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: 10.17509/ije.v12i1.17776 13 member of the group, it will merely become the occasions where students with stronger academic ability sympathize for the weak by simply telling them the correct answers, even during the test. the last cultural dimension that strongly influences the learning process is uncertainty avoidance which relates to students’ tolerance for uncertainty and ambiguity that happen in learning. the data reveals that the majority of the students exhibited strong uncertainty avoidance, which is indicated by their preference in putting more priority on getting correct answers than on the process that can lead to obtaining the answers. hofstede (2011) points out that strong uncertainty avoidance societies expect teachers to have all the answers and have strong need for clarity and structure in the learning process. as a result, the communication style favored by most of the students is face-to-face communication although they are in the process of taking online learning. this preference also influenced their participation in the online discussion forum, which is very low (23 percent). indeed, the nature of online discussion forum is asynchronous and as such, there is no certainty if students’ questions will be answered by the instructor and other students and even if answered there is no guarantee that they will be answered immediately. these shortcomings make students unwilling to participate in online forum discussions because they think the forums will be useless and just a waste of time. a number of instructional strategies have been proposed by many researchers to address the cultural issues presented above so that learners from nonwestern or eastern world get the support needed to succeed in online learning. sanchez and gunawardena (1998) recommend the application of a wide variety of instructional strategies to cater for the cultural differences. however, their study did not further suggest in what ways the instructional activities and resources can be organized to integrate learners’ cultural values into the instructional system. nathan (2008) argues that the cultural issues that should be addressed in order to build an effective online learning system include: (1) individualism versus collectivism, (2) gender, (3) relationship of student and instructor, (4) age and generation, (5) focus on time, and (6) inductive versus deductive reasoning. students’ different focus on time, for instance, should be facilitated by giving flexibility in deadlines instead of applying fixed deadlines. in the same vein, rao (2010) proposes differentiation in online learning methods (synchronous or asynchronous) according to the degree of power distance, degree of uncertainty avoidance, preference for individualism versus collectivism, and preference for short-term versus long-term orientation. for example, learners with high power distance culture expect to learn directly from the instructor and therefore synchronous online learning is more suitable because it allows learners to identify a learning expert to showcase subject knowledge. on the other hand, edmundson (2011) proposes that the cultural adaptation of online learning includes content, instructional design, and media. the instructional design employed should be able to facilitate learners’ learning styles and cultural characteristics, and the assessment techniques should also align with their cultural preferences. for this purpose, the cultural adaptation process involves: (1) analyzing learners’ cultural learning styles, preferences, and environment; (2) identifying what cultural issues that could strongly affect learning outcomes; and (3) determining critical adaptations that should be applied to content, instructional strategies, and media (edmundson, 2011). as analyzed earlier, the students exhibited high power distance, low individualism (more collectivist), low masculinity (culturally feminine), and high uncertainty avoidance. these preferences affect the process of online learning, especially in the aspects of assessment, interaction, and communication. each aspect is influenced by different cultural dimensions and is mapped out accordingly along with the resulting instructional needs in table 3. table 3. students’ cultural problems and instructional needs in online learning aspect of learning influence of cultural dimension instructional needs assessment high collectivism → students do not believe in their own abilities in doing the test, are dependent on friends or group, prioritize harmonic relationship in group. low masculinity (more feminine)→ students exhibit group orientation behaviors and low motivation for individual development. accommodating process-oriented assessment method and multiple assessment methods. interaction large power distance → students are so dependent on direction and instruction from the instructor, possess low autonomy in learning, cannot self-regulate their learning. independent learning and selfregulated learning skills. communication high uncertainty avoidance → students’ low participation in online discussion forum due to uncertainty in getting instructor’s or friends’ responses and when they will be responded. encouragement or rewards (points & badges) for active participation in forum discussion and the need for synchronous mode of communication which enable them to obtain real time feedback. hanoum & silvana instructional needs analysis and cultural values in online learning 14 as shown in table 3, indonesian students’ cultural problems can be tackled by implementing specific instructional strategies that can facilitate them to study effectively within an online learning environment. firstly, the assessment should employ multiple methods combining both product and process oriented assessments. an ongoing and processoriented assessment allows for students’ continuous involvement and application of the theories (liu, et al., 2010). process-oriented assessments can be in the forms of observation, problem-solving activities, reflective journals, portfolio assessment, and assignments or homework. the interaction between students and instructor should promote independent learning and foster selfregulated learning skills. studies found that selfregulated learning behaviors correlated positively with academic achievement (littlejohn, hood, milligan, & mustain, 2016). self-regulated learning skills utilize students’ ability to initiate metacognitive, cognitive, affective, motivational, and behavioral processes needed to achieve learning goals successfully (kizilcec, perez-sanagustin, & maldonado, 2016). self-regulated learning skills include goal-setting, selfefficacy, learning and task strategies, and helpseeking strategies (littlejohn, hood, milligan, & mustain, 2016). these skills will empower the students so that they are willing to take responsibility for their own learning. once they do, they will be more motivated and will not be highly dependent on their instructor. the communication should be more intensified and varied to increase students’ low participation in discussions. students’ participation in forum discussions can be boosted by giving points and badges as rewards. awarding points is effective in increasing intrinsic motivation, as it provides instant feedback and recognition for the completion of an activity or task (lister, 2015). badges embedded in a system encourage learners to keep interacting with the system or to take part in some learning activities and to finally achieve the learning goal (yang, quadir, and chen, 2016). badges can also be used to display students’ achievement and allow students to achieve social recognition which will improve their motivation and engagement (lister, 2015). asynchronous modes of communication should be varied with synchronous ones which allow for immediate responses and thus greatly reduce the possibilities of being in uncertainties. as argued by liu et al., (2010), using both types of communication modes can balance the weaknesses of each mode. while synchronous communication provides live interaction, it requires timely participation. conversely, asynchronous communication offers flexibility, but it is unable to convey the nuances of human interaction due to delayed text-based communication. thus, the balanced use of both modes is recommended. conclusions the process of online learning requires learners to study independently and exhibit high motivation in learning although they cannot have face-to-face interaction with their teachers and their peers. from a cultural perspective, the nature of online learning is more compatible with low power distance culture and high individualism. given that indonesian people tend to show high power distance and low individualism, online learning is not compatible with indonesian culture. consequently, certain instructional design is needed to overcome the compatibility problem. first, large power distance affects the interaction in the classroom, where students become too dependent on the instructor. therefore, the instructor should promote learning autonomy and self-regulated learning skills through various methods and learning activities. second, high collectivism influences the assessment process, as it makes students diffident on their own abilities and highly dependent on friends or their group. consequently, multiple assessment methods should be used to make the students believe in their abilities and eliminate dependency on their group. students’ high uncertainty avoidance hampers the communication process because online discussion forum does not provide real-time feedback. thus, synchronous communication mode such as mobile messengers or social media can be added to smooth the communication. finally, high femininity lowers students’ motivation to compete due to prioritization on the group’s harmony and relationship among the group’s members. hence, creating fun competition through gamification is paramount, as it encourages them to compete with their friends without harming the group’s harmony. references ally, m. 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(2016). effects of the badge mechanism on self-efficacy and learning performance in a game-based english learning environment. journal of educational computing research, 54(3), 371-394. retrieved from https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/07 35633115620433 https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/6b8f https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/6b8f https://journals.uair.arizona.edu/index.php https://journals.uair.arizona.edu/index.php http://www.sciencedirect.com/%20science/article/%20pii/%20s1096751615300099 http://www.sciencedirect.com/%20science/article/%20pii/%20s1096751615300099 http://www.sciencedirect.com/%20science/article/%20pii/%20s1096751615300099 http://www.sciencedirect.com/%20science/article/%20pii/%20s1096751615300099 http://www.ifets.info/journals/13_3/16.pdf http://www.ifets.info/journals/13_3/16.pdf http://www.upenn.edu/learninganalytics/ryanbaker/paper121.pdf http://www.upenn.edu/learninganalytics/ryanbaker/paper121.pdf http://www.upenn.edu/learninganalytics/ryanbaker/paper121.pdf http://www.upenn.edu/learninganalytics/ryanbaker/paper121.pdf international journal of education, vol. 8 no. 1 december 2014 54 enhancing students’ mathematical logical thinking ability and self-regulated learning through problem-based learning euis e. rohaeti e-mail: e2rht@yahoo.com stkip siliwangi, bandung budiyanto, a.m e-mail: bybudiam@gmail.com sman tegalsari karawang, utari sumarmo e-mail:utari.sumarmo@yahoo.co.id stkip siliwangi, bandung abstract this study was intented to investigate the development of students’ mathematical logical thinking ability and self-regulated learningthroughproblem-based learning (pbl). this study was a part of a master thesis and a sub-studyof a postgraduate research grant from dghe in 2013. this study was a pre-testpost-testquasi-experimental control group design involving 93 eleventh-gradestudents of a senior high school in karawang which were chosen puposively.the instrumentsof this study were an essay test on mathematicallogical thinking, a self-regulated learning scale, and a scale measuring students’ perception on pbl. the study revealed that students getting treatment on pbl attained better grades on mathematical logical thinking ability than students taught by conventional teaching, though the grades were at low level. however, there was no difference in gradesof self-regulated learning between students in the two groups though thegrades were fairly good. also, there was no correlation between mathematical logical thinking ability and self-regulated learning with students’ positive opinions toward pbl. keyword: mathematical logical thinking, self-regulated learning, problem-based learning, perception toward pbl. statements which illustrate the essence of logical thinking in teaching mathematics. some experts defined the term oflogical thinking differently. capie and tobin (as cited in sumarmo, 1987) assessed logical thinking ability thorugh the test of logical thinking (tolt) whichcovered five components, namely controlling variable, proportional reasoning, probabilistic reasoning, correlational reasoning, and combinatorial reasoning. other researchers definelogical thinking as to conclude using reasoning consistently (albrecht, as cited in aminah, 2011); to think causally (strydom, as cited in aminah, 2011); to think based on certain introduction basically, mathematical logical thinking ability as acomponent of mathematics learning outcomes should be developed by high school students. the reason is that mathematical logical thinking ability is included in the vision and the goals of mathematics teaching (bnsp, 2006, nctm, 2000). as for the vision of mathematics,it includes develop mathematical thinking abilities which are logical, systematic, critical, accurate, and creative.in addition, othergoals of mathematics teaching areto generate a reasonbased on mathematical patterns andfeatures, to draw generalization, as well as to proveand to clarify mathematical euis e. rohaeti, budiyanto, & utari sumarmo, enhancing students’ mathematical logical thinking ability 55 pattern or rules of inference (minderovic, suryasumantri, sponias, as cited in aminah, 2011); and to thinkinvolving induction, deduction, analysis, and synthesisactivities (iove your eyes, as cited in aminah, 2011). from these definitions, sumarmo, hidayat, zulkarnaen, hamidah, & sariningsih, (2012) summarized a ctivities related to logical thinking ability, such as conclud or estimate relevant proportionon probability, correlation, combinatorial computation, and on similarity or analogy; and to generalize, prove, analyze, and synthesis some cases. glasersfeld (as cited in suparno, 1997), nickson (as cited in hudojo, 2002), and polya (1973) state teacher’s role plays an important role in improving students’ thinking abilty; teacher not only delivers information but also acts as a student, understands their way of thinking,assists them to build their knowledge,and improves their thinking ability.essentially, these roles are in line with contructivism philosophy in which the learning process involves students’ active learning,connecting information to the prior knowledge for building a more complex and meaningful schemata, and emphasis on investigating and inventing. one of teaching learning models on the basis of constructivism philosophy is problem-based learningor pbl (barrows &kelson; ibrahim &nur; stephen and gallagher as cited in ratnaningsih, 2004). problem-based learning (pbl) starts the learning activities by presenting a contextual problem relevant to the learned material. furthermore, ibrahim and nur (as cited in ratnaningsih, 2004) listed five stepsin conducting pbl; they are engaging students to the problem, managing them to learn, guiding them to explore it individually or in groups, helpingthem improve and present their work, and helping them analyze and assess theprocess of problem solving. in approachs to teaching and learning, there are some variables that may affect students’ mathematics achievement, particularly on attaining good grades; one of the variables is self-regulated learning (srl).several researchers (butler, 2002; corno & randi, 1999; hargis, paris & winograd, 1998; schunk &zimmerman, 1998; wongsri, cantwell, & archer, 2002, as cited in sumarmo, 2006) defined srl in different ways but principally they proposed three similar characteristics of srl, namelyplanning a goal, selectinga strategy, and monitoring cognitive and affective processes while answering an academic task. some studies reported that pblis better on developing various mathematical abilitiesofsenior and junior high school studentsthan conventional teaching, such as juandi (2008), herman (2006), permana (2004), and ratnaningsih (2004). those studies reported that students obtained fairly good grades on various mathematical abilities. nevertheles, some of other studies employing various teaching approaches reported that senior high school students obtained low to average grades on mathematical logical thinking ability (maya, 2005; setiawati, 2014; sumarmo, 1987; sumarmo, hidayat, zulkarnaen, hamidah, & sariningsih, 2012). these studies found out that mathematical logical thinking problems were relatively difficult tasks for most of students. furthermore, qohar (2010) reported that implementing reciprocal teaching made students obtained good grades on self-regulated learning. based on the a forementioned background, the research questions of this study are as following: 1. are students’ grades of mathematical logical thinking ability and their n-gaintaught by pbl higher than the grades of those who are taught by conventional teaching method? 2. are students’gradeson self-regulated learningtaught by pbl higher than the grades of students who are taught by conventional teaching method? 3. is there any correlation between mathematical logical thinking ability and self-regulated learning? 4. what are students’ perceptions toward pbl? international journal of education, vol. 8 no. 1 december 2014 56 theoritical review mathematical logical thinking and selfregulated learning capie and tobin (sumarmo, 1987) measure dstudents’ mathematical logical thinkingability through the test of logical thinking (tolt) that consists ofcontroling variable, proportional reasoning, probabilistic reasoning, correlational reasoning, andcombinatorial thinking. other researcher proposed the definition of logical thinking as well (albrecht, minderovic, ioveureyes, sonias, strydom, suryasumantri, as cited in aminah, 2011). logical thinking or thinking sequentially is defined as concluding through reasoning consistently (albrecht, in aminah, 2011), thinking causally (strydom, in aminah, 2011), thinking by following rules of logical inference to draw conclusion (suryasumantri, minderovic, sponias, as cited in aminah, 2011), and thinking involvingactivities on induction, deduction, analysis, and synthesis (ioveureyes, cited in aminah, 2011). having analyzedideas of several writers, sumarmo et all (2012)listedthe indicators ofmathematical reasoning as follow: a) to draw analogyand generalizationas well asto generate conjectures; b) to draw conclusion logically through the rules of inference, to compose a valid argument, and to examine the validity of an argument;and c) to prove the argument directly and indirectly using mathematical induction. moreover, sumarmo (ibid) summarizesix components of logical thinking, namely logical reasoning, controlling variable, proportional reasoning, probabilistic reasoning, propositional reasoning, combinatorial reasoning, and corelational reasoning. there are some variables in teaching and learning process that might affectstudents’ mathematical ability; one of them is selfregulated learning (srl).bandura (as cited in sumarmo, 2006) defines the term srl as an ability to observe someone’s behavior. furthermore, he suggests three phases in conducting srl: observing and monitoring him self or herself, comparing his or her position with a particular standard, and giving either positive or negativeselfresponse.there are several activities related to srl,includingself-evaluation, managing and transforming, determining goals and planning, collecting information, noting and monitoring, drawing a consquence, thinking of and repeating, seeking social assisstance, and reviewing some notes. hargis (cited in sumarmo, 2006) defines srl as an attempt to deepen and manipulate associative network in a certain field, and to monitorthe process.the srl itself was neither a mental ability nor an academic skill, such as reading ability, but it is a self-directive process that is transformed into a particular mental abilty. yang (as cited in sumarmo, 2006) found out that students with high srl tended to learn better in their own control, to have ablility to control, evaluate, and manage their learning effectively, to save their time while working on their tasks, and to manage their time efficiently. zimmerman (as cited in zimmerman & schunk (eds). 2001) define srl as a learning process affected by someone’s thinking, feeling, strategy, and behavior which are orientedto achieve his or her own goals. moreover,they (as cited in sumarmo, 2006) state three main phases in thecycle of srl,namely planningfor learning activity, monitoring learning progress, and evaluating learning outcome thoroughly. on the other hand, woolfolk (as cited in sumarmo, 2006) identifies some factors affecting srl:knowledge, motivation, and self-discipline. in order to possess high srl, students should be aware of their selves, the learned subject, tasks, and learning strategies, as well as application of the subject.students with high srl show high learning motivation and interest on completing their tasks, high self-discipline and awarenessof the reason why they should learn, andshow capability on selecting and solving their tasks on their own control, not on their external control. pintrich (as cited in sumarmo, 2006) proposesfour kinds of strategiesfor improving euis e. rohaeti, budiyanto, & utari sumarmo, enhancing students’ mathematical logical thinking ability 57 srl: self-regulated thinking strategy, selfregulated motivation and feeling, selfregulated behavior strategy, andself-regulated contextual strategy. however, self-regulated learning cannot be taught but it should bedevelopedactively and continuously (ghozi, 2010). aswandi (2010) and sauri (2010)propose four steps for improving self-regulated learning in mathematics teaching and learning, those aregiving the meaning of self-regulated learning, adjusting activities that portray the indicators of selfregulated learning, performing the model of self-regulated learning, and conducting integrated mathematics teaching and learning continuosly. problem-based learning some experts have conducted indepth analysis on problem-based learning (barrows &kelson; ibrahim &nur; stephen & gallagher; as cited in ratnaningsih, 2004). the researchers suggest that problem-based learning is a teaching learning approach which begins the classroom activities by presentinga contextual problem relevant to the learned content. the problem should have some characteristics, such as it should be connected to curriculum, structured or unstrctured, openended;the process is carried out in stages; students actively solve the problem and teacher acts as a facilitator; students only receive guidance and not formulas or procedures for solving the problem; and teacher carries out authentic assessment. the main differences between problembased learning and conventional teaching approach are the phase and the role of the problem. in conventional teaching, a problem is presented at the end of an explanation and as an assignment or application of a particular concept. whereas in problem-based learning, the problem is presented in the begining of a learning activity for motivating students to acquire the concept through investigation, invention, problem solving,as well as for encouraging students’ self-directed learning. here, the role ofteacher as a facilitator are posing relevant questions, monitoring the lesson, assessing students’ thinking ability, motivating them to actively participate in learning activities, compiling relevant tasks, and managing the students to work in group enthusiastically. the role of students as an active problem solver are actively participating in learning process, communicating with other students, and constructing understanding toward the presented problem. there fore, theproblem should be challenging, unstructured, and motivating students to solve and create relevant context to the learning objectives. ibrahim and nur (as cited in ratnaningsih, 2004) listed five steps inproblem-based learning: a) orientation students toward the problem, b) managing them to understand it; c) guiding them to work individually or in a group, d) motivate them to improve and present their work, e) analyzing and assessing the process of problem solving. looking at the steps, problem-based learning follows the constructivism philosophy in which students learn actively through assimilation and accomodation processes. when discussion is not satisfactory enough, it is teacher’s role to carry out scaffolding activitessuch as proposing question for helping or directing studentsfind the solution. nctm (1993) propose several important things that should be considered in mathematics teaching and learning: a) selecting the correct mathematics tasks which are relevant to the mathematics content, understanding, interestand prior knowlegde ofthe students in order to stimulate the development of students’ mathematical ability, b) motivating students to obtain a meaningful learning and to develop their mathematical disposition, c) administering a discussion for reinventing and developing students’ mathematical ideas, d) participating in learning situation to motivate students for the escalation of mathematical power, e) analyzing students’ learning participation. international journal of education, vol. 8 no. 1 december 2014 58 related studies several studiesconducted to high school students reported the benefits of pblin improving various mathematical abilities and dispositionbetter than conventional teaching (herman, 2006; nur, 2010; permana, 2010; ratnaningsih, 2004).these studies reported that the students taught by pbl obtained fairly good grades on various mathematical abilities in which the grades were better than the students’ grades in the conventional teaching group. however, on mathematical logical thinking ability (mlta) employing pbl, setiawati (2014) and sumarmo (1987) found out that students’ grades were considered very low (40% -45% out of ideal score).moreover, maya (2005) and sumarmo et al. (2012) discovered that students of senior high school achieve average grades (60% out of ideal score) on mlta.these findings demonstrated that problems of mathematical logicalthinking wererelativelydifficult for most of senior high students.different finding was reported in qohar (2010) that reciprocal teaching made sudents obtaina high grade on srl. regarding correlationbetween mathematical abilities and affective learning outcomes, many studies reported inconsistent findings. for example, several studies (ratnaningsih, 2007; sugandi, 2010; wardani, 2010, qohar, 2010;yonandi 2010) reported there was a correlationbetweencognitive and affective components of mathematical learning outcomes.however, other studies (permana, 2010;sumarmo, et al., 2012;sumaryati, 2013) reported there was no correlation between mathematical abilitiesanddisposition. method this study was intended to analyze sudents’ achievement on mathematical logical thinking ability and self-regulated learningthrough problem-based learning (pbl). this study is a part of master thesis (budiyanto, 2014) and a sub-study of a postgraduate research grant from directorate general of higher education (dghe) (hendriana, rohaeti, & sumarmo, 2013). this study was a pre-test post-testquasiexperimentalcontrol group design involving 93 eleventh-grade students of a state senior high school in karawang which were chosen purposively. the instruments of this study were an essaytest on mathematical logical thinking, a self-regulated learning scale, and a questionnaire measuring students’ perception on pbl.the sample of mathematical logical thinking test, mathematical disposition scale, and students’ perception on pbl are as follow: 1. sample of mathematical logical thinking test observe these cases carefully, and then answer the question: which one of the four cases below is similar to the number of ways to combine these five digits 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 into three different permutation of numbers.write mathematical concept in each case andexplain your answer! a) to arrange male double from five male players of badminton. b) to selectthree people from fivecandidates foroccupying a leader, a secretary, and finance personnel. c) to arrange a teamof mathematics contest composed of three out of five students. d) to select the first, thesecond, and the third champion from five finalistsin a beauty pageant. 2. sample item of mathematical logical thinking test a small restaurant prepares 7 food packets a and 6 food packets b. a family consists of a grandfather, a father, a mother, and three kids visit the restaurant for taking lunch.each personis allowed to selectone packet only. a) which packetbetweena and b hasa greater chance to be picked by grandfather? write the formula to answer the question! b) suppose grandfather, father, and mother have chosen their food. now the three kids willchoose the food euis e. rohaeti, budiyanto, & utari sumarmo, enhancing students’ mathematical logical thinking ability 59 together. howmany permutations can be selected by the kids? write the formula to answer the question! result and discussion mathematical logical thinking ability, self-regulated learning, and students’ perception on problem-based learning students’ grades on mathematical logical thinking ability (mlta), their n-gain of mlta, self-regulated learning (srl), and their perception on problem-based learning(ppbl) were presented in table 1. table 1 shows that there was no difference in students’ grades ofmlta for both groups in the pre-test since the grades for both groups were considered low (about 25% out of ideal score). in the post-test, students’grades of the group taught by pbl were better on mlta(54.70%out of ideal score) than students’ grades of another group (48.70% out of ideal score), and both of grades were still considered low. analysis of the mean differences of students’grades on mltain both teaching approaches were presented in table 2. these findings were similar to the findings of setiawati (2014), sumarmo (1987), and sumarmo et al. (2012). also, the study revealed that some of the difficulties students faced during solving mlta tasks were drawing an analogy of a case on permutation and commbination, synthesizing information in a case of combination, and reasoning proportionally. table 1. mathematical logical thinking ability, self-regulated learning, and students perception on problem-based learning variable statist. pbl conventional pre test pos test n-gain pre test pos tes n-gain mlta mean 5.06 10.93 0.41 5.02 9.72 0, 32 % 20.24 43.72 20.08 38.88 sd 2.15 3.85 0, 14 1.98 2.59 0, 16 srl mean 100.41 98, 49 % 66.94 65.66 sd 11.03 7.99 note : mlta was mathematical logical thinking ability;ideal score of mlta was 25 srl was self-regulated learning;ideal sore of srl was150 table 2. testing of hypothesis of mean difference of mlta , n-gain of mlta, and srl in pbland in conventional teaching variables teaching approach mean sd n sig. interpretation mlta pbl 10.93 3.85 46 0.002 mlta pbl> mlta conv conventional 9.72 2.59 47 n-gain mlta pbl 0.41 0.14 46 0.000 n-gain mlta pbl> n-gain mlta convconventional 0.32 0.16 47 srl pbl 100.41 11.03 46 0.148 there was no different srlpbl and srl convconventional 98.49 8 47 note: mlta was mathematical logical thinking ability;ideal score of mlta was 25 n-gain was normalizedgain scwasself-confident;ideal score of srl was 150 pblwas problem-based learning international journal of education, vol. 8 no. 1 december 2014 60 on normalized gain (n-gain) ofmlta, the result showed thatstudents taught by pbl obtained better grades(n-gain)of mlta(0.41) than those who were taught by conventional teaching(0.32), and their grades in n-gainof mlta were classified as medium. analysis of mean difference of n-gain on mlta was presented in table 4.besides, table 3 showed that there were no difference in srl grades between students of the two groups though the grades were fairly good (100.41and 98.49 out of 150). analysis of srl mean differences was presented in table 4. the finding on srl in this study was similar to the findingsof previous studies (mulyana, 2008; permana, 2010; qohar, 2010; ratnaningsih, 2007; setiawati, 2014;sumarmo, et al., 2012; sumaryati, 2013). correlation between mathematical logical thinking abilityand self-regulated learning the correlationbetween mathematical logical thinking abilityand self-regulated learningwas analyzed usingcontigency tableas presented in table 3. the result indicated that there was high correlation between mathematical logical thinking ability and mathematical disposition (c = 0,655). analysis of the correlationand χ2 testing hypothesis were presented in table 4.this finding was similar with the findings of earlier). studies (qohar, 2010;sugandi, 2010;wardani, 2010). however, other studies reported that there was no correlation between hard skills and soft skills of mathematics (permana, 2010; sumarmo, et al., 2012; sumaryati, 2013; yonandi, 2010this finding illustrated inconsistent findings with the previous studies which highlighted the existence of correlation betweenhard skills and soft skills of mathematics. students’ perception on problem-based learning students’ perception toward pbl was fairly good(132.28 or 66.14% out of ideal score). they demonstratedpositive opinions toward pbl. positive statements,such asstudents’ worksheet comprises challenging mathematics problems orstudents’ worksheet asks me to examine the accuracy of my own work, were responded positively (strongly agree or agree). moreover, negative statements, such as teaching and learning mathematics restrictme to choose excercises myself or the situation during teaching and learning mathematics is boringwere responded contradictory (disagree or strongly disagree). conclusion students’ grades in the group taught by pbl on mathematical logical thinking abilityand their n-gainwere better than the grades of students of the group taught by conventional teaching. however, students’ grades of mathematical logical thinking ability were at a lowlevel though their n-gains werefairly good. furthermore, there was no difference in grades onself-regulated learning between both groups though students’ grades werecategorized as medium. some difficulties students faced during solving the tasks onmathematical logical thinking were drawing an analogy in cases related to permutation and combination, synthesizing table 3. number of students based on level of mlta and level of srlin pbl class mlta self-regulated learning totallow medium high low 3 16 0 19 medium 0 16 0 16 high 0 3 8 11 total 3 35 8 46 table 4. pearson-chi square test and contigensi coeffisien between mlta and srl pearson-chi square (χ2 ) dk contigency cofficient (c) sig. 34.530 4 0.655 0.000 euis e. rohaeti, budiyanto, & utari sumarmo, enhancing students’ mathematical logical thinking ability 61 information in a case of combination, and reasoning proportionally. however, there was highcorrelation between mathematical logical thinkingability and self-regulatedlearning with students’ positive perception toward pbl. problem-based learningis accounted successful in fostering students’ mathematical logical thinking ability. however, teaching and learning activity were not sufficient enough for obtaininga high grade on self-regulated learning, since acquiringself-regulated learning required a continuous process. although mathematical logical thinking ability was a difficult task for most of the students, this ability should be improved. due to the limited time in conducting this study, itis recomended for further study thatteaching and learning process for the improvement of mathematical logical thinking and other high-level mathematical thinking abilities should be arranged for acquiring essential mathematics substances, such as by providing the appropriate learning materials to fit with students’ need. improvement in mathematic hard skills and soft skills should be conducted appropriately through accustoming students to materials and teacher’s modelling. references aminah, m. 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(1987). kemampuan pemahaman dan penalaran matematika siswa sma dikaitkan dengan kemampuan penalaran logik siswa dan komponen proses belajar mengajar. (unpublished disertation). school of postgraduate studies, indonesia university of education, bandung. sumarmo, u. (2006). kemandirian belajar: apa, mengapa dan bagaimana dikembangkan pada peserta didik. paper presented at seminar of mathematics education in department of mathematics,faculty of mathematics and science, stateuniversity of yogyakarta. sumarmo, u., hidayat, w., zulkarnaen, r., hamidah, & sariningsih, r. (2012). kemampuan dan disposisi berpikir logis, kritis, dan kreatif matematis:eksperimen terhadap siswa sma menggunakan pembelajaran berbasis masalah dan strategi think-talk-write. jurnal pengajaran mipa, 17(1), 17-33. sumaryati, e. (2013) pendekatan induktifdeduktif disertai strategi think-pairsquare-share untuk meningkatkan kemampuan pemahaman dan berpikir kritis matematis siswa sma. unpublished euis e. rohaeti, budiyanto, & utari sumarmo, enhancing students’ mathematical logical thinking ability 63 disertasi).school of postgraduate studies, indonesia university of education, bandung. suparno, p(1997).filsafat konstruktivisme dalam pendidikan.yogyakarta: kanisius. wardani, s. ( 2010). meningkatkan kemampuan berfikir kreatif dan disposisi matematik siswa sma melalui pembelajaran dengan pendekatan model sylver. unpublished disertasi).school of postgraduate studies, indonesia university of education, bandung. zimmerman b.j. (2001) theories of selfregulated learning and academic achievement: an overview and analysis. in zimmerman b.j. &schunk d.h.(eds). self-regulated learning and academic achievement: theoretical perspectives(2ndedition). mahwah, nj:lawrence erlbaum associates inc. yonandi (2010). meningkatkan kemampuan komunikasi dan pemecahan masalah matematik melalui pembelajaran kontekstual berbantuan komputer pada siswa sekolah menengah atas. unpublished disertasi).school of postgraduate studies, indonesia university of education, bandung. international journal of education vol. 13 no. 1, aug-2020, pp. 44-52 ©2020 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: 10.17509/ije.v13i1.22643 44 mapping indonesian efl teachers’ perception and practice of technology integration endang setyaningsih, dewi sri wahyuni, dewi rochsantiningsih department of english education, sebelas maret university, indonesia endang_setyaningsih@staff.uns.ac.id first draft received: 30 march 2020 date accepted: 14 jul 2020 final proof received: 20 aug 2020 abstract the growing number of 2.0 studies indicated the increasing tendency to integrate technology into efl teaching. reports on teachers' perception of and practice of technology integration can easily be found in research databases. nevertheless, quite a few laid attempts to map and build a tentative connection between perception and practice. this study examined teachers' current practice and their perception of technology integration. the respondents of this study were 40 english teachers from 20 senior high schools in a district in indonesia. to collect the data, a technology integration questionnaire (tiq) was developed based on pre-existing instruments. the responses were analyzed using both quantitative and qualitative strategies. the study found that, first, the teachers commonly held positive views on the use of technology although they also indicated their alert on the challenges and requirements for the success of the implementation. second, the responses suggested that there was a connection between teachers' perception and their technology integration practice. third, viewed from the samr model, the teachers' technology integration practice mainly fell into substitution and augmentation. categorization of the technology integration purpose, practice, and process is discussed further. the study concludes teachers’ practice tended to focus more on the technology but less on the teaching and learning. keywords: efl teaching; samr; teacher perception; technology integration to cite this paper (in apa style): setyaningsih, e., wahyuni, d. s., rochsantiningsih, d., (2020). mapping indonesian efl teachers’ perception and practice of technology integration. international journal of education, 13(1), 44-52. doi: 10.17509/ije.v13i1.22643 introduction technology has become a buzzword in 21st-century education. research databases have recorded an increasing number of studies focusing on the use of technology in the teaching and learning process. to name some of the most recent, hartman et al. (2019) investigated the teachers’ perception of technology integration. francom (2019) studied the barriers to technology integration while khlaif et al. (2019) look into how teacher design activities that integrate technology in their teaching. although themes such as teachers’ perspectives on technology integration have been explored (e.g. hartman et al., 2019 and halvorsen, 2020), it is always interesting to examine how the perceived views about technology are reflected in the practice. theoretically and empirically teachers’ beliefs lead their practice, however, chen (2008) found that there was an inconsistency between teachers’ expressed belief and their practice of technology integration. this finding is quite the opposite of ertmer et al. (2012) who assert that teachers’ belief is the major factor that influenced their practice. this study sits in the unresolved discussion of teachers’ perspectives and practices of technology integration. utilizing a questionnaire, this study collected data on teacher's perception of the use of technology and elicit their current practice of teaching to see if there is a potential dialogue between their view on ed-tech and their actual classroom practice. technology in the classroom: trends and issues since its early use in efl classrooms, support and criticism on technology integration have been around and the debate is inconclusive. one central issue in technology integration is whether it transforms instructional practice. briefly, at least two kinds of setyaningsih, wahyuni, & rochsantiningsih mapping indonesian efl teachers’ perception and practice of technology integration 45 transformations can be drawn from recent studies in the area. first, technology transforms the role of the teacher. increased access to information as a result of technology has lessened the dependency of students in obtaining content. the teacher role thus shifted from content or material provider to facilitator (glasset & schrum, 2009; mcknight, 2016). second, technology transforms teaching/learning routines. for students, the open access to content at the same time bring them to the new learning routines. learning changes from memorization to active inquiry (glasset & schrum, 2009). for teachers, at the very least, technology offers efficiency in doing their tasks that traditionally were time-consuming, e.g. checking and grading homework. as such teachers have more time to focus on other important tasks such as planning instructions (mcknight et al., 2016). furthermore, technology changes how teachers enact the curriculum; in other words, it changes how the teacher teaches the lesson (levin & schrum, 2013). mcknight et al. (2016) found that the open accessibility aided by the use of technology leads to the possibility to tailor the lesson in a more personalized manner. the very idea that technology transforms teaching and learning, however, has been a subject of criticism from its early years to date. hennessy et al. (2005) for example has placed caution by citing several findings on ict implementation which mentioned that teachers do not change the way they teach although technology is used. the available technology is either underused or poorly integrated into the classroom. likewise, livingstone (2012, p.9) doubts the transformation by saying "schools proving slower to change their lesson plans than they were to fit computers in". livingston forwarded different, if not opposing, research findings on learning improvement as a result of technology integration. she eventually questions the benefits of technology for teaching/ learning by pointing out that the evidence on learning improvement remains ‘elusive'. the concern with the ‘transformation' issue of technology integration invites scholars to provide and/or suggest models for technology integration. wang (2018) comes with the generic model that consists of interactive components of pedagogy, social interaction, and technology which is claimed to fit well within the constructivist learning theory (both cognitive and social), interactivity design, and the definition of the usefulness of a system. meanwhile, a critical work on mobile learning by kearney et al. (2012) results in the proposal of the ipac framework. this framework consists of three key constructs in technology integration, particularly mobile learning: personalisation, authenticity, and collaboration which are further broken down into seven operational sub-contracts. two other approaches to technology integration that receives growing attention are tpack (mishra and koehler, 2006) and samr (puentedura, 2014). tpack offers a unifying framework that consists of technology, pedagogy, and content knowledge. tpack is depicted as circular in nature with an overlapping area in the center. while the samr is often viewed as a framework for technology integration (hilton, 2016), it somewhat differs from the previous models because samr can also be used to depict the integration process (or, debatably, level) and compared to the other framework, it tends to be more practical than theoretical. this model will be further addressed in the next section. regardless of the opposing views on technology integration, and the continuous search for effective integration, it does not change the fact that technology will continue to affect all aspects of human life including efl classrooms. boosted with support from the policymakers, rich-tech classrooms will likely to be the normal environment of efl teaching/ learning in the coming years. needless to say, reflecting on previous studies by hennessy et al. (2005), livingston (2012), mcknight (2016), kearney et al. (2012) and wang (2018) which have examined several aspects of technology integration e.g. teachers perspective, the process of integration, expected transformation, and working model for effective technology integration, further explorations on the issue are required due to the complexity of the context of technology integration in the classroom and the inconclusive findings of previous studies. samr model of technology integration samr model is often illustrated as levels or sequences that begin with the substitution, augmentation, modification, and redefinition (puentedura, 2014a). figure 1. the samr model (https://www.schoology.com/blog/samr-model-practicalguide-edtech-integration) in the ‘substitution' technology acts as a direct tool to substitute with no functional change. moving to ‘augmentation', technology acts as a direct tool substitute, with functional improvement. at the ‘modification' technology allows for significant task redesign and at the ‘redefinition', technology allows for the creation of new tasks, previously inconceivable. the first two ‘stages' i.e. the substitution and augmentation serves as the enhancement of the traditional practice while the last two i.e. modification and redefinition defines the transformation of the practice. this model is commonly viewed as a pathway and is sequential but it is also viewed as spectrum or international journal of education vol. 13 no. 1, aug-2020, pp. 44-52 ©2020 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: 10.17509/ije.v13i1.22643 46 continuum. floris and renandya (2019) view the samr as the "path by which technology can be systematically embedded in teachers' instructional practices" (p. 55) the model invites teachers to aim for the transformation stage. despite its level-like depiction, it is important to ensure that technology that is integrated has a meaningful purpose. this means that the implementation of samr has to be nested in a certain instructional context. in a certain context, substitution may be the best option. however, if the whole term is filled with digitizing sources/ activities without a purposeful enhancement or transformation then, likely, the technology integration is not for the sake of instruction. as a systematic approach, samr offers ease of use for teachers. examining the use of both tpack and samr, hilton (2016) revealed that teachers found the later easier and simpler to implement. nevertheless, samr's simplicity is also a subject of criticism. hamilton et al. (2016) viewed the model as overly simplified in capturing the complex nature of technology integration in the classrooms. in particular, they pointed at the absence of context, rigid structure, and focus on product over process. while some points of the criticism are on point, samr still holds some potentials to guide teachers to integrate technology in their classrooms. although the number of studies on samr is limited, an attempt to exemplify its use in the efl classroom has been made by floris and renandya (2019). they provide four hands-on scenarios for the transformation stage. the original task of writing and speaking is modified and redefined by infusing friendly and free applications such as bookcreator, natural reader, and google form. the application does not only ease the completion of the task but also reaches a wider audience. this opens the opportunity for wider collaboration and peer interaction which from the constructivist point of view leads to learning. in this study, the samr model is used to frame the investigation of teachers’ current practice of technology. this model is selected because of its simplicity and clarity of the leveling as indicated in the study by hilton (2016). the study aims at finding out in what stage the current practice of technology integration sits. this study also investigates if there is a possible connection between their current practice and their perception on technology integration. method participants a population of senior high school english teachers from all schools in a district in central java, indonesia was invited to participate in this study via district english teacher association (mgmp). a technology integration questionnaire (tiq) was distributed through both e-mail and postal mail to all 50 teachers in the region. the online and offline distributions were required because some teachers were not familiar with technology and had no or limited internet connection out of 50, 10 teachers did not fill in the instrument; leaving 40 teachers (30 female and 10 male) as the actual respondents of the study. the teachers came from 20 different schools, both state and private. they all had been teaching at all levels, from grade 12 to 15. the respondents who completed the questionnaire had a heterogeneous background in terms of teaching experience and technology training as observed in tables 1 and 2. table 1 technology training technology training experience none a full day or less more than a day but less than 1 semester more than 1 semester 30 % 33% 30% 7% table 2 teaching experience teaching experience (years) in percent 0 1-5 6-10 11-15 16-20 21-25 26-30 >30 8.8 8.7 16.1 25.8 22.6 16.1 12.9 data collection and instrumentation the data were collected utilizing a questionnaire. the questionnaire was adapted from available pre-developed instruments on technology integration (tiq) in education. the questionnaire is divided into five main sections. four sections present close-ended questions and one section at the end of the instrument presents open-ended questions. the first section consists of 27 questions eliciting the respondents' professional views on technology (e.g. if technology aids learning). the second section consists of four questions to capture the teacher's background, preferred teaching style, and available resources. the third section gathers information on the teachers' experience with technology. the fourth section collects information on the teacher's process of integration. finally, the fifth part captures the teacher's short description of their current practice (open-ended). all questions were uploaded and shared online. before distribution, face validity was established by having the items reviewed in terms of the content/ coverage and readability. a pilot survey was also carried out to a group of senior high school teachers in different districts. the problematic items were revised afterward. data analysis the collected data were tabulated and analyzed quantitatively to obtain a ‘readable' data display. the data obtained from online and offline questionnaires were extracted and transformed into figures and tables. the data displayed were then interpreted qualitatively. the process began by sorting display for each group of information (referring to the sections of the setyaningsih, wahyuni, & rochsantiningsih mapping indonesian efl teachers’ perception and practice of technology integration 47 questionnaire). in each group, modus and peculiarity were located or identified. theme or category was then developed, and interpretation was made based on the pattern of information that emerged from the obtained data. to enhance reliability, data were triangulated by conducting a focus group interview. results and discussion teachers’ professional view on the use of technology in this study, the teachers’ perspective refers to what teachers think of the technology integration (ti); their particular attitude or way of regarding ti, either positive or negative, regardless of the theoretical or empirical considerations. the questionnaire revealed that teachers generally hold a positive perspective on the use of technology. the positive views can be categorized into three areas: students’ improvement, instructional benefit, and perceived professional competence. 1. students improvement data from the questionnaire revealed that the students’ improvement which was perceived by the teachers to have been driven by the use of technology in the classroom covers academic achievement, collaboration, communication skills, interpersonal skills, and the learning of critical concepts/ ideas. further, the interview bared that the teachers think ti helps students to learn better because it allows students to learn at any time and opens access to various learning materials, thus lead to better academic achievement. ti also helps students to communicate and collaborate either with their classmates or students from different classes even different parts of the world. the larger network opens the opportunity for developing communication and cooperation among students. the data also revealed that teachers view ti as an aid to develop students’ critical thinking. they argued that technology provides more materials/ information for students and it means that the students have to select, synthesize, and evaluate the content which all required higher-order and critical thinking. figure 1 teachers’ perspective of ti on students’ improvement these positive perspectives on ti have been an area of interest for researchers to empirically prove them. while results are still inconclusive (livingston, 2012; unser, 2017), theoretically, when technology allows students and teachers to connect to a wider audience (e.g. through a forum or blog post) and when it allows collaborative construction of text (e.g. through google docs), new demands on the collaboration skill and communication skill will emerge and develop. learning through the world-wide-web allows students to be exposed to multiple-perspective thus help them to increase their criticality. 2. instructional benefits most teachers in this study agreed that the use of technology in their instruction is not a burden for their instruction. they think that integrating technology will not make classroom management difficult. this study found that the teachers perceived ti is beneficial for their instruction. figure 2 teachers’ perspective of ti on instructional benefits there are three major benefits that the teachers perceived from the integration of technology into instructions. (1) technology motivates students to involve in the learning activities. the authenticity of material and tasks offered by the use of technology potentially elevates the students' motivation to engage in the learning activities. besides, novel and continuous improvement/ interactivity of education application, for example, serves as the trigger of students' interest and curiosity which is vital in learning. (2) technology accommodates personal learning. this finding resounds kearney et al. (2012) who noted that personalization is the prominent feature that technology offers to teachers. this element of personalization is particularly advantageous for teachers teaching a mixed ability class. a well-tailored lesson allows students to learn at their own pace and their comfort zone of learning (style). technology has the required buttons to make this personalization possible. (mcknight, 2016). (3) technology encourages shifts in teachers’ roles. accessibility which has been viewed as an element of technology integration brings about this transformation. as the students have more access to content, the teacher 0 20 40 60 80 academic achievement collaboration interpersonal skill communication skill learning of critical concept students' improvement strongly agree moderatly agree slightly agree slightly disagree moderately disagree strongly disagree 0 20 40 60 effective tool for all students accommodate personal learning motivate student difficult class management shift of teacher role instructional benefits strongly agree moderately agree slightly agree slightly disagree moderately disagree strongly disagree international journal of education vol. 13 no. 1, aug-2020, pp. 44-52 ©2020 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: 10.17509/ije.v13i1.22643 48 role shifts from a content provider to facilitator and learning become more student-centered. 3. perceived professional competence, challenges, and threats the data indicate that 69 percent of the respondent think using technology lessen the teachers' pressure in doing their work and respondents agree at a varying degree that using technology makes them feel more competent. an interview with the teachers revealed that as the use of technology in teaching has become a preferred practice in recent years, teachers feel that the ability to use technology as a required competence for them. it means, when they can utilize the technology, they considered themselves as competent teachers and vice versa. this common view is emphasized by respondent ew: today that everyone is talking and using these modern tools, computers, apps and stuffs, i personally think that they are so cool. i mean, that’s like a new definition of a teacher today. a teacher who is struggling or do not or cannot use technology, like myself, are often considered as not competent. i mean, unlike my friends who can explore new media and materials, i feel that i’m so left behind. at the same time, the questionnaire respondents regard technology as a means to enhance their professional development. in the interview, they clarified that through technology they learn new things about their subject knowledge. they also found learning to use the technology itself is part of their effort to develop their professionalism as highlighted by teacher ws: “i like joining trainings and workshops on technology because i think.. that is now a demand and i belief such training is highly beneficial for my career. my friends are using great apps in their classes and if i can’t use tech like my friends do, my class will be like the worst among other classes. if i can use technology my teaching will get better, i can create online quizzes or videos or other projects that the students like. my class will not be boring again” the interview excerpt also suggests that there is a social element that affects the teacher’s attempt to develop their professionalism through the use of technology. the teacher use technology because other teachers around him/ her are using it. unser (2017,p.38) also found a similar phenomenon: “teachers are influenced by social norms attached to the use of technology in their schools and respective school environments.” while the teachers commonly view the use of technology positively, they also feel a certain degree of threat to their professional work. the data indicates that 35 percent of the respondents worry that the use of technology will reduce the number of teacher demand in the future. surprisingly also, 44 percent of the questionnaire respondents think that their choice of material will be limited. the teachers are aware that with the aid of technology, the materials are not only easily accessible but also abundant. yet, the ease of access for the students and the largely and traditionally held role of teachers as content providers made them think that technology reduces their authority in terms of material provision. this explains how 44 percent of the respondents also think that the use of technology in the classroom is difficult because some students know more about computer technology than many teachers do. aside from the threats, the respondents acknowledge the challenges of technology integration. figure 3 challenges of technology integration as indicated in figure 3, the respondents hold different views on the challenges of technology integration. however, the near split-half proportion of those who agree and disagree on given statements indicated the teachers' concern on the issue. similar problems were also identified in the study by ramorola (2015) which revealed that major challenges affecting the integration of technology included insufficient technology, lack of teacher qualification to integrate technology, and technical issue related to integration and maintenance. these findings suggest that there are requirements for effective technology integration in classroom instruction. the questionnaire reveals four main prerequisites: adequate training, stand-by/ on-demand technical support staff, teachers' agency (involvement of teacher, self-efficacy), and parents and home environment support. 0 20 40 60 extra time for planning time consuming training wasted time on technical problem generaly costly challenge strongly agree moderately agree slightly agree slightly disagree moderately disagree strongly disagree setyaningsih, wahyuni, & rochsantiningsih mapping indonesian efl teachers’ perception and practice of technology integration 49 figure 4 requirements two of the identified requirements i.e. training and available technical support confirmed findings of the previous study by romorola (2015). it is interesting to note that the teachers highly value their agency in using technology in the classroom as a success element. the teachers’ process and current practice of technology integration the examination of teachers' process of technology integration begins by mapping the length of training that they have for the integration of technology into teaching. the data obtained revealed that only 6.5 percent of the respondent received full semester training and nearly 30 percent have not received any training. the rest mentioned that they have received either less than a day or less than a semester-long training. (see table 1). the data are confirmed by the teachers' self-description on the proficiency level they have in technology. the majority of the questionnaire respondents consider themselves as being at the average and beginner category. this means that they either have attempted to use technology but still need help or have the basic ability to use certain applications/tools/ software. table 3 perceived technology proficiency unfamiliar newcomer begin -ner average advanced expert 0 12.5% 15.6% 59.4% 9.4% 3.6 % regardless of the minimum amount of formal training and their perceived technology proficiency, the questionnaire responses revealed that the teachers are quite positive in describing their process of technology integration in their teaching. different finding, however, was reported by unser (2017). she found that the amount of training for classroom teachers and the teachers’ self-efficacy in using technology are two crucial factors that determine teachers’ technology integration practice. she noted that teachers are reluctant to use technology if they think that they have not enough training and skills to use it in the classrooms. table 4 self-description of the technology integration process (self-efficacy) i am aware that technology exists but i have not used it – perhaps i’m even reluctant to use it. 3% i am currently trying to learn basic tools and application 21.9% i am beginning to understand the process of using technology 31.3% i am gaining self-confidence in using technology 34.4% i can apply what i know about technology in the classroom 9.4% as indicated in table 4, 87.7 percent of the teachers describe themselves as either beginning to use or gaining confidence in using technology in their instruction and only 3 percent are reluctant to use technology in their teaching. unser (2017) found that self-efficacy is one factor that determines whether or not teachers are going to use technology. her study revealed that “many teachers believed that they were not properly prepared to use the [technological] devices, let alone to teach their students to use them” (p.39). these teachers tend to not use technology due to low self-efficacy. in this study, however, responses to the questionnaire bared a different finding. while some teachers admitted that they did not receive any training on using technology, a high percentage of teachers state that they are willing to use technology in their teaching. the relatively high self-efficacy on the use of technology is mirrored in the frequency of technology integration practice. as many as 20 tech-related activities which can be categorized into 7 purposes (instructional, evaluation, recreational, expressive, creative, communicative, and informative) are used to describe the current practice of technology integration. 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 adequate training available technical staff believe in ability to im plem ent involvem ent in decision m aking/ planning parents' support technology as part of hom e environm ent requirements strongly agree moderately agree slightly agree slightly disagree moderately disagree strongly disagree international journal of education vol. 13 no. 1, aug-2020, pp. 44-52 ©2020 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: 10.17509/ije.v13i1.22643 50 figure 5 ti for instructional and evaluation purposes figure 6 ti for organizational processes figure 7 ti for recreational, expressive, and creative purposes figure 8 ti for communicative-informative purposes the data show the varying degrees of the frequency of using technology in the eight categories of purposes. top five activities that reflect the integration of technology include: (a) using an online resource for learning, (b) keeping track of students' grades, (c) preparing handouts/ tests/ quizzes/ homework, (d) searching the internet to search for information for the lesson, and (e) using social media to communicate with the students. these activities, however, indicate very basic use of technology and yet to be said as purposefully designed to facilitate learning. advanced and more meaningful activities are not explored i.e. creating a lesson plan, using an online test, and maintaining an online journal. also, the frequency measure suggests that the teachers do not actively build connections to parents either through emails or social media platforms. viewed from the process, the teachers mainly acknowledge that their use of the technology is in the substitution and augmentation category. 0 10 20 30 40 50 play game in class draw/ paint/ design program use digital video, digital cameras maintain online journal recreational/expressive/ creative almost always very often fairly often once in a while practically never never 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 em ail-teachers em ail parents lc d projector p p t presentation socm ed-teacher socim ed-students socm ed-parents use internet to search inform ation for lesson communicative-informative almost always very often fairly often once in a while practically never never 0 10 20 30 40 keep track of student grades or marks prepare handouts, tests/quizzes, and homework assignments for students create lesson plan organizational almost always very often fairly often once in a while practically never never 0 20 40 60 80 use online resource in the lesson use video tutorials for self-training have students use totorial for learning use digital portfolio use online platform for test instructional-evaluation almost always very often fairly often once in a while practically never never setyaningsih, wahyuni, & rochsantiningsih mapping indonesian efl teachers’ perception and practice of technology integration 51 figure 9 teachers’ process of integration the respondent-teachers also reported examples of their teaching activities which they perceived as integrating technology. there are reports on the use of kahoot, weblog, and youtube project but one commonly reported activity includes using powerpoint presentations in addition to using digital resources (book). this means that the reported sample activities justified the self-measurement/ evaluation. the findings of this study are relatively problematic. while the teachers commonly hold positive views on ti and indicate an attempt to integrate technology into their work (regardless of theor formal training), the integration process was mainly at the level of substitution and augmentation. the two levels of integration may be viewed as less meaningful to learning. puentedura (2014b) exemplified that switching hand to digital note as a good sample of substitution; however, oppenheimer and muller (2014) mentioned that this substitution harms students learning. this confirms the previous criticisms and requirements on technology integration which were forwarded by hennessy et al. (2005), livingston (2012), and unser (2017). they pointed out at least two issues related to ti in the classroom: (a) the poorly used of technology that it cannot lead to teaching transformation, (b) the teachers’ use of technology in the classrooms is dependent on the continuous classroom teachers training and self-efficacy. conclusion this study revealed that the positive views on technology may have driven teachers to use technology. however, there are some propositions on technology integration that can be drawn from the results of the study. first, teachers who are beginners or average users of technology tend to focus more on the use of technology and less on teaching. second, technology integration does not make teaching and learning better. as shown in the findings, the teacher’s current practice of technology integration was at the substitution and augmentation. this means that the integration has not been purposeful or meaningful. the transformation effect of the integration for learning or teaching is yet to be achieved. this means the teachers’ teaching does not undergo any change regardless of the use of technology. while the teaching tool or medium of instruction is changing, the change is a normal impact of technological advancement in all aspects of human life. simply put, in the context of the non-advanced user, the only thing that develops is the technology being used but not the learning. it is therefore recommended that teachers should receive continuous training on technology to minimize their struggle with the fast advancement of technology but at the same time, teachers should be trained to frame the use of technology in the effort to optimize their teaching and learning. references chen, c. 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(2017). a study on the positives and negatives of using technology in the classroom. undergraduate honors college theses. 18. accessed from https://digitalcommons.liu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi? article=1012&context=post_honors_theses on june, 9, 2020 wang, q (2008). a generic model for guiding the integration of ict into teaching and learning. innovations in education and teaching international 45(4), 411–19. https://doi.org/10.1080/14703290802377307. https://doi.org/10.3402/rlt.v20i0/14406 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2018.11.014 http://www.punyamishra.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/mishra-koehler-tcr2006.pdf http://www.punyamishra.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/mishra-koehler-tcr2006.pdf http://www.punyamishra.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/mishra-koehler-tcr2006.pdf https://doi.org/10.1080/18146627.2013.853559 https://digitalcommons.liu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1012&context=post_honors_theses https://digitalcommons.liu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1012&context=post_honors_theses data from the questionnaire revealed that the students’ improvement which was perceived by the teachers to have been driven by the use of technology in the classroom covers academic achievement, collaboration, communication skills, interpersonal skill... 2. instructional benefits 3. perceived professional competence, challenges, and threats chen, c. (2008). why do teachers not practice what they believe regarding technology integration? the journal of educational research, 102 (1), 65-75. database connection failed! database connection failed! international journal of education vol. 13 no. 1, august-2020, pp. 18-25 ©2020 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: 10.17509/ije.v13i1.18196 18 prevalence of tertiary level students’ critical thinking skills in speaking agung ginanjar anjaniputra department of english education, universitas negeri semarang, indonesia anjaniputragi@mai.unnes.ac.id first draft received: 10 jul 2019 date accepted: 15 jan 2020 final proof received: 17 jul 2020 abstract critical thinking is deemed vital to students’ success of learning. not only does it help in processing information received through written and oral communication, but also it enhances the quality of language which is produced logically and reasonably. critically thinking of what to say has been deemed intricate and more demanding by most students. thus, this study is intended to investigate critical thinking of students at tertiary level, particularly critical thinking aspects demonstrated in speaking. to address this issue, this study deploys a case study qualitative design to gain in-depth, thorough, comprehensive understanding. involving the second year university students, this study results in findings that some aspects of critical thinking are demonstrated by the students in their speaking performance, encompassing relevance, clarity, consistency, accuracy and fairness, and that trends of how these aspects of critical thinking occurs, entailing deductive and inductive reasoning, cause and effect, comparison, planning as well as hypothesizing, are interpreted and discussed. therefore, critical thinking is necessary and this needs improvement if students’ success in the new world era is to be attained. keywords: critical thinking; speaking; students; tertiary level to cite this paper (in apa style): anjaniputra, a. g. (2020). prevalence of tertiary level students’ critical thinking skills in speaking. international journal of education, 13(1), 18-25. doi: 10.17509/ije.v13i1.18196 introduction critical thinking constitutes one prerequisite skill in higher education (mcmillan, 1987; pike, 1996; bers, 2005; miekley, 2014). it is required to promote students’ success in this globalized world (schafersman, 1991; marin & halpern, 2010; miekley, 2014; junining, 2016). it is also associated with the problem-solving ability. yet, to critically and communicatively convey ideas in english is sometimes burdensome for efl students in higher education (masduqi, 2011). it is a glitch since, according to gustine (2014 cited in apsari, 2016) critical thinking is said to be essential for higher education. notwithstanding the primacy of critical thinking in higher education, students in tertiary level are loath to use and even develop their critical thinking skills, particularly when they are producing spoken language. they seem to utter words, phrases, clauses or texts which is deemed easier as long as they can speak fluently regardless of the content. besides, speaking in foreign languages is more difficult than speaking in the mother tongue, resulting in a large burden on students. in this regard, masduqi (2011) affirms that lack of critical thinking and difficulties to convey ideas communicatively and critically may result from teacher-centered learning in primary and secondary schools. for that reason, it becomes crucial to explore not only critical thinking among college efl students, but also that in speaking performances. in indonesia, critical thinking is to be implemented in the curriculum as it is embodied in the latest curriculum 2013 (ariyana, pudjiastuti, bestary, & zamroni, 2018). this denotes the urgency of critical thinking among the youth. having students used to critical thinking skills before they advance to higher education is a strategy to prepare them to deal with the globalization era. in addition, by teaching critical thinking skills, the way of knowing is not only about getting knowledge, but also some procedural ways to question what is known through reasoning or assertions, so what is true is definite and certain. hence, the students in today’s higher education or tertiary level are at least exposed to the teaching of critical thinking and are supposed to have a firm foundation of it. in tertiary level, students learning to master a second or a foreign language need various language skills and even the integration of two of the language skills. before a person speaks, the person must have been introduced and listen to the utterances. to promote students’ thinking when they are performing such skills, critical thinking is required. in this regard, one language that is learnt to be able to speak bursts anjaniputra prevalence of tertiary level students’ critical thinking skills in speaking 19 one’s creative and critical thinking skills (busch cited in bowman, 2010). furthermore, critical thinking skills can help students to optimize their language competence in order to perceive and produce text effectively as well as reflectively. hence, critical thinking in speaking is vital to ensure the provision of ideas is acceptable, understandable, and sensible. critical thinking has its own standards so that one can be considered critical in their thinking. this is in line with bassham, irwin, nardone, & wallace, (2014, p.1) that it is “disciplined thinking governed by clear intellectual standards”. it is further argued that these standards encompass clarity, precision, accuracy, relevance, consistency, logical correctness, completeness, and fairness. the standards to some extent bear a resemblance to “intellectual standards” proposed by paul (2005). these are to be presented in the following paragraphs in detail. clarity means that understanding clearly what others are saying is vital before effectively evaluating the argument or claim. it cannot be taken for granted since by carefully making others point clear, miscommunications and disappointments can be precluded. however, it is not easy to clearly comprehend others’ utterances or ideas because unclarity of ideas can result from laziness, carelessness, a lack of skill or even a misguided effort to be considered profound (bassham et al., 2014). critical thinkers make every attempt to pursue clarity at its pinnacle through self-understanding of thought (bassham et al., 2014). precision is another standard of critical thinkers. it has something to do with the primacy of precision by careful and highly trained observation so that all can be precisely noticed. precise answers must be available for precise questions. this can solve many everyday problems and issues by dealing with confusions and uncertainties. to think precisely, one can ask something to its edge of certainty, which generate questions such as what exactly is the problem? what exactly are the alternatives? what are the advantages and disadvantages? (bassham et al., 2014). in regard to accuracy, according to bassham et al. (bassham et al., 2014) a good decision can solely be generated if the information is accurate, not the false one. this indicates that valuing the truth is not enough, what is more important is the commitment to accurate, timely information. decisions made should always be as informed as possible if the accuracy standard is supposed to be attained. hence, it is vital to be well-informed about and strive harder for accurate information before coming into a conclusion because what you earn is what you possess. ideally, the accurate information results in the informed decision, and vice versa, the inaccurate information misleads the decision. relevance deals with “logical relevance to the strength of one’s arguments” (bassham et al., 2014, p.4). an argument can only be strengthened, so that others deem it true, by providing relevant ideas and information. if not, this will lessen the argument and in turn make others feel unnecessary to uphold the argument. no jokes are necessary in presenting arguments, unless this is logically relevant to the argument. the ability to keep your argument relevant to what is being said is one proof that one is a critical thinker. in addition, critical thinkers have to be consistent in a way that is consequent to what they say or believe. to see whether or not someone is consistent can be recognized by two kinds of inconsistency, logical and practical inconsistency (bassham et al., 2014). the first one is logical inconsistency, dealing with arguing and holding inconsistent things about a certain matter. so, to be critical thinkers, it is better to be logically consistent with what is believed to be true. in other words, persistence in believing what is true about something is the utmost importance. the second one is practical inconsistency, having to do with a gap between what is said and what is done. this implies that consistency between saying and doing is of critical thinking, allowing for full awareness of using words for deeds. critical thinkers are also to bear in mind that conclusions are drawn from the held beliefs so that the conclusions are well-founded, which constitutes the so-called logical correctness standard. reasons given must be correct, which are based upon accurate and well-supported beliefs. however, illogical reasons are more common among human, as bassham et al (2014) mention, conveyed by russel in his classic essay, that the pious nuns could draw correct conclusions that “god sees everything”, which they believe “god sees bathroom walls”, yet they failed to provide logical correctness following previous reasons to a premise that “god sees through bathrobes” (p.6). logically, walls which is thick and robust can be seen through, and bathrobes definitely can be too, but they illogically could not support such a reason. to follow previous standards, completeness comprises deep and complete thinking. it is asserted that “thinking is better when it is deep rather than shallow, thorough rather than superficial” (bassham et al., 2014). eventhough sometimes in certain contexts it is improbable to discuss an issue in depth, people prefer completely thorough explanations in many contexts such as criminal investigations, jury deliberations, news stories, driving directions and medical diagnoses. therefore, critical thinkers require completeness in thinking. with all the standards described beforehand, another crucial aspect is fairness. it means being open-minded, impartial, and free of distorting biases and preconceptions. it may be hard to achieved since the way people think is highly influenced by how the culture and previous prior knowledge shape the mind. besides, resistance to unfamiliar ideas, prejudgement about issues, outsider stereotyping, truth identification with own self-interest are examples of why fairness in international journal of education vol. 13 no. 1, august-2020, pp. 18-25 ©2020 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: 10.17509/ije.v13i1.18196 20 thinking is difficult. despite such conditions, fairness is of importance in critical thinking. hence, the inclusion of all the standards can result in what is meant to be critical thinking. some studies on critical thinking were conducted in the efl context in relation to language skills. they were concerned with reading skills, writing skills, listening skills as well as integrating critical thinking into these language skills. an investigation of critical thinking in english language teaching in general was conducted (masduqi, 2011; tosuncuoglu (2018); vdovina; 2013), incorporating critical thinking in the classroom. a rather similar study by junining (2016) explored how to develop critical thinking among students through oral interpretation class. regarding reading skills, aspects of critical thinking skills are explored with an emphasis on those of students in high school (putri, 2014) and in college (husna, 2019; zheng, 2014). in addition, students’ critical thinking skills are examined to focus on the enhancement of the skills (buranapatana, 2006; changwong, sukkamart, & sisan, 2018; ralston & bays, 2015). moreover, the portrayal of critical thinking skills in efl academic writing produced by the japanese in university level was done due to an issue of the students’ lack of critical thinking (mckinley, 2013). however, studies on aspects of critical thinking demonstrated in speaking performance are still scarcely conducted in any levels of education; primary, secondary and tertiary levels. for this reason, it is deemed essential to investigate the aspects of critical thinking in higher education, in this sense university students. as speaking performances are emphasized in this study due to students’ difficulties and inadequate skills, it is worth noting that the activity for teaching speaking is different from the activity for teaching writing because the main focus of the two skills is not the same. the main focus of teaching speaking is intended to enable students to produce the language orally. as a result, the activities should be designed to give students any speaking opportunities and obstacles that impede students’ potential in achieving the objectives should be minimized. in order to maximize speaking opportunities and increase the chances that students will experience autonomous language use, brown (2001) suggests seven principles for designing speaking activities taking into account student needs, motivating techniques, authenticity, feedback, connection between listening and speaking, students’ opportunity, and speaking strategies. given the considerations that critical thinking skills are required and likely to provide students with a multitude of advantages, especially in higher education as suggested by some experts, and that speaking are the most prevalent skill in this new digital era, critical thinking aspects investigated in this study deals with those demonstrated particularly in tertiary level students’ speaking performance. this is intended to explore critical thinking in terms of the aspects or standards demonstrated by students and the extent to which they are capable of thinking critically in speaking performance. with these purposes, students’ oral performance is required to portray the demonstrated standards and the extent of their critical thinking. method in accordance with the research problem and the aim of this study to investigate demonstrated aspects of critical thinking by tertiary level students, a case study design is deployed. this qualitative design is utilized by virtue of the necessity to yield in-depth, thorough understanding of the problem. this denotes that a case study is concerned with merely one or more subject of occurrence examined with a highly centralized focus. in this sense, the use of a case study design is deemed essential since this study puts emphasis on one case which is students’ critical thinking in speaking. besides, critical thinking in speaking becomes the only subject to be investigated in a way that it is to result in comprehensibly unified findings. out of the populations, five second year college students were chosen purposively as the sample. they were selected as they were considered the high achievers in the classroom. these students were to perform their speaking skills whose result was transcribed and analyzed to investigate the manifestation of critical thinking aspects. in the meantime, the selection of them was intended to reveal more information about the depiction of critical thinking of students in that grade. in this study, the technique for collecting the data was mainly administered through recording and transcribing students’ oral texts. a topic was given in a speaking course, requiring the students to inquire about english learning problems by asking two friends. as they got the information on the problems, they had to think through all possible solutions to deal with the problems before they spoke. so, the students conveyed the problems experienced by their friends and the solutions to the problems. which was recorded by the researcher. the recording was then transcribed to result in analyzable documents. such documents are expected to be a medium for investigating demonstrated aspects of critical thinking in speaking. the data collection is based upon the recommendations for assessing critical thinking proposed by lai (2011), encompassing the appropriateness of employing open-ended measures, authentic problem contexts and performances, qualitybased evaluation, as well as the reinforcement of student reasoning. unlike closed-ended questionnaires or likert scales, an open-ended measure is deployed in this study since after interviewing two classmates the students are asked how to solve their friends’ english learning problems. so the students freely express ideas and solutions for their friends’ problems. in addition, this is also authentic in terms of contexts and performance in a way that difficulties of learning are undergone in reality anjaniputra prevalence of tertiary level students’ critical thinking skills in speaking 21 by their friends. moreover, what is sought in the students’ texts is the quality of their arguments regardless of being right or wrong. this is also shown that the activity to provide solutions for learning problems stimulates student reasoning. as for the data analysis, the critical thinking aspects demonstrated in speaking performance are emphasized as stated in the research question section. in general, the steps of the analysis include coding, categorization, and interpretation. coding is carried out to identify aspects of critical thinking in the data after the transcribing process. in addition, categorization is intended to classify the coded utterances of students in terms of critical thinking aspects. this is done to ease the identification and classification of the mood structure employed in the texts. this also aims to help in interpreting the data. in this sense, interpretation is conducted to give meaning and insight of what the critical thinking aspects suggest as it is uttered by the students in their performance, which is in turn associated with previous research and theories vis-a-vis critical thinking. results and discussion aspects of critical thinking students demonstrate in speaking performance aspects of critical thinking conveyed in this study is in accordance with eight standards proposed by bassham et al. (2014). the standards entail clarity, precision, accuracy, relevance, consistency, logical correctness, completeness, and fairness. these standards are what is required to be a critical thinker and are widely used (see austin, 2012; bassham et al., 2014; paul & elder, 2005; paul & elder, 2013; ralston & bays, 2015; uribe-enciso, uribe-enciso, & del pilar vargas-daza, 2017). each of the standards is going to be explained sequentially in relation to its prevalence in the students’ oral texts as well as be discussed as opposed to or in line with previous corresponding theories in the following paragraphs. table 1. critical thinking standards in the texts critical thinking aspects students’ oral texts text 1 text 2 text 3 text 4 text 5 clarity √ √ √ √ √ precision accuracy √ √ √ √ √ relevance √ √ √ consistency √ √ √ √ √ logical correctness completeness fairness √ √ √ √ in the activity before students made their own oral texts, they were assigned to interview their partners vis-à-vis their difficulties in learning english. as they finished the interview, they had to think about the solutions to their friends’ problem. it indicates that the activity requires them to have a sense of clarity before determining best possible solutions to the learning problems. this is in line with bassham et al. (2014) that clarity means that understanding clearly what others are saying is vital before effectively evaluating the argument or claim. in other words, once their partner conveys their problems in learning english, those who have a sense of clarity will be capable of thinking through the problems so as to take into account any available answers. the interview carried out by students is originally to elicit ideas. eliciting ideas constitutes the stage that can be implemented to teach critical thinking (masduqi, 2011). understanding of the problems faced by their friends is conveyed as one of the students attempted to synthesize the problems of her friends. so, guys, we have four problems from them, one, how not to get nervous; two, how not to be confused about grammar; three, how to be confident; four, how to pronounce words correctly. #s3 of all students’ text analyzed, the solutions, such as believing in yourself, keeping up the learning, practicing in front of mirrors, listening to music, being relaxed and confident, reading everyday, etc., show decent clarity in a way that misunderstanding or miscommunication hardly appears. the texts can address all the problems clearly without resulting in ambiguity, despite some other aspects of critical thinking, which are discussed later in this section, may not be nicely put. among others, the solutions provided encompass believing in yourself to cope with lack of confidence in speaking, listening to songs to improve vocabulary mastery, singing a song to improve pronunciation, and so on. paul (2005) asserts that once an individual can provide examples and elaboration, the clarity standard of thinking critically is fulfilled. therefore, the ability of students to make use of this aspect is deemed sufficient as seen from the logic of their thoughts in the provision of ideas, because reversely a lack of skill brings about unclarity of ideas (bassham et al., 2014). in addition, precision is one of the aspects neglected by the students in their oral texts as they only ask superficial questions to their partner about their learning problem. instead, to think precisely, one can ask something to its edge of certainty, such as what exactly is the problem? what exactly are the alternatives? what are the advantages and disadvantages? (bassham et al., 2014). in a similar sense, vujic & jerkovic (2014) assert that people thinking critically can raise vital questions, and formulate the questions used to gather relevant information to come up with well-informed conclusions or decisions to solve complex problems. it can be seen that the students in their performance do not talk about further problem examination of their partners’. they merely elicit the problem then logically provide international journal of education vol. 13 no. 1, august-2020, pp. 18-25 ©2020 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: 10.17509/ije.v13i1.18196 22 possible solutions or answers. if they had asked something to its edge, they should have explained it in their texts and the solutions would not have been directly appointed to the problem. for example, one of them said, “she has a difficulty to memorize the vocabulary. and for this problem i have four solutions to solve this problem” (#s5). the student did not ask why, when, how can, and to what extent his/her friend is difficult to memorize words. such questions are vital to generate precision. the detailed information on the problem can definitely determine the provision of solution. nonetheless, superficial questions delivered by the students lead to superficially good answers in their oral texts. more precise answers must have been available. in this sense, hughes (2014) suggests there is a need for students to foster critical questioning so as to become effective critical thinkers. by looking at the solutions provided by the students in their oral texts, it is very likely that the arguments are accurate in addressing the problems. the way students decided to come to the given solution is based upon the timely accurate information from their partner. if the information obtained is inaccurate, the decision about the solutions will be misleading. the decisions are all sufficiently wellinformed as no false or ambiguous solutions are found. for example, in attending to a grammatical problem in learning english, the occurrence of the inaccuracy aspect could have resulted in a solution such as learning various verb forms. this is misleading as grammar is not only about verbs, and learning solely verbs may generate other grammatical problems such as sentence structures, subject-verb agreement, passive forms, etc.. yet, learning the tenses and their use is proposed as in “…should learn from the basis especially tenses” (#s2). therefore, accuracy is essential since according to bassham et al. (2014) a good decision can solely be generated if the information is accurate, not the false one. this is in line with bailin et al. (1999, cited in lai, 2011) that critical thinking can be realized when the standard of accuracy is met. relevance deals with “logical relevance to the strength of one’s arguments” (bassham et al., 2014, p.4). it is reflected in one student’s arguments when asserting the primacy of talking before the mirror to gain confidence in speaking. the student illustrates how important it is by describing her experience: “make the mirror your best friend…. i’m pretending like i’m the famous girl. so, it works” (#s1). this indicates that the student attempts to make the argument relevant to the problem, which is to increase confidence in speaking. besides, the presence of her experience about talking before mirrors seems to strengthen the argument in a way that at least the strategy to gain confidence in speaking is to some extent successful and possibly yields the same result as it is to the speaker. the presence of such arguments manifests the relevance standard since this standard is said to be concerned with a strong relationship between arguments and matters being discussed (paul, 2005). since this analysis is based upon the speaking performance of the students, it will merely focus on how the argument is consistent. according to bassham et al. (2014), the consistence can be seen from the inconsistency entailing logical and practical inconsistency. in this regard, one logical inconsistency is obvious in one of the students’ oral texts. the logical inconsistency is indicated when the speaker proposes a solution to believe in our self. nevertheless, instead of supporting the arguments with convincing facts or evidence, the speaker says that “maybe it sounds hard and not all of people can do it, but this step is really important” (#s1). the argument about believing in yourself may have been stronger and convincing to make the person confidence in speaking. the inconsistency generates a weak spot of the argument and is likely to create doubts in the listeners. however, the student can provide practical consistency of what is said and done in relation to talking to the mirror, which is based upon what she has usually applied. logical correctness has to do with conclusions which are drawn from the held beliefs and are wellfounded. in other words, generalizations created in our mind have to be based on careful considerations of all information and evidence available. missing one fact can bear illogical arguments. in regard to this, the students failed to fulfil the provision of logical correctness as the arguments are presented without the explanation how they come up with the solution. moreover, they did not refer to or cite well-supported beliefs. as a result, listeners in this sense cannot see how logical it is to use the solutions given. their arguments must be firm and acceptable if this standard is realized in the texts. regarding the standard of completeness, a critical thinker requires deep and complete thinking. however, most of the arguments presented in the texts regarding problems in learning english merely cover the surface of the actual necessity to overcome the problems. for example, when the students express the solutions, the students just mention the ideas one by one without being elaborated. they hardly have completeness in thinking because they discuss the problems and the solution superficially. one of the solutions offered by students is: “try calming exercises, close your eyes and slow down your breathing rate.” (#s3) the excerpt indicates that the students seem not to have the ability to elaborate ideas. according to paul & elder (2005), deep thinking entails complexities, multiple interrelationships and many variables in the ideas. the students should have considered all variables included in the solution so that completeness can be attained. this is to some extent associated with their ability to get precise information as previously discussed. it seems that the precise standard or the ability to get certainty results in lack in completeness in thinking. thus, to pursue the ability to anjaniputra prevalence of tertiary level students’ critical thinking skills in speaking 23 think thoroughly, shallow and superficial thoughts and criticism must be avoided (austin, 2012). of all arguments presented by the students to overcome problems in learning english, they presented all the possibility including unfamiliar ideas such as uttering spells. this to some extent denotes the realization of the fairness standard in critical thinking where a critical thinker is open-minded, impartial, and free of distorting biases and preconceptions. in the case of uttering spells to deal with lack of confidence in speaking, it is done to motivate themselves. although it is not the real spell related to magic, it is interesting to look at how the student choose the word “spells”, which is considered taboo and opposed to the held belief of the community. this denotes a disposition of critical thinking, namely fair-mindedness (lai, 2011), where the individual is capable of producing impartial and just judgements regardless of his/her beliefs. in a nutshell, the students’ oral texts have certain standards of critical thinking encompassing clarity, accuracy, relevance, some extent of consistency as well as fairness. in the meantime, a number of standards entailing precision, logical correctness, and completeness are absent. these rarely found standards emphasize the ability to elicit exactly what is the case so as to attain thorough understanding and logically well-developed reasons for the given arguments. their absence may be caused by students’ lack of enthusiasm. concerning this, buskist and irons (2008, cited in rezaei, derakhshan, & bagherkazemi, 2011) specify reasons underpinning their reluctance to think critically, two of which are concerned with students being told what to do and when to do and with students being wont to learn information by heart without thinking about it. thus, teachers should promote the provision of learning activities that engage students in meaningful discussions on appealing topics. the extent of students’ critical thinking in speaking performance to assess the extent of students’ critical thinking, several dispositions of arguments identical to thinking critically are discussed (hughes & lavery, 2008; lau, 2011; bassham et al., 2014; kelley, 2014). their critical thinking is described one by one per text based upon the speakers’ arguments expressed in their own texts. these will cover logical thinking and reasoning including skills such as deductive and inductive reasoning, comparison, cause/effect, forecasting, planning, and hypothesizing, some of which are absent in the students’ texts. by doing so, it is expected that the extent to which students think critically can be apparent. in text 1, one apparent indication of critical thinking is deductive reasoning when the student argues about using phones for improving speaking in english. the student comes up with this conclusion by considering the ideas of always listening to english in this digital era as the information can rapidly be gotten. she contends that the information is all in our hand where we can learn english through a multitude of social media. in addition, as the use of phones brings about drawbacks effect among its users, she deductively concludes that phones are supposed to be used for learning improvement. in deductive reasoning, the presence of premises ensure that the conclusion is true (hughes & lavery, 2008). in other words, the argument that phones must be used for enhancing speaking is justified by rapid information change and its availability in our hand. in addition, it is found in text 2 that cause and effect are presented by highlighting the importance of partner for learning english. the student is able to exemplify the effect of learning english without partners. moreover, the effect of learning with a partner is also conveyed by the speaker. this shows certain skills of critical thinking, where the speaker provides readers with the possibility that may occur when learning with or without partners. this occurrence, to follow bassham et al. (2014), refers to a prediction associated with happenings in the future with a following reason. judgements vis-à-vis probability are of logic, albeit its common association with determining whether or not something is true (kelley, 2014). as a result, with the possibility, readers can make themselves clear of what they prefer. such arguments can certainly be left out by an uncritical thinker. another salient element of critical thinking is classification (kelley, 2014), as shown in text 3, yet the student or speaker cannot completely organize the ideas. the speaker attempts to categorize problems encountered by her friends, but the categorization is simply too superficial. for instance, she classifies the problems into four things including nervousness, confidence, grammar, and mispronunciation. if the speaker can carefully think about the origins of confidence and nervousness, one general problem can be generated. in this sense, it is very likely that the speaker lacks one previously explained standard of critical thinking, namely precision, which can be probed by a question “could you be more exact?” (paul, 2005). notwithstanding arguing some ideas superficially, it needs to be noted that the student in text 4 shows certain levels of inductive reasoning. this is used when the student argues about the importance of getting rid of nervousness in speaking. the inductive reasoning begins with the premise that alleviating nervousness is required in speaking as the students find it difficult. another premise is that usually the cause of our nervousness when we are talking is thinking too much about people’s opinion. finally, it is inductively presented that nervousness can disappear by trying to be the one who doesn’t care about others’ perception. this denotes one inductively strong argument since the conclusion of ignoring others’ international journal of education vol. 13 no. 1, august-2020, pp. 18-25 ©2020 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: 10.17509/ije.v13i1.18196 24 opinion is derived from strong supports of the premises (see lau, 2011). in the last text, which is text 5, instead of finding indications of critical thinking, thinking fallacy is found. it is manifested in the argument that proposes reading to tackle the difficulty in memorizing the vocabulary. it is first affirmed that by reading, ones can be exposed to various numbers of words. following the previous argument, the speaker expresses that reading can increase vocabularies, as the speaker cites one source. nonetheless, it is clear that the idea that reading can increase vocabulary cannot explain how reading allows for memorizing vocabularies since the difficulty in memorizing vocabulary is associated with the forgotten words that should have been known. in the meantime, increasing vocabulary is extending the range of vocabulary mastery, having nothing to do with ease memorization of certain words. this denotes an inductive fallacy resulting from weak premises in generating conclusions, also known as “hasty generalization” (wood, 2002; moore & parker, 2009). the findings in this study denote an emerging capacity of the students to think critically in efl speaking. however, some standards are not realized in how they speak. this indicates a limit in critical thinking skills performed and possessed by the students. the findings to some extent bear a resemblance to the studies in turkey and thailand that the development of students’ critical thinking skills was limited (bilgin & eldeleklioğlu, 2007; rujivanarom, 2016, cited in changwong, et al., 2018). therefore, the teachers should teach critical thinking to students not only in reading and writing but also in listening and speaking in particular. this should be done earlier so as students continue their study to higher education, they will have been accustomed to activating critical thinking skills, which promotes the optimal development of the skills for their success. conclusion although the students were all in tertiary level of education, not all standards of critical thinking were met. among others, three standards encompassing precision, logical correctness, and completeness are lacking in their speaking performance. in addition, in presenting the arguments, the students hardly used analogies which might have helped them strengthen their arguments. instead, inductive and deductive reasoning as well as cause and effect are the most prevalent characteristics among their arguments. thus, it is vital for teachers to teach the students critical thinking skills, which in turn can bring them success in this new digital era. it is also suggested critical thinking skills be taught earlier so as to prepare students as they continue the study to the tertiary level. references apsari, n. p. a. n. 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(2014). a study of senior students’ critical reading competence via analyzing their reading reports. international journal of learning, teaching and educational research, 1(8), 215221. database connection failed! international journal of education vol. 12 no. 2, feb-2020, pp. 109-121 ©2020 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: 10.17509/ije.v12i2.19429 109 corpus-driven genre pedagogy of english for research publication purposes: toward an elf-referenced critical teaching framework arif husein lubis korean language education department, universitas pendidikan indonesia lubis_ah@upi.edu first draft received: 22 aug 2019 date accepted: 15 jan 2020 final proof received: 26 feb 2020 abstract ever since the non-native english speaker (nnes) and novice writers became actively engaged with international publications, the pedagogy of english for research publication purposes (erpp) has received considerable attention from the eap/esp scholars using corpus-driven genre pedagogy. however, the quality of its implementation is still understudied. this study, therefore, critically reviews the qualitative milestone of corpus-driven genre pedagogy of erpp. nineteen (19) relevant research-based articles on corpus-driven genre pedagogy in the last 15 years from 2004 to 2019 were selected from google scholar and three top-tier journals in this realm: journal of second language writing, english for specific purposes, and journal of english for academic purposes. three stages were conducted: preparation, screening and validation, and content review. the findings encompassed: 1) the materials development process, 2) the learners’ engagement, and 3) the development of learners’ research writing competencies and certain soft skills. the findings become the bases for proposing a framework of elf-referenced critical corpus-driven genre pedagogy of erpp. keywords: corpus-driven genre pedagogy; critical pedagogy; elfa; english for research publication purposes; systematic review to cite this paper (in apa style): lubis, a. h. (2020). corpus-driven genre pedagogy of english for research publication purposes: toward an elf-referenced critical teaching framework. international journal of education, 12(2), 109-121. doi: 10.17509/ije.v12i2.19429 introduction the realm of academic writing has witnessed the notable transition from teaching english as a second/foreign language to english as a global lingua franca in conjunction with the growing influx of participation and contribution of non-native english speaker (hereafter nnes) writers (hyland, 2016; hynninen & kuteeva, 2017) in international scholarly publications. english as a lingua franca is being embraced to eliminate the linguistic boundaries pertaining to knowledge dissemination and acquisition in all sciences; in other words, english as a lingua franca in academic settings (hereafter elfa) (mcdowell & liardét, 2018). such circumstances lead the nnes writers to consciously accept english as the medium of disseminating their works to not only reach wider audiences (j. flowerdew, 2013) but also seek recognition as part of the circle of international academics (ingvarsdóttir & arnbjörnsdóttir, 2018). the significance of elfa also gives effects on the stakeholders of the journals. many reputable journals have started to reframe the language norms and standards in processing the manuscripts (kuteeva & mauranen, 2014; mauranen, 2012; mckinley & rose, 2018). they initiate more tolerance on the elf varieties, but are still concerned with the quality of the generic conventions. the existing consensus about embracing elf in the realm of academic writing and its pedagogy is associated with the evolving mantra in the world of academia from “publish or perish” (huang, 2014) or “go public or perish” (feng & shi, 2004) to “publish internationally or perish.” the pressure of publications in the international and reputable journals has been articulated over thirty-five years (li & flowerdew, 2009; salager-meyer, 2014), causing double burdens for the nnes and/or novice writers. the academic contribution through high international publication rate can elevate the reputation of the universities, including in non-anglophone countries (li, 2016, 2019). more educational advancement can, therefore, be achieved and more financial prosperity for the country, universities, and individuals can be gained. the growingly blatant pressure of publications in international journals raises some challenges of the nnes or multilingual or novice writers in the effort of disseminating their research. discursive challenges (language-related) encompass lack of understanding of the expected genre conventions from the journals and https://doi.org/10.17509/ije.v12i2.19429 https://doi.org/10.17509/ije.v12i2.19429 lubis corpus-driven genre pedagogy of english for research publication purposes 110 reviewers, i.e. generic structure, rhetorical structure, lexico-grammatical features, and vocabulary repertoire (cargill, 2019; huang, 2010, 2017; hyland, 2016; ma, 2019; mcdowell & liardét, 2018) or the acceptable standards (not emphasized on the native-like standards) of highly proficient academic writing (mcdowell & liardét, 2018; mckinley & rose, 2018). meanwhile, nondiscursive challenges (non-language-related) pertain to lack of support of national research and publication spending, which decreases the journal publication rate of the writers (huang, 2010). last but not least is plagiarism issue (huang, 2014; li & casanave, 2012). the lack of understanding about plagiarism such as citation and paraphrasing rules results in the unintentional practice of academic frauds. the teaching of english for research publication purposes (terpp): a corpus-driven genre pedagogy the emergence of inquiry on terpp is, therefore, motivated by the needs to enhance the awareness and repertoire of discursive practices of nnes and/or novice writers in multi-disciplinary discourses and across professional communities. referred to its historical trajectory, erpp is a branch of english for academic purposes (eap) and/or english for specific purposes (esp). it encompasses the description of language system utilized in the domain of research output presentation (cargill & burgess, 2008; mckinley & rose, 2018). hence, terpp can be conceptualized as the pedagogical concerns to deliver the materials of erpp. its main goal is to mediate the development of research articles (hereafter ras) writing in english (cargill, 2019) and the whole process of international publications of nnes and/or novice researchers and academics as well as postgraduate learners (cargill & burgess, 2008; chen & flowerdew, 2018a; mcdowell & liardét, 2018) so that their international publication rate can be elevated. the implementation of terpp can be in the forms of the accommodation of region-wide or university-based scientific writing courses/coaching programs in the countries within the outer and/or expanding circles (cargill, 2019; salager-meyer, 2008), the train-the-trainer (tot) workshop (cargill et al., 2017) or the embedded research writing coaching within the university courses (cahyono & amrina, 2016). previous literature has reported some important points to be taken into account, comprising the elements of terpp (huang, 2017; li, flowerdew, & cargill, 2018; morton, 2016; tardy, 2009) and the mediating approaches to succeed the teaching process (cargill, 2019; cotos, link, & huffman, 2017; huang, 2014, 2017; poole, 2016). the first element pertains to the learning materials encompassing the exploration of the texts, the writers, and the target discourse communities (cotos et al., 2017; tribble & wingate, 2013). they are translated into four facets of genre knowledge (huang, 2014; tardy, 2009): 1) formal knowledge (the repertoire of the generic structure, the rhetorical organization, and the lexicogrammatical features of the genre), 2) process knowledge (the understanding of all stages of the publication process from analyzing the target audiences prior to writing the research article, finding the suitable journal, corresponding with the journal editors during the submission, revision, and editing process, and responding to the reviewers’ feedback), 3) rhetorical knowledge (the correspondence strategy with the journal editors and reviewers so that the writers can convince the journal editors and reviewers of the significance of their research), and 4) subject-matter or content knowledge (the understanding of the disciplinary contents in general and the topic-related contents in particular). consequently, the cognition of the literacy brokers in terpp, especially the instructors, needs to be seriously taken into account. teacher’s cognition entails the knowledge of the professional status, the experiences in the field of expertise, the beliefs of the target knowledge, and the understanding of the contextual factors (borg, 2003). ding and bruce (2017) and cheng (2015) asserted that eap teachers are required to delve into and have an adequate repertoire of the specialized knowledge of the target genre including the writing cultures and the epistemological nature of the genre. last but not least is the awareness of sociolinguistic and ideological variations. the knowledge of politics of international scholarly publication and english as the global lingua franca in academic settings as previously discussed needs to be obtained (ding & bruce, 2017; hadley, 2015; melander, swales, & fredrickson, 1997) since genre conventions may differ not only across genres and disciplines but also across journals. there are two renowned approaches to conduct the terpp programs: data-driven learning (hereafter ddl) and genre pedagogy (hereafter gp) or the combination of both namely corpus-driven genre pedagogy. the former was firstly put forward by johns (1990), while the latter was inspired by the notion of learning genre from systemic functional linguistics perspective (derewianka & jones, 2012; hyland, 2007). the former teaching approach, ddl, is conceptualized as “the use in the classroom of computergenerated concordances to get learners to explore the regularities of patterning in the target language, and the development of activities and exercises based on concordance output” (johns & king, 1991, p. 3). the main goal of ddl is to make the learners familiar with the direct exposure of the corpus data (usually in the form of electronic massive data of language use and patterns) (johns, 2002), typically about certain focused lexicogrammatical features in writing classrooms (chambers, 2005; cotos et al., 2017; poole, 2016; tribble & jones, 1990). the learners are also trained to be capable of operating the corpus tools, such as wordssmith, antconc, and antmover. the latter teaching approach, genre pedagogy, entails explicit instructional strategies to maximize learners’ understanding of the analyzed genre (huang, 2014; d. lee & swales, 2006). two underlying theories of the implementation of gp are text-oriented and writeroriented. the text-oriented gp aims to provide ample guidance in the process of elevating learners’ communicative competence of the genre by dealing with in-depth explorations of generic structure and linguistic international journal of education vol. 12 no. 2, feb-2020, pp. 109-121 ©2020 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: 10.17509/ije.v12i2.19429 111 features (from sfl perspective) of the genre. the writeroriented gp involves two traditions: new rhetoric and academic literacy. in this theory, learners are encouraged to criticize the prescribed systems of language use in the analyzed genre. a considerable body of research has reported the successful stories of using the combination of both approaches to terpp, i.e. corpus-driven genre pedagogy in an independent coaching program or embedded program in the academic writing course in china, hong kong, indonesia, spanyol, taiwan, united states (international classes), and vietnam (cahyono & amrina, 2016; cai, 2016; cargill, 2004; cargill, gao, wang, & o’connor, 2018; cargill et al., 2017; cargill & o’connor, 2006; charles, 2007, 2018; chen & flowerdew, 2018b; corcoran, 2018; cotos et al., 2017; l. flowerdew, 2015, 2016; friginal, 2013; huang, 2014; li, 2019; li et al., 2018; q. luo, 2016; tribble & wingate, 2013). the findings generally demonstrate that the development of genre awareness of learners is considerably mediated by the integration of top-down and bottom-up approaches in the genre analysis process. additionally, the focus on the four facets of genre knowledge driven by authentic learning materials can elevate learners’ rhetorical consciousness. third, the team-teaching method involving the content specialists and the eap instructors allows dialogic and in-depth supervisions in the genre analysis process and in the independent construction process. however, those studies extensively sought to investigate the effectiveness of corpus-driven genre pedagogy in the teaching of english for research publication purposes. there is scant attention devoted to qualitatively review its milestone. thus, this study seeks to address the gap by conducting a systematic review on the implementation of corpus-driven genre pedagogy for terpp for nnes, multilingual and/or novice writers. to accomplish the research objective, this study is driven by the following research questions. rq 1: how is the process of materials development of terpp conducted? rq 2: how do the learners engage with the utilization of the corpora in the process of knowledge telling and knowledge transformation? rq 3: how is the development of the learners’ research writing competencies exhibited after the terpp program? the findings may offer eap/esp literacy brokers (i.e. teachers, practitioners, researchers), particularly for research publication purposes, a better understanding of the strengths and limitations of the teaching approach. this paper also encourages novice writers in international publications to view the findings as a reflective reference prior to the manuscript preparation process. method this study adopted xiao’s and watson’s (2017) framework as the guideline of conducting the qualitative systematic review by using thematic synthesis method (thomas & harden, 2008). the procedure entails three main stages: preparation, screening and validation, content review, and synthesis and report. each stage comprises several steps as depicted in fig. 1. at the first stage, the literature search of published articles was done using the very general keywords such as “research publication”, “academic writing”, “genre pedagogy”, and “data-driven learning”. the articles were obtained from google scholar and three top-tier journals in the realm of teaching english for research publication purposes: journal of second language writing (jslw), english for specific purposes (esp), and journal of english for academic purposes (jeap), with the publication time from 2004-2019. approximately 106 ras were obtained. screening and validation processes were conducted afterward by sorting out the relevant and figure 1 data collection and analysis procedure https://doi.org/10.17509/ije.v12i2.19429 lubis corpus-driven genre pedagogy of english for research publication purposes 112 irrelevant ras based on the titles and the keywords. twenty (20) ras were discarded because they did not address the issue of terpp (e.g., ddl for teaching grammar not in an erpp context) or they were irrelevant for the proposal of elf-referenced teaching framework, or they were non-original research. content review i was done to classify the 87 ras into two main categories based on the contents of the abstracts: previous studies and relevant studies for the proposal of elf-referenced teaching framework. in total, there were nineteen (19) previous studies. although most of the titles did not literally contain the words “corpusbased/corpus-driven genre pedagogy”, the objectives and the findings of the studies addressed the implementation of the pedagogy. meanwhile, the other 66 ras were reclassified into smaller units: critical pedagogy and critical academic literacy (hereafter crital), elf and corpora construction, elf in scholarly publication, ict use in ir 4.0 era and education 4.0, and corrective feedback. content review ii was initiated by reading the whole parts of the papers, but focusing on the findings, discussion, and conclusion sections for the synthesis and report stage. first, open coding technique was utilized based on the verbatim meaning of the sentences. then, the obtained codes were classified into several categories, which directly answered the research questions (e.g., table 1). table 1 sample of coding and categorization results author and year excerpt code category theme cai (2016) the sla ra corpus comprises empirical research articles. disciplinespecific expert corpora types of sources materials development in the synthesis and report stage, the coherence of the projected information within the codes within each category was re-examined. the results of the reexamination were used to structure the presentation of the findings so that the qualitative state-of-the-art of the three foci of corpus-driven genre pedagogy for erpp along with the challenges can be clearly obtained. findings and discussion this section elaborates on the qualitative information of the implementation of corpus-driven genre pedagogy in the teaching of english for research publication purposes. the three research questions as mentioned in the introduction section are addressed sequentially. the presentation and discussion of the findings are not literature-based, rather based on the general findings in each cluster as exhibited in fig. 2 below. rq 1: the materials development process the content review process resulted in 38 codes (including the recurring codes). afterward, the existing codes were classified into three main clusters: target information in the needs analysis process, coverage of the materials (genre knowledge), and sources of corpora. as envisaged, all facets of the genre knowledge as conceptualized by tardy (2009) and huang (2014) were identified in the corpus. preliminary research in the form of needs analysis was conducted to formulate the learning objectives and develop the learning materials. the findings revealed that learners’ backgrounds were important to explore prior to the implementation of terpp by employing corpus-driven genre pedagogy. personal identity and institutional power relations were considered valuable to understand the personal information of the learners. background knowledge about international scholarly publication and research article genre along with the encountered difficulties in writing a research article served as the core information in developing the learning materials. to ensure the congruence of the materials with the learners’ expectations, their preferences on the learning sources were also sought. the data obtained from the learners’ responses to the needs analysis stage were transformed into learning materials. indeed, genre knowledge was the learning orientation of the terpp program. it encompassed discursive and non-discursive lessons. the former lessons were represented in the form of formal knowledge such as the generic structure of an international scholarly article, rhetorical organization, lexico-grammar, and the elements of sentence constructions including linking adverbials, sentence voice, verb tense, and basic grammar. the latter lessons were addressed in the delivery of process knowledge when dealing with publication trajectory and plagiarism issue, rhetorical knowledge in corresponding with the journal editors or reviewers, and subject-matter or content knowledge in shaping the state-of-the-art of the articles. in order to achieve the expected learning outcomes and to conform to the principles of corpus-driven genre pedagogy, the sources of materials development varied figure 2 main themes of the findings international journal of education vol. 12 no. 2, feb-2020, pp. 109-121 ©2020 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: 10.17509/ije.v12i2.19429 113 depending on the learning objectives. with respect to the bottom-up and top-down approaches to genre analysis in the modelling and joint construction stages of the genre pedagogy, the learners were encouraged to utilize published ras corpora. some studies preferred to provide textbooks based on empirical results or prescribed workshop slides and syllabi (cai, 2016; cargill et al., 2017; corcoran, 2018; friginal, 2013). only few of the previous studies employed learner corpora as the comparison of the genre conventions with the published ras written by expert writers (cai, 2016; friginal, 2013). from the lens of comparative linguistics, disciplinary corpora were identified in all previous studies. therefore, the materials became more authentic than the prescribed textbooks or workshop slides, which might not be representative enough to clarify the variations of language use and patterns across disciplines. in the knowledge transformation process, i.e. independent construction, the learners were encouraged to utilize the results of the collaborative genre analysis in the joint construction stage in constructing their own paper (or certain intended sections), or revising their own paper or another anonymous corpus written by novice writers (cai, 2016). however, no corpora were utilized in the process of enhancing rhetorical knowledge during the correspondence with the editors or with the reviewers in which workshop slides were preferred. apart from that, personalized corpora based on the learners’ interests (e.g., corpora of hedging usage) served as a distinguished technique. cargill (2006) reported that the learners were allowed to construct their own corpora by using the corpus tools based on their interests or intent in a group. such a learning strategy may lessen the learners’ anxiety and increase their learning autonomy because although the learners are in the same class, the joint construction stage is done based on their rights to gain the expected knowledge from the self-constructed or personalized corpora. however, it must be viewed with caution in the heterogeneous classroom settings. the diversity of language proficiency of the learners might hinder the effectiveness of utilizing personalized corpora if the group’s composition is not equal in the level of english proficiency. rq 2: the learners’ engagement when using the corpus and corpus tools in the process of knowledge telling and knowledge transformation the content review process identified 161 codes, which were then classified into three categories: type of activity, impression on the activity, and influential factors toward the manifestation of engagement in the activity. first, the three categories were elaborated within the context of knowledge telling. second, similar categories were presented within the context of knowledge transformation. there were three types of activities in the process of knowledge-telling in the modeling stage mediated by the corpus-driven genre pedagogy: understanding the lessons about formal knowledge, process knowledge, and rhetorical knowledge. in the joint-construction stage, the learners’ engagement was also evident during the practice of identifying the aspects of the three facets of genre knowledge. it was noted that the learners engaged in understanding discourse level of language, rhetorical organization of each section of the research articles, lexico-grammatical features of the rhetorical moves, and sentence construction or sentence templates involving the understanding of lexical choices and language use. the learners perceived those activities as useful, valuable, and enriching to develop their repertoire of formal knowledge. they further clarified that the teaching materials, especially from the use of various types of corpora and the use of relevant corpus tools, assisted them in analyzing the intended generic, rhetorical, and grammatical features of the research articles. within the format of embedded writing intervention in the research on second language writing course, cahyono and amrina (2016) revealed that the learners found the provided corpus beneficial. in addition to the scaffolding from the lecturer when delivering the lessons, they argued that the representative ras assisted them to recognize the eligible structure of each section from the abstract to the conclusion. video lectures were also considered helpful in gaining more understanding about genre conventions. some of them also argued that the steps in making sense the lessons were detailed. the explicit and guiding instructional steps were exemplified in the friginal’s (2013) study where the learners were engaged with the tutors’ lectures about linking adverbials. the process continued with the guided hands-on concordancing activities to understand the common usage of linking adverbials in the sample texts. with respect to process knowledge, the understanding of the nature of the target journals and the strategy to avoid plagiarism became the most engaged activities. huang (2014) let the learners determine the contents which were potential to be considered as plagiarism in three different types of corpora. each corpus contained different types of plagiarism. therefore, the learners felt surprised knowing that all corpora actually contained plagiarism. regarding the rhetorical knowledge, the learners were concerned with, multidisciplinary variations of language use and argument construction to convince the readers and editors about the novelty of the research. similar impressions to those in understanding the formal knowledge were identified as the results of their engagement with those activities. such a learning process enhanced their motivation and autonomy to examine the three facets of genre knowledge. it is believed that the explicit instruction from data-driven learning and the guided instruction from genre pedagogy played an important role in elevating the learners’ engagement. some applicable activities comprised critical engagement questions from the tutors, extensive consultations, discovery learning through hands-on practices, learners’ conferences after the delivery of the lesson, and warm-up activity before the use of corpus tools in scrutinizing the sample corpora. furthermore, in the process of knowledge transformation, the findings of the previous studies demonstrated a consensus of consistently positive https://doi.org/10.17509/ije.v12i2.19429 lubis corpus-driven genre pedagogy of english for research publication purposes 114 engagement with the activities. there were two types of activities: joint and independent construction of writing the research paper and evaluation activity including paper review and revision. in the first activity, the learners performed collaborative and/or independent genre analysis of another sample corpora including discursive features of ra as an academic genre and problems associated with power relation. interestingly, cargill (2004) encouraged her learners to construct the papers bilingually so that they could apply their obtained knowledge about the differing linguistic systems between their native languages and english language as the medium of international publication. in the second type of activity, the learners practiced independent writing of each section of the research articles. afterward, they engaged in the paper review and revision process by giving corrective feedback. the evidence of learners’ engagement was noticed in their follow-up responses that generally the activities were empowering. their confidence and motivation level arose to deal with prospective paper writing for international publication. the empowering nature of the activities also triggered more curiosity to challenge their old traditions in writing a research article so that the critical awareness of academic writing, albeit not all studies, was simultaneously elevated as what cotos, link and huffman (2017) reported: the annotated corpus affordance of rwt stimulated learners’ immersion in macroand microlevel analysis of disciplinary texts […]. this immersion also helped them understand the important relationship between texts, writers, and audience, thus enhancing the dimensions of genre knowledge they were acquiring through corpus exploration (p.117). such benefits were notably stimulated by the sequence of interrelated activities from critical reading, independent construction, and paper review from peers, tutors, and the participating editors or referees from the journals. during the three stages, one-on-one consultation was highly recommended to cater to the learners’ questions and problems. however, the use of case studies as in wingate’s (2012) study could not mediate the development of learners’ critical awareness. the findings confirmed that the learners only attempted to understand the genre conventions, not to criticize the conventions further. at the end of the process, corrective feedback became the driving means of their revision stage. rq 3: the development of learners’ research writing competencies and soft skills there were 92 codes identified in the findings. as referred to the focused materials of corpus-driven genre pedagogy in terpp, i.e. developing genre knowledge, the codes were classified into two clusters: discursive and non-discursive developments. the former comprises formal knowledge and rhetorical knowledge, and the latter encompasses process knowledge and some soft skills in dealing with writing a research article for international publication. it was noted that the learners performed some developments on the formal knowledge including the manifestation of a better generic structure of the research articles, the more eligible manifestation of rhetorical moves and rhetorical organization of each ra section. in addition to the discourse-level language features, the sentence-level language features were also developed in the forms of proper use of general and move-specific lexico-grammatical features, verb tense, linking adverbials, parallel structure, logical order, and key vocabularies. with respect to the development of rhetorical knowledge, the studies reported that the proper uses of boosters, bridging sentences to indicate research novelty, and agentic subjects to convince the research novelty were mostly traced in the learners’ revised papers (whether from their own papers or sample papers). huang (2014) demonstrated that one of the learners’ revised papers projected those rhetorical features in writing the introduction and discussion sections. most of the learners asserted that corpora and corpus tools helped them understand the eligible format to be published in the target journals. in other words, data-driven learning is perceived as a valuable learning method because the learning sources are taken from authentic and contextual sources such as expert and learner corpora. additionally, genre pedagogy was believed to be the contributing method to succeed in the delivery of ddl. this teaching method allows the combination of discovery learning and guided instruction. some other learners posited that the development of formal and rhetorical knowledge was influenced by continuous support from peers and tutors through the provision of corrective feedback and/or the use of track changes in conducting peer-review process. wingate (2012) found track changes tool in the word program useful in the joint reconstruction stage. one of the learners’ ra introduction sections was voluntarily examined and revised by the other learners. hence, the track changes tool allowed the class to recognize the development of the writing quality as the take-home messages since it displayed both the original and the revised parts simultaneously. process knowledge became one of the nondiscursive developments. it was represented in the forms of increased understanding about the complexity of publication, increased skill in journal selection, and increased repertoire of academic plagiarism, according to the learners’ responses. however, further textual evidence regarding their increased repertoire of academic plagiarism was not identified in the database. therefore, it needs a further call to examine the effectiveness of corpus-driven genre pedagogy in terpp on the learners’ repertoire of plagiarism as viewed from the textual evidence. another type of nondiscursive developments pertains to the learners’ soft skills. they comprise self-confidence, cognitive capacity, autonomy and agency, academic reading sensitivity or awareness, scientific thinking, and reflective thinking. international journal of education vol. 12 no. 2, feb-2020, pp. 109-121 ©2020 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: 10.17509/ije.v12i2.19429 115 similarly, the development of learners’ soft skills was influenced by the implementation of corpus-driven genre pedagogy. corpus exploration using corpora and corpus tools gives them the opportunity to understand commonalities and variations of rhetorical and grammatical features in writing a research article for international publication. the wide array of alternatives to rhetorical and linguistic choices leads them to be more prepared and reflective in editing their own papers. moreover, peer review can maintain the confidence level and academic writing empowerment. hence, the identification of take-home messages as valuable learning inputs can be meaningfully done by the learners. envisioning the elf-referenced critical teaching framework of corpus-driven genre pedagogy of erpp this section aims to delineate the proposal by reflecting from the previous studies. what and whose corpora should be highlighted? the idea of embracing elf as the driving philosophy for materials development of terpp is inextricably associated with the emerging discussions about elfa. from the elfa lens (mauranen, hynninen, & ranta, 2016), academic writing is no longer monolithic in dealing with variations of language use because the acceptability of those variations may vary depending on the contributing factors such as discipline and journal’s characteristics (hyland & jiang, 2017; j. j. lee, bychkovska, & maxwell, 2019). however, the embrace of elf in scholarly writing is not as fluid as in the speaking realm since the inclusion of informal language uses may disadvantage the process of international publication of the nnes writers (hyland & jiang, 2017; jenkins & wingate, 2015). the practice of critical needs analysis and rights analysis needs, therefore, to be revisited. the previous studies tended to conduct needs analysis based on the global requirements and the learners’ problems. even, prescriptive learning materials in the forms of powerpoint slides and grammar books were still found. therefore, it is not surprising then that some learners reported that the course materials did not cater to the expected teaching framework (cargill et al., 2018). the meeting point between critical needs analysis and rights analysis (serafini, lake, & long, 2015 for the complete procedure to conduct rights analysis) is on the reliance of materials development and/or course design on the learners’ exact and actual intents (crookes, 2012; huang, 2014). as a result, the learning environment sparks social justice and equitable education for both the learners and the teachers (benesch, 1999; helmer, 2013). the traditional approach or so-called accommodationist paradigm (basturkmen, 2010; helmer, 2013) results in an unfulfilled or satisfactory outcome as in some of the previous studies because the learning process might require higher-level skills that the learners do not possess; in other words the mismatch between the learners’ strengths and the demands. in response, the tutors or course designers need to encourage the prospective participants to be coresearchers in exploring their actual needs through critical discussions (e.g., cheng, 2011). specifically, the course designers have to consider a number of contributing factors that influence the actual intents of the participating learners including their personal attributes (e.g., proficiency level, writing quality, and major or discipline), the research topics, the research designs, the genre conventions (chan, 2018; kuteeva & mauranen, 2014), motivation and attitudes toward the language lessons of scholarly publication (see also sung, 2013), and previous experiences in international publications gea-valor, rey-rocha, and moreno (2014). the results of the critical needs analysis or rights analysis can be used for developing the course materials driven by elf. indeed, previous studies have demonstrated the importance of elevating the learners’ repertoire of the four facets of genre knowledge. however, the debate on to what extent the inclusion of elf can be realized in the milieu of teaching scholarly writing is still evident. the grammatical and phraseological variations between nes and nnes research articles (e.g., l. flowerdew, 2016; römer, 2009) can be embraced as long as it conforms to the very basic rules of academic writing; that is formality and clarity (hyland & jiang, 2017; j. j. lee et al., 2019 for some of the informal elf variations). another crucial focus lies on the elements of rhetorical organization and self-voice because they vary across disciplines and even journals. therefore, the materials about general lexicogrammatical features are not crucial enough to be highlighted, but rather the move-specific lexicogrammatical features. the tutors can train the students to identify the typical and non-typical lexico-grammatical features to convey the rhetorical moves of a particular section of the analyzed research articles. for example, the students are trained to be aware of what lexicogrammatical features constitute the introduction, purpose, method, results, and conclusion moves of a research article abstract. instead of exploring the usage of verbal verbs followed by that-clause in general, the students are given the opportunity to examine whether the pattern is one of the typical lexico-grammatical features to convey the results move in an abstract (e.g., the students reported that) along with the other possible alternatives. last but not least is the urge to explore about the conceptualization of errors, standards, norms, and nativeness in general (serafini et al., 2015) and in the written academic discourses such as in the journals’ author guidelines (mckinley & rose, 2018). therefore, the evidence of kinds of elf manifested in the articles of the target journals becomes pivotal to be understood. as a result of emphasizing elf-referenced teaching materials, the types of corpora and the sources of corpora are worth-revisiting. the findings underscore a distinguished limitation in which the corpora have not been able to reach the heterogeneous group of learners across disciplines (charles, 2007). native speakers’ writing from reputable journals still becomes the prime choice of corpora in the modeling stage of the genre pedagogy (cargill et al., 2018; cargill & o’connor, 2006; corcoran, 2018). this tradition only limits the writers to widen their perspectives about the practices of scholarly https://doi.org/10.17509/ije.v12i2.19429 lubis corpus-driven genre pedagogy of english for research publication purposes 116 writing in international journals considering the growing interest in dealing with elfa. reflecting on the previous studies, this paper suggests the redefinition of criteria for constructing the specialized corpora as the learning resources. the traditional approach to the construction of specialized corpora merely considers discipline as the prime criterion of texts selection (burgess & cargill, 2013; cargill et al., 2018; cargill & o’connor, 2006). more variables need to be included such as types of a research article (i.e. original or non-original research), research topic, research design, target audience, and characteristics of the journal (e.g., indexing and abstracting and/or quartile) as what kuteeva (2014) also suggests. on the other hand, boulton (2011) and gilquin (2007) posit that the attempt to embrace perfectionism in corpus construction should be diminished. personalized corpora or localized corpora (j. flowerdew, 2013; krishnamurthy & kosem, 2007) then can be the alternative way of facilitating corpus investigation (cargill, 2019; d. lee & swales, 2006). it is based on the will or interest of the learners to focus on analyzing certain elements of the corpora. the application of making personalized corpora needs to be suited with the terpp program considering the issues of size, variety, availability, reliability, and flexibility (boulton & atilf, 2011). another worth-noting domain of corpus construction process is whose corpora should be compiled and highlighted. the findings demonstrated that most of the corpora were from expert writers, novice writers, and learners and the writers were ness and/or nness. even, the case of using prescriptive textbooks, e.g. azar and hagan for the exploration of the english grammar of the corpora is identified in corcoran’s (2018) study. therefore, this paper suggests two main criteria of corpus selection regarding the attributes of the writers: english proficiency level and level of education. the corpora should not only cover the ra conventions from diverse countries such as europe, asia, and western countries (galloway & rose, 2017), but also from novice and/or learner as well as expert writers (hynninen & kuteeva, 2017). additionally, the level of education in compiling learner corpora depends on the diversity of the participants’ levels of education. for example, the learner corpora cover the works written by undergraduate, master, and/or doctoral students. reframing the implementation process of terpp from the perspectives of critical pedagogy and critical academic literacy the elf-referenced learning materials of erpp may not be effectively contributing to the learners’ publication success without a proper teaching framework. corpusdriven genre pedagogy must, therefore, be empowered by the perspectives of critical pedagogy and critical academic literacies in accordance with the current notion of learning academic writing as a situated, goal-oriented, contested(able), and networked social practice (lillis & tuck, 2016). figure 3 the entire teaching process of critical corpus-driven genre pedagogy of erpp international journal of education vol. 12 no. 2, feb-2020, pp. 109-121 ©2020 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: 10.17509/ije.v12i2.19429 117 critical pedagogy contests the positivist paradigms of accepting knowledge based on objectivity and empirical verification by criticizing the different views toward the accepted knowledge to make meaning (gustine, 2018; kumaravadivelu, 2003; pennycook, 1990). hence, the goal of critical pedagogy to erpp or critical pragmatic approach to erpp (corcoran & englander, 2016) corroborates the goal of critical academic literacies pinpointing the encouragement for the writers to challenge or argue the prescriptive norms, traditions, conventions, power relations, and assumptions in academic writing, in this sense research article writing, (wingate, 2012) from its personal, social, cultural, and political dimensions so that the self-awareness of the writers to bring about positive change can be empowered; in other words social justice (crookes, 2012). this paper, therefore, proposes the teaching framework of corpus-driven genre pedagogy empowered by the perspectives of critical pedagogy and critical academic literacies oriented to the development of selfawareness of the writers to be successful in their international publications. fig. 3 exhibits the complete cyclical framework. the framework can be applied for teaching the individual section or the whole parts of the research article. in doing so, some principles are formulated as the bases for implementing the teaching framework. 1. the learning process should be oriented to the inculcation of self-determined learning; in other words heutagogy (tabuenca, kalz, drachsler, & specht, 2015) as the form of education 4.0 by activating classroom discussion and sharing about their experiences in publishing articles in journals. 2. sharing, recounting, and comparing successful stories and vice versa of the learners and the tutors can be done in the building knowledge of field (bkof) stage to establish the learning context and to enhance the learners’ self-confidence in dealing with international publication (see li et al., 2018). 3. considering the growing interest of elfa and the goal of critical pedagogy and critical academic literacies for terpp, the inclusion of ness as the tutors should be re-examined to avoid “unfairly privileges ness over nness as text mediators” or literacy brokers (n. luo & hyland, 2016). 4. the good command of critical pedagogy and critical literacy including the awareness of learners’ diverse backgrounds and varieties of language use (sparking tolerance), and the agency to empower the learners to be the agent of change is crucial to possess by the tutors (see gevers, 2018; gustine, 2018) 5. revisiting the mixture of l1 and l2 uses based on the learning objectives is worth-taking. for example, the l1 use might be more beneficial than l2 use when the tutors aim to deliver explanation and clarification of certain complex points of the learning materials or of the given corrective feedback. 6. critical reading should become the introductory activity through the deconstruction of the given sample corpora to shape the learners’ repertoire of genre knowledge through providing space for expressing own voices and contesting the dominant voices regarding the analyzed corpora; not to shape the learners’ critical awareness first in the modelling (mod) stage. 7. the learning process should activate the learners’ critical thinking in exploring their identities and ideologies of academic writing as compared to those of the target discourse communities as well as their positions in the discourse communities (ingvarsdóttir & arnbjörnsdóttir, 2018) after critical reading process. hence, they can recognize their learning goals and manage the strategies to be successful to achieve the goals as the manifestation of their critical awareness. 8. the learners must have the experiences of controlled corpus investigation in the modelling stage to obtain the target knowledge and selfdirected corpus investigation in the joint construction (jcot) and independent construction (icot) stage to allow as many critics as possible for their own papers to make meaning; in other words, arguing to learn. critical corrective feedback at the forefront apart from those principles, the types of tasks in the independent construction stage are important to take into account. the findings reveal the decrease in learners’ confidence level due to limited time to comprehend the materials (cargill et al., 2017; corcoran & englander, 2016). this might be caused by the diverse proficiency level of the learners in understanding the lessons. peer empowerment through critical peer review to promote critical corrective feedback is worth-taking. this paper suggests the combination of explicit, critical, and continuous feedback (cotos et al., 2017) during the peer review process. the highlighted feedback should be able to testify the critical thinking of the participants so that they can recognize not only their improvements and weaknesses on the linguistic aspects after the writing intervention program, but also their understanding of the socio, cultural, and political complexity of rhetorical aspects of scholarly writing in international journals. prior to the implementation of peer review, the reviewer candidates should be trained by the tutors to conduct the review process. the peer-review process might be best done by senior writers to junior ones (li, 2019) in which the decision to determine the senior or junior writers is based on the repertoire of genre knowledge of scholarly writing in international journals. regarding the medium of feedback delivery, 1-on-1 consultation (li, 2019) seems promising because it promotes critical dialogues between the tutors and the learners or the senior writers and the junior ones. consequently, the language medium of communication should involve a mixture of l1 and l2 use (yu & lee, 2014). the l2 is used to inform the written feedback delivered by using track changes or equivalent tools and the l1 is used to clarify the feedback orally and mediate the process of critical dialogues. although the learners are proficient enough to perform english speaking, l1 https://doi.org/10.17509/ije.v12i2.19429 lubis corpus-driven genre pedagogy of english for research publication purposes 118 use allows more open and critical argumentation because they do not worry about language usage; only the contents they intend to criticize. conclusion this paper has reported the qualitative milestone of the implementation of corpus-driven genre pedagogy of english for research publication purposes. the findings demonstrate that the complexity of the teaching process is evident. on the one side, the repertoire of the learners’ genre knowledge is elevated by the assistance of the explicit, contextual, and authentic instructions through data-driven learning and the discovery learning or guided instructions through genre pedagogy. such a learning atmosphere can bring about empowerment for the learners to enhance some soft skills to be successful in their international publication process as well. on the other hand, deterioration of self-efficacy and loss of autonomy to empower themselves after the writing intervention program are still identified. the over-reliance on the technical exploration of genre conventions might lead to the decrease of autonomous critical awareness in examining the socio, cultural, and political dimensions of the genre conventions. this study might serve as a checkpoint for the literacy brokers of english for research publication purposes. this study, therefore, suggests future calls to examine the influence of the proposed teaching framework on the learners’ critical engagement toward critical awareness and agency of research article writing for international publications. additionally, more elfadriven genre analyses on multi-disciplinary scholarly articles need to be initiated to generate a clearer picture of the now-and-then practice of scholarly writing. the results can be utilized as the bases for making the best use of the proposed teaching framework. references basturkmen, h. 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(2014). an analysis of chinese efl students’ use of first and second language in peer feedback of l2 writing. system, 47, 28–38. doi:10.1016/j.system.2014.08.007 https://doi.org/10.17509/ije.v12i2.19429 database connection failed! international journal of education vol. 12, no. 1, august 2019, pp. 26-33 ©2019 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: 10.17509/ije.v12i1.17509 26 an investigation into communicative english language needs and perceptions of english for specific purposes course: the case of holy trinity theological college amare tesfie birhan bahir dar institute of technology, bahir dar university, ethiopia amaretesfie@gmail.com first draft received: 29 may 2019 date accepted: 9 jul 2019 final proof received: 27 aug 2019 abstract this research aimed to investigate the communicative english language needs of holy trinity theological college students. to this end, mixed methods approach was undertaken using questionnaires, interviews and course book (module) analysis. the participants of the study were students, employees, english course instructors, content area instructors. the samples were chosen through availability and purposive sampling. descriptive statistics and thematic analysis were employed to analyse the data. the findings indicate that students used english language to read and understand professional courses, to communicate freely with english speakers, to prepare religious journals, to present papers in seminaries, to translate books, and to preach the bible abroad. the respondents preferred courses that contain both professional and academic linguistic items and discourses to use the language in their professional and academic contexts. furthermore, the text evaluation indicated that the materials were designed without considering theology students’ professional language needs and expectations. finally, it is recommended that syllabus designers and material writers should consider the communicative english language needs of theology students identified in the study. keywords: english for specific purposes; holy trinity theology college; need analysis; perception to cite this paper (in apa style): birhan, a. t. (2019). an investigation into communicative english language needs and perceptions of english for specific purposes course: the case of holy trinity theological college. international journal of education, 12(1),26-33. doi: 10.17509/ije.v12i1.17509 introduction english is a widely spoken language in the world, and it is the only lingua franca language (jha, 2013; zikmundova, 2016) which is spoken by millions of people as first, second, and foreign language levels. as a result of greater needs of the language use in different contexts, english for specific purposes came into existence in the 1960s (paltridge & starfield, 2013; richards, 2001). since then, the application and usage of english for specific purposes has been the focus of various researchers (hutchinson & waters, 1987). this increasing focus is mainly due to the growing needs to use the language internationally in commerce, engineering, medicine, law, culture, tourism and religious activities, fields or situations, (crystal, 2003; richards, 2008). besides, learners are also seeking language skill or competency in the target language in specific domains to use it for communication. as paltridge and starfield (2013) mentioned, learners need to develop specific english language skills to use it in a particular domain. hence, english for specific purposes (esp) focuses on developing the communication skill of learners in specific disciplines. the courses are designed with learner-centred approaches in order to achieve the designed objectives. therefore, to determine the communicative language needs of various disciplines, language experts and researchers applied needs analysis as a tool. according to dudleyevans and st. john (1998), needs analysis is the backbone of esp; it asks questions about students’ needs, wants, expectations and features of the actual teaching which they use in their profession. in this regard, brown (1995) defines needs analysis as “ the collection and analysis of all subjective and objective information necessary to define and validate defensible curriculum purposes that satisfy the language learning birhan an investigation into communicative english language needs and perceptions of english for specific purposes course 27 requirements of students within the context of particular institutions that influence the learning and teaching situations. (p. 36) designing a course that meets the specific needs of learners helps to enhance learners’ conceptions, motivation, and engagement to learn a language, and will later help learners to function effectively and efficiently in their professional life. to design english for specific purposes courses, various procedures should be considered. the first procedure is needs analysis; it is an umbrella concept which encompasses subjective, objective, target and present situation analysis. the objective needs analysis includes analysing learners’ level of language proficiency, their perceived language difficulties and their demand of language in the real communicative context (nunan, 1988; brindley, 1989). whereas, the subjective needs analysis includes the affective needs, expectations, preferred learning styles, previous learning experiences, self-esteem and reasons for attending the course (nunan, 1988; mehrdad, 2011; brindley, 1989). similarly, it is also important to consider the target situation and the present situation needs of the learners. the present situation analysis refers to analysing learners’ current language skills and language use; this should be done at the beginning of the course. this analysis helps to understand what learners already know and to suggest what they should learn. likewise, the target situation needs analysis refers to getting information about the reason why students need to learn the language (robinson, 1991; nunan, 1988; dudley evans & st. john, 1998). therefore, it is important to include all these four issues while analysing the language needs of the learners. furthermore, the material that is designed to be implemented in esp courses should be assessed based on whether or not it addresses the communicative needs of the learners. if the material does not address the communicative needs of the learners, linguistic items, skills or any other missed issues can be incorporated, and these could be achieved with clear and objective assessment criteria. in ethiopia, teaching english has a long history, and it has become an instructional language in primary to higher education. moreover, it is used by media, entertainment, and governmental and nongovernmental agencies as a second official language. consequently, the ministry of education directs all students who enrol in college and university to take courses such as communicative english, basic writing skills, technical report writing skills, and english for lawyers (only by law students) for the purpose of improving learners’ communicative skills in using the language in their profession. holy trinity theological college is one of the university colleges in the ethiopia orthodox church which accepts students and teaches religious and secular courses, and students who enrol in the college take mainly college english i and ii and sophomore english with the purposes of using english for communication purposes. however, these courses do not include many linguistic items, expressions and genres which appear in students’ profession. it was assumed that learning those courses was not enough to understand and practice the many literary terms and expressions that appear in students’ profession and academic context in particular and in the church services in general. early studies on esp such as those by abraham (1993), mekasha (1994), habtamu (2008), and tufaro (2009), in ethiopia as well as by international researchers (chovancova, 2014; moslehifar & ibrahim, 2012; nakamura, 2014; zafarghandi, sabet, & delijani, 2017) explored the necessities of teaching english for specific purposes courses to satisfy the communicative needs of the learners. however, to the researcher’s best knowledge there has been no research specifically addressing the communicative english language needs of holy trinity theology college occupational and professional english language communicative needs. therefore, this research was conducted in the light of research works which focused on communicative english language needs of those college students. this research hypothesised that holy trinity theology students learn english language by taking courses which do not satisfy their occupational communicative language needs, and various authentic and specialized linguistic items do not appear in the courses which they take. hence, the general objective of this research was to explore the communicative english language needs of holy trinity theology university college students and their preference language courses. it also endeavoured to explore learners’, instructors’, and employees’ perceptions towards esp courses. based on the above general objectives, the following research questions were formulated. 1. what are the communicative language needs of the students in a theological college in ethiopia? 2. how do students and instructors in the theological college perceive english for professional purposes? 3. to what extent do the courses being offered address theology students’ communicative language needs? method research design the researcher gathered the qualitative and quantitative data simultaneously or sequentially in order to answer the proposed research questions. hence, the research was designed through an embedded mixed methods design. particularly, the qualitative data were gathered by interview and course book (module) analysis and the quantitative data were gathered through questionnaire. international journal of education vol. 12, no. 1, august 2019, pp. 26-33 ©2019 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: 10.17509/ije.v12i1.17509 28 participants and sampling procedures the research aimed to explore communicative english language needs of students and their perceptions for specific purposes course. hence, the research was conducted at holy trinity university college of the ethiopian orthodox church in addis ababa, ethiopia. in accordance of the nature of the research, students, employees, english courses instructors, and content area (theology) courses instructors who were teaching courses through english language participated in the study. moreover, three teaching materials were also analysed. to choose the sample, purposive and availability sampling procedures were used. specifically, two english language instructors and two content area instructors were selected through purposive sampling technique, and 10 employees and 80 students were selected through availability sampling procedures. out of the 70 theology students who filled in and returned the questionnaire, 48 of them were between 20 and 30 years old. 17 students were between 31 and 40 years old, 3 respondents were between 41 and 50 years old, and the other 2 respondents were over 51 years old. they also had different educational levels. 48.6% of the respondents finished grade 10, 25.7% of respondents completed grade 12, 20% of respondents graduated with a diploma and the other 5.7% of respondents had a degree. in addition, 10 employees and 2 content area instructors participated in the study. procedures and instruments to gather the data, the researcher followed two procedures: determining the samples and gathering data. though, it was difficult to get actual number of students who enrolled in the college in different programs, the researcher decided to take 80 students through availability sampling. in the study, first year students were excluded because they took only one course while the data were gathered. it may be difficult for them to give comments on the courses they did not take. accordingly, after the samples were selected, training was given to the students who participated in data gathering. then, the questionnaire items were translated into the official language of ethiopia, amharic, and administered to the samples. 98% of the respondents properly filled in and returned the questionnaire. in addition, semistructured interview was conducted with the instructors parallel with the questionnaire data. to ensure its validity, the researchers adopted questionnaire items from previous researchers (abraham, 1993; hailemariam, 1993; abebe, 1997; habtamu, 2008; aman, 2011; hutchinson & waters, 1987). secondly, the items were commented and revised by students who pursue a phd program in english language and literature. questionnaires, as the main instrument prepared for both students and employees, were designed using likert scales of 5-1(5, always 4, usually, 3, sometimes, 2 rarely and 1, never) and 1-3 most preferred, second preferred, and least preferred, respectively. the major themes of the questionnaires were when they use english language in their occupation, how much it satisfies their communication needs, how frequent they use english for professional communication, and what kind of courses they prefer. the other instrument was a semi-structured interview. this was used in order to assess the general attitudes and practices of the instructors on students’ language ability and english courses. semistructured interview items were prepared for both english instructors and theology or content area instructors with the aim of supplementary data asked in student and employee questionnaires. it covered students’ need, expected objectives of learning the language, and an evaluation of whether or not the courses were related to students professional study. the items were adapted from hutchinson and waters (1987). lastly, the researcher conducted a textual analysis. this tool was used to triangulate the data which were gathered through questionnaires and interviews. the analysis was administered to check whether or not the course being offered to theology students would satisfy the academic and professional communicative language needs of theology students. the researcher evaluated college english i and ii, and sophomore english course books. the researcher prepared checklists adapted from hutchison and waters, (1987), cunningsworth (1984). among the items in the checklist, some of them are: whether or not the material carefully considers the learners’ needs, meets the objectives, is appropriate to the learners’ needs, includes specialist linguistics items that are related to the subject area; and whether or not the learners are equipped with skills and strategies that will allow them to operate effectively in english in professional situation, there is a balance between subject specific language items and operational skills and strategies in language use, and the extent to which the learning activities mirror real life situations. finally, the collected data were tallied and analysed quantitatively and qualitatively. the quantitative data were computed using spss to obtain the mean, frequency, and percentage of each item. birhan an investigation into communicative english language needs and perceptions of english for specific purposes course 29 these quantitative data were put in tables and descriptive analysis. on the other hand, the qualitative data from students’ questionnaire, the instructors’ interview, and text book analysis were analysed qualitatively. results and discussion to compute learners’ and employees’ communicative language needs and the extent of their language use in their occupation, descriptive statistics was run. accordingly, both employees’ and students’ responses are summarized in table 1. both employees and students were asked to rate the extent to which they used english for communicative purpose in their profession. table 1 students communicative needs in their profession situations always usually sometimes rarely never f p f p f p f p f p in preaching em 1 10 9 90 st 1 1.4 7 10 62 88.6 in counselling em 4 40 4 40 2 20 st 1 1.4 3 4.3 3 4.3 5 7.1 58 82.9 in reading religious books em 4 40 4 40 1 10 1 10 st 18 25.7 37 52.9 9 12.9 3 4.3 3 4.3 in mass em 10 100 st 2 2.9 4 5.9 64 91.4 in presenting papers and work shop em 6 60 2 20 1 10 1 10 st 8 11.4 29 41.4 21 30 2 2.9 10 14.3 notes: f= frequency st= students p= percent em= employee as indicated in the table 1, 90% and 88.6% of employees and students, respectively, reported that they did not use english language for preaching purposes. similarly, 40% of employees and 58% of students stated that the english courses that they took never prepared them for counselling purposes. in ethiopian orthodox church, priests and preachers have great responsibility to give moral, religious and psychological counselling services. however, the courses they took pose a challenge to give international counselling service. in order to read international and national religious books, both students (52.9% usually, 25% always) and employees (40 % always, 40% usually) stated that they frequently used the language. likewise, 60% of employees and 41.4 % of students stated that they used the language to give presentation in the workshop. on the contrary, 100% and 91.4% of employees and students, respectively, stated that the courses they took did not equip them to use the language to give mass service. hence, they perceived it difficult to use the language during church mass. in addition to the above data, both content area and english language instructors stated that english language is very important for theologians though tasks, activities and exercises, were different from theological or professional languages. they mentioned all languages skills are very important for theology students. specifically, students used speaking, writing and reading skills in regular frequency. the instructors agreed the skills are very important to preach, read and understand the bible and ministry, and to give religious presentations. moreover, they stated that professional language was very essential to understand different academic and for theological materials, to prepare for a theological conference, theological literature, to write a lot of religious argumentative text, preach the bible abroad and to listen and understand international religious ceremonies. employees and students’ perceptions towards esp course students were also asked to indicate preferences for topic areas of english for which their studies should be focused. as shown in table 2, a majority (80%) of students indicated that their first preference was a balance between topics from general and professional english. they perceived a balance between general and professional english very important for them in order to use in their academic and occupational situations. they also ranked professional english second and general english third as preferred topics of interest. international journal of education vol. 12, no. 1, august 2019, pp. 26-33 ©2019 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: 10.17509/ije.v12i1.17509 30 table 2 students’ perceptions of esp course notes: f= frequency p= percentage st= students the above data indicated both students’ and instructors’ language needs were to have english language competency that enabled them to be competent language users in their professional and academic communicative situations. during the interview, content area and english language instructors recommended that the contents of the english courses should be related to theology courses; they added that the courses must include some theological terms and expressions to fit with major courses. they perceived that all language skills should be emphasized to fit with theological terms and expressions and enable them to use in their occupation; the students would write professional journals, theological books, prepare for theological conferences and preach the bible abroad. therefore, they stated that the courses must be designed to enhance students’ language problems and enable them use the language skills for different professional activities. learners communicative needs vs the module in the college, the students took college english i and ii and sophomore english courses. thus, an attempt was made to examine those course books. the course books were evaluated by using the checklists which were developed by cunningsworth (1984) and hutchinson and waters (1987). these checklists were employed to examine whether or not the materials adequately satisfy the english language needs of theology students. the first item was whether or not the courses carefully analysed students’ needs. the course helps students improve writing paragraphs, letters, essays, cvs and reading skills which they used in their academic contexts. moreover, the contents of the courses included both receptive and productive skills in addition to grammar and vocabulary. in each language skill, different items were explained. likewise, the contents of sophomore english were good for students’ academic communicative language need. they slightly help what students want to work with writing. however, the researcher found that both college english and sophomore english contents did not include theological terms and expressions, and there were no core specialist genres related to theology. the courses were designed without analysing theology students professional communicative language needs. the other item assessed was the teaching material objectives and distribution of language skills. both college english course books have seven different units and each unit has its own objectives. the course books include listening, speaking, writing, reading, grammar and vocabulary. those language skills are important in students’ academic studies, and they were designed to help students explore many concepts independently, to think, explore and share their views freely and manage academic demands effectively. on the other hand, sophomore english was designed to enable them to compose comprehensive sentences and paragraph, and to edit written texts. but the mentioned objectives were general objectives. those objectives did not include all objectives that theology students wanted to achieve at the end of the english courses in their profession. furthermore, the flexibility of the material was assessed, and it was found that the courses were not fully and sufficiently flexible. some units were difficult if students missed the class. for example, sophomore english module was organized as word, phrase, sentences, paragraph, and essay. if students did not understand the first section of the course, they would not understand the other section. in relation to allowing modular structure, there are two approaches. some units of the courses allow modular structure, and other units do not. in addition, students who did not learn section one of the units could not easily learn and understand the other sections and units of the courses. generally, the materials were designed through a mix of sequential and non-sequential ways. in addition, the material did not have clear and essential explanations, examples, tasks, pictures and other illustrations which are appropriate for individual study. as a result, it seemed difficult for individual independent learning; they require teachers’ follow-up, explanations and guidance. the last point was the learning activities had outcomes or products that would help learners to evaluate their performance. the researcher found that in the beginning of the units the general objectives of the materials were specified. in addition, within each unit there were various tasks and exercise which could be used as self-assessment mechanism. those tasks and exercises helped them to evaluate their performances. accordingly, the textbooks do not seem most preferred second preferred least preferred f p f p f p general english st 18 25.7 12 17.1 40 57.1 professional english st 23 32.9 45 64.3 2 2.9 balance between general english and professional english. st 65 92.9 4 5.7 1 1.4 birhan an investigation into communicative english language needs and perceptions of english for specific purposes course 31 to respond to the professional communicative needs of theology students, and they did not employ languages and expressions linked a particular profession or discipline. though researchers such as richards (2001) argue that students are studying english in order to carry out a particular role in their occupation, the material does not sufficient to satisfy their communicative needs. the courses were designed to promote students’ language knowledge in various aspects. these may help students in some aspects, but they did not satisfy many of the elements an esp material should treat. furthermore, those courses could not prepare them for their occupation and make them familiar with professional linguistic expressions, lexes and genres. the esp materials help to use language effectively for their purpose, and the courses must base their considerations on what students want to learn (cunningsworth, 1984). this argument is resonated in the bible, such as in psalm 150, that says: praise god in his sanctuary praise him with the sound of trumpet praise him with psaltery praise him with tumbrel with stringed instrument and organs praise him upon the loud cymbals praise him up on the high sounding cymbal the instructors also recommended courses which were given to them were not enough to use the language in different church activities except the students had other experiences and words and expressions specifically which appear in mass and preaching are not familiar words, and it is not easy to use those words and expressions in english. they added that if the courses were revised and included theological linguistic items and expressions, students would become more interested than at the present time. generally, the courses were not deemed to appropriately prepare students to participate in different occupational situations. thus, the material must be revised and related to theology students’ needs. vocabulary, reading, writing and grammatical contents of the modules (course books) must fit with theological language, and the reading texts should be taken from religious texts, and every other aspect of the language must fit theology. discussion having good communication skills is one of the fundamental aspects in language learning (moslehifar & ibrahim, 2012; chatsungnoen, 2015). thus, to achieve good communication with the target language, students need to learn courses which satisfy their needs and communication gaps. accordingly, this research has great implication for learners, instructors, curriculum designers and language policy makers. the research indicated theology students preferred to learn courses which they need to use in both general and specific purposes. the students need to use the language for their professions. these findings were in correspondence with those of chovancova (2014), moslehifar and ibrahim (2012), nakamura (2014), and zafarghandi, sabet and delijani (2017). who mentioned that learners need to learn english language contents and skills that can satisfy their communicative needs. the present research also revealed that students’ communicative needs and courses were unrelated. students rarely used the language for their occupation purposes because of inadequacy of the teaching material to corpuses which can be utilized in their communication. this finding entails that instructors who teach at holy trinity university college need to consider the communicative needs of their students, and they may have to incorporate authentic linguistics items and corpuses while they teach the courses. they may also have to identify the students’ communication gaps and diagnose students’ language competency. chovancova (2014) recommended: the aim of esp course is to provide targeted language instruction that addresses the students’ real communicative needs in students’ professional situations. the teachers have responsibilities to support students to become functional members of their professional communities by achieving their linguistics needs. (p. 56) moreover, the research implies that syllabus designers may have to design courses which are appropriate to theology students’ language needs. it was also found that most students came from the ethiopian orthodox church school/abenet temhertbet, and they did not use the english language. only 10% of students could have conversation at academic level with the instructors and 20% of students were unable to answer basic conversation questions, understand easy texts, and write correct sentences. the students who do not have good language competency may not be interested to engage in language classes and activities. besides, the learners varied in their educational level and age, and these differences may affect their communicative language needs. students’ second language acquisition and proficiency are intervened by age, aptitude, intelligence, attitude and motivation (de bot, lowie & verspoor, 2005). as a result, offering the same course for these various groups of students will seem difficult, and the varying communicative needs of the students will not be met. some students may need a course for basic communication purposes, while the others need a course to help them use english for a variety of professional situations. conclusions this study was conducted to explore the communicative needs of english language at holy trinity theological college. it was found that though students needed to learn courses related to their profession, the course materials which were used in the college did not have professional and academic genres (professional language and expressions) to international journal of education vol. 12, no. 1, august 2019, pp. 26-33 ©2019 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: 10.17509/ije.v12i1.17509 32 help them use the language in different professional settings or situations. as a result, a majority of students faced difficulty to learn english. understanding the role and practice of english language in the workplace is one of the concerns of esp (marra, 2013). hence, the teacher should analyse the needs of the learners and design a course or courses that can help prepare them for their future career. it has to be understood that the learners need good communicative competency to perform professional tasks. likewise, the material should include rhetorical genres, linguistic items, expressions, collocations that are related and commonly used in theology. basturkmen (2010) stated that the esp course design includes specific language skills that the students will need. therefore, it is important to consider the communicative english language needs of the learners. in addition, the instructors should always assess the difficulties of their students and provide assistance and work on students’ weakness. in order to minimize students’ language competency difference, additional and varying activity seems important. thus, the college has to design additional courses which help to enhance students’ communicative skills. in this study, certain limitations were observed. the study involved only one college, and it did not seek to determine the effect of the courses on learners’ communicative skills. hence, it would be interesting and useful if future research includes other theology colleges. future research may also use experimental design to examine the effects of esp courses on learners’ communicative skills. references abebe, m. 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(2015). needs analysis for an english for specific purposes (esp) course for thai undergraduates in a food science and technology programme (unpublished phd thesis). massey university, palmerston north. chovancova’, b. (2014). needs analysis and esp course design: self-perception of language needs among pre-service students. studies in logic, grammar and rhetoric, 38(51), 43-57. crystal, d. (2003). english as a global language. cambridge: cambridge university press. cunningsworth, a. (1984). evaluating and selecting efl teaching materials. london: heinemann education. de bot, k., lowie, w., & verspoor, m. (2005). second language acquisition: an advanced resource book. new york: routledge. dudley-evans, t., & st. john, j. (1998). development in english for specific purpose. a multidisciplinary approach. cambridge: cambridge university press. jha, s. k. (2013). english in eastern ethiopia is learnt: not mastered. english language teaching, 6(4), 42-55. habtamu, d. 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(2009). english language needs assessment of shashamanne health science college students: 10+3 in focus. (unpublished ma thesis). addis ababa university, ethiopia. zafarghandi, a. m., sabet, m.k., & delijani, y. k. (2017). an investigation into the effectiveness of an esp course: a case study of graduate students of psychology. journal of applied linguistics and language research, 4(2), 57-80. zikmundova e. (2016). english as lingua franca: theory and practical implications. (unpublished thesis). university of west bohemia is a university in pilsen, czech republic. nur farhanah k., et all., relationship between self-directed learning, motivation to learn toward learning organization 23 relationship between self-directed learning, motivation to learn toward learning organization among lecturers at a selected public university in malaysia nur farhanah kamarruddin, norhasni zainal abiddin, khairuddin idris department of professional development and continuing education faculty of education studies universiti putra malaysia abstracts the purpose of this research is to examine the relationship between self-directed learning, motivation to learn, and learning organization at one public university in malaysia. ninety two academic staff were selected through stratified random sampling by post of professor, associate professor, senior lecturer and lecturer. three research objectives frame the research: (1) to determine the level of learning organization, self-directed learning, and motivation to learn among lecturers, (2) to determine the relationship between self-directed learning, motivation to learn and learning organization among lecturers and (3) to determine the contribution of selfdirected learning and motivation to learn on learning organization among lecturers. descriptive analysis was used to determine the level of self-directed learning, motivation to learn and learning organization. pearson product moment correlation’s test was used to determine the relationship between self-directed learning, motivation to learn and learning organization. regression analysis was used to determine the contribution of elements of self-directed learning and motivation to learn on organizational learning. based on the findings of the study, recommendations and policy implications are discussed and directions for future research are provided. key words: higher education, learning organization, learning organization culture, motivation to learn, self-directed learning. self-directed learning ability (conferrore, 2010).organization competes to become a more flexible organization to realize some modifications of their day-by-day learning (malik & ghafoor, 2011). the changes made and carried a big impact on the organizations, especially in creating a learning organization culture. self-directed learning or individual learning is the foundation of a learning organization. adult participation in selfdirected learning in their organization is increasing from day to day (tough, 1979). long and morris (1995) state that 90 % of adults carry at least one self-directed learning activity in their organizations each year, while introduction the rapid expansion of knowledgebased economy has driven individuals to promote and improve their cognition in order to remain competitive. hence, organizations increasingly are urged to become learning organizations (singh, 2010). learning organization provides a way by which faculty act together with other colleagues to raise the knowledge and skills of all members of the governing bodies, especially in times of rapid change happening in the workplace environment (conferrore, 2010). the learning organization will consider the efficiency of all individuals involved in the organization and can implement and enhance their international journal of education, vol. 8 no. 1 december 2014 24 70 % of the knowledge and skill they practice in organizational learning culture derived from self-directed learning activities (long & morris, 1995). typically, an adult employee in the learning organization must engage in five independent learning activities on average and take approximately 100 hours for each project (hiemstra, 2008). an organization requires high motivation (bui and baruch, 2011). motivation factors describe why people should do the same work. in addition, motivation is closely related to individuals (miller, 2010). motivations will increase the performance of each individual in the organization. support service within the institution of higher education can achieve success with the assistance from qualified workers and most importantly satisfied employees are motivated in doing the work (malik & danish, 2010). the motivation to learn has a positive relationship toward the performance of workplace learning (colquitt, lepine & neo, 2000). employees who enjoy learning in the workplace will be more motivated. the probability to achieve performance is very high. a study done on the service organizations showed that employee motivation is a key factor of the success in service organization (goldstein, 2001). employees who are motivated and have high capacity are important for an organization to achieve excellent quality service (goldstein, 2001). the creation of a learning organization of institutions of higher education requires not only the workers who have a high level of education, but also those who can engage in independent learning and have motivation to learn. motivation for learning itself is the accumulation of desire, passion and behavior to reach a target (hodson, 2001). the motivation to learn is also a motivation and combined with encouragement and guidance that will lead to success in the organization (morris, 1970). in addition, selfdirected learning or individual learning is also important to establish and maintain a process of learning in the workplace. therefore, these factors are important information to a learning organization in institutions of higher education. over the last few years, many researchers have dealt with the issues of learning organizational practices in an organization (singh, 2010). various factors have been reviewed from time to time. however, the literature review indicated that some gaps of the learning organization should be emphasized. research on learning organization in the education sector is still a few (white & weathersby, 2005; bui & baruch, 2011; ali, 2012). a few studies of organizational learning have been conducted, such as among nurses (tsai, 2014), managers, supervisors and employees in the private organization (weldy & gillis, 2010), distance education students (gaile, 2013) and physiotherapist (dannapfel, pusan, & nilsen, 2014). most of the studies have been conducted to investigate different factors. however, factors on the motivation to learn (bui &baruch, 2011) and self-directed learning factor (conferrore, 2010) have not been widely addressed in the study of learning organization in the context of the organization. common factors that are emphasized and studied as factors are organizational commitment (yaghoubi, raeisi, afshar, yarmohammadian, hasanzadeh, javadi & ansary, 2010), organizational culture (singh, 2010), job satisfaction and customer satisfaction (pantouvakis & bouranta, 2013), and leadership styles (chang & lee, 2007). existing research on learning organization has been done in the west and in developed countries like the united states (nyhan et al., 2004; blackman & henderson, 2005; birdthistle, 2008; bui & baruch, 2011). thus, the lack of research in asian countries like malaysia can shed light to the learning culture of the organization in asian countries. therefore, this study was undertaken to determine the factors that influence learning nur farhanah k., et all., relationship between self-directed learning, motivation to learn toward learning organization 25 organization among lecturers at one public university in malaysia. learning organization a learning organization grows and becomes a stronger concept when the concept is associated with more extensive research in the field of management and organization (bui & baruch, 2011). the issue of a learning organization has sparked more than 20 years of debate, although there is still no universal formula for creating a learning organization that suits all organizations (levine, 2006). there are many views on organizational learning and the learning organization is the only one to play a role in developing and implementing policies and strategies that promote and use continuous learning at all levels in the organization (sackmann, rehart & friesl, 2009). theodore (2012) has listed a number of characteristics of a learning organization in his persuasion that the figure of actors involved in the on-going process of collaboration, collective change, individual responsibility in their study and the principles shared in the organization involved. however, majority of researchers prefer to refer to senge (1990) because he was the researcher who proposed and developed the concept of learning organization. senge (1990) defines a learning organization as a place to develop the ability to make decisions, maintain continuous thinking, inspire widespread release and learn what to learn and how to learn. senge (1990) states five disciplines of a learning organization: (1) openness in systems thinking (thinking system) is where individuals within the organization, especially the senior and middle leaders need to look at something as a whole and not by segment, (2) self-control (personal mastery) is that the individual has a high degree of discipline and learning to enhance their knowledge through a variety of methods. organizations need to provide the opportunity and the space for individual learning process and enable them to apply their knowledge and expertise, (3) mental model (mental models) or individuals within the organization develop concepts and understanding through reading and experience – in connection with their duties and at the same time appreciate the concept and understanding of other individuals in the team. think open and update mental model allow individuals to unlearn and relearn, (4) shared vision (shared vision) can be developed by members of the organizations or from the proposal at the top; build a learning organization and have the same direction among its members and last but not least (5) learning group (team building) is a collective learning to generate new ideas and improvements. learning organizations strive to document the tacit knowledge of expertise individuals to be shared. senge (1990) also suggests that an individual should set aside the old ways of thinking (mental model), learn to continuously improve knowledge (self-control), the effectiveness of understanding the company they work for (system thinking), and form a joint planning consent (vision together and work together to achieve the vision). a learning organization is an organization where everyone is engaged in identifying and solving problems, which enables the organization to continue to move onwards and improve the ability of the involved organization (weldy, 2010). learning organization works to create value, practice, procedure in which learning and employment are synonyms and parallel to the organization (rowley, 1998). in addition, the learning organization also presents challenges to the employee and the organization in order to use their collective wisdom, the ability to learn and their creativity to transform the organization into one of the best system (bierema, 1998). self-directed learning the term self-directed learning was introduced by houle (1961) in research linked to students’ motivation. tough (1979) is one of the researchers who dealt with selfinternational journal of education, vol. 8 no. 1 december 2014 26 directed learning in research related to the adult learning. followed by knowles (1975), who explains about self-directed learning in adult learning concept in which the concept was well accepted in educational theory and research. according to knowles (1975), self-directed learning is a process where an individual takes the initiative of their own without the help of others in diagnosing their learning needs, formulating learning goals, identifying materials for learning, choosing and implementing appropriate learning strategies as well as evaluating result learning. students who practice self-directed learning must be responsible in identifying their own learning needs and learning objectives, deciding how to assess learning outcomes, identifying and focusing on resources and learning strategies as well as evaluating the learning (iwasiw, 1987). in addition, self-directed learning is also regarded as a learning process in which individuals take the initiative, without the help of others, in diagnosing their learning needs, formulating learning goals, identifying learning resources and materials to choose, in addition to implementing and evaluating appropriate learning outcomes (brookfield, 2009). selfdirected learning basic principles involve the interaction between a person and their environment in which knowledge is tentative, quick to learn and developed socially (candy, 2004). he also notes that the dynamics of the free self-study will be considered, especially when carried out by educators. self-directed learning is essential in the learning and practice of adult education. selfdirected learning has been reviewed in literature review and concept, but it is important to bring confusion and misunderstanding (candy, 2004). up until now, self-directed learning is strongly connected to external management in the process of learning (garrison, 1997). there is no concept of actually explaining adult education and self-directed learning. self-directed learning can also be understood through the three functions of adult learning: (1) learn the job-oriented instrumental in problem solving related to controlling the surroundings and other people, (2) learn to read what others mean through a conversation between us and them, and (3) self-reflective learning is about an individual who understands about ourselves. therefore, self-directed learning is more than just knowing what we want to read. self-directed learning also admits what we understand from people around us, try to understand our surroundings, and realize what is important. for these reasons, self-directed learning is an approach in which the scholars will be motivated, become more responsible and control themselves (selfmonitoring) and context (self-management) in the process of acquiring and validating learning outcomes (garrison, 1997). motivation to learn in the 1970s and 1980s, the motivation in the workplace has become an important topic (ambrose & kulik, 1999). numerous opinions about motivation in the workplace were raised by researchers. based on the literature, different opinions brought different definitions of motivation to learn. motivation for learning in the workplace is a set of external and internal behavior that will demonstrate a connection with the work and will specify the shape, direction, and timeintensive of the individual work itself (pinder, 1998). motivation to learn has been studied in education and psychology research in different views (winterstein, 1998). motivation is defined as a collection of option desire, determination and behavior of the feelings (edwards, 1999), the behavior intended to achieve a set goal (hodson, 2001), the desire to restore power, determination, and behavior in doing a job and achieve goals (hancock, 2004). motivation is also considered as an endorsement, action or guide towards an act, especially in performing a job (morris, 1970). in the setting of adult learning, motivation to learn is fixed as the tendency for somebody to receive or find learning nur farhanah k., et all., relationship between self-directed learning, motivation to learn toward learning organization 27 activities that are meaningful and beneficial for them (wlodkowski, 1999). motivation to learn is also stated as the movement behavior of a passionate and personal learning or a continuing self-study (colquitt, lepine & noe, 2000). the literature states that motivation is an important factor in the learning process and the process of organizational learning in the workplace (malik & danish, 2010). they noted a positive relationship between motivation and learning organization. besides, hays and hill (2001) also state that motivation is a factor that allows the creation of a learning organization as a whole. motivation to learn is the key component in the selection of individual learning (klein, noe & wang, 2006). with the motivation to learn, an individual will choose to learn and pick their own learning activities. previous surveys demonstrated that motivation to learn is an important factor in learning and research described that the motivation to learn affects the individual as well as external conditions of their learning (colquitt et.al, 2000; noe, 1986; tannenbaum & yulk, 1992). motivation to learn is a vital element to adults, especially to their learning process (gusho, 2013). in adults’ life, motivation to learn plays a major character in controlling and driving adults to reach determinations in their spirits. in addition, teghant and pogson (1995) state that adults will choose to participate in all activities associated with the learning if they are really motivated. learning organization model by watkins & marsick learning organization modelled by watkins & marsick (1996) consists of seven dimensions: 1. creating opportunities for continuous learning, personal and career development in the workplace (level of learning in the organization can be increased by acquiring how to learn new knowledge, values and skills), 2. promoting dialogue and inquiry (dialogue is the extent to which organizational culture allows members to practice open communication without the limitation to talk, discuss and explain their experience and skills), 3. encouraging collaboration and group learning (the extent to which organizations are trying to plan the work for the members of their organizations to achieve common action), 4. developing a system for sharing learning (create a system or medium for employees to use all available technology to conduct their learning partnerships with other workers), 5. increasing towards a collective vision (a process that allows the members of the organization to take part in the formulation of policies, to know how to get things done, to assess their needs, to influence others and to create a collective vision), 6. the system of environmental connection (an open system to connect the organization to the external and internal environment and help the members of the organization to perceive the impact of their work to the entire organization), and 7. strategic leadership to the environment (the efficiency of the organization’s leaders to think strategically; to be a model in the organization, learning to support and energize the organizations to bring about positive changes). related previous research nzuve and omolo (2012) conducted a study in 43 banks under the auspices of the kenyan commercial banking. this study was conducted to determine the practice of the learning organization in each bank. there was significant relationship between organizational learning and organizational performance, such as thinking systems, personal mastery, mental models, shared vision and team learning. overall, the level of organizational learning for each bank was significantly high. a research conducted in a banking institution in england by antonacopoulou (2006) found that self-directed learning activities and processes influenced practices within the organization. activities and learning processes are: (1) the content of the learning process; (2) learning resources, and (3) political in workplace learning. learning organization practiced in the english banking institution also international journal of education, vol. 8 no. 1 december 2014 28 affected employees’ self-directed learning with understanding how the organization should learn and how they grow. this study supports watkins and marsick’s (1996) statement that the learning organization will grow and learn from individual teams within the organization. this study also supports the study by march (1991) who reported a learning organization will learn through individual and the knowledge that goes on within the organization involved. a study conducted by tanyaovalaksna and li (2013) on 106 laboratory supervisors at the ontario hospital, which focused on individual learning and group learning with learning organization. the study showed a significant relationship between individual learning and learning organization, r (106) = 0.97, p = 0.001 while group learning with learning organization also showed a significant correlation, r = 0.73, p = 0.001. a study by colquitt, lepine & noe (2000) showed a significant relationship between motivation to learn by learning organizations, where employees would motivate them to face their learning process to increase the learning organization. not only that, workers must constantly learn and practice learning activities to enhance their knowledge to increase their performance (goldstein, 2001). in addition, porter and lawler (1968) explained that in the study of motivation to learn in the organization of services for which the motivation to learn is the most important key to achieving success in a service organization. normally, employees will learn what they want and if the motivation to learn does not achieve a higher level, the process of learning will move slowly. objectives the purposes of the study are: a) to determine the level of learning organization, self-directed learning, and motivation to learn among lecturers. b) to determine the relationship between self-directed learning, motivation to learn and learning organization among lecturers. c) to determine the contribution of selfdirected learning and motivation to learn on learning organization among lecturers. table 1. profile of the respondents (n = 92) frequency % m sd gender male 42 45.7 female 50 54.3 age (n=92) 1.60 0.63 26-39 years old 35 38 40-53 years old 48 52.2 54-68 years old 9 9.8 post 2.30 0.81 lecturer 12 13.0 senior lecturer 48 52.2 associate professor 24 26.1 professor 8 8.7 work experience 1.61 0.60 3-15 years 41 44.6 16-28 years 43 46.7 29-24 years 8 8.74 nur farhanah k., et all., relationship between self-directed learning, motivation to learn toward learning organization 29 methods for this section, the topic will be discussed on study setting and data sample information, instrumentation, population and research sample and result. study setting and data sample information a total of 92 questionnaires were distributed to the lecturers at one public university in malaysia. in this study, 12 (13.0%) lecturers hold the position as lecturers, 48 of them (52.2%) are senior lecturers, 24 of them (26.1%) are associate professors and 8 of them (8.7%) are professors. instrumentation this study used questionnaires as a research tool to collect data from respondents. according to saunders, levis and thirnhill (2009), the questionnaire allows all data to be collected, analyzed and compared easily. ary, jacobs and razavieh (1990) also note that the use of questionnaire is easier and saves time compared to other instruments. field and abelson (1982) state that most researchers use questionnaires to measure the perception of the respondents. therefore, the form of measurement used in this study is based on assumptions and perceptions. overall, the questionnaire contains four parts. part a is the background of respondent, part b is a learning organization, part c is self-directed learning and part d is the motivation to learn. all four parts use a likert five-point scale (1 = never, 2 = rarely, 3 = sometimes, 4 = often, 5 = always). the questionnaire was translated into bahasa melayu (malay language) to be adjusted to the context of the country, malaysia, which predominantly uses bahasa melayu in its communication. part a includes question about demography profile for respondent. the questions cover several points such as gender, age, post and working experience. questions for part b are about organizational learning is an adoption and modification of the dimension learning organization questionnaire (dloq) developed by watkins & marsick (1996). this questionnaire measures the learning organizations including continuing learning, dialogue and inquiry, team learning, shared learning systems, control system, connections and strategic leadership. as a result of discussions with supervisors, twelve items were selected and modified based on the context of research and adaption of the respondent. items for self-directed learning are an adoption of the self-rating scale of selfdirected learning (srssdl) developed by williamson (2007). the srssdl consisted of 60 items, which are divided into five dimensions in which each dimension has 12 items. the dimensions are (1) awareness of self-directed learning, (2) self-directed learning strategies, (3) self-directed learning activities, (4) evaluation of self-directed learning, and (5) interpersonal skill of selfdirected learning. measuring motivation to learn is an adaption and modification of the motivation to learn questionnaire developed by noe (1989). there were eight items that matched the purposes of the study and were used in the study. table 2 will show more detail about instrument in this study. table 2. research instrument no instrument no.item researcher 1 learning organization questionnaire (dloq) 12 marsick & watkins (1999) 2 self-rating scale of self directed learning (srssdl 12 12 12 12 12 swapna naskar willianson (2007) 3 motivation to learn 8 noe (1986) 4 total of item 80 population and research sample the sample is a subset of the population. in this study, the population was determined to be among the lecturers at one public university in malaysia. based on statistics from the international journal of education, vol. 8 no. 1 december 2014 30 university register’s office, an updated list of lecturer is 1654 people. this study employed a stratified random sampling. stratified random sampling is the selection of respondents by group or strata with similar characteristic. the samples were randomly selected for each group or stratum. only social science faculty were chosen for this study. so, four faculties were selected with a total population of 380 lecturers. consequently, the selection of a sample from the four faculties was done based on the table of sample size by bartlett, katrlik and higgins (2001). bartlett, katrlik and higgins (2001) state that if population of 400 people, the samples will be taken around 24 %. due to the process of selecting samples by using stratified random sampling, then the calculation was done through predetermining academic positions namely (1) lecturers, (2) senior lecturer, (3) associate professor and (4) professor. for each of these positions, only 24% will be used as samples. the samples were randomly selected using a systematic list of lecturers who were identified based on a randomly drawn initial number. result and discussion cronbach’s alpha was calculated to examine the reliability of each variable in the study that ranged 0.768 to 0.928. the means for dependent and the independent variable were calculated and are presented in the table 1. from this table, all mean scores were well above the mid-point (2.5) of the scale. the highest mean score recorded was for the motivation to learn variable (m = 4.46) while the lowest means score was 4.10 for learning organization. table 3. means and standard deviations of variables (n = 92) variables mean sd learning organization 4.10 .59 self-directed learning 4.29 .29 motivation to learn 4.46 .43 descriptive analysis results showed that learning organization (82.6%), self-directed learning (98.9%) and motivation to learn (94.6%) were at high level. correlation analysis to determine the nature and strength of the relationship among variables, pearson’s product moment correlation procedure was used. table 2 presents the correlation coefficients of the relationship between variables. there was a positive strong relationship between learning organization and motivation to learn (r = 0.611, p = .01). motivation to learn is positively and significantly related to the learning organization (r = 0.521, p = .01). table 4. pearson’s correlation among variables (n=92) variables 1 2 3 learning organization 1 self-directed learning .521** 1 motivation to learn .611** .510** 1 ** correlation is significant at 0.01 level (2-tailed) regression analysis multiple linear regression analysis was performed to identify the factors that explained the variance of the learning organization among lecturers. results showed that both self-directed learning (β=0.474, p<.05) and motivation to learn (β=0.263, p<.05) significantly predicted the learning organization. thus, we concluded that selfdirected learning and motivation to learn influenced learning organization among lecturers. nur farhanah k., et all., relationship between self-directed learning, motivation to learn toward learning organization 31 in depth, this study was carried out to determine variables affecting learning organization in one public university at malaysia. the results showed that the level of learning organization, self-directed learning and motivation to learn were at high levels. the scores indicated that lecturers at the selected public university have high motivation to learn and are also self-directed in their learning. results also showed that the level of learning organization was high. employees within an organization will always meet their needs when there is high motivation to learn and they are more likely to engage in self-directed learning to obtain knowledge and skills required for the career (munroe, schumaker & carr, 1997). senge, roberts, ross, smith and kleiner (1994) explain that when employees would like to be a part of the organization where they work, then they have to go through the process to change them to fulfil the requirement of the organization. therefore, in the case of lecturers at a higher learning institution, they need high motivation to learn and conduct regular self-directed learning process so that they can continuously increase their knowledge to be better equipped to perform their work. redding (1997) points out that to make sure the learning organization develops continuously, people should persistently work on problems and find solutions to these problems. institutions of higher learning generally through their employees are expected to continuously learn in order to become a learner. the correlation analysis showed a significant positive relationship between learning organization and self-directed learning (r =.611, p =.01). the relationship between motivation to learn and learning organization also showed a positive significant relationship (r =.521, p =.01). regression analysis showed that self-directed learning and motivation to learn predicted 42.4 % of variance of the learning organization. therefore, motivation to learn and self-directed learning directly influenced the learning organization. march (1991) argues for the creation of a learning organization. at the practical level, selfdirected learning done by every individual in the organization contributes to knowledge and learning in the organization involved. this is because the flow of knowledge will occur from an individual to another individual. at the same time, the flow of knowledge is part of the practice of a learning organization. conclusions in professional and academic field, the factors of self-directed learning and motivation to learn are very important to maintain the existing knowledge. therefore, this study will provide improvements to the learning organization theory. the results indicated that the factors of self-directed learning and motivation to learn contributed to learning organization practices. learning organization theory is often applied in different settings, particularly in the areas of business, management and health. in academic field, learning organization table 5. self-directed learning and motivation to learn as predictor of learning organization model unstandardized coefficients standardized coefficients b std. error beta t sig. 1 (constant) -1.537 0.704 -2.183 0.032 self-directed learning 0.941 0.187 0.474 5.034 0.000 motivation to learn 0.358 0.128 0.263 2.790 0.006 note: r=0.651; r2=0.424; adj.r2=0.411; f=32.78 international journal of education, vol. 8 no. 1 december 2014 32 theory is rarely employed and described in detail. therefore, this study describes the importance of self-directed learning and motivation to learn within the learning organization theory. future research on learning organization can utilize this theory as a foundation. the addition of new knowledge across different cultures and context will contribute to knowledge that will be applied in the evolution of a learning organization in institutions of higher education. a learning organization is a place where skills are created, acquired and knowledge is passed between individuals, units and levels. to realize the creation of a learning organization, an organization needs to identify factors that affect the learning organization. thus, the outcomes of this research can be used as a guide in designing and planning the development and pattern of the learning organization at institution of higher education in malaysia. 42.2 % of self-directed learning and motivation to learn to predict the learning organization. the outcomes of this study could be the foundation for the initial development of a learning system. systems can enhance self-directed learning practices in an establishment. motivation to learn can be fostered within each individual in the organization. in addition, the results of this study can be a guideline for institutions of higher education in developing plans and policies for prescribing culture knowledge by making learning an ongoing process. institutions of higher education can use 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(2010). the relationship between learning organizational and organizational commitment among nursing managers in educational hospital of isfahan university of medical sciences in 2008. iran j nurs midwifery res, 15(2), 83-89. international journal of education vol. 11 no. 1, august 2018, pp. 78-86 ©2018 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v11i1.12165 78 an investigation into the extent and challenges of assessing students’ speaking skills in selected secondary schools: the cases of wolayita zone, ethiopia mebratu mulatu bachore1, amare satenaw2 college of social sciences and humanities, hawassa university, ethiopia1, boditi secondary school, boditi, ethiopia2 mebratumulatu@gmail.com 1 , amaresatenaw12@gmail.com 2 first draft received: 03 june 2018 accepted: 31 july 2018 final proof received: 30 august 2018 abstract the main objective of this study was to investigate the assessment of students’ speaking skill in some selected preparatory schools. it was a descriptive survey. the data were collected from teachers and students using questionnaire, interview, and classroom observations. yemane’ (1996) formula was used to determine the sample size. accordingly, 254 students were selected as samples using simple random sampling technique. six english language teachers who teach grade 11 students were selected using availability sampling technique. the data collected via questionnaire were filled into spss and then, different statistical analyses such as frequency and percentage were computed from the data in the spss. the results of statistical analysis were presented in tables and pie chart. besides, data obtained from interview were transcribed and categorized according to related themes. the study revealed that english teachers assess speaking skills of their students at different times. but, it was noted that most teachers assess speaking skill during speaking lessons only. regarding the frequency, many efl teachers assess their students always; however, it was disclosed that there are teachers who assess their students speaking once in a month and even in a semester. the findings of the study also disclosed that different factors such as lack of adequate time, lack of sufficient material, large number of students per class, and teacher’s inappropriate way of assessing speaking skill affect the assessment of speaking skill. keywords: speaking skills, assessment, challenges to cite this paper (in apa style): bachore, m. m., & satenaw, a. (2018). an investigation into the extent and challenges of assessing students’ speaking skills in selected secondary schools: the cases of wolayita zone, ethiopia. international journal of education, 11(1), 78-86. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v11i1.12165. introduction english, as one of the international languages, plays an important role in international communication. it is used as a tool for international communication in many fields such as transportation, commerce, banking, tourism, technology, diplomacy, and scientific research (brown, 2004). english is the official language for 45 countries in the world. one third of the world population speaks english and 75% of the television programs are produced in english. 95% of the united nations conferences and meetings are conducted in english and 80% of information on internet is presented in english (wang, 2006). based on the importance of english as a tool in the development of the country, both for international relations and scientifictechnological advancement, english was chosen by policy makers in ethiopia as a foreign language to be taught in schools nationwide. in the ethiopian curriculum, there are four major skills (listening, speaking, reading, and writing) which have to be taught during the teaching and learning process. although all four skills are important, speaking skill could be seen as the paramount skill during the english learning process. during the learning process, learners need to communicate with others in order to express their ideas and feelings. one of the ways to communicate with others is through speaking. richards (2008) stated the mastery of speaking skills is a priority for second language learners. as a consequence, the effectiveness of an english course is decided based on how well the learners improve their spoken language proficiency. mailto:mebratumulatu@gmail.com bachore, m. m., & satenaw, a. an investigation into the extent and challenges of assessing students’ speaking skills in selected secondary schools 79 assessment is an activity that engages both students and teachers in judgment about the quality of students’ achievement or performance and inferences about the learning that has taken place (sadler, 2005). second language assessment is done either to measure a participant’s actual level of competence or proficiency or to assess language development over a period of time (bruton, 2009). there are few opportunities to evaluate students’ speaking skills, because speaking assessment is not administered in any formal exam. the curriculum and formal examinations focus heavily on grammar, but the speaking skill assessment is left entirely to the discretion of teachers. hence, with the curriculum focus on this, in practice, english education in secondary schools puts a greater emphasis on english grammar, rather than speaking proficiency. teacher-based classroom assessment as well as curriculum emphasizes enhancing oral communication skills. however, classroom assessment is not widely practiced in many ethiopian secondary schools, even though for many students in ethiopia, classroom assessment is the only opportunity to have their speaking skills assessed. assessment of speaking skills indeed often lags far behind the importance given to teaching those skills in the curriculum (knight, 1992). teaching methodology goes hand in hand with the curriculum impact. teachers simply spend too much time lecturing while students take notes and seldom participate in class (tirualem, 2003). in other words, even if the rationale for classroom assessment is to provide both students and teachers with information about their current level of speaking skills and how to improve their speaking skills on the basis of their real language performance, teachers are under pressure from the policy to reflect the result of classroom assessment as a certain portion or percentage of the students’ final grades. so, the basic features of classroom speaking assessment present in the situation where it is expected to achieve both pedagogic usefulness and meet the desired measurement purpose. the success of speaking is measured by the ability of students to carry out conversation in an interactive process of constructing meaning that involves producing, receiving and processing information. likewise, brown (2004) believed that language proficiency is ensured when learners get the opportunity to work with the target language in different contexts. also, the study explores whether the current practice of classroom assessment in selected wolaita zone preparatory schools can be effective in terms of assessing speaking skill. thus, investigating on the assessment of students’ speaking skill is the main concern of this study. as it can be understood from the foregoing discussion, the teaching of speaking skill and its assessment are very interrelated. the information obtained from the assessment of speaking skill can be used by teachers to improve their teaching of speaking skill. besides, students can use the results of speaking assessments to improve their speaking ability. that is, the assessment of speaking skill can enhance students’ speaking skill by showing areas and components to be improved by the students. accordingly, assessment plays a pivotal role in the teaching and learning of speaking skill. that is why scholars argue that the teaching and assessment of speaking are seen as two sides of the same coin. despite this fact, speaking skill has not been properly and adequately assessed by english language teachers. from the experiences of teaching english at secondary and preparatory schools for the last eight years, the researchers have observed that teachers do not give due attention to the assessment of students’ speaking skill. such practice hinders students from getting important and necessary feedback and comments from their teachers. in other words, students do not get the needed feedback and comments from their english language teachers that may enable them to improve or enhance their speaking skill. besides, the extent to which english language teachers assess the speaking skill of their students is not clearly known. the assessment techniques used by english language teachers to assess the speaking skill of their students and the components of students’ speaking skill assessed by english language teachers are not studied at the selected school. in addition, english language teachers usually encounter different challenges while assessing the speaking skill of their students. these problems have initiated the researcher to conduct a study on the present study. accordingly, it is imperative to describe the practices and challenges of assessing the speaking skill of the students. the other important rationale for the present study is that the research gap is observed in the area. that is, the review of local studies revealed that limited local studies were undertaken in relation to the present study. for instance, fasil (1992) studied how oral skills are taught. tsegaye (1995) conducted research on speaking strategies employed by college students respectively. jenenew (2006) studied how oral skills are taught and also made a survey on teachers’ and students’ respective roles for implementation in efl speaking classrooms. tesfaye (2007) researched communication strategies utilized by omo tti teachers in oral production of english. taye (2008) made a comparative study of televised and non-televised speaking skills teaching techniques. however, the above studies do not examine the extent to which (frequency) english language teachers assess the speaking skill of their students. the assessment techniques used by english language teachers to assess the speaking skill of their students have not been studied, so far as the researchers’ knowledge is concerned. furthermore, the challenges encountered by english language teachers while assessing the speaking skill of their students are not addressed by the aforementioned local studies. thus, specifically the objectives of the study are to examine the extent to which english language teachers assess the speaking skill of their students, and reveal the challenges encountered by english language international journal of education vol. 11 no. 1, august 2018, pp. 78-86 ©2018 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v11i1.12165 80 teachers while assessing the speaking skill of their students. methodology the study employed a descriptive research design. according to best and kahn (2003) descriptive research design enables the researcher to examine the present situation and identify some of the major problems in the area of the study. in line with this, descriptive design was used to describe the extent to which (frequency) english language teachers' assess the speaking skill of their students. in addition, research designs are usually structured and specifically designed to measure the characteristics illustrated in a research question. it is also used to portray an accurate event and situations (hair, et.al 2003). accordingly, descriptive research design is used to clearly identify and describe the assessment techniques used by english language teachers to assess the speaking skill of their students. besides, it is used describe the component of students’ speaking skill assessed by english language teachers. furthermore, descriptive research design was used to point out the challenges encountered by english language teachers while assessing the speaking skill of their students. participants of the study this study was intended to investigate the assessment of students’ speaking skill in some selected preparatory schools. thus, english language teachers and students were selected as the major participants of this study. this is because it was believed that they can provide necessary data for the study. as stated above, the study was conducted in three schools (shanto, boditti, and gacheno). in these three schools, there were 6 english language teachers who were teaching grade 11 students. the target populations of this study are grade 11 preparatory school students and english language teachers of 2010 academic year. accordingly, there were 150 students in shanto secondary and preparatory school, 346 students in boditti secondary and preparatory school and 200 students in gacheno secondary and preparatory school. totally, there were 696 students in the three schools. only grade 11 students were taken as the participants of the study because it is believed that they can provide the data needed for the study. samples were selected from the target population using different sampling techniques described in the next subsection sample size and sampling techniques based on the information obtained from the record office of the schools, there were 696 students attending their class in 13 sections. considering each section with an assumption that may have a different learning experience, the researcher selected 254 students by using yemane’s (1996) formula: 𝑛 = 𝑁 1+𝑁 (𝑒)2 by using simple random sampling technique. two hundred-fiftyfour students were selected as a sample population for the study by using simple random sampling technique. besides, all six of the english language teachers who were selected availably as participants of the study teach grade 11 students. data collection the data were gathered through questionnaire, interview, and classroom observation. besides, the tools were pilot tested, in boditti, in order to check the clarity of questions to the respondents. it was also intended to check the appropriateness and relevance of the instruments to achieve the purposes of this research. based on the results of the pilot study, necessary changes and modifications were made on the tools of data collection and finally, the tools were used to collect data for the main study. questionnaire enables a researcher to collect the data from group of individuals within a short period of time (kothari, 2004). it was developed based on the basic questions and on the available literature. the questionnaire contains both close-ended and open ended items. it was used to gather data from sampled students, triangulate the data obtained from the interview and classroom observation. the questionnaire contains 4 subparts. the first sub part is intended to collect the background information of the participants. the second subsection was used to identify the extent to which english language teachers' assess the speaking skill of their students. the third sub section is meant to identify the assessment techniques used by english language teachers to assess the speaking skill of their students. further, the fourth subpart is used to examine the component of students’ speaking skill assessed by english language teachers. the last part collects information about the challenges that affect the assessment of speaking. the researchers also used interview as a widely used instrument to collect qualitative data that allows the researchers to obtain firsthand information directly from participants (burns 1999). besides, semistructured interview was used to obtain firsthand information directly from some participants (kumar, 2005).semi-structured interview was used; hence the researcher can obtain firsthand information directly from some participants (kumar, 2005). therefore, semistructured interview was designed to obtain necessary data from the sampled english language teachers. the interview was used to triangulate the data obtained from the questionnaire and classroom observation. the researchers prepared five major parts pertaining to the objectives of the study. the first sub part is intended to collect the pertinent demographic, about participant teachers of the study. the second part is intended to examine the extent to which english language teachers' assess the speaking skill of their students in their efl classroom. the third sub section is meant to identify the assessment techniques which used by english language teachers to assess the speaking skill of their students. further, the fourth subpart is meant to describe the component of students’ speaking skill bachore, m. m., & satenaw, a. an investigation into the extent and challenges of assessing students’ speaking skills in selected secondary schools 81 assessed by english language teachers. finally, the interview was used to point out challenges encountered by english language teachers’ assessment of students’ speaking skill. the interview items were prepared based on literature review. thus, six english language teachers were interviewed. the interviews took place face-toface and one interview meeting was used with one teacher only. the interactions were tape-recorded and played back during data analysis. then, the recorded data were transcribed for analysis. finally, classroom observation was carried out to search out what is happening in actual classroom situation (kumar, 2005). classroom observation is also a powerful tool for getting insights into situations (kothari, 2004). in this situation, merriam (1998) also believed that classroom observation is a kind of data triangulation in order to validate the findings. classroom observation provides the researcher opportunity to search out what is happening in actual classroom situation (kumar, 2005). besides, classroom observation is a powerful tool for getting insights into situations (kothari, 2004).as the result, in this research, classroom observation used to crosscheck whether teachers and students have positive perceptions in the actual classroom situations. data collection from classroom observation took over two month’s period beginning with classroom observation of six teachers and their lessons, three times each. the classroom observation was made in order to check whether or not english language teachers assess speaking skills in the actual classroom situation. the observation was made based on a prepared notebook. the observer’s notebook was prepared based on the objectives of the research and in line with literature review. the self-prepared observer’s notebook assesses issues comprising the frequency that teachers to assess speaking skill. besides, data were gathered in the form of note taking to see how english language teachers assess the speaking skills of the students. to conduct the classroom observation, first the researcher asked permission and knew the schedule of the teachers. then, the researcher observed the overall situation of the classes. during the classroom observation, the researchers sat in the class and took short notes to record how teachers assess students’ speaking skill in the actual classroom situation. moreover, those teachers teaching in their actual classroom situation were observed to get data on how english language teachers assess the speaking skill of their students. methods of data analysis the data gathered through questionnaire, interview, and classroom observation were analyzed differently using both qualitative and quantitative methods. for example, data obtained from interview were transcribed and transformed into textual data. the transcribed data were read again and again in order to have a full understanding of the themes the objectives of the study. the data that were relevant to achieve the purpose of this study were selected for analysis. the selected data were categorized according to related themes. in the end, the thematic categories were analyzed through description using words and summarized and paraphrased descriptively. besides, the thematic analysis was supported by directly quoting the responses of the respondents. then, the interview data was substantiated by questionnaire and classroom observation. regarding the data collected via questionnaire, first the questionnaires were checked for consistency and complete. the complete and consistent questionnaires were coded and filled in to spss. then, different statistical analysis such as frequency and percentage was applied to spss data. the result of statistical analysis was presented in the table, pie chart and graph forms. finally, it was used to validate and substantiate the interview and questionnaire. concerning the data collected through classroom observation, the raw data gained from classroom observation was tallied. then, the obtained result was used to reveal the classroom practices of teachers in assessing the speaking skills of the students. the data was also used to validate and substantiate the data obtained via questionnaire and interview. during analysis, results obtained from questionnaires, interview and classroom observation were presented interactively in the way they and can support and validate each other. results and discussions the extent of assessing speaking skills the extent to which teachers assess the speaking skill can determine the amount of feedback students get from the result of speaking assessment. thus, it is important to know how often teachers assess the speaking skill of their students. the learners’ response is demonstrated in the pi chart below. international journal of education vol. 11 no. 1, august 2018, pp. 78-86 ©2018 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v11i1.12165 82 figure 1. frequency of assessing speaking skills figure 1 reveals that among the study population, 48% of the students reported that their english teachers assess their speaking skill during or after speaking lesson. in addition, 29% of the respondents said that at every three speaking lesson. however, 15% and 8% responded that one per month and once per semester respectively. from this data, it can be concluded that most of the respondents replied that their english teacher always assess their speaking skill. however, considerable number of students reacted that their teachers assess their speaking skills in every three lesson, once per month and even once per semester. the result of classroom observation reveals that two teachers were observed while assessing students’ speaking skill using various kinds of techniques genuinely. from them, one teacher gave home take assignment to practice a certain topic, depending on their interest. the day of observation was presentation day, which students had experienced performing on various issues, at the end of every month, formally. the second teacher assessed his students’ speaking skill in the same fashion. in addition to that, he told a story for the students and let them retell the same story in their own language, in front of their classmates. every fifteen days they have experience in presenting a different technique. however, the rest of the teachers did not practice formal assessment effectively in the actual classroom situation. rather, they assess their students informally, by oral questioning and answering. assessment takes place during or at the end of the class every day. from the results of questionnaire, interview, and classroom observations, it can be inferred that english teachers assess the speaking skill of their students at different times. but, it should be noted that majority of students and teachers reported that english language teachers assess speaking skill during speaking lessons. this may imply that teaching and assessment are interactively practiced by the teachers in the sampled schools. the result coincides with bachman (2010) and cohen (2001) who disclosed that efl teachers are continuously assessing the speaking skill during speaking lessons. this will be useful for both teachers and students. in addition, it would enable students to get feedback from their teacher. on the contrary from the literature, the response of teachers reveals that teachers’ assessment of speaking skill is not uniformly undertaken by teachers as some teachers don’t assess their students’ speaking skills regularly. classroom time of assessing speaking skills the research also checked the time spent in the classroom to assess students’ speaking skills. the results are presented in figure 2. always 48% at evey three speaking lesson 29% once per semester 8% once per month 15% how often does your english language teacher assess your speaking skill? during or after speaking lesson at every speaking lesson once per semester once per month bachore, m. m., & satenaw, a. an investigation into the extent and challenges of assessing students’ speaking skills in selected secondary schools 83 figure 2: classroom time of assessing speaking skills as depicted in figure 2, 25(9.8%) of students replied that their english language teachers assess their speaking skill after the model activity is presented by the teacher. in addition, 135 (53.1%) of the respondents stated that their teacher assesses their speaking skill during the speaking lesson. however, 39(15.4%) and 38(15%) of the students reported that their teachers assess at the end of speaking lesson and combination of the above options respectively. hence, it can be concluded that a majority of the respondents said that their teachers assesses their speaking skill during speaking lesson. besides, teachers were asked when they assess the speaking skill of their students. they forwarded three different views. one group of teachers (t5, t6 and t2) reported that they assess their students’ speaking lesson during the speaking lesson. in regards to this, t2 explained that “i assess informally during my lessons. every lesson is unique.” the second view is at the end of the speaking lesson, which was supported by t3 and t1). scholars like harmer (2001), jenenew (2006) and luoma (2004), efl teachers are expected to assess their students speaking skills uniformly during the speaking class. specifically, speaking assessment should be done after delivering a model conversation or input to students. this helps students to be creative enough to bring the given input to the actual context. however, in the above graph, though each time has got distribution of the respondents, the dominant figure was displayed in “during speaking lesson”. this trend should be revisited by efl teachers in line with the existing scholarly views. challenges that teachers encounter while assessing the speaking skill of students the next thing investigated is the challenges that teachers face during the assessment of their students’ speaking skills. the results are presented in table 4. 25 135 39 38 17 9.8 53.1 15.4 15 6.7 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 after the model activity is presented by the teacher during speaking lesson at the end of speaking lesson combination of the above options any when does your english language teacher assess your speaking skill? international journal of education vol. 11 no. 1, august 2018, pp. 78-86 ©2018 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v11i1.12165 84 table 1. students’ responses regarding the challenges that teachers encounter while assessing the speaking skill of students no items responses yes no not sure total f % f % f % f % 1. do you think that assessing the speaking skills of students is time consuming? 135 53.1 98 38.6 21 8.3 254 100 2. do you think that the availability of adequate time affect the assessment of speaking skill? 128 50.4 99 39.0 27 10.6 254 3. do you think that your school has sufficient materials (textbook, reference books, english lab class, audio materials) that help to assess the speaking skills of students? 125 49.2 99 39.0 30 11.8 254 100 4. do you think that the number of students affect the assessment of students’ the speaking skills? 128 50.4 103 40.6 23 9.1 254 100 5. are you voluntary to have your speaking skill assessed by your teacher? 184 72.4 44 17.3 44 17.3 254 100 6. teacher’s way of assessing speaking skill affects the assessment of speaking skill? 137 53.9 80 31.5 37 14.6 254 100 table 1 summarizes students’ responses on the challenges that teachers encounter while assessing the speaking skill of students. accordingly, in item l, students were asked if they think that assessing the speaking skills of students is time consuming. in the table, 135 (53.1%) of students responded that assessing speaking skill of fellow students is time consuming. but, 98 (38.6%) of the students reported no, and 21 (8.3%) were unsure if assessing speaking skill is time consuming. thus, the majority of students felt that assessing speaking skill of fellow students is time consuming. in item 2, majority of the respondents stated that availability of adequate time affect the assessment of students’ speaking skill. besides, the data obtained from interview and observation revealed that availability of adequate time is the main factor that affects the assessment of students’ speaking skill. item 3 shows that majority of students and teachers replied lack of sufficient materials such as text book, reference books, english lab class, audio materials affect the assessment of speaking skill. during the researcher’s observation, only one school which has elic room even though it does not have sufficient materials that help to assess speaking. due to this, none of the teachers from grade eleven used elic room. the rest schools also lack authentic materials which support the assessment of students speaking skill. regarding the influence of the number of students, 128 (50.4%) of the respondents replied that the number of students affect the assessment of students’ the speaking skills. however, 103 (40.6%) of them reported no. the remaining responded, 23 (9.1%) were unsure. with this regard, all teachers agreed that the number of students affects the assessment of the students’ speaking skill. for example, in interview, one teacher said, “yes, it is impossible to effectively assess more than 15-20 students in 40 minutes. more time is required for more students. if i spend multiple days assessing my students’ speaking, they will fall behind schedule in other areas.” as depicted in item 5, students were asked if they are voluntary to be assessed by your teacher. in response, 184 (70.4%) said yes, 44 (17.3%) said no, and 44 (17.3%) were unsure. hence, majority of the students are volunteers to be assessed by their teacher. in connection to this, five teachers reported that their students are voluntary to be assessed. for instance, one teacher said, “yes, they are volunteer to participate in speaking activities, however, there are several affections, such as background language deficit, lack of adequate time, and required materials.” however, another teacher said students are not voluntary to be assessed. thus, though majority of students and teachers stated that students are voluntary to be assessed, considerable number of students and teachers reacted against this view. beside, during classroom observation the majority of the students have stage phobia to be assessed in front of their classmate due to this they keep silent in the classroom and unable to generate speech. this implies that even if students volunteer to speak, they lack the necessary knowledge to produce speech in front of their classmates, for the purpose of assessment. finally, students were asked if way of assessing speaking skill affect the assessment of speaking skill. in bachore, m. m., & satenaw, a. an investigation into the extent and challenges of assessing students’ speaking skills in selected secondary schools 85 response, 137 (53.9%) said ‘yes’, 80 (31.5%) said ‘no’, and 37 (14.6%) were ‘unsure’. thus, majority of students felt that their teacher’s inappropriate way of assessing speaking skill affects the assessment of speaking skill. the researchers’ observation revealed that teacher’s inappropriate way of assessment affects students’ speaking assessment. this implies that assessing students’ speaking skill, by nature, requires professionalism from the teacher. regarding the challenges in assessing speaking skills, some authors forwarded points to be considered. for example, nunan (2001), shaaban (2001) and thornbury (2005) mentioned challenges like material scarcity, shortage of time, teachers’ competence and class size. the findings of the current study also agree with these challenges. in addition, the techniques efl teachers use and students poor linguistic competence should also be considered according to the present study. conclusion the study revealed that the majority of students and all of the teachers believe that assessment of speaking skill is important for its teaching. thus, this clear understanding of teachers and students about the importance of speaking skill can facilitate teachers’ assessment of students speaking skill. however, the actual classroom observation confirms, oral assessment in the actual classroom situation is not applicable as needed. the majority of students and teachers believe that the assessment of students’ speaking skill helps the students to improve their speaking skill. hence, it can be said that speaking assessment can serve as a powerful motivation tool for the students to improve their speaking skill. the belief and the practice in the actual classroom situation are paradox about speaking assessment because both respondents believe the importance of speaking assessment, but it was not observed during classroom observation session. they are far behind from the reality to create exposure to let the students practice in the real classroom situations. the study revealed that english language teachers assess the speaking skill of students at different times. besides, it was noted that majority of students and teachers reported that teachers assess speaking skill during speaking lesson. classroom observation divulges that speaking assessment doesn’t get genuine consideration. there are challenges that teachers encounter while assessing the speaking skill. the result of the study divulged that the majority of students felt that assessing speaking skill of fellow students is time consuming. besides, the majority of the respondents stated that availability of adequate time affect the assessment of students’ speaking skill. this was clearly observed during classroom observation since teachers were facing difficulties to manage the allotted class time. the study also shows that the school schedule is not adequate to assess the speaking skill. in addition, the majority of students and teachers replied lack of sufficient material affects the assessment of speaking skill. in addition, majority of students believe that lack of sufficient material affect the assessment on speaking skill. the responses of students are supported by the interview data. that is, all interviewed teachers reported that the schools have no adequate material and lack of the materials affect the assessment of speaking skill. even though, the problem exists, students and teachers are not wise enough to use the resources in their surroundings. the researcher observed that some materials are wasted without giving proper service as needed. the finding of the study shows that the majority of teachers and students reported that the number of students affect the assessment of students’ the speaking skills. researcher classroom observation confirms the same truth. furthermore, the majority of students felt that teacher’s inappropriate way of assessing speaking skill affect the assessment of speaking skill. the nature of assessing speaking skill requires professionalism. some situations need immediate and perfect answers, and assessing in such situations may drive some teachers to be in confusion, lacking a proper response. this situation was observed frequently during classroom observation. finally, based on the conclusions it is recommended that teachers should be more rigorously trained in the assessment of speaking skill so that they are comfortable and proficient in the assessment. 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(1967). statistics: an introductory analysis. 2nd edition, new york: harper and row. international journal of education vol. 13 no. 1, august-2020, pp. 1-7 ©2020 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: 10.17509/ije.v13i1. 20997 1 factors influencing classroom participation of undergraduate nursing students doreen asantewa abeasi, paul adjei kwakwa department of nursing, presbyterian university college, ghana reenasantewa@gmail.com first draft received: 11 nov 2019 date accepted: 17 feb 2020 final proof received: 10 may2020 abstract participation is very essential for achieving positive learning outcomes in students, especially for nursing students. this is because the skills they obtain are applicable in the clinical setting in order to provide high quality of care to patients. the study sought to examine the student-related, faculty-related and classroom climate factors influencing classroom participation among 100 undergraduate nursing students of the presbyterian university college, ghana (pucg). the findings of the study revealed that main student-related factors hindering participation in the classroom were being shy, lack of control over english language and inadequate preparation. adequate wait time, mentioning of students’ name, offering of equal opportunities to students and awarding marks to students were faculty-related factors identified to foster students’ participation in class. additionally, the most important classroom climate factor mentioned to hinder participation was large class size. it is recommended that lecturers should set expectations for students’ participation and counselling should be done for students who are shy to boost their self-confidence which is likely to improve classroom participation. keywords: participation; undergraduate nursing students, ghana to cite this paper (in apa style): abeasi, d. a., & kwakwa, p. a. (2020). factors influencing classroom participation of undergraduate nursing students. international journal of education, 13(1), 1-7. doi: 10.17509/ije.v13i1.20997 introduction nursing, one of the pillars of the health care institution, has been described as very dynamic because it continues to evolve day in and day out. as a result, innovative problem-solving skills are needed to address inherent challenges as well as incorporating new knowledge and technology that may impact care (benner et al., 2010). the nursing faculty has a key role in providing student nurses with a foundation for problem-solving skills (tedesco-schneck, 2016; lau, 2014) which can be achieved through promoting student-centered teaching methods that foster active learning supported by active classroom participation. the concept of classroom participation means more than just a question and answer section between the lecturer and the student (mccleary et al., 2011; rocca, 2010). many types have been described by different researchers. they include; spontaneous or volunteer (weaver & qi, 2005; fassinger, 1995), required or graded (daggett, 1997), passive (weaver & qi, 2005), para participation (billings & haltstead, 2009), negative (howard & henney, 1998), compulsory (dallimore et al., 2004), non-participation (weaver & qi, 2005), active (mustapha et al., 2010) and passive (loftin, davis & hartin, 2014). classroom participation is an essential ingredient for active learning, yet it has been found that many nursing students do not participate in class (pokess & mcdaniel, 2011). positive learning outcomes are closely related to classroom participation such that students who get involved have been reported to demonstrate an improvement in their communication skills (dancer & kamvounias, 2005), group interactions, and functioning in a democratic society (girgin & stevens, 2005). again, it helps the student to demonstrate understanding of the concepts and ability to think critically (garside, 1996). students who are not confident enough through participation begin to improve on their confidence level. route learning is minimized when classroom participation is high (rocca, 2010). communication, critical ability and confidence are very important in preparing student nurses for their careers and life as well. some researchers have identified student confidence as a key factor in influencing classroom participation (susak, 2016; kheleghi, 2016; moffet et al., 2014). others have also found lack of preparation and fear of making mistakes (abebe & deneke, 2015; mustapha et al., 2010) as inhibiting participation. classroom participation has been found to be affected by the lecturer’s relationship with students (tedescoschneck, 2016), teaching skills (abebe & deneke, 2015; nunn, 1996), criticisms of students’ responses (susak, 2016; abebe & deneke, 2015) and course policies by the lecturer. in addition to the above, classroom climate factors which have been reported by studies to affect participation are small class size (susak, 2016; moffet et al., 2014) and classroom arrangement (abebe & deneke, 2015; rocca, 2010). a significant proportion of the studies on students’ classroom participation has been devoted to students in secondary schools (aziz et al., 2018; phelps et al., abeasi & kwakwa factors influencing classroom participation of undergraduate nursing students 2 2012; fassinger, 1995), however, classrooms containing adults or young adults especially university students is increasingly becoming popular in recent times. among those that have examined the case of university students, some have focused on undergraduate students’ participation in english classrooms (abebe & deneke 2015); participation in communication subjects (mustapha, rahman and yunus, 2010); graduate students’ participation in classrooms (tatar, 2005) while some have examined a combination of undergraduate and graduate students’ participation (abdullah et al., 2012, weaver & qi, 2005). those studies done on undergraduate students (ballen et al., 2017; abebe & deneke, 2015; mustapha et al., 2010; howard et al., 2006) have not yet focused on nursing students. another observation from existing studies is that a greater proportion has told the story without capturing the views or the perspective of students (ballen et al., 2017). although studies on student’s classroom participation exist, empirical evidence from africa is scarce (schreiber & yu, 2016). in addition, it appears the previous studies have focused on students’ participation in public institutions with little known about students of private institutions (ballen et al.,2017; abebe & deneke, 2015) and this is important especially when the prevailing conditions at a public university may differ from that of a private especially in many developing countries. the above reasons identified gives room for further studies. the current study makes four key contributions to the literature on the subject matter. first, it is the first study to examine the drivers of undergraduate nursing students’ classroom participation in ghana. second, it adds to the few studies that have provided evidence from the perspective of students. third, it focuses on undergraduate nursing students which have not received much attention in the literature; and fourth, it adds to the few studies that have provided evidence from private universities. this study does that to bridge the gap identified from the review of existing studies. gathering evidence from ghana is premised on two reasons. in the first place although empirical evidence from africa is scarce, that of ghana is scarcer. again, many nursing faculty members are of the view that nursing students do not participate in class and since that may have implication on the quality of nursing professionals that will be churn out in the future it is imperative to understand the factors behind that. consequently, the study examines the undergraduate nursing students’ perspectives on student-related, faculty-related and classroom climate factors affecting their participation in the classroom in a private university. method study design and setting the researchers adopted a descriptive cross-sectional design to find out factors influencing classroom participation among undergraduate nursing students. the setting for the study was presbyterian university college (puc), ghana, specifically the asante-akyem agogo campus which hosts the department of nursing. sampling technique and sample size the population for the study was 314 nursing students from levels 200, 300 and 400. students in level 100 were excluded from the study because they had not reported to campus at the time of data collection. again, students who did not give consent were excluded from the study. a sample size of 100 was used. stratified random sampling which is a form of probability sampling was the sampling technique used in the study. in this type of method, people are classified into groups according to some characteristics, such as position, rank, income, education, sex, or ethnic background and referred to as strata (alvi, 2016). in this study, the educational levels of the students were used as the strata. three strata were used: level 200, level 300, and level 400. a random sample is selected from each stratum based upon the percentage that each subgroup represents in the population (alvi, 2016). the last stratum (level 400) had majority of students and hence a higher proportion of participants were randomly selected from there as compared to other two strata (level 200 and 300). data collection tool data analysis data was collected using a likert scale questionnaire developed by the researchers. participants were asked to specify their level of agreement or disagreement to certain statements. data was collected between 10th september and 1st october, 2018. the questionnaires retrieved from the respondents were serially numbered to facilitate identification. the responses to the various items were also coded. data was grouped and subjected to statistical analysis using the statistical package for social scientists (spss version 21). ethical consideration participation in this study was voluntary after the purpose and benefits of the research was explained to participants. participants were made to know they could decide to opt out at any point in time and would not be forced or intimidated. anonymity and confidentiality of the participants were maintained by ensuring that their identities are not revealed in any part of the research. results demographic characteristics of undergraduate nursing students descriptive characteristics of the family caregivers are presented in table 1. the results in table 1 showed that majority of respondents (81%) were between the ages of 21-26 years, 15% were between 15-20 years, 2% were between 27-31 years and another 25 were between 32-36 years old. majority of respondents (94%) were single, 6% were married whilst none was divorced. on the level of respondents, 40% were in level 400, 30% were in level 300 and level 200. furthermore, as high as 93% of respondents were christians whereas 7% were muslims. in addition, majority of respondents (77%) were females whilst 23% were males. level of participation the current study showed that majority of nursing students (52%) often participated in the classroom, 17% participated very often, and 31% did not participate often. international journal of education vol. 13 no. 1, august-2020, pp. 1-7 ©2020 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: 10.17509/ije.v13i1. 20997 3 student factors that affect classroom participation the results from table 1 shows that out of the 100 respondents, majority agreed that inadequate preparation (60%), being afraid of speaking in front of mates (54%), afraid of appearing unintelligent (51%), poor command over english language (65%), being shy (74%), receiving negative evaluation from classmates (58%) affected their participation in class. on the other hand, majority disagreed that desire to remain anonymous (74%), other students dominating discussion (60%), having a boyfriend/girlfriend (78%) hindered them from participating in class. only a minority of students (21%) did not participate because they perceived it as being unimportant. table 1 student factors affecting classroom participation variables a (%) n (%) d (%) inadequate preparation before the lecture hinders my ability to participate in class. 60 20 20 i am afraid of speaking in front of the whole class and it prevent me from participating. 54 16 30 i am afraid of appearing unintelligent, so i do not participate in class. 51 14 35 i do not have control over english language which is the main means of communication, hence i do not participate in class. 65 7 28 i am often shy of my course mates so i do not participate in class. 74 10 16 i am afraid of negative evaluation from colleagues so i do not participate. 58 13 29 i have a boyfriend/girlfriend in the class so i do not participate because i do not want to be embarrassed in front of them. 9 13 78 i desire to remain anonymous especially to my lectures so i do not like participation in class. 23 26 51 when some students dominate the classroom participation, it does not encourage me to participate. 28 12 60 i do not participate because i do not perceive classroom participation as important 21 5 74 faculty factors that affect classroom participation of students table 2 shows that of the 100 respondents, majority agreed that they participate when the lecturer does not criticize contributions (80%), gives adequate wait time (72%), mentions name (74%), offers equal opportunity (63%), awards marks (57%), asks open ended questions. the gender of the lecturer was not found to affect participation as majority disagreed (73%). majority of the respondents (63%) did not participate when the lecturer likes embarrassing students. table 2 faculty factors affecting classroom participation variables agree neutral disagree i participate when the lecturer usually builds on my contributions but does not condemn or criticize me. 80 4 16 i participate when the lecturer and i are of the same gender (male-male or female-female). 15 12 73 i do participate when the lecturer gives adequate wait time for us to digest information and give comments. 72 9 19 i participate when the lecturer mentions my name to contribute. 74 13 13 i participate when the lecturer offers equal opportunities for us to participate. 63 11 26 i participate when lecturer awards marks for classroom participation. 57 23 20 i participate when the lecturer asks open ended or analytical questions. 52 23 25 i do not participate when the lecturer is unfriendly. 42 19 39 i do not participate when the lecturer is boring. 48 27 25 i do not participate when the lecturer likes embarrassing student in front of classmates. 63 16 21 abeasi & kwakwa factors influencing classroom participation of undergraduate nursing students 4 classroom climate factors influencing classroom participation the majority of the respondents disagreed that temperature of the classroom (53%), time of lecture in the day (56), sitting position in class (51%) did affect their participation in classroom discussions. on the other hand, majority agreed that large class size (54%) and the traditional classroom setting (62%) influenced their classroom participation. the results are presented in figure 1. figure 1 classroom climate factors affecting classroom participation classroom participation and demographic variables from the table 3 below, there was significant relationship between classroom participation and age, marital status and educational level at 5% level of significance as more level 400 students, male students, christians, and the married appear to participate more. table 3 anova results for classroom participation and students’ demographic variables variables mean p gender male 3.78 female 3.32 .204 religious affiliation christian 3.71 muslim 3.41 .053 marital status married 3.46 single 4.00 .045 age(years) 15-20 3.60 21-26 3.49 27-31 2.00 32-36 1.00 .042 educational level level 400 3.67 level 300 3.33 level 200 3.33 .030 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 traditional classroom setting large class late afternoon lecture unconducive classroom environment sitting infront of the class classroom climate factors inhibiting participation agree neutral disagree international journal of education vol. 13 no. 1, august-2020, pp. 1-7 ©2020 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: 10.17509/ije.v13i1. 20997 5 discussion level of classroom participation the current study showed that majority of nursing students often participated in the classroom and it is most likely they perceived participation as very important. according to the expectancy value model, the student’s expectation about the chances of attaining the incentives associated with participation and the value placed on that incentive will motivate participation. this shows that perception is very likely to influence an individual’s behaviour. the finding is not consistent with a study done by pokess and mcdaniel (2011) which found that nursing students did not participate in class discussions. student factors influencing classroom participation of undergraduate nursing students the main student factor that was reported to affect participation was being shy of their colleagues. other studies have also found shyness as a factor inhibiting participation (kheleghi, 2016; moffet et al., 2014; howard et al., 2002). people who are shy may be very critical of what others may think and say about them. from the perspective of the force field theory, such students may not have congruence between the perception of themselves and the nature of the education programme. it is not surprising that most students were not willing to participate because they were afraid of receiving negative evaluation from their classmates. students when counselled may improve on their self-esteem which can help them overcome this challenge. majority of nursing students reported that they do not have command over the english language which affected their level of participation and this is similar to a study by susak (2016). it is likely that when students are given other alternate means to communicate apart from the english language, they will be more willing and feel at ease to participate. students may sometimes understand the concept but lack the ability to explain due to poor command over the language. inadequate preparation before the lecture was one other factor which majority of nursing students mentioned prevented them from participating. inadequate preparation is likely to narrow students’ scope of the concept of topic being discussed, decrease their confidence and subsequently decrease participation. this is consistent with other studies (abebe & deneke, 2015; mustapha, rahman & yunus, 2010). faculty related factors influencing classroom participation of undergraduate nursing students the findings of the current study showed that the main faculty factor which influenced participation was when the lecturer built on students’ contribution. when students’ contributions are not condemned, it is likely to boost the confidence and also be an extrinsic motivation for the student to read more. as the students explores more on the subject matter, they are more likely to contribute in subsequent discussions. other studies have also reported that students keep quiet when they wanted to avoid criticisms from their lecturer (susak, 2016; abebe & deneke, 2015). concerning adequate wait time, majority agreed that it influenced their level of participation since they were able to organize their thoughts before putting it across. the current study found that students were likely to participate when their names were mentioned by the lecturer. the names of the students can be mentioned but can be done after the question is posed. when it happens the other way around, other students may feel the question was not for them and be unwilling to participate. on the contrary, abebe and deneke (2015) and arafat (2012) reported that students get more anxious when called upon to respond individually. majority of nursing students participated when marks were awarded for that. no student would like to lose marks especially if it affected their overall grade. similarly, sommer and sommer (2007) also found that class participation increased when associated with course credits. the expectancy value model indicates that if the student does not place value on the outcome of participation, it is unlikely for him/her to participate and vice versa. in the current study, gender of the lecturer did not affect participation which is not consistent with a study done by hall and sandler (1982). what probably may influence the students to participate is the teaching skills and methods of the lecturer as well as the personality. classroom factor and students’ classroom participation concerning classroom climate factors affecting classroom participation, the majority of respondents stated that they were reluctant to participate in a traditional classroom setting. in the traditional classroom set up, the teacher stands in front of the class and it mostly appears the communication is between the lecturer and those seated in front. thus, if the student finds him/herself at the back, participation may decrease. this may also explain why those who sit in front are not nervous, the lecturer may concentrate on those at the back. similarly, a study conducted by rocca (2010) showed that the physical arrangement of student desk in a traditional, forwardfacing rows with the lecturer positioned in the front of the room decreases participation. the findings indicate that majority of the respondents were not willing to participate in large classes. in large classes other students may not participate for several reasons. first and foremost, it is likely to find the regular participants, so other students are likely to think even if they do not participate others would do. again, others have performance anxiety especially in front of the whole class. on the other hand, if the class size is small, there may not be anyone to participate but you. in a similar study, students reported that smaller size of class and small group activity made it easier for them to participate (susak, 2016; moffet et al., 2014). on the contrary, crombie, pyke, silverthorn, jones, and piccinin (2003) failed to find a significant impact of class size. the time of day for the lecture was not found to influence participation. abdullah, abu bakar and mahbob (2012) and rocca (2010) in their studies that classes that was held in the evening decreased classroom participation. students demographic variables and participation the study further sought to explore the relationship between the participants demographic variables and participation. there was significant relationship between age, marital status and level and classroom abeasi & kwakwa factors influencing classroom participation of undergraduate nursing students 6 participation. in the ghanaian culture, marriage is revered and gives someone a particular social status. married people may therefore feel more reluctant to participate. in the current study, respondents with lesser ages tend to participate. it is likely that as one increases in age, there may be other responsibilities to deal with which may give divided attention. other studies have reported that age does not affect participation (moffet et al., 2014; crombie, pyke, silverthorn, jones & piccinin, 2003). on the contrary, some studies have found that increasing age is associated with increased participation (howard, james, & taylor 2002; howard & baird, 2000). respondents in higher levels tend to participate more than those in lower levels. moffet et al. (2014) and fritschner (2000) found that higher levels are associated with increased participation. as students progress through the various levels, their confidence level may increase. no significant relationship was found between gender and classroom participation. some studies have also found that the there is no significant relationship between gender and classroom participation (kheleghi, 2016; howard, james & taylor, 2002). on the contrary other studies have showed that females participated less than males (aziz, quraishi & kazi, 2018; ballen et al., 2017; yaylaci & beauvais, 2017). conclusion and recommendation classroom participation has garnered a great of positive attention, and it is not entirely undeserved because participation of students in class help to develop critical way of thinking and practically developing problem solving skills that would be useful in their professional development and other aspect of self-development. the result of this study provides some insights into the student, lecturer and classroom climate factors influencing participation. the study showed that undergraduate nursing students are most likely to participate when they have prepared adequately for class. allowing adequate wait time, offering students the equal opportunities to participate and awarding marks for participation were found to be the most likely faculty factors to influence students to participate. the time of the lecture during the day did not influence the participation of the students but the only factor that seemed to influence participation was class size. clearly, classroom participation is not entirely one dimensional as all the key stakeholders have a role to play to ensure participation is effective and also the maximum benefit is derived from it. the above findings call for the following recommendations:  the lecturers in the university should establish expectations of participation. they should also encourage students, this is likely to boost the confidence of students to speak in class, negative evaluations and comments by classmates should condemned by lecturers to make room for low esteemed and shy students to be able to participate in class. lecturers should also ensure that their lectures are understandable and interesting lessons. in addition to the above, the questions should be simple and prepared in advance if possible, should be given to students in advance. lecturers are to allow enough time after questions are posed. finally, they should learn the names of their students and move around in class.  student should take upon themselves to adequately prepare themselves before lectures so that they are not found in an uncomfortable situation. student should also foster good relationship amongst each other, friendly and give motivation to each other.  the management of the university college should provide a conducive atmosphere for learning by providing good, comfortable furniture and learning materials for student and lecturers to work with. large class sizes can be divided in smaller sizes to foster participation. acknowledgement the authors of this work wish to express their profound gratitude to undergraduate nursing students of the presbyterian university college, ghana for their support during the data collection. references abdullah, m.y., bakar, a. & mahbob, m.h. 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(2017). the role of social group membership on classroom participation. political science & politics, 50(2), 559-564. introduction references database connection failed! international journal of education vol. 14 no. 1, april-2021, pp. 70-77 ©2021 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: 10.17509/ije.v14i1.26375 70 the use of first language (l1) in efl classrooms: teachers’ practices and perspectives hanna sundari, rina husnaini febriyanti faculty of language and arts, universitas indraprasta pgri jakarta, indonesia hanna.sundari@gmail.com/hanna.sundari@unindra.ac.id first draft received: 30 oct 2020 date accepted: 21 jan 2021 final proof received: 5 apr 2021 abstract teaching english in the context of foreign language needs vigorous efforts and strong commitment, especially for non-native english-speaking teachers to maintain professionalism and to achieve the success of learning language. generally, it is believed that a teacher should be a language model for the learners by providing a great deal of input in the target language and applying the l2 only policy. however, some teachers finally decide to use their first language (l1) or mix it with the target language (l2) while teaching. this qualitative study investigated the frequencies, functions, and teachers’ perceptions of their l1 use in efl classes. twenty english teachers from lower secondary schools in jakarta, indonesia were asked to participate. the data were collected through classroom observations, in-depth interviews, and focus group discussions. the finding obtained that the frequency of the l1 was seemingly noticeable but not overused. moreover, teachers used first language mostly for activity objective, translation, comprehension check, and activity instruction. the finding also revealed that the majority of the teachers decided to mix first language and target language with different proportions. meanwhile, the others decided to use a small portion of target language. only few teachers consistently tried to instruct mostly in target language. the finding implies the need for teachers to enhance the usage of first language (l1) during the teaching process to get maximal result. . keywords: efl; first language; non-english speaking teachers to cite this paper (in apa style): sundari, h., & febriyanti, r. h. (2021). the use of first language (l1) in efl classrooms: teachers’ practices and perspectives. international journal of education, 14(1), 70-77. doi: 10.17509/ije.v14i1.26375 introduction in the world of second/foreign language (l2) teaching and learning, the use of first language or home language (l1) by both teacher and student in the l2 classroom has been a controversial issue among language experts and practitioner-teachers (almoayidi, 2018; balabakgil & mede, 2016; bozorgian & fallahpour, 2015; campa & hossein, 2009; galali & cinkara, 2017; yavuz, 2012). some of them believe in the policy of l2 only (english, in this case) underpinned by several argument (auerbach, 1993; cook, 2008). on the other side, some evidences show that using l1 in l2 classroom is still considered beneficial and needed to facilitate language learning and teaching (auerbach, 1993; cook, 2008; macaro, 2009) at first, in the era of grammar-translation method, language was taught by translating techniques and the use of l1 to teach l2 was universal and acceptable as a norm (hashemi & sabet, 2013; yavuz, 2012). later, in the line with the criticism of gtm in the twentieth century, the student’s first language was nearly avoided; from direct method to audio-lingual method to task-bask learning, it has been argued that the less l1 is used in the class, the better the teaching (cook, 2008). moreover, philipson has emphasized that english is best taught monolingually; the more english, the better the result (auerbach, 1993). berlitz, from berlitz’ direct method, even directly ask the teachers to use l2 only in language classroom (hariri, 2015). the monolingual approach of l2 teaching also gains support from krashen (1981) with his theory of second language acquisition (sla) which is stated that the l2 learning follows the same route as acquiring the mother tongue so that the l1 in learning language should be avoided (alshehri, 2017). the use of l1 can be a hindrance in second language acquisition. despite the views of the policy of l2 only in language classrooms, some recently different arguments come to light in discussion on the benefits and frequency of l1 in l2 classroom. campa & hossein (2009) wrote that the usage of l1 brings cognitive and sociolinguistic positions for the students mailto:hanna.sundari@gmail.com/ mailto:hanna.sundari@unindra.ac.id kusmaryono, jupriyanto & kusumaningsih a systematic literature review on the effectiveness of distance learning 71 in the language classroom. correspondingly, cook (2008) explained that the l1 is used by teachers in some ways, such as explaining grammar, tasks, and exercises to the students and they naturally use it their classroom activities. in addition, some research also provides the evidence on how l1 helps l2 to learn and to teach. the study by bozorgian and fallahpour (2015) who investigated 155 university students in a pre-intermediate 12-week efl course in iran showed that the small amount of l1 in the classroom is as a facilitative tool in order to achieve a wide range of teaching learning purposes: to convey meaning, manage classroom, make friendly environment, reduce students’ anxiety, facilitate communication, and elaborate the course objectives. in 2017, alshehri (2017) surveyed 104 female teachers from different nationalities (saudis, south asian, arabic, others) to find out their attitudes toward and frequency of l1 in their efl classrooms. he then concluded that the teachers use l1 for some functions, such as explaining grammar and developing rapport with the students; meanwhile, the students use it mainly for translating new vocabulary and preparing tasks. furthermore, macaro (2009) summed up that the usage of first language facilitates learning and recalling second-language vocabulary and effects to the first language in reading. the research results from iraqi tertiary level students also revealed the positive attitude toward the l1 in facilitating target language learning (galali & cinkara, 2017). then hongkong teacher thought that the usage of l1 is permittable to maintain students’ interests and involvement (carless, 2007). particularly the use of l1 as a source of humor, the study by jawhar (2018) has proved that it has obviously increased the students’ interactional competence. within the study on efl senior high schools in china, li (2018) reported that, in the form-focused irf cycle, l1 can function as linguistic clues to scaffold students’ learning; at the same time, the students can benefit from l1 in teacher’s instruction so as to keep in touch with the teacher and concentrate on pedagogical goals. not only that, the research by paker & karaağaç (2015) showed that the language instructors use l1 mostly for building rapport, making topic/meaning clear, and explaining difficult concepts/ideas. regarding the use of l1 for teaching efl in the indonesian context, manara (2007) investigated 9 non-native english teachers from three universities in central java, indonesia to determine the perceptions and purposes of the use of l1 in their classrooms. she concluded that both teachers and students agreed that english praxis should be used to the fullest although the teacher also thought that the essential considerations in using l1 support, such as the course’s goal, students’ level of proficiency, and the immediacy of responses. in 2012, hidayati (2012) also reported her study of the role of l1 (bahasa indonesia) in teaching receptive skills and grammar in efl classes in university level. after conducting observation and interviewing three participant teachers and surveying 100 students through questionnaire, it can be concluded that bahasa indonesia is helpful only when it is used judiciously, and it functions to explain grammar and difficult vocabulary items, to check students’ comprehension, to make jokes, to give suggestions, and to give complex classroom instruction. at the level of classroom practices and interaction in efl classrooms, the teachers and students who share the same l1 tend to use it for many purposes and different frequencies. and it evidently facilitates language learning in the classroom when it’s used proportionally. as yavuz (2012) concluded about the use of l1, it can neither be ignored nor overused in language classrooms. in addition, pan and pan (2017) also pointed out that the use of l1 is justified, but none of the its supporters endorses unlimited use. despite the fact that the research on the issue of l1 use in language classrooms has been widely and extensively conducted, most of them explored the perception, frequency, and purposes in the university level. meanwhile, its exploration on the different settings (primary or secondary levels) is still uncovered and needed to figure out the differences (almoayidi, 2018; manara, 2007). therefore, the current study has attempted to address to the following questions: 1) how frequent is the l1 used by the teachers in the efl classroom? 2) what are the functions/purposes of its use? and 3) how do the teachers perceive their l1 use in efl secondary classes? method to answer the research questions, the study was carried out in descriptive, qualitative approach. the participants were twenty non-native english teachers whose teaching experiences ranged from four to thirtyseven years from eight lower secondary schools (smp) in jakarta, indonesia. they taught grade 7 (25% of participants), grade 8 (20%) and grade 9 (55%). to collect the data, the instruments were classroom observation/recordings, in-depth interviews, and focus-group discussion (fgd). the classroom observation/recordings were conducted for those were willing for classroom observation. six of all teacherparticipants provided their consents with the total of 5.8-hour recordings to figure out the frequency and the functions/purposes of the usage of l1. the recordings were captured by camera that was placed in the back or the front of the class. the class recordings were then listened, analyzed, and coded from the teachers’ utterances based on two aspects: frequency and function/purpose. the utterance cuts were determined by the shift among them. and the classification of the utterances was based on the teacher’s talk analysis by duff and polio (1990)’s category of utterances. meanwhile, the utterances that contain the use of l1 were then tallied and classified based on the coding schemes of the functions/purposes suggested by campa and hossein, (2009). observation sheets were international journal of education vol. 14 no. 1, april-2021, pp. 70-77 ©2021 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: 10.17509/ije.v14i1.26375 72 also written to collect what the researcher’s see and capture on the classroom atmosphere especially on the students’ responses on the use of l1 that were probably not captured on camera. not only class recordings to 12 interviews of eleven teacher-participants but also 2 fgds of nine teacher-participants were conducted to elicit the teachers’ perspectives about frequencies and purposes on the use of l1 in their efl classrooms as a triangulation of the gathered data from class recordings. both interviews and fgd were videorecorded and transcribed in verbatim helped by nvivo version 8. furthermore, member-checking technique by the second author was also applied to verify the gathered data valid and reliable. results and discussion after collecting and analyzing data, the gathered data resulted in the frequency and the functions of the utterances spoken by the teacher participants who were teaching english in their class as well as the reasons and perspectives of the use of l1. those data are presented based on the research question formulation, as follow: the frequency of the use of l1 from classroom recordings, the collected data showed that the entire utterances expressed by the teacher participants reached 1300 times of occurrences in total. with 54% of the total utterances, the use of l2/target language, which is completely in english, seems dominating the language classroom spoken by the teachers. however, the number of l2 occurrences were less than in the study by campa and hossein (2009) in which l2 word yielded 88.2% of total words. in addition, the data also showed that the utterances of english with one word/phrase in bahasa indonesia was occurred 131 times, equals 10% of all utterances. meanwhile, the mixed utterances, that are approximately an equal mixture of english and bahasa indonesia spoken by the teacher participants, gained 76 times of occurrences. from these l2 occurrences, it can be drawn a pre-conclusion that the english in efl classroom is mostly and predominantly used by the teacher. figure 1 the frequency of utterances despite the fact that english becomes the primary language spoken by the teachers in efl classroom, the number of occurrences of l1 (bahasa indonesia) cannot be neglected and ignored (see fig. 1). based on the class recordings, teacher participants spoke completely in bahasa indonesia for 287 times and used it with one word/phrase in english for 93 times. those occurrences equal 29% of total utterances expressed by the teacher. the percentage of the use of bahasa indonesia becomes 35% of all utterances if the mixture of english and bahasa indonesia is included. this is much higher than what was found by campa and hossein (2009) with only 11% of the use l1 word. however, almost similar result can be found on the study by hidayati (2012) which the use of l1 reached 30% to 49% among six teachers recruited. the functions of the use of l1 table i shows the functions or purposes of use of l1 (bahasa indonesia) uttered by the teacher participants from class recordings. at first, the fourteen categories were selected to code the utterances as proposed by campa and hossein (2009). in fact, some utterances occurred in the data could not be coded based on the selected categorization. as a result, those were noted as no code or nc because it was uttered in arabic language. table 1. the functions of l1 utterances from the table above, activity objective (5) is the most frequently used function. this indicates that the goal/aim of the lesson, the objective of activity/task, and the topic/material discussed are better and more understandable when using bahasa indonesia. the l1 is more preferable to express the complex expressions such as: “karena lamanya pake for, for 2 hours, selama dua jam. untuk menyatakan lamanya. atau tanya mengenai lamanya nya pakai long.” (wc1). (because of its duration, use for, for 2 hours. to say duration. else, when asking duration, use long) “keunggulan-keunggulan taman menurut lima siswa yang berdiskusi. eh 6 siswa yang berdiskusi” (wc5) (the advantages of parks based on 5 students on the discussion. ups, 6 students.) (wc5). kusmaryono, jupriyanto & kusumaningsih a systematic literature review on the effectiveness of distance learning 73 “karena kalo kita menanam kan harus ditutup akarnya.” (wc6) (because when planting, we should cover the roots, right) the functions of l1 to explain grammar or difficult concepts and conveying meaning were also widely found in many research (balabakgil & mede, 2016; cook, 2008; hidayati, 2012; paker & karaağaç, 2015). at this stance phase, it can be concluded that the teachers use the l1 to consolidate students’ knowledge about l2, for example its vocabulary, sentence structure, and cultural aspects (pan & pan, 2017). furthermore, the function of translation (1), comprehension check (8) and activity instruction (4) reach the next three highest occurrences with 81, 79 and 78 times of occurrences in respectively. this means that the teacher participants prefer to use bahasa indonesia to check the students’ understanding of the materials and to deliver the steps and how the students to do the tasks in the classroom; as also found in the study by hashemi & sabet (2013) in which concluded that the main areas of l1 use are in explaining grammatical terms, introducing abstracts words and checking students’ comprehension. and then, to make meaning of difficult concepts/ideas easier, the teacher participants choose translation. the excerpts from class recordings are below. “you said you understand. what do you have to do? di suruh ngapain?” (wc3) “listen. koq ini advise? bukannya pakai -c? ya ok, sorry, bro. koq gak pake -c sih? what do you advise me? ini verb atau noun? verb atau noun? verb.” (wc7) (listen. why is it advise? why don’t use -c? ok, sorry. why not use -c? what do you advise me? is it verb or noun? verb or noun? verb) “dengan memilih satu yang ada di sini” (wc1) (by choosing one of these) the function of l1 as translation was also revealed in the study by campa and hossein (campa & hossein, 2009), bozorgian and fallahpur (bozorgian & fallahpour, 2015) and paker and karaagac (paker & karaağaç, 2015). meanwhile, the use of l1 allows the students to complete the task more easily because the teachers explain it in students’ first language. therefore, l1 helps the students in defining unknown words directly and do the task easily, as stated by pan and pan (pan & pan, 2017). the other functions of l1 in efl classroom that occurred from the data are evaluation (3), personal comment (7) and elicitation of student contribution which gained 35, 29, and 26 times in respectively. the examples can be seen on the excerpt below: “jangan komplain ya. jangan komplain this song because” (wc7) (no complaint, please. no complaint.) “salah. koq” (wc5) (it’s wrong.) “buat apa? emang pengen dapat 10? “ (wc2) (for what? do you want to get 10?) “ayo yang cepat ngerjain siapa?” (wc6) (come on, who does the fastest?) even though teacher participants tend to give positive evaluation such as good, very good in english or target language, some evaluations are uttered in l1, particularly when giving negative evaluation and correction in the students’ mistakes and misbehaviour. on the other hand, study by campa and hossein (2009) revealed the functions of personal comment in l1 words as the second most frequent functions on their data. personal comments are as a contribution of personal note on the teaching. beside the function of personal comments, using l1 to make jokes (humour 13) was also found 12 times of occurrences from the data. the similar finding can be found on jawhar (2018)’s study on investigation of teaching english towards university students in saudi. humours in l1 was also occurred in research by hidayati (2012); the teachers prefer l1 to make jokes since the students often feel difficult to make meaning of amusement when using the target language (hidayati, 2012). meanwhile, the study by paker & karaağaç (2015) shows that making jokes and personal comments to show concerns and empathy in l1 words aims at building rapport to the students. the data of the teachers’ utterances, it shows that the teacher participants have their roles as bilingual instructors (14a) who speak arbitrarily between l1 and l1 with 23 times of occurrences, for example, “so sometimes, we don’t know exactly. ada pepatah atau sebuah such a wise word say …”(wc4). moreover, they sometimes utter the word or term from the l1 culture (14b) with the occurrences of 16 times, such as “if asking your friend, you got the answer, but your listening still payah, you know?” (wc2). this indicates that the code-mixing between l1 and l2 is occasionally applied when the teachers and students share the same l1. the other functions in the use of l1 in efl classroom found from the data were classroom equipment, administrative issues, l1-l2 contrast, reaction to the student’s questions, and repetition of student’s l1 utterances; with the occurrences 15, 13, 9, 7, and 4 times in respectively. it can be stated that the l1 utterances were used for discussing course policies, attendance, and other administrative issues, and conflict management (paker & karaağaç, 2015). the functions of l1 use from the teacher-participants’ utterances on this current research are equivalent to what franklin found that more than 80% of teachers used l1 to explain grammar and discuss objectives; more than 50% to evaluate written work and teach background; but less than 16% to organize classroom activity and to informal chat (cook, 2008). besides those functions of l1 utterances, at least 76 times occurrences of l1 uttered by the teacherparticipants cannot seemingly be categorized. they frequently use several particles in bahasa indonesia, such as ya, nah, kan, loh, yuk in classroom language. international journal of education vol. 14 no. 1, april-2021, pp. 70-77 ©2021 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: 10.17509/ije.v14i1.26375 74 these particles are used either in initial or final position of the utterances, for example “so that, later on, you will get used to people talking like me. ya” (wc2) and “nah. if you were as merly and jennifer” (wc7). and then the functions are probably to get student’s attention, to emphasize the explained concepts, and to show surprise. the teachers may think that they couldn’t find the similar expressions in l2 as well as these particles are very common in l1 daily conversation. accordingly, their uses in efl classroom sound reasonable and natural. from the 76 times of l1 occurrences as no code category, the utterances that show to give advice or suggestions from the teachers to the students are also frequently found. for example, one teacher participant says “makanya, jangan ingkar janji.” (therefore, don’t break your promise) (wc6). giving suggestion/advice or evaluation of the students’ behaviour in the classroom shows that the teachers have the role as the classroom manager and evaluator. it might indicate that the social relation between student and teachers is as children-parent relationship or lesscompetent learners-more experienced teacher which the gap of age and competences are widely opened between them. as a result, the teacher might have authority to evaluate students’ proficiency and behaviour in the class; at the same time, they also might think that it is part of job to be teacher-educator to maintain discipline and build positive behaviour. meanwhile, their preference to use l1 in expressing suggestion/advice is to make the students understand what they are saying directly and easily. at this point, it can be summed up that the functions of bahasa indonesia in efl classroom are mostly to give activity instruction, to translate difficult word, to check students’ comprehension as well as to give feedback and to maintain discipline, as also already mentioned by cook (2008). teachers’ perspectives on the use of l1 this section presents the perspectives from the teacher participants about their uses of l1 in the classroom particularly the purposes and the reasons grounded their practices. the data were mostly gathered from in-depth interview and focused-group discussions completed by observation sheets. from the interview and fgd of the teacher participants, the majority of the participants stated that the medium of instruction in their efl classrooms uses the mixture of l1 and l2 with the slightly different proportions. for example, one teacher participant said that “iya, tidak hanya full english sih, cuma dimixlah antara bahasa indonesia dan bahasa inggris” (yes, it is not full english. it is mixed between bahasa indonesia and english) (tw-07). the similar result was also found on the study by petek (2013) which revealed the use of both l1 and l2 as medium of instruction in foreign language classroom. in addition, hariri (2015)’s research shows that 72% of teachers who live and study in arabic-speaking countries participating on the survey claimed that they use l1 in and outside the classroom. moreover, the small number of the teacher participants declared that l2 is dominantly used for classroom language and they try to avoid translation technique as a tool. on the contrary, the other small number of them expressed that bahasa indonesia is mostly spoken in the classroom with approximately 70% of total utterances, as the excerpt below: “… maka saya coba sekali-sekali itu menggunakan bahasa inggris. dan mereka enggak ngerti gitu, tidak paham. jadi saya iker daripada nanti materinya tidak sampai kepada siswa, jadi saya campur bahasanya. presentasenya antara 70 banding 30 … 70% bahasa anak dan 30% bahasa target”. (so sometimes i try to use english. however, they don’t understand. therefore, i think i mix the languages instead of missing of the materials/lessons. the percentages are 70% and 30%... 70% for student’s first language and 30% for target language) (tw-07). in addition to the frequency of l1 use in the efl classrooms, the teacher participants were then asked when and for what situation they use l1 during teaching. the excerpts from the interview said: “nanti kalo di inti, baru itu kita masuk ke bahasa indonesia-nya. jadi separuh menggunakan bahasa inggris lalu kita jelaskan dalam bahasa indonesia.” (when the main activity, we use bahasa indonesia. so, for half of the teaching session, teacher uses english; and then bahasa indonesia is used for the other half of session) (tw-11). “bahasa indonesia dipakai untuk menerangkan materi bahasan yang sulit.” (bahasa indonesia is used for explaining difficult topics) (cw-11). “… sedikit bahasa indonesia, terutama untuk penegasan/penguatan disiplin.” (… just a small use of bahasa indonesia, primarily for strengthening of discipline) (lo05). “…sementara bahasa indonesia digunakan untuk memberikan komentar, instruksi yang panjang dan rumit, merespon pertanyaan siswa, dan penjelasan lainnya.” (… while bahasa indonesia is used for giving comments, long difficult instructions, responding student’s questions, and delivering other explanation) (co-08) the data shows that the teacher participants prefer l1 to l2 in classroom to explain difficult concepts/topics during main activity of the lesson, give comments and instructions, and feedbacks, and discipline student related to classroom behavior and kusmaryono, jupriyanto & kusumaningsih a systematic literature review on the effectiveness of distance learning 75 equipment. these findings are consistent with what harmer said that the classes with low level learners, the l1 is used to explain topics/materials, discuss lessons, and deliver announcements that are probably difficult to understand when using l2 (harmer, 2005). to be more specific on classroom discipline, the similar finding can be seen on the study by yavuz (2012) which resulted in the data that teachers get forced to use l1 to control students’ behaviors when the classes are crowded and noise. concerning to the considerations in using l1 for language classroom, the teacher participants stated some reasons for their preferences. these excerpts below cover the information. “kelas dengan kemampuan bahasa inggris rendah sekali menggunakan bahasa indonesia, kecuali untuk kalimat perintah.” (for the class with a very low english level of proficiency, bahasa indonesia is applied, except for commands) (cw-4). “saya lebih supaya mereka tidak frustrated belajar bahasa inggris, jadi kadang-kadang saya selipi bahasa indonesia.” (for me, it is more to not make the students frustrating when learning english. therefore, i sometimes combine with bahasa indonesia) (tw-02). “… mengajar menggunakan full english tapi disini karena saya juga mengajar di beberapa level tingkatan yang siswanya rata-rata menengah ke bawah..” (teaching uses full english, but here because i have also taught in several levels of the students’ language level that are partially in low levels) (tw-07). the use of l1 preferred by the teacher participants are based on some considerations. at first, student’s proficiency level of english is the first aspect to consider. when entering the class with relatively low level of english learners, the l1 or students’ first language is mostly used for classroom language; the higher the learners’ level of l2 the more frequently the use of l2. meanwhile the l2 as communicative language spoken by the teachers is slightly limited for only some expressions. the similar factor was also found on the research by campa and hossein (2009) in which student’ level determines how much l1 use in the classroom. in addition, this finding supports the view of brown who wrote that for beginner level learners, the main objective in learning language is to understand and to produce spontaneous language but it is still in the practices of controlled repertoire of language (brown, 2007). as also the conclusion on pan and pan’s research, the quantity of l1 use depends on the students’ proficiency levels and teaching purposes in which l1 may be spoken from beginner to lower-intermediate levels on a gradually decreasing scale (pan & pan, 2017). related to the teacher’s proficiency in l2, only one of the teacher participants stated that “for me it doesn’t matter; mungkin ada beberapa guru yang capek dia ngomong bahasa inggris terus [maybe some teacher feel tired speaking in english]… or they don’t know how to say english and they make it with bahasa.” (tw-02). meanwhile, most of the teacher participants do not consider it as a factor in using l1/l2. this finding may support what was stated by duff and polio. they wrote that the role of teachers’ english proficiency as a factor influencing the amount of l2 use in classes can be discounted; in the other words, oral proficiency does not determine to push teachers to speak more or less of the l2 (duff & polio, 1990). the second consideration in using the l1 in efl classes is social/affective factor. when teachers use l2 words that the students do not fully understand. consequently, they fail to make meanings of the information, communication and instructions given by the teachers. as a consequence, they feel confused, frustrated, and lost in learning l2. the feelings of failure may demotivate them. therefore, the teachers think that they need to place themselves and the languages used in the classroom suit to the students’ language levels. the study by l1 on application of l1 in china brought the similar view that when students hear l1 from their teachers and they allow to use it, they become more confident and willing to participate in language discourse. in the other words, l1 can create harmonious situation to encourage students’ participation in the classroom (li, 2018). conclusion this research is aimed at describing the use of l1 in efl classes, particularly in the aspects of frequency, functions, and reasons from teachers’ practices and perspectives in lower secondary schools. after analyzing and presenting the gathered data, it can be drawn some summaries. firstly, from the 1300 times of total teacher’s utterances, the utterances completely in l1 were 287 times of occurrences, equal to 29%. the percentage rose to 35% when the l1 utterances were combined with one word/phrase in l2. this number of l1 utterances can be said to be neither significant nor overuse of l1, considering that the students in the research context were from lower secondary school and could be categorized as beginner-level learners. the second conclusion is that the l1 used by the teachers was mostly for activity objective, translation, comprehension check, activity instruction, evaluation, personal comments, eliciting contribution, and humors. in other words, the teachers preferred using first language to target language to explain difficult concepts/topics/materials, to check how well students understand the lesson and to deliver how to do the tasks in the class. moreover, the l1 was also more preferable to give personal comments and humors as well as to evaluate students’ performance and to maintain student discipline during the lesson. it can be assumed that international journal of education vol. 14 no. 1, april-2021, pp. 70-77 ©2021 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: 10.17509/ije.v14i1.26375 76 the teachers chose to speak in first language to students in the classroom in the level of classroom management, i.e., lesson delivery, comprehension check, and student discipline. from the teachers’ perspectives, it can be summed up that majority of the teachers chose to mix l1 and l2 for language used in the classroom. meanwhile, the small number of them decided to use either l1 or l2 dominance with some considerations. students’ l2 proficiency of english is the first factor to consider. when teaching students with low level of english, the students’ first language (l1) is more preferable. in addition, to avoid students’ confusion, frustration and demotivation in learning english, teachers finally resort to speak in l1 because those social/affective factors may hinder the learning process. implications for this study is to enhance the use of l1 in order to improve students’ input from the teachers as the role model of target language. recommendation for further research may analyze about the factors of l1 use from both teacher and students’ viewpoints in the perspectives of psycholinguistics and/or sociolinguistics. references almoayidi, k. a. 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(2018). l1 in the irf cycle: a case study of chinese efl classrooms. asian-pacific journal of second and foreign language education, 3(1), 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40862-0170042-y macaro, e. (2009). teacher use of codeswitching in the second language classroom: exploring ‘optimal’use. in first language use in second and foreign language learning. second language acquisition series. (pp. 35–49). manara, c. (2007). the use of l1 support: teachers’ and students’ opinions and practices in an indonesian context the use of l1 support: teachers’ and students’ opinions and practices in an indonesian context. the journal of asia tefl, 4(1), 145–178. paker, t., & karaağaç, ö. (2015). the use and functions of mother tongue in efl classes. procedia social and behavioral sciences, 199, 111–119. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.07.494 pan, y., & pan, y. (2017). the use of l1 in the foreign language classroom. colombian applied linguistics journal, 12(2), 87. https://doi.org/10.14483/22487085.85 petek, e. (2013). teacher’s beliefs about classroom interaction and their actual practices: a qualitative case study of a native and a nonkusmaryono, jupriyanto & kusumaningsih a systematic literature review on the effectiveness of distance learning 77 native english teacher’s in-class applications. procedia social and behavioral sciences, 70, 1195–1199. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2013.01.176 yavuz, f. (2012). the attitudes of english teachers about the use of l1 in the teaching of l2. procedia social and behavioral sciences, 46, 4339–4344. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2012.06.251 international journal of education vol. 15 no. 2, august-2022, pp. 95-102 ©2022 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: https://doi.org/10.17509/ije.v15i2 95 enhancing learning participation of international students in the classroom using social media: the case of international students in the uk university subkhi abdul aziz national research and innovation agency (brin), indonesia *corresponding author: subkhi.aziz@gmail.com / subk001@brin.go.id first draft received: 2 apr 2021 date accepted: 17 jun 2022 final proof received: 28 aug 2022 abstract the utilisation of social media for education such as kahoot! and padlet to improve the classroom learning experience has become popular in recent years. this study investigates the implementation of kahoot! and padlet in the international students' learning environment at the uk university. the purpose of this study was to explore international students' perspective towards the implementation of kahoot! and padlet in the classroom learning process. in doing so, this study used a qualitative research design. data were collected from ten international students from six different countries origin via semi-structured interviews. the results suggest that the implementation of kahoot! and padlet can improve the classroom learning process and create better study experience than the conventional way. several benefits have been identified from the implementation of kahoot! and padlet in the international students learning environment, such as managing classroom discussion, building up an active classroom discussion, and encouraging critical thinking. however, some challenges regarding the implementation should be considered, notably those related to technical matters and the production of interesting contents. from this study, it can be concluded that using social media applications, such as kahoot! and padlet, can enhance students’ collaboration learning as well as support an inclusive classroom learning environment. keywords: classroom learning; international students; kahoot!; padlet; social media to cite this paper (in apa style): aziz, s. a. (2022). enhancing learning participation of international students in the classroom using social media: the case of international students in uk university. international journal of education, 15(2), 95-102. https://doi.org/10.17509/ije.v15i2 introduction social media is a digital online platform that builds on the foundation of web 2.0, which enables the creation and exchange of user-generated content (kaplan & haenlein, 2010). social media can facilitate the social and interpersonal relationship among individuals, allow their users to connect with other people, to publish content, and to engage in conversation (jarrahi & sawyer, 2015). nowadays, social media becomes a popular tool for online communication. social media also improves communication in many activities, including in the higher education area. one of the most discussed topics regarding social media in the context of higher education focuses on the usage of social media as tools to enhance participation learning of students. as van dijck and poell (2018) assert that there is an increasing tendency to use social media as tools and platforms in the educational context. the utilisation of social media in the education process, can, however, either be enhancing or disrupting the learning experiences. on the one hand, social media offers opportunities for collaboration by allowing students to engage in communication and content creation (gikas & grant, 2013). on the other hand, the challenges arise when social media triggers disruptions in the classroom learning process, causing teachers' disappointment (junco, 2012). in the educational context, social media can be used either both inside and outside the classroom. moran, seaman, and tinti-kane (2011) argue that the implementation of social media for teaching inside and outside the classroom can create collaborative learning and sharing knowledge among members. this can occur because social media enables students to post content and video and to give comments to each other related to study materials. another study from hrastinski and aghaee (2012) states that social media has a role in supporting students for a particular task, such as information retrieval of the study material. the information retrieval becomes easier because it is uploaded in social media like facebook international journal of education vol. 15 no. 2, august-2022, pp. 95-102 ©2022 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: https://doi.org/10.17509/ije.v15i2 96 or youtube, therefore preventing the students to lose their study materials. research from pallas, eidenfalk, and engel (2019) reports that the implementation of social media for education in the classroom could encourage students who are normally quiet in the class to become more active in the discussion. furthermore, more discussions will be produced by the quieter students when conducted the learning process in online forums rather than in the physical classroom (pallas et al., 2019). another research from henninger and neal (2012) implements social media to convert live classroom presentation to presentation in digital format and then upload this in facebook. the result shows that presentation in digital format through social media (that allows the students to comment) has substantially increased students participation in the discussion (henninger & neal, 2012). another social media study in higher education, discusses the utilisation of kahoot! and padlet to support learning process in the classroom. research conducted by rashid, yunus, and wahi (2019) regarding the implementation of padlet application in the classroom reports that it has improved students' participation in-class activities and has encouraged interaction between students and teacher. rathakrishnan, ahmad, and choi (2018) argue that learning with padlet in the classroom can enhance the critical thinking of students. furthermore, beltránmartín (2019) notes that padlet can be used in the classroom for several class activities such as class resource for material learning, class diary, information for frequently asked questions, brainstorming and online dialogue. another study regarding the utilisation of kahoot! application concluded that it can be used as a collaborative learning tool. licorish et al. (2018) argue that using kahoot! in the classroom has influenced the enhancement of classroom dynamics, fostered student engagement and motivation, as well as improved the learning experience. kahoot! can also foster and reinforce learning material (tan, lin, ganapathy, & kaur, 2018). furthermore, kahoot! can be used to evaluate teaching and learning activities based on students answer to quizzes (licorish et al., 2018). in the context of international education environment, social media is also used as a tool to build interaction and communication between local and international students (yu, foroudi, & gupta, 2019). however, in this environment, international students tend to choose to stay in the same cultural group and to build communication with other students that have a familiar language (arkoudis et al., 2013). rienties, héliot, and jindal-snape (2013) argue that the english language ability of international students and the limited opportunity to make interaction with local students are the main obstacles to build communication between them. in the university, teachers play a crucial role in designing collaborative learning and improving the social interaction between international students and local students in the classroom through social media application (gray, chang, & kennedy, 2010; hrastinski & aghaee, 2012). moreover, ngai (2019) studying japanese international students in us university that use facebook to support activities inside and outside the classroom reports that there is an improvement in terms of global competence, such as communicative ability and collaboration involving people from diverse backgrounds. considering the advantages of social media as one of the tools in the learning process, it is reasonable to assume that using social media application for education inside and outside the classroom could help improve learning experience between teacher and student. however, previous studies regarding the utilisation of social media in the education sector for international students has largely focused on mainstream applications, such as facebook, twitter and youtube, that is strongly related to personal and private usage. meanwhile, studies focusing on social media to improve learning in the classroom such as kahoot! and padlet only involve students from the same background. therefore, little is known on the implementation of those social media applications within the context of international students who have different languages and cultures. against this background, this study aims to better understand the international students' perspective in the uk university towards the implementation of social media in the classroom learning process, as well as the extent to which kahoot! and padlet have supported the learning process in the classroom. such knowledge is important to improve the implementation of social media in the classroom by a teacher, that in return may enhance international students' participation and create a better study experience for them. method this research used a qualitative method. while the previous literature provides little information about the phenomenon, the researcher needs to explore this phenomenon from participants overview (creswell, 2012). in this sense, exploratory research is useful to clarify the researcher's understanding of a particular issue, problem, and phenomenon (saunders, lewis, & thornhill, 2015). the implementation of social media in the classroom for international students learning is the central phenomenon of the research that was explored through participants view, opinion and perception. as this research is exploratory in nature, semi-structured interviews provide an opportunity to probe the participants' answer, where the researcher wants their interviewees to explain and give a response to a particular topic (saunders et al., 2015). a total of 10 participants from international students in the uk university were selected purposefully for this research. the participants come from postgraduate international students and studied master degree in one of the uk universities. participants consist of six countries of origin that have aziz enhancing learning participation of international students in the classroom using social media: the case of international students in the uk university 97 different languages and cultures: three students from indonesia, three students from china, one student from japan, one student from india, one student from the united arab emirates, and one student from taiwan. the purposeful sampling was selected where the researcher intentionally select individuals to understand the central phenomenon and ensure they can meet the objectives of the research (creswell, 2012). in this research, the researcher tried to select participants that have "information-rich". because of that particular reason, participants are those having experience in using padlet and kahoot! as social media applications in the learning process in the classroom. before collecting the interview data, all participants were given the participant consent sheet to ensure they are aware of the interview process and accept all the terms. all participants were also informed that they could withdraw their participation for this research in anytime during the interview session. the researcher committed for the ethical consideration such as ensuring that participants response would be anonymous, saving the recorded interviews and then transcribing these in a secure device with codifying folder name that has been protected by a password, as well as ensuring the data collection will be used only for this research purpose. for that reason, 10 participants of this research are given a pseudo name: participant a to participant j. the details of the participant background can be seen in table 1. table 1 participant background participant country of origin degree a indonesia master b indonesia master c japan master d china master e china master f china master g india master h united arab emirates master i indonesia master j taiwan master all data collected from semi-structured interviews have been analysed using thematic analysis. the thematic analysis process followed six steps (terry, hayfield, clarke, & braun, 2017). the thematic analysis started by familiarising the data during the collection period. after transcribing the interview conversation, the researcher reread the transcripts and then highlighted the words or sentences to create notes. in the second step, the researcher immersed more deeply in the data collected to find meanings and then grouped similar notes for generating codes. in the third step, the researcher continued to find similarities and patterns across datasets and then grouped similar codes to constructing themes. in the fourth step, the draft themes created in the previous step are possible to change during data analysis to find the new appropriate potential themes. in the fifth step, the researcher defined the name of each theme after ensuring clarity and cohesion between codes and themes. finally, in the sixth step, the researcher produced a report from the result of the thematic analysis. findings and discussion the two main themes that followed by five sub-themes have been defined after processing the collected data using thematic analysis. all of the themes used to answer the international student’s perspective towards the implementation of social media such as kahoot! and padlet for classroom learning. table 2 shows the detail of the themes and their sub-themes from the result of data analysis using a thematic analysis approach. table 2 the results from thematic analysis themes sub-themes advantages managing classroom discussion building up an active classroom discussion encouraging critical thinking challenges technical matters create interesting content advantages social media has a chance to improve the learning process in the classroom. international students as participants of this research have a certain degree of experience in using social media for collaborative learning in the classroom, such as padlet and kahoot! during their study in the uk university. the participants argued that social media implementation in the classroom had created better experiences in the learning process. one participant expressed the experience using kahoot! in classroom learning, "it is interesting because one professor uses the platform that we can see other students answer. it is like competition, so we can just feel more interesting than just having the lecture." (participant e) the expression above shows that social media implementation in the classroom has given a chance for the teacher to offer another learning method than the conventional way. this can enhance students engagement in the classroom learning process. aligned with the participant expression, previous research from licorish et al. (2018) argue that the implementation of kahoot! in the classroom can improve the quality of teaching and learning beyond the conventional classroom method. kahoot! (https://kahoot.com/) is one of education social media applications that can modify the learning method through online gaming quiz. a teacher can create online gaming quiz related to study material using kahoot! and encourage all students to join the quiz international journal of education vol. 15 no. 2, august-2022, pp. 95-102 ©2022 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: https://doi.org/10.17509/ije.v15i2 98 that has a chance to answer within a limited time. kahoot! offers an online quiz followed by some music that can create an attractive environment and impose students to win the competition by choosing the right answer as quick as possible. kahoot! is able to show a sense of pride for the winning student because the quiz winner indicates the understanding of study material (zarzycka-piskorz, 2016). in addition to kahoot!, padlet has been also used to support the learning process in the classroom. one participant shared an opinion about the implementation of padlet in the classroom learning, "it is interesting, you can share your idea, share link website, share photos and they are will appear in front of the screen." (participant b) based on this opinion, the ability of padlet application has encouraged students to become more active in classroom learning. aligned with the participant opinion, previous research from rashid et al. (2019) report that padlet utilisation for learning in the classroom can motivate students to participate in class activities and encourage interaction between students and teacher. padlet (https://padlet.com/) is one of education social media applications in the classroom learning that can accommodate the collaborative learning among class members through the online digital canvas. on this online digital canvas, students and teacher can share their questions, opinions, and ideas. because of that, padlet has enabled students to collaborate and support each other in the learning process by providing the study materials. shortly, padlet has an ability to build discussion and enhance class activities by creating two-way interaction between teacher and students, as well as produce more interesting learning process through online collaboration than the conventional way. from this study, there are three sub-themes of advantages of using social media in classroom learning, i.e. managing classroom discussion, building up an active classroom discussion, and encouraging critical thinking. managing classroom discussion the teaching method in the (traditional) classroom usually involves students in some activities: asking questions, participating in discussion and class activities, and offering opinions. many people argue that successful teaching in the classroom can be measured by the quality and quantity of student participation. however, there are some barriers that discourage students from involving in classroom activities. fuchs (2014) argues that some barriers can come from the variety of conflicting feelings and beliefs of students, such as (1) afraid of making a mistake, (2) afraid that their words will not be understood, (3) afraid of how class members might respond to an opinion that is not widely discussed, (4) feeling shy and fear to speak in public, (5) and having a feeling that their opinions and thoughts are not yet well-formed and thus unworthy to be shared in-class discussion. those barriers are preventing students from participating in-class activities, especially in the discussion session. all the barriers should be removed to support inclusive classroom learning that can accommodate and encourage participation from all students. on the other hand, some challenges can arise when starting the discussion in a big classroom, such as the limited time of discussion session, needly to wait the turn to speak and to compete with other friends to make a contribution. the implementation of padlet for classroom learning can help the teacher to manage the classroom discussion, particularly when the teacher is running the question-and-answer session in classroom learning. one of the participants shared an opinion about padlet implementation in a big classroom. "it is more convenient, it is helpful for us, for the students when they are in a very big classroom. i think it is good. it helps the students to share their opinion. maybe some students they do not want to ask the teacher directly so they can use this to raise their question." (participant f) the opinion above indicates that the utilisation of padlet for classroom learning can help students to share their opinions, especially when students learn in a big classroom. in this situation, padlet can accommodate all students’ questions and opinions about study materials. padlet can replace an ordinary whiteboard in the classroom to an online digital canvas that can facilitate online classroom discussion. when using padlet, every student does not need to wait their turn to speak, thus enabling the teacher to collect many ideas and suggestions within a short space of time. moreover, fisher (2017) argues that students from the non-english speaking background may feel more comfortable in participating in class discussion through the written post rather than directly speaking in the class. it is reasonable because some students who are non-native english speakers have a difficulty to fully express their thoughts due to limited capability in the english language. as one participant said, "when the discussion started, sometimes i want to express all ideas in my thoughts. however, i couldn't do that because it was difficult to say in english. but when the professor using padlet in our class, i can use a translator to express my ideas before i post online to the padlet." (participant d) based on this participant statement, we can conclude that padlet can help students to become more active in classroom discussions, even though they have a problem with limited english language capability. padlet enables students to rethink and recheck their ideas before posting these so as to ensure that their statements have been written correctly. padlet has made interactive learning between teachers and students easier. building up an active classroom discussion having the function to enhance collaborative learning in the classroom, padlet is beneficial, not only for aziz enhancing learning participation of international students in the classroom using social media: the case of international students in the uk university 99 teachers (in terms of managing classroom discussion) but also for students as they become more active in the classroom discussion. one participant said that, "it is definitely a very important and very helpful, because i'm in a hall, well maybe 200 or 500 students sitting, and someone wants to speak specific views and some people got shy. so, using this tool, you can use to type your question and be anonymous at the same time. because some students feel that if they ask a particular question, then some students will laugh and make fun of them because the question is not that important or not that relevant other." (participant g) based on that participant comment, padlet utilisation for classroom learning can help students with a shy personality to remain active in the discussion. padlet enables the student to become anonymous when giving a comment on the platform, and this can help this type of student to protect his/her identity while asking the question in the big classroom. students with a shy personality may hesitate to raise question given the feeling that their questions may be inappropriate for the study material discussion. this is because this type of student has high social anxiety and greater fear of negative interpersonal evaluation. ulbig and notman (2012) argue that the use of inclass technology can improve the classroom learning experience of shy students who are typically isolated by traditional classrooms teaching methods. aligned with the participant comment above, another research carried out by megat mohd. zainuddin et al. (2020) note that padlet utilisation for learning in the classroom has encouraged not only an active student but also student with a shy personality to become active in classroom discussion. in the international students learning environment, another challenge arises when creating discussion in the classroom, such as the ability to use the english language for communication. one participant said that, "padlet is convenient. it is a supporting tool to transfer your idea. because some students are not fluent in english, so using this tool, you can raise your idea or question without anxiety to speak in front of other friends. because some student feels if they can not speak clearly, other students will criticise and mocking them because of their inability to speak english in the international learning environment." (participant a) according to previous research, international students who have limited english language capability has lack of confidence in speaking and talking a proactive role in classroom discussion (sawir, 2005). aligned with this finding, research from park et al. (2017) report that international student was facing communication difficulties due to their accented english. the accented english of international students was a factor that has affected their communication success, and the false of accented english could be a major cause of miscommunication. in addition to this, when students feel their language abilities are insufficient in terms of expressing themselves clearly in the presence of other international students, they tend to remain silent as a face-saving strategy (tatar, 2005). the silence students could be a sign that student wants to avoid a direct face-to-face communication due to their insufficient english language abilities. to overcome that problem, padlet utilisation for learning in the classroom can help international students with limited english language capability to keep active in the classroom discussion. padlet offers an opportunity for students to review a message before posting their idea or question online which will be appear in the classroom screen. padlet is seen to be convenience for international students with limited english language capability as it allows them to edit their message before posting it, thus ensuring that it conveys the intended meaning. encouraging critical thinking in addition to improving the learning process in the classroom, social media can also encourage the student to become critical during the class session. one participant who experience using kahoot! and padlet for learning in the classroom said: "i think it is good for students who use those apps, because when i was answering the question, sometimes i will discuss with my partners, so it can help us to have the brainstorming and also critical thinking." (participant j) murawski (2014) argues that critical thinking becomes one of the important skills that want to be developed by the teacher in higher education. however, it is challenging to create a learning environment that can promote critical thinking for students. social media utilisation for learning in the classroom can encourage such a thinking from students. kahoot! and padlet enable students to share ideas, comments, and questions that appear on the big screen. it can be a starting point to involve students in the classroom discussion, as well as to encourage the critical thinking of students through their comments on the learning material. aligned with the participant comment, another research carried out by rathakrishnan et al. (2018) reports that students who used padlet for online discussion in the classroom have greater macro and micro critical thinking than students who do not use it for online classroom discussion. challenges besides the advantages offered by kahoot! and padlet in the classroom, the utilisation of these social media applications for classroom learning can have some obstacles in its practice. the technical matters and the creation of interesting contents are identified as the main obstacles for effectively implementing these applications in classroom learning. international journal of education vol. 15 no. 2, august-2022, pp. 95-102 ©2022 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: https://doi.org/10.17509/ije.v15i2 100 technical matters technical matters can become an obstacle when implementing social media in classroom learning. one of the participants shared the technical problem experienced when using social media for learning in the classroom: "before beginning the lecture, the professor asked us to open an online link and then submit a survey of what we think the course was about. then for some phones, it worked, but for some others, it didn't work." (participant h) according to the finding on social media for the classroom learning process, it can be concluded that social media implementation used as collaboration tools create a positive experience when the application can run smoothly. however, it would become an obstacle, thus creating a bad experience, when some devices cannot connect with the social media application due to broken connection of the provided link, unsupported apps for several phones, and unstable internet connection. those problems are known as a technological challenge when applying social media for education using mobile technology. khaddage et al. (2015) argue that several technological challenges should be considered when applying mobile technology for education, such as supporting infrastructure, supporting device, design and delivery of the content, and technical support. the problems that encounter participant h when using social media for education in the classroom relates to the issue of the content delivery and the unsupported device for some apps. technical support knowledge is needed to overcome those problems. create interesting content another challenge of social media implementation in classroom learning is the production of creative content from the platform. the social media utilisation in the classroom may not change the student interest. instead, it can increase boredom while studying in the classroom. the participant who experiences boredom said that, "when in my class, kahoot only for a survey, so i'm lazy to answer any questions. i never do like competition using kahoot!." (participant c) the argument above indicates that teacher should produce more interesting content by utilising some features embedded in the social media applications. the appropriate content generation can improve satisfaction and learning experience. for example, beltrán-martín (2019) reports that students have increased their satisfaction when utilising padlet for several activities in the classroom learning, such as online dialogue, class dairy, and class resources. because of that, producing interesting content in social media to support classroom learning would become a challenging task to do for the teacher. aligned with previous research carried out by khaddage et al. (2015) design content is important and becomes the challenge for the teacher when implementing mobile technology for supporting student learning in the classroom. so, creating an engaging content would be a determinant factor affecting student satisfaction and learning experience. conclusion the findings of this study have provided some insights that may have some benefits for academic staffs, especially for teachers and lecturers teaching students in an international education environment. this study reveals that the benefit of implementation kahoot! and padlet as social media for education in the classroom is to improve the learning process of international students. the research also exhibits that the utilisation of kahoot! and padlet can enhance the participation of international students in the classroom discussion. it happens because kahoot! and padlet have erased barriers that discourage international students from involving in classroom activities caused by different languages and a variety of conflicting feelings and beliefs. kahoot! and padlet have also helped the teacher in managing the classroom discussion, as well as have enabled inclusive learning that can accommodate and encourage participation from all students. kahoot! and padlet have stimulated the critical thinking of international students through collaborative working and discussion. despite a number of benefits they provide, some challenges should be considered when implementing those social media applications in classroom learning. creating interesting content from kahoot! and padlet have to a certain extent become challenging for some teachers. technical matters when operating kahoot! and padlet in classroom learning also become a challenge that should be taken into consideration. based on those findings and given their practical currency, it is recommended for academic staffs to utilise kahoot! and padlet for supporting international students learning in the classroom. kahoot! and padlet have the value to improve communication performance and create better learning experiences. this study thus extends the knowledge of kahoot! and padlet utilisation, that is by testing these applications in a different context: international students learning environment. potential future research can cover different types of social media for education purpose as well as involve broader international student participants outside the asian continent. references arkoudis, s., watty, k., baik, c., yu, x., borland, h., chang, s., … pearce, a. 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(2016). kahoot it or not?: can games be motivating in learning grammar? teaching english with technology, 16(3), 17– 36. international journal of education vol. 14 no. 1, april-2021, pp. 48-61 ©2021 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: 10.17509/ije.v14i1.27140 48 task-based language teaching to develop malay language speaking skills among primary 5 singaporean students zainaba omar, norliza jamaludin, mahzan arshad education university of sultan idris, malaysia ozasrid05@gmail.com first draft received: 10 aug 2020 date accepted: 21 jan 2021 final proof received: 21 apr 2021 abstract the purpose of this study is to examine the effectiveness of task-based language teaching approach for improving speaking skills, focusing on fluency, use of appropriate language structure and vocabulary for primary schools in singapore. this study is also to find out whether the task-based language teaching model can increase students' motivation level, confidence, and ability to speak malay. this quasi-experimental nonequivalent groups pre-post-tests design study was conducted in singapore, involving primary 5 pupils from two different schools. the treatment group comprised of 30 students while 22 students were included in the control group. the treatment group used the task-based language teaching model and the control group used conventional approaches. the treatment and control groups underwent oral pre-test before task-based language teaching approach and conventional approaches, respectively. five task-based language teaching lessons were carried out for five weeks before post-test was administered using pictures for the treatment group. the control group took the same post-test after the conventional approach. the treatment group also completed survey questions before and after task-based language teaching approach. findings show that there were significant differences between the preand post-tests scores for fluency, vocabulary, and language among students in the treatment group. for the control group, there were no significant differences between preand post-test scores for fluency, vocabulary, and use of language. however, when the post-test scores of both groups were compared, the results show only significant differences for fluency but not for vocabulary and language. the descriptive results show improvement in motivation and confidence after using task-based language teaching approach. based on the findings, the researchers recommend that taskbased approach be given more attention in malay language classes though they also suggest that further research is needed to explore more in the effectiveness of task-based programs for other levels. keywords: confidence; motivation; speaking skills; task-based approach to cite this paper (in apa style): omar, z., jamaludin, n., & arshad, m. (2020). task-based language teaching to develop malay language speaking skills among primary 5 singaporean students. international journal of education, 14(1), 48-61. 10.17509/ije.v14i1.27140 introduction singapore, a small multi-racial, multi-religious, and multi-cultural country that relies heavily on an economy with no natural resources, faces the challenge of developing its people to their optimum to survive. it needs a good education system to benefit from globalisation while maintaining its values and culture. thus, to survive in a globalised world, singapore has positioned the english language as an important subject in its educational system, promoting the teaching of ‘standard english’ as an important educational initiative to make the country globally competitive. to counterbalance the effect of the westernisation of singaporeans through the globalisation of undesirable values and practices, teaching and learning the mother tongues (chinese, malay, and tamil) as second languages has also been made compulsory. this was done to ensure that singaporeans remained rooted in their local cultures and histories and did not waver in their respect for asian traditions and values (gopinathan, 2010) thus, bilingualism has become the cornerstone of the education system in singapore. among the objectives of learning a second language or a mother-tongue language is to enable students to understand and build their own unique identity through a deep mailto:ozasrid05@gmail.com omar, jamaludin, & arshad task-based language teaching to develop malay language speaking skills 49 appreciation of their culture, tradition, literature and ethnic history (lee, 2012) in addition, the singaporean government wants to ensure that its mother-tongue languages remain living languages and are not used just for examination purposes (lee, 1999). however, the profound emphasis on english as a working language and its role as a language of globalisation have indeed made it a crucial subject in schools. consequently, an increasing number of primary school students are speaking english more than their own mother tongue. statistical data from the ministry of education show that more and more primary 1 students are speaking only english at home. figure 1 illustrates that in all three ethnic groups in singapore (zhou, 2019), the percentage of primary 1 students speaking english at home has increased since 1999. figure 1 percentage of primary 1 students speaking mother tongue language at home meanwhile, a 2010 survey conducted by the ministry of education’s mother tongue language curriculum review committee also found that this bilingual policy has caused more malay families to use english at home, but some of them are not able to converse in their own language. as a result, many students have problems speaking, reading, and writing in malay. they possess a limited vocabulary, which makes it hard for them to conduct fluent conversations in malay. they find it more comfortable to converse in english even though they are part of the malay language class. also, this report highlighted that teachers had to use translation methods when teaching malay to help the students understand what was being taught. the plight of teachers has worsened because of the shorter time allocated to teach the second language compared to english. this has resulted in students’ reduced exposure to the malay language and limited vocabulary. the students always code-switch to english while speaking, which has become a habit in the classroom. in addition, the emphasis on the use of english has also caused teachers to interact in english with students who cannot speak or are not interested in the malay language (moe, 2010). the situation has worsened because of the lack of parental encouragement regarding the malay language learning process at schools. in reality, most students enter school with limited malay language skills or with no basic knowledge at all. this has prompted parents and students to question the value and effectiveness of teaching malay (moe, 2005, 2010). therefore, this language is no longer used to interact with friends, teachers, or society, but english is a must for communication (moe, 2011). moreover, classroom observations carried out by the ministry of education found less participation from students in teaching and learning activities. many malay language teachers still practise the lecture or explanation method, and while it does not conflict with teaching and learning principles, it is no longer suitable for use, as it does not help in developing students’ minds (baki, 2003; brown, 2000), especially for those who do not use the language that much outside the classroom (moe, 2005, 2010). if this scenario continues, students’ malay language mastery will continue to decline, eventually leading to inter-language fossilisation. therefore, a policy goal emphasising mastery of and fluency in two languages will only be an obstacle and will not be achievable if this issue is not addressed in the long run. since today’s students have problems learning and speaking the malay language, it is worthwhile to build a model that can help teachers instruct on speaking skills by highlighting students’ active participation. to ensure that the malay language is kept alive and used by students, an approach is needed to expose the malay language in class, so they have a chance to use it correctly and efficiently. the task-based language teaching approach was introduced in 1987 by n.s. prabhu in his bangalore project, which attracted much interest. according to van den branden (2006), functional tasks given in task-based language teaching approach provide students with the opportunity to use the target language more meaningfully. task-based language teaching approach does not highly emphasise grammar teaching before students can speak the language; rather, they will be able to learn grammar through observing and performing the tasks. this will help them master the language and skills (bygate et al., 2021; van den branden, 2016). willis and willis (2007), van den branden (2006), ellis (2003), skehan (1998), and long and crookes (1992) stated that students learn a language efficiently through tasks because by performing them, they will be able to communicate and interact with one another. through such interaction, students will be able to understand and also be understood. mao (2012) reiterated that task-based language teaching approach also provides an opportunity for language learning to take place through interaction, and task-based language teaching approach is in line with the needs of today’s extremely student-centred classroom. a study conducted by rohani (2011) on tertiary students in indonesia showed that tasks help students focus on international journal of education vol. 14 no. 1, april-2021, pp. 48-61 ©2021 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: 10.17509/ije.v14i1.27140 50 meaning, which will stimulate their learning and encourage them to use the language more. a similar study carried out in pakistan by buriro and hayat (2010) claimed that task-based language teaching approach can promote student–teacher negotiations within a collaborative environment. the findings showed that students’ proficiency level increased after they performed and reflected on the tasks. studies have also shown that task-based language teaching approach could provide intrinsic motivation, encourage active participation in class, and increase communication and collaboration (barnard & viet, 2010; jong, 2006; plews & zhao, 2010; xiong & moses, 2011). another study conducted by thanh and huan (2012) found that task-based language teaching approach highly motivated students to complete meaningful and challenging tasks. in addition, their vocabulary acquisition also increased. various task-based language teaching designs have been proposed and used (ellis, 2003; gatbanton & gu, 1994; willis, 1996), all of which have three principal phases in common, that is, pre-task, during task, and post-task. this research modified the models presented by willis and ellis, which was deemed necessary based on the profile of students in singapore who are learning their mother tongue as a second language. figure 2 shows the task-based language teaching model, modified from willis’s and ellis’s models, which was used in this research. figure 2 modified task-based language teaching model models pre-task during task post task ellis introduction & task modelling task presentation introduction and task modelling willis introduction & task modelling task presentation planning and presenting reports language analysis in reports and language practice modified introduction & task modelling planning & practicing of task presentation of task assessment explicit language component teaching in the modified model, the task is introduced and modelled for the students. afterward, the students plan and practise how they are going to perform the task. finally, students will do the task. during the presentation, the teacher guides students to conduct peer assessment. teacher will assess at the same time. the teacher highlights the correct words or phrases used during the presentation and at the same time checks for mistakes in the language. the teacher then teaches the language component explicitly and concludes the lesson language practice. therefore, this study examines whether there is a significant difference in speaking skill achievement in students who undergo the conventional task-based language teaching approach in learning malay. the findings will clearly determine the viability of the taskbased language teaching model as vital tool in teaching and learning speaking skills among p5 malay language learners. method this study used a quasi-experimental design of pre and post-tests for unbalanced groups. participants to accomplish the current research, sampling was conducted at two schools with similar socio-economic backgrounds. the schools were neighbourhood schools in two different zones, using similar instructional materials and syllabus provided by the ministry of education. the students were native malay who either unable or refuse to speak the language. a total of 30 students from the first school were the treatment group, while another 22 from the second school were selected to be the control group. instruments the researcher used pictures and stimulus questions for pre-test and post-test. in addition, treatment group also completed a questionnaire for motivation and confidence after tbtl. 5 tbtl lesson plans were developed based on the themes used in the instructional materials used in the school. procedures the researcher trained the teacher and tbtl lessons commenced only started after the teacher was confident of carrying out the lessons. both groups underwent a pre-test before the task-based language teaching approach was implemented (appendix 1). after the pre-test, students in the treatment group were taught by the teacher using task-based language teaching for 5 weeks (appendix 2), while the control group was taught using the conventional approach through self-directed activity as in the instructional material package (designed by singapore ministry of education) for the same duration. lesson started with the teacher explaining the objectives and showing the model of the task the students have to complete. teacher brainstormed the vocabulary needed to complete the task. at the preparation level, students discussed and rehearsed how to present the task. students were required to present their task either by presenting their poster or role-play. during the presentation, teacher evaluation and peer evaluation were conducted. and finally, teacher distinguished the language aspect that required teaching. teacher then taught the language component explicitly. after the completion of the 5 lessons, both groups underwent a post-test (appendix 3). both pre-test and post-test were evaluated using a rubric (appendix 4). omar, jamaludin, & arshad task-based language teaching to develop malay language speaking skills 51 n min standard deviation minimum maximum percentile 25th 50th (median) 75th bahasa (pre) 30 4.60 1.35 2.00 7.00 4.00 4.50 5.00 bahasa (post) 30 5.70 1.60 2.00 9.00 5.00 6.00 7.00 vocabulary (post) – vocabulary (pre) z -4.108 asymp. sig. (2-tailed) .000 results the kolmogorov–smirnov test showed an abnormal data distribution (p < .05). therefore, a non-parametric test was performed to determine the difference between pre-measurement and post-measurement for the three test elements. in addition, the wilcoxon signed-rank and mann–whitney u tests were also used for inference statistics analysis. treatment groups preand post-test fluency score analysis table 1.1 descriptive statistics n min standard deviation minimum maximu m percentile 25th 50th (median) 75th fluency (pre) – 30 4.93 1.33 2.00 7.00 4.00 5.00 6.00 fluency (post) 30 6.20 1.51 3.00 9.00 5.00 7.00 7.00 table 1.2 ranks n min ranks total ranks fluency (pre) – fluency (post) negative ranks 0 .00 .00 positive ranks 21 11.00 231.00 equal 9 total 30 table 1.3 test statistics fluency (pre) – fluency (post) z -4.075 asymp. sig. (2-tailed) .000 the results of the wilcoxon signed-rank test in table 1.2 show a significant difference in the fluency aspect for the treatment group, z = -4.075, p < .001. the study result shows that after treatment, the resulting score (median = 7.00) was higher than the before-treatment score (median = 5.00), as shown in table 1.1. this indicates that task-based language teaching significantly improves students’ speaking skills. preand post-test vocabulary score analysis table 2.1 descriptive statistics n min standard deviation minimum maximum percentile 25th 50th (median) 75th vocabulary (pre) – 30 4.56 1.30 2.00 8.00 3.75 5.00 5.00 vocabulary (post) 30 5.66 1.39 3.00 8.00 4.75 6.00 7.00 table 2.2 ranks n min ranks total ranks vocabulary (pre) –vocabulary (post) negative ranks 1 6.50 6.50 positive ranks 22 12.25 269.50 equal 7 total 30 table 2.3 test statistics the result of the wilcoxon signed-rank test in table 2.2 also shows a significant difference in the vocabulary aspect for the treatment group, z = -4.108, p < .001. the study result shows that the vocabulary score after treatment (median = 6.00) was higher than the one before treatment (median = 5.00) as shown in table 2. this also indicates that the students’ speaking skills in malay improved significantly through task-based language teaching approach. preand post-test language score analysis table 3.1 descriptive statistics table 3.2 ranks n min ranks total ranks language (post) – language (pre) negative ranks 3 8.50 25.50 positive ranks 22 13.61 299.50 equal 5 total 30 table 3.3 test statistics language (post) – language (pre) z -3.811 asymp. sig. (2-tailed) .000 other than that, the wilcoxon signed-rank test results in table 3.2 show a significant difference in the language aspect for the treatment group, z = -3.811, p < .001. this shows that the language score after treatment (median = 6.00) is higher than the one before treatment (median = 4.50), as shown in table 3. again, this indicates an improvement in speaking skills among students after task-based language teaching. control group preand post-test fluency score analysis table 4 international journal of education vol. 14 no. 1, april-2021, pp. 48-61 ©2021 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: 10.17509/ije.v14i1.27140 52 descriptive statistics n min standard deviation minimum maximum percentile 25th 50th (median) 75th fluency (pre) – 22 4.90 1.230 1.00 7.00 4.00 5.00 6.00 fluency (post) 22 5.22 .921 3.00 7.00 5.00 5.00 6.00 table 4.2 ranks table 4.3 test statistics fluency (post) – fluency (pre) z -.941 asymp. sig. (2-tailed) .347 for the control group, the wilcoxon signed-rank test results in table 4.2 show no significant difference in this aspect before treatment (median = 5.00) and after treatment (median = 5.00), z = -.941, p > .05. this indicates no improvement in speaking skills after using the conventional method. preand post-test vocabulary score analysis table 5 descriptive statistics n min standard deviation minimum maximum percentile 25th 50th (median) 75th vocabulary (pre) – 22 5.09 1.50 1.00 8.00 4.00 5.00 6.00 vocabulary (post) 22 5.36 1.00 3.00 7.00 5.00 5.50 6.00 table 5.1 ranks n min ranks total ranks vocabulary (pre) – vocabulary (post) negative rank 5 9.20 46.00 positive rank 10 7.40 74.00 equal 7 total 22 table 5.2 test statistics vocabulary (post) – vocabulary (pre) z -.810 asymp. sig. (2-tailed) .418 the results of the wilcoxon signed-ranks test in table 5 also show no significant difference in the vocabulary aspect before treatment (median = 5.00) and after treatment (median = 5.00), z = -.810, p > .05, indicating no significant improvement in speaking skills after undergoing the conventional method. preand post-test language score analysis table 6.1 descriptive statistics n min standard deviation minimum maximum percentile 25th 50th (median) 75th language (pre) – 22 5.09 1.50 1.00 8.00 4.00 5.00 6.00 language (post) 22 5.72 .93 4.00 7.00 5.00 6.00 6.00 table 6.1 ranks n min ranks total ranks language (post) – language (pre) negative ranks 4 10.13 40.50 positive ranks 13 8.65 112.50 equal 5 total 22 table 6.2 test statistics language (post) – language (pre) z -1.761 asymp. sig. (2-tailed) .078 furthermore, the wilcoxon signed-rank test results in table 6 also show that there was no significant difference in the language aspect after treatment (median = 6.00) and before treatment (median = 5.00), z = -1.761, p > .05. again, this shows little improvement in speaking skills after going through the conventional method of learning the malay language. control and treatment groups’ post-test score differences table 7.1 descriptive statistics fluency n min standard deviation minimum maximum percentile 25th 50th (median) 75th group treatment 30 6.20 1.51 3.00 9.00 5.00 7.00 7.00 control 22 5.22 .921 3.00 7.00 5.00 5.00 6.00 vocabulary n min standard deviation minimum maximum percentile 25th 50th (median) 75th group treatment 30 5.66 1.39 3.00 8.00 4.75 6.00 7.00 control 22 5.36 1.00 3.00 7.00 5.00 5.50 6.00 language n min standard deviation minimum maximum percentile 25th 50th (median) 75th group treatment 30 5.70 1.60 2.00 9.00 5.00 6.00 7.00 control 22 5.72 .93 4.00 7.00 5.00 6.00 6.00 table 7.2 test statistics fluency (post) vocabulary (post) language (post) mann–whitney u 190.000 279.000 325.500 wilcoxon w 443.000 532.000 578.500 z -2.679 -.971 -.087 asymp. sig. (2-tailed) .007 .331 .931 the mann–whitney u test scores in table 7 shows higher achievement in the fluency aspect for the treatment group after using task-based language teaching (median = 7.00) compared with the control group (median = 5.00), u = 190.00, p < .05. however, the same test also showed no significant difference n min ranks total ranks fluency (post) – fluency (pre) negative ranks 5 7.60 38.00 positive ranks 9 7.44 67.00 equal 8 total 22 omar, jamaludin, & arshad task-based language teaching to develop malay language speaking skills 53 between both groups in the vocabulary aspect, u = 279.00, p > .05, or the language aspect, u = 325.50, p > .05, after using task-based language teaching approach. discussion fluency aspect the research findings in table 1 show a significant difference between pre-test and post-test scores for the treatment group. fluency can be defined as the ability to speak without stumbling by using suitable intonation and to relate spoken ideas cohesively and coherently. the results of the wilcoxon signed-rank test show a significant difference in the fluency aspect, z = -4.075, p < .001. the fluency score (median = 7.00) was higher after treatment than before treatment (median = 5.00). this significant difference shows that the tasks used in task-based language teaching approach help students speak fluently. these findings are parallel with those of nunan (2004), ellis (2003), and willis (1996), that task-based language teaching could help students learn a language efficiently. in addition, these findings support mao’s (2012) conclusion that an approach such as task-based language teaching approach can give students the chance to interact using the target language and that such an approach is necessary to achieve language skill objectives. moreover, these findings are in line with the research by torky (2006) in egypt, which found that task-based language teaching can help students accept the challenge of performing the given tasks and speak fluently. aliakbari and jamalvandi (2010) strengthened these findings by stating that task-based language teaching helped students in iran to speak the english language fluently. these findings are also in accordance with those of buriro and hayat (2010), who found that task-based language teaching succeeded in helping the students use the target language fluently in pakistan. this established that this group of students improved their speaking skills after conducting activities and reflecting on their learning. for the control group, the study findings in table 4 show no significant difference in fluency before treatment (median = 5.00) and after treatment (median = 5.00), z = -.941, p > .05. this proves that the conventional approach does not affect how the students speak. these findings are in parallel with the opinion of skehan (1998, 2001) that the effectiveness of a conventional approach such as presentation, practice, and production (ppp) is questionable in helping teach speaking skills because these skills require not only grammar exercises but also exposure to meaningful tasks. the findings from this study also strengthen the research by dekeyser (2007), who stated that the conventional approach uses fewer tasks in teaching and may result in students’ inability to communicate well in the target language even if they have been learning it for years. meanwhile, the study findings are also consistent with those of the study summary done by frost (2014), who concluded that while conventional methods such as ppp can make students speak confidently in the classroom, they won’t be able to use the learned language or will find it difficult to do so while speaking after the learning session. in conclusion, the study findings prove that taskbased language teaching tasks can expose students to an environment where they can use the language fluently. the tasks can motivate students to make mistakes and learn from them by noticing them while interacting. without exposure to such an environment, students will find it difficult to use the target language. this will prevent them from applying their mastery by speaking fluently. language and vocabulary aspects from a malay vocabulary usage standpoint, the findings from the study, as shown in table 2, reveal a significant difference for the treatment group, z = 4.108, p < .00. the vocabulary score after treatment (median = 6.00) was higher than that before treatment (median = 5.00). besides, the study findings in the language aspect in table 3 also show a significant difference in the treatment group, z = -3.811, p < .001. the language score after treatment (median = 6.00) was higher than that before treatment (median = 4.50). these study findings are supported by krashen (2003), who highlighted that exposure to a meaningful environment can help students understand challenging language inputs to master language knowledge. also, significant differences may have been observed because the students had a chance to receive feedback when their mistakes were corrected by paraphrasing them to ensure the interlocutor understood the speech, or to ask for clarification when completing the tasks. this view is supported by swain (1985), who argued that a positive environment for language learning will positively pressure the student to utter understandable inputs and directly expand their language mastery. in addition, the study findings also agree with the views of howatt (1984), bygate and norris (2009), and van and branden (2012), who stated that task-based language teaching emphasises fluency and precision of meaning to help students master vocabulary and language knowledge. therefore, activities done in a given task will motivate students to try to use the language correctly as much as they can so they can be well understood. according to bruner (1999), language learning is effective if students can participate well and do a task well. additionally, the study findings are in accordance with the research by lopez (2004) in brazil and tanasarne (2002) in japan. they found that the group that used task-based language teaching showed higher language abilities compared to the group that only used ppp. overall, this study shows that taskbased language teaching helps inject the element of linguistic awareness into students and can directly or international journal of education vol. 14 no. 1, april-2021, pp. 48-61 ©2021 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: 10.17509/ije.v14i1.27140 54 indirectly increase their mastery of effective speaking skills. in this study, the control group was taught through a conventional approach using the instructional material package designed by ministry of education (singapore) . the teaching of speaking skills was more focused on text reading and answering comprehension questions based on video watching or audio listening. after that, they had to recall the scene they had watched or listened to. the students also needed to fill out a graphic arranger as a reference before speaking. based on the study findings in table 5, no significant difference was observed in the vocabulary aspect in the control group before and after treatment (median = 5.00), z = -.810, p > .05. similarly, in table 6, the study findings show no significant difference in the language aspect after treatment (median = 6.00) and before treatment (median = 5.00), z = -1.761, p > .05. these findings are in accordance with those of scrivener (1994), who stated that an approach that follows an organised routine can make students feel in control but can restrict their vocabulary learning and creative usage of the language. language learning in the context of the conventional approach can provide declarative knowledge but does not guarantee procedural knowledge mastery. these findings are also consistent with the opinions of j. r. anderson (2000) and dekeyser (2007), who stated that students who master declarative knowledge fluently and clearly might forget how to use the language because they were not trained or do not have the opportunity to use the language with certain activities and tasks. treatment group and control group pre-test score differences the mann–whitney u test results show higher achievement in the fluency aspect after task-based language teaching for the treatment group (median = 7.00) compared to the control group (median = 5.00), u = 190.00, p < .05. meanwhile, the same test showed no significant difference between the two groups after treatment in the vocabulary aspect, u = 279.00, p > .05, or in the language aspect, u = 325.50, p > .05. this is because students from the treatment group underwent tasks without any precision of language use but a primary focus on comprehension. a person who can speak fluently may have imprecise vocabulary and language use but still be understood by the teacher. according to skehan (1998), this can become a habit of wrong language use. the students in the group might use code-switching while speaking when performing the given task. additionally, this is a habit of malay students in singapore. therefore, imprecise and wrong use of the language structure can happen with malay respondents because of codeswitching. also, this can interrupt their language mastery and vocabulary acquisition, especially if their teachers cannot give any feedback or correct the students’ mistakes (skehan, 1998). this shows that students really need help in vocabulary and language mastery. in addition, these findings are due to the students’ level of mastery and the way the subject is taught. this has been highlighted by task-based language teaching researchers, namely prabhu (1987), willis and willis (2001), nunan (1989, 2003), and swan (2005). there is a possibility that the vocabulary used was not precise or suitable, and the students did not get any input or feedback from the teacher. insignificant changes may also have occurred because the duration of the study was insufficient. the study was only conducted for only 8 weeks. however, teaching using task-based language teaching approach was only done for 5 weeks. because of the limited time allocated to the study, some tasks could not be conducted as planned. the 5 weeks of treatment were not sufficient, and the researcher found it difficult to measure the changes and see an immediate improvement in students’ oral skills. in this study, students were exposed to taskbased language teaching approach twice a week for only 5 weeks, consisting of five periods or 2.5 hours only. students also needed to follow the current learning syllabus for other periods. the study findings supported krashen’s monitor hypothesis (2003), which states that the learning system needs to comply with three main conditions to elicit learning and language mastery. among them is enough time for the students to focus on the correct structure and form of the language. the same system was also proven by favreau and segalowitz (1983) through the information process model, which emphasises the importance of time for students to perform mental activities. the insignificant change is due to the students’ disciplinary and attitude issues in the classroom, their absenteeism, the ability of the teacher to conduct taskbased language teaching, and the emphasis on examination and formative tests in the classroom. this will influence the mastery of vocabulary and language, as the study conducted by zheng and borg (2014) in china revealed that task-based language teaching effectiveness was restricted only by the students’ discipline in the classroom, the teachers’ low capacity for task-based language teaching usage, and the frequent emphasis on examination. their research is parallel with li’s (1998) study in china, which explained that most teachers were dissatisfied with task-based language teaching because of the limited time and students’ negative attitude towards language learning. although no significant difference was found between the groups in this study, the students in the treatment group had a more positive attitude towards tasks given in task-based language teaching. conclusion inference statistics analysis showed a significant difference between pre-test and post-test in fluency, vocabulary, and language scores for the treatment omar, jamaludin, & arshad task-based language teaching to develop malay language speaking skills 55 group, but for the control group, no significant difference was observed between pre-test and posttest scores in fluency, vocabulary, and language. based on the comparison of achievement scores between both groups, a significant difference was found in the fluency aspect in the post-test, but no significant difference was determined in vocabulary or language. this study adopted a quasi-experimental design and only used pre-test, post-test and questionnaire findings. as such, no classroom observation was conducted by the researcher before or after task-based language teaching approach. for future research, it is strongly recommended that a mixed research design be used. suggestions based on the findings, the researcher would like to suggest the following. first, malay language teachers must engage students in the classroom by using taskbased language teaching as an alternative method to improve their speaking skills. this would also improve teachers’ potential or skills as educators in guiding students to speak malay. second, the task-based language teaching structure needs to be included by ministry of education officers when they are developing instructional materials, as these are used widely in all primary schools in singapore. third, the national institute of education, an institution that provides pre-service training to teachers, must add task-based language teaching to their training modules. this way, pre-service teachers can teach the malay language using task-based language teaching once they graduate, consequently 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(2019, nov 9). keeping the mother tongues alive: singapore's bilingual challenge. the straits times singapore. https://www.straitstimes.com https://doi.org/10.1177/1362168813505941 https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/keeping-the-mother-tongues-alive-singapores-bilingual-challenge omar, jamaludin, & arshad task-based language teaching to develop malay language speaking skills 57 appendix 1 (pretest) appendix 2 (task-based language teachingsample lesson with materials) rancangan pelajaran (lesson plan) tarikh : minggu 5 (week 5) international journal of education vol. 14 no. 1, april-2021, pp. 48-61 ©2021 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: 10.17509/ije.v14i1.27140 58 masa : 60 minit (2 period) 90 minit (3 periods) tajuk (topic) : sihat dan cergas (healthy and active) objektif : pada akhir pelajaran murid dapat: • bercerita dan melaporkan sesuatu perkara yang didengar, ditonton, di baca atau dialami • menyampaikan maklumat kepada pihak lain dengan pengucapan yang jelas, betul dan berkesan • menyatakan nama-nama jenis makanan kata adjektif (perasaan dan pancaindera) tugasan : makan makanan yang sihat ialah salah satu cara hidup sihat. pada pendapat kamu adakah makanan di kantin sekolah kamu menyihatkan? sekiranya kamu menjadi pemilik restoran, apakah makanan yang akan kamu sediakan. sediakan satu menu. bahan : • powerpoint slides pratugasan 20 minit : pelajar: • melihat gambar yang ditayangkan • menjawab soalan yang diajukan oleh guru a. adakah kamu akan membeli hidangan lengkap makanan segera? mengapa? b. mengapakah agaknya hidangan lengkap ini disertakan dengan permainan? c. adakah kamu suka makan di restoran makanan segera? mengapa? : pelajar: • membincangkan soalan ‘pada pendapat kamu adakah makanan di restoran makanan segera menyihatkan? mengapa? • berbincang secara berpasangan selama 5 minit • sumbang saran dan menyenaraikan segala jenis makanan yang mereka makan, tidak makan dan makanan yang diketahui oleh mereka pada kertas sebak secara berpasangan • mendengar penerangan guru tentang objektif pelajaran dan tugasan yang perlu dilakukan oleh mereka guru: • menerangkan objektif pelajaran • menunjukkan menu sebagai contoh • memodelkan cara melakukan tugasan yang diberikan semasa tugasan persembahan tugasan tugasan 1 15 minit : pelajar: • menyenaraikan semua jenis makanan yang mereka ketahui di kertas sebak • mengkategorikan makanan mengikut mengikut kumpulan makanan sihat dan makanan tidak sihat secara individu guru: • membetulkan jawapan pelajar tugasan 2 20 minit : pelajar: • menyediakan menu secara berpasangan • mengiklankan menu mereka kepada kelas • mendengar maklum balas yang diberikan oleh rakan guru: • membetulkan bahasa/kosa kata yang digunakan dan memberikan penerangan tentang kesilapan bahasa dan menyatakan cara membetulkan kesilapan tersebut. omar, jamaludin, & arshad task-based language teaching to develop malay language speaking skills 59 pascatugasan 20 minit : pelajar: • mendengar dan memberikan maklum balas kepada menu yang disediakan oleh rakan • menyatakan masalah yang dihadapi oleh mereka ketika mempersembahkan menu mereka fokus bahasa guru: • menulis nama-nama jenis makanan bagi mengenalkan kata nama • menyenaraikan perasaan mereka dan perkataan adjektif yang ada kaitan dengan pancaindera seperti sedap, manis dan sebagainya • menerangkan konsep adjektif dan kata nama penutup pelajar: • menyatakan cara mereka akan memilih sarapan mereka dan sebab-sebab makanan itu dipilih. powerpoint slides appendix 3 (post-test) international journal of education vol. 14 no. 1, april-2021, pp. 48-61 ©2021 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: 10.17509/ije.v14i1.27140 60 appendix 4 (rubric to assess speaking skills) omar, jamaludin, & arshad task-based language teaching to develop malay language speaking skills 61 markah 9-10 cemerlang 7-8 sangat baik 5-6 baik 3-4 sederhana 1-2 lemah kelancaran • berupaya bertutur dengan lancar dan jelas • sekali-sekala tersekat-sekat tetapi masih boleh difahami • sering tersekat-sekat dan pengulangan kata tetapi masih boleh difahami • tidak mampu bertutur dengan jelas, kerap kali terdapat ayat yang tidak lengkap • tidak mampu bertutur; tersekatsekat dan berjeda agak lama pada tempat yang tidak sesuai hingga mengganggu pemahaman tatabahasa • tidak melakukan lebih daripada dua kesilapan • melakukan sedikit kesilapan namun tidak menjejas pemahaman • sekali-sekala melakukan kesilapan yang menunjukkan kurang tepat penguasaan pola-pola tertentu • kerap kali melakukan kesilapan kerana belum menguasai polapola ayat utama yang mengganggu pemahaman • hampir keseluruhann ya tidak betul dan amat mengganggu pemahaman kosa kata • kosa kata yang tepat dan sesuai • kosa kata yang memuaskan dan masih boleh menerangkan isi • kosa kata yang terhad tetapi masih berupaya menerangkan isi • kosa kata yang terhad hingga tidak berupaya meneruskan pertuturan • kosa kata yang terhad dan kurang sesuai hingga mengganggu pemahaman dan tidak dapat meneruskan pertuturan international journal of education vol. 14 no. 1, april-2021, pp. 62-69 ©2021 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: 10.17509/ije.v14i1.29191 62 a systematic literature review on the effectiveness of distance learning: problems, opportunities, challenges, and predictions imam kusmaryono1, jupriyanto2, widya kusumaningsih3 universitas islam sultan agung, semarang, indonesia1,2 universitas pgri semarang, indonesia3 kusmaryono@unissula.ac.id1 first draft received: 30 oct 2020 date accepted: 21 jan 2021 final proof received: 5 apr 2021 abstract distance learning has increased in popularity during the covid-19 pandemic as a new method for research and learning. however, the implementation of distance learning with management learning systems still faces a problem, namely the difficulty of understanding instructional objectives. regardless of the pros and cons, the results of literature research suggest that distance education is as effective as face-to-face (traditional) learning in terms of student learning outcomes. the application of distance learning (online learning) has many opportunities to develop rapidly as most academic institutions shift to this model. improving the quality of distance learning programs poses a real challenge in developing challenging content that does not only cover the curriculum but is also engaging. it is strongly predicted that the application of distance learning will not only be part of the normal learning process but will completely replace the current face-to-face conventional teaching and learning. keywords: covid-19; distance learning; distance learning; systematic review to cite this paper (in apa style): kusmaryono. i., jupriyanto, & kusumaningsih, w. (2021). a systematic literature review on the effectiveness of disctance learning: problems, opportunities, challenges, and predictions. international journal of education, 14(1), 62-69. doi: 10.17509/ije.v14i1.29191 introduction the crisis due to the covid-19 pandemic that is currently sweeping the world has caused a change in the paradigm of learning for students in schools. learning that was originally carried out face-to-face in schools has changed drastically into distance learning (affouneh et al., 2020; dhawan, 2020; favale et al., 2020). many people have negative perceptions about distance education (learning), given its performance which raises the pros and cons. distance learning has also faced many challenges historically, such being impersonal and unsatisfactory interactions (abuhassna & yahaya, 2018; affouneh et al., 2020). however, new tools and techniques such as distance learning, webbased learning or courses, and learning management systems make a significant contribution to the distance learning arena and increase student satisfaction (abuhassna & yahaya, 2018). distance learning at the higher education level is not a new phenomenon in the world of education but may be new for students, teachers, and parents at the primary and secondary education levels. in fact, its popularity has increased during the covid-19 pandemic as a new method for increasing research and learning audiences. one of the right steps in this situation is to utilize network technology and information technology for the development of a learning system, namely the distance learning model or online learning or e-learning, or online learning model (dhawan, 2020). expanding and increasing the availability of materials and communication technology very rapidly, distance learning courses are on the rise. new learning methods have also been developed (dhawan, 2020; gupta & goplani, 2020; k. lee, 2020; mahlangu, 2018). online learning platforms have the potential to increase student interactivity and engagement, there by contributing to influencing the level of optimism and pessimism of students during distance learning (kusmaryono, maharani, & rusdiantoro, 2020). as a result of the covid-19 pandemic from the beginning of 2020 until now in 2021, all students or students and teachers have not been able to do faceto-face learning. in order to prevent the wider spread of covid-19, several countries are still implementing a distance learning system. the hasty and unavoidable adoption of distance learning presents an unequal and potentially unsatisfactory educational experience and threatens to further discredit distance learning as a viable educational platform (dhawan, 2020; gupta & goplani, 2020; lee, 2020). this policy of implementing distance learning mailto:kusmaryono@unissula.ac.id1 kusmaryono, jupriyanto & kusumaningsih a systematic literature review on the effectiveness of distance learning 63 reaps the pros and cons of the community and has the potential for backlash from students, parents, and education observers. because of its unplanned nature, distance learning is in a crisis situation where students, parents, teachers, and education leaders face many obstacles in its implementation (affouneh et al., 2020). previous distance learning reviews have been conducted by several researchers including wong et al., who reviewed distance learning articles published between 2006-2016 (wong et al., 2019). lee et al., reviewed distance learning articles published between 2014-2016 (lee et al., 2018). nortvig et al., reviewed distance learning articles published between 2014-2017 (nortvig et al., 2018). therefore, distance learning problems are very important to be discussed based on theoretical studies and research results that have been conducted by education experts. this literature study is expected to add important information currently developing about distance learning in educational settings during and after the covid-19 pandemic. the terms distance education, distance learning, web-based instructional, virtual schools, e-learning, and online learning are all terms that are often used interchangeably to describe the vast and changing nontraditional teaching of today. summarized from various literature, the researchers define distance learning as learning that uses an internet-based interactive model and a learning management system. they call distance education as formal institution-based education where the learning system is separated by distance and time. an interactive communication system is interwoven through learning management systems to connect students, resources, content, and teachers (instructors) (abuhassna & yahaya, 2018; dhawan, 2020; khalaf & zin, 2018; k. lee, 2020; mahlangu, 2018; simonson, schlosser, & orellana, 2012; traxler, 2018; uziak et al., 2018). there are four main components to the definition of distance learning, namely (1) to differentiate between distance education and independent learning, institutionbased distance education; (2) there is a separation of teachers and students in terms of geography, time, and knowledge to be taught; (3) some form of interactive long-distance telecommunication should be available for students to interact with learning resources and teachers; and (4) emphasize the concept of learning environment and resources that facilitate student learning experiences and encourage learning (mahlangu, 2018; simonson et al., 2012). this researcher aims to review the literature on distance learning which includes (1) identifying the quality and effectiveness of distance learning; (2) investigate the constraints, opportunities, challenges, and predictions of future distance learning; and (3) provide suggestions for improving the implementation of distance learning. method research method the research method in this literature review is designed to use a systematic approach to critically analyze the application of distance learning. according to dixon-woods (2008) (as cited in khalaf & zin, 2018; martins & gorschek, 2016), a systematic literature review is defined as a scientific process governed by a set of explicit and demanding rules oriented towards demonstrating completeness, immunity from bias, and transparency and accountability of techniques and techniques execution. data collection was done through a google search to obtain quality articles in online journals. all literature (articles) relevant to distance learning topics are then compared and evaluated for reliable understanding (khalaf & zin, 2018). the systematic review process is characterized by the existence of several criteria used to limit the scope of the review (martins & gorschek, 2016). criteria of inclusion the inclusion criteria were developed at the start of the review process involving quantitative and qualitative studies (raes, detienne, windey, & depaepe, 2019; smale-jacobse, meijer, helms-lorenz, & maulana, 2019). inclusion criteria are the standards for assessing the weight of a subject in a study that is included in the review and who does not fit the criteria to be excluded from this review. table 1 criteria of inclusion no. criteria description 1. topic papers (journal articles) have discussion topics related to distance learning (online), web-based instruction, distance education (online), online interaction, and e-learning. 2. period the research articles (papers) were published between 2018 and 2020, and relate to the subject being investigated. 3. research base papers (articles) cover both quantitative and qualitative empirical studies 4. transparency the research method (previous research) should explicitly indicate sample size, instruments and analysis. 5. reliability/ validity study results must be valid and reliable according to the type of research and scientific publications. the literature search as the basis for this review serves to identify papers that can contribute to achieving the research objectives. recent findings in the search for this systematic review are limited to papers published in 2018 2020. the search for related literature was carried out through the scopus-indexed international journal of education vol. 14 no. 1, april-2021, pp. 62-69 ©2021 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: 10.17509/ije.v14i1.29191 64 online journal databases (routledge, taylor and francis, springer, elsevier), and websites, with keywords: distance learning (online), web-based instruction, distance education (online), distance interaction, and elearning. data analysis to obtain a good-quality systematic review, the prisma (preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses) guidelines are used (raes et al., 2019). these guidelines consist of checklists and flow charts to improve review reporting. the literature was identified and screened through five stages: (1) development of inclusion criteria (see table 1), to ensure that it is systematically reviewed. literature that did not fit these criteria was excluded from the review; (2) search of related literature in online journal databases indexed by scopus, (routledge, taylor and francis, springer, elsevier) and google scholar using tracking: titles, abstracts, and keywords referring to distance learning. the studies discussed in this literature were considered to fit the inclusion criteria; (3) limitation of findings in literature published in 2018 to 2020; (4) carry out a wider investigation of the literature that fits the inclusion criteria and is kept for research; (5) conduct literature analysis to construct critical reviews of distance learning; and (6) draw conclusions based on the final analysis that has been carried out and validated by the current review. results and discussions the literature search results obtained a total of 68 papers. the author examines the paper in more detail and confirms whether the article (paper) involves a distance learning arrangement, then categorizes according to the inclusion criteria. finally, 43 relevant papers were selected based on an estimate of which category was the most dominant (see table 2). the papers discussed were published in 2018 (12 papers), 2019 (8 papers), and 2020 (23 papers). the paper reviews the application of distance learning at the tertiary education level as much as 70% and at the primary-secondary education level as much as 30%. table 2 distribution of distance learning article publications research areas publication year number of papers references performance of distance learning 2018 4 mahlangu, v. p. (2018), mshana, j. a. (2018) wong, et al.,( 2018), abuhassna, h., & yahaya, n. (2018) 2019 3 muljana, p. s., & lao, t. (2019), sugilar. (2019), (hart et al., 2019) 2020 11 favale, t., et al., (2020), alip et al.,(2020), affouneh, s.,& dhawan, s. (2020), tedja, (2020), ferraro et al., (2020), wen & hua,(2020), lee, k. (2020). masterson, m. (2020), tanis, c. j. (2020), darling-hammond, l., et al., (2020), diehl, w. (2020). opportunities, trend, and challenges in education 2018 3 nortvig, a. m., et al., (2018), traxler, j. (2018) palvia et al., (2018) 2019 5 paul, j., & jefferson, f. (2019), raes, a., et al., (2019), sadeghi, m. (2019), wakil et al., (2019), smale-jacobse, a. e., et al., (2019), 2020 5 anjum, p., et al., (2020), wang, a. i., & tahir, r. (2020), halvoník, d., & kapusta, j. (2020), kusmaryono, i., et al., (2020), walton, p., et al., (2020). students' experiences, persistence, and perceptions 2018 5 abdel-maksoud (2018), lee et al., (2018), au, o. t.-s., li, k., & wong, t. m. (2018), nortvig et al., (2018), uziak, j., et al., (2018), 2020 7 ramel, m. r. b. (2020), senturk et al., (2020), gupta, a., & goplani, m. (2020), ha & im, (2020), lapada, a. a., et al., (2020), ntombela, s. (2020), mavroidis, i., & giossos, y. (2020). total 43 the effectiveness of implementing a distance learning in achieving the effectiveness of the application of distance learning, there are 74% of literature research results that state that distance education is as effective as face-to-face (traditional) learning in terms of student learning outcomes. about 12% of the literature study collected indicated that face-to-face learning formats were more effective, and 14% showed mixed findings. indicators of the effectiveness of distance learning can be achieved because there are major improvements in technology, and there is an increasing demand for innovative ways from teachers to deliver learning which has led to changes in learning and teaching methods (affouneh et al., 2020; favale et al., 2020; mahlangu, 2018; sadeghi, 2019). electronic kusmaryono, jupriyanto & kusumaningsih a systematic literature review on the effectiveness of distance learning 65 devices are used to keep students in touch with the teacher. this tool provides access to communication between students and teachers anytime, anywhere to bridge gaps and distribute educational materials through distance learning programs (affouneh et al., 2020; halvoník & kapusta, 2020). learning environment learning environments that are supported by computer tools can stimulate students to explore and reflect well on their knowledge constructs (mahlangu, 2018; masterson, 2020). this environment appears to be beneficial in the development of interaction between students, and digital skills in a student-centered inquirybased learning approach (masterson, 2020). this investigation shows that technology provides significant benefits for the creation of meaningful interactions (students) by encouraging active social collaboration in digital learning spaces (bondar et al., 2021; diehl, 2020). however, distance learning programs may be difficult to apply in laboratory science. the distance learning process cannot reach the full potential of students until students can practice what they are learning (dhawan, 2020). but they have the opportunity to maximize their real potential through the use of technology (mahlangu, 2018). distance learning problems now modern technology is available to support distance learning (online), but for some teachers and students sometimes it creates difficulties. these difficulties are related with modern technology that ranges from download errors, problems with installation, login problems, audio and video problems (dhawan, 2020), and difficulty understanding instructional objectives are the main obstacles to distance learning (affouneh, salha, & khlaif, 2020). students find distance learning (online) boring and uninteresting (au, li, & wong, 2018). student interest and focus on distance learning activities is a problem that needs attention. often students expect a two-way interaction even though this is difficult to implement (ha & im, 2020). online content is generally theoretical, not enabling students to learn and practice effectively (darling-hammond, flook, cook-harvey, barron, & osher, 2020). some students were found to be less ready for certain types of e-learning competencies and academic competencies (dhawan, 2020). on the other hand, e-learning methods and processes have a very strong influence (hart et al., 2019). the power of distance learning methods can save us from difficult times such as the covid-19 pandemic (lapada, miguel, robledo, & alam, 2020). in addition, distance learning studies have explored the potential that students generate as a form of interactive formative and summative assessment (buelow et al., 2018). in online formative assessments, teachers sometimes face obstacles that hinder the integration of information technology and computers (ict) in their work, including lack of training for teachers, lack of appropriate software and hardware, and lack of administrative assistance (lajane, 2020). advantages and disadvantages of distance learning some of the advantages of implementing distance learning are students learning independently, flexibility in space and time (accessible anywhere and anytime), saving time, having access to more materials (alip et al., 2020; anjum et al., 2020; bondar et al., 2021), and distance learning are often cheaper than learning from home to school (wakil et al., 2019). students can freely communicate with the teacher, greet classmates, complete study materials, and access the internet (buelow, et al., 2018; k. lee, 2020; paul & jefferson, 2019). the distance learning method (e-learning) allows teachers to adjust teaching procedures and processes based on student needs. teachers can use technology with a combination of audio, video, and text strategies to reach all students and to maintain a human touch to them (dhawan, 2020). this strategy helps create a collaborative, interactive, and effective learning environment (lajane, 2020). the disadvantages of distance learning include: such as isolation, a hard struggle to stay motivated, a lack of face-to-face social interaction, difficulty getting immediate feedback from teachers (sugilar, 2019), and a need for reliable and continuous technology access (buelow et al., 2018; mahlangu, 2018; muljana & lao, 2019; raes, detienne, windey, & depaepe, 2019; traxler, 2018). opportunity during the covid-19 pandemic crisis, online learning has many opportunities to develop rapidly as most academic institutions are shifting to this model (favale, soro, trevisan, drago, & mellia, 2020; mahlangu, 2018; mshana, 2018). now, academic institutions can take this opportunity by having their teachers teach and students learn via distance learning methods (walton et al., 2020). teachers can easily practice technology and design flexible online programs for better student understanding (tanis, 2020). teachers can develop innovative pedagogical approaches in this state of panic. the application of distance learning will test educators and students to improve problem-solving skills, critical thinking skills, and adaptability among students (abdel-maksoud, 2018). challenges facilitating distance teaching and learning in an online learning environment poses a number of challenges to adapting distance learning practices during the covid19 pandemic (dhawan, 2020). these challenges range from problems of students, educators, content, internet networks, and the learning environment (alip et al., 2020; diehl, 2020; wong et al., 2019). the covid-19 pandemic threatens to reduce the quality of education and deprive students of the right to study. on the other hand, this pandemic brings students to two things, namely: find new ways to learn or they are helpless by this situation (ferraro et al., 2020; fidalgo et al., 2020). the condition of the international journal of education vol. 14 no. 1, april-2021, pp. 62-69 ©2021 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: 10.17509/ije.v14i1.29191 66 covid-19 pandemic is an opportunity for academic institutions to take an active role in overcoming educational problems through the application of distance learning methods (lapada, miguel, robledo, & alam, 2020). teachers can design flexible online programs through advanced technology to improve student understanding. teachers can also apply innovative pedagogical approaches in this state of panic. the application of distance learning will test educators and students to improve problem-solving skills, critical thinking skills, and communication skills among students. the role of educators and student learning experiences many experts agree that it is very important to involve the role of teachers to develop their capacity in using new technology in the era of the industrial revolution 4.0 (m. lee, yun, pyka, won, & kodama, 2018; paul & jefferson, 2019). the skills of these teachers will be useful in developing distance learning approaches that are interactive, engaging, and collaborative (affouneh, salha, & khlaif, 2020). distance learning in a pedagogical view to enhancing the learning experience (ramel, 2020; senturk et al., 2020; su & waugh, 2018), retention and understanding of students in the field of science, and also to develop a more scientific frame of mind (traxler, 2018). some literature states that strong educator interactions together with quality learning content are important elements in facilitating student involvement in distance learning (lajane, 2020). the role and relationship of educators on the dimensions reported in the review literature have a significant effect on student learning offered through the online format (duyen, 2014; nortvig, petersen, & balle, 2018). this research shows that distance learning communities (online) can help create a sense of connection with fellow learners and build self-confidence in students (nortvig et al., 2018; ntombela, 2020), as well as a source for knowledge construction and knowledge growth (duyen, 2014; nortvig et al., 2018; wang & tahir, 2020). predictions it can be said that technological developments in this digital era cannot be denied or even rejected. the impact has extended from the retail industry to banking to education (palvia et al., 2018). therefore, the world of education in the new normal era continues to improve to provide good educational services to students. a distance learning model with an online system was developed and gradually began to be applied. at the end of this discussion, the authors provide a strong prediction that the application of distance learning, distance education, or e-learning will not only be part of the normal learning process but will completely replace the flow of face-to-face conventional teaching and learning into a new era. the application of the concept of online learning (e-learning) makes education significantly more accessible (au et al., 2018; wong et al., 2019). in the future, children can learn anywhere without being bound by physical space, as well as teachers who act as facilitators. the classroom is no longer the only place to learn. the virtual world is a campus where everyone can learn anything. conclusion and recommendation this literature study shows that distance education is an effective method in terms of learning outcomes. the effectiveness of distance learning has more to do with who teaches, who is learning, and how the learning interactions are carried out and the support of learning technology. distance learning will be effective if it is well prepared, in terms of content, learning interaction models, learning media, communication strategies, and learning assessments. even when properly designed, online learning requires more self-discipline and initiative on the part of student’s. however, the implementation of distance learning with management learning systems still faces a problem, namely the difficulty of understanding instructional objectives is the main obstacle to distance learning. regardless of the pros and cons, the results of literature research suggest that distance education is as effective as face-to-face (traditional) learning in terms of student learning outcomes. the application of distance learning (online learning) has many opportunities to develop rapidly as most academic institutions shift to this model. improving the quality of distance learning programs is a real challenge that must be realized. developing challenging content that not only covers the curriculum but engages students as well. it is strongly predicted that the application of distance learning will not only be part of the normal learning process but will completely replace the current face-to-face conventional teaching and learning into a new era. suggestions for improvement and enhancement of distance learning, are as follows: (1) when starting lessons, greet all students warmly and kindly to build comfortable learning interactions; 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(2019). supporting selfregulated learning in online learning environments and moocs: a systematic review. international journal of human-computer interaction, 35(4–5), 356–373. https://doi.org/10.1080/10447318.2018.1543084 introduction international journal of education vol. 14 no. 1, april-2021, pp. 39-47 ©2021 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: 10.17509/ije.v14i1.29408 39 measure of central tendency: undergraduate students' error in decisionmaking perspective rosidah, fadhil zil ikram 1mathematics department, universitas negeri makassar, indonesia 2mathematics department, universitas negeri malang, indonesia dhilikram@gmail.com first draft received: 14 apr 2020 date accepted: 13 nov 2020 final proof received: 4 apr 2021 abstract the purpose of this research was to examine undergraduates' understanding of the central tendency measure from a decision-making perspective. the research adopted a qualitative method by employing an interview and test to obtain the data. it enrolled 93 undergraduate students who had previously studied basic statistics and applied statistics. four students were selected for interviews out of the 93 participants. the analysis model used included data condensation, data visualization, and conclusion and verification. a large number of students were unable to provide explanations for their decisions. the majority of students related the test with the necessity of calculating an average or selecting a more straightforward measure. none of the students was aware of the presence and effect of outliers in the data. the undergraduate students demonstrated a lack of awareness of the factors that could influence their decision-making. the students did not consider other variables. the majority of them were unaware of the benefits and drawbacks of using mean, median, and mode to describe data. keywords: decision-making; errors; measures of central tendency; undergraduate students to cite this paper (in apa style): rosidah, & ikram, f. z. (2021). measure of central tendency: undergraduate students' error in decisionmaking perspective. international journal of education, 14(1), 39-47. 10.17509/ije.v14i1.29408 introduction statistics has become inextricably linked to our daily lives, particularly at work. we come into contact with data on a near-daily basis as the vastness of information grows. statistics is necessary because it teaches us how to collect, organize, and analyze data and draw conclusions and make appropriate decisions (tiro, 2008). one of the most common measures used in statistics is the measure of central tendency. numerous individuals have used central tendency measures to characterize data used in decision-making in various sectors, including business, politics, and education (gravetter & wallnau, 2017; nctm, 2000). each measure of central tendency has its use (witte & witte, 2017). for instance, polling companies used mode as a central tendency to indicate which presidential candidate received the most votes in their quick count. they cannot use the mean or median because the values of the measures convey no information. in another instance, where there are multiple modes, this is inappropriate because the optimal one only involves a single value or category (weisberg, 1992). the illustrations demonstrate how a particular sector applies central tendency measures in practice. there have been numerous and growing studies on measures of central tendency in education. there has been much research on the following topics: measure comprehension and interpretation (saidi & siew, 2019; santos & da ponte, 2013); statistical reasoning and misconceptions (rosidah et al., 2018; maryati & priatna, 2018; ismail & chan, 2015; zaidan et al., 2012); decision-making (roy et al., 2016; holt & scariano, 2009); (manikandan, 2011). additionally, one examined teachers' knowledge of the measure (groth & bergner, 2006), and another examined averages, including the concept of average and its development (sharma, 2008; mokros & russell, 1995; strauss & bichler, 1988), as well as the history of averages (bakker, 2003). there are also studies discussing the implementation of a particular method or learning design to teach the concept of measures of central tendencies, such as one that used realistic mathematics education (meitrilova & putri, 2019) or one by kraus (2010) that employed a fictional story. central tendency measures is a prevalent topic of research in indonesia. the majority of the research rosidah & ikram measure of central tendency 40 discussed the implementation of a specific learning method to teach it, such as improving mathematical reasoning through a problem-posing approach (chasanah et al., 2019) or utilizing a hypothetical learning trajectory in a game rating context (kusumaningsih et al., 2019). however, there is a dearth of research in education that discusses the central tendency measure in the context of decisionmaking in problem-solving. decision-making is a critical aspect of our daily lives because an error in this area can have a negative impact on the outcome of our work. to illustrate, the government wishes to implement several programs to assist a village with sixteen heads of families and an average income of no more than 1.5 million rupiahs. the administration directed census officers to collect monthly income data for each head of the family in the village and describe it using central tendency measures. the following are the findings. table 1 monthly income of a certain village head of family monthly income a 1,000,000 b 1,000,000 c 900,000 d 1,100,000 e 1,200,000 f 1,100,000 g 800,000 h 900,000 i 700,000 j 1,000,000 k 1,000,000 l 1,300,000 m 800,000 n 1,200,000 o 16,000,000 total 30,000,000 according to table 1, if census officers used the mean (2,000,000) to describe the data center, the government could cancel the programs, putting the village at a disadvantage. however, upon closer examination, the officers discover a value that differs significantly. they could use the median in this case, which is 1,000,000. it is referred to as an outlier value. outliers are values that deviate significantly from the other observations or data. it is one of the factors causing the error when deciding to use a specific measure to explain our data. if ignored, it has a significant impact on our decision-making when solving problems. the preceding illustration demonstrates how outliers have a considerable effect on decision-making. the presence of extreme values is not the only factor influencing how an individual decides a statistics problem involving a measure of central tendency. our decision is also significantly affected by the type of data, mode values, the distribution, and other factors (weisberg, 1992). we conducted a preliminary study to ask undergraduate students about the most appropriate measure to use when describing data with outliers. the data presented were identical to those in table 1. nevertheless, all students agreed that the mean was the best measure because its formula encompassed all cases. they did not consider the outliers. it implied that they lacked a fundamental understanding of outliers and were unaware of their existence. this lack of comprehension may result in fatal errors in the future, as data encounters are inevitable in the working world. to summarize, the literature and preliminary research emphasize the importance and necessity of conducting a study on undergraduate students' decision-making errors, particularly regarding the concept of measure of central tendency. the purpose of this study is to describe undergraduate students' misconceptions in selecting the most appropriate measures of central tendency when faced with a decision-making problem. method participants and sites this research's objective was to describe the phenomenon of undergraduate students' understanding of central tendency measures using a qualitative approach. the study was conducted in november, the odd semester of 2019/2020, at three universities in indonesia in the mathematics and economics departments. ninety-three undergraduate students, who were in their third and fourth years, participated in our study. students who became the participants were ones that already took the basic statistics and applied for statistics courses. four students, consisting of two females and two males, were recruited to be interviewed to clarify and elucidate their answers. their lecturers recommended interviewees based on our criteria, which included good communication skills, as our objective was to delve deeply into their understanding. data collection a test and an interview were used to elicit data of students' understanding of central tendency measures. the test required the participant to determine whether two statements were true or false and explain their reasoning. we conducted the test by administering one item for one day. the three statements that comprise the test are listed in table 2. international journal of education vol. 14 no. 1, april-2021, pp. 39-47 ©2021 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: 10.17509/ije.v14i1.29408 41 table 2 statements regarding decision making number statement 1 monthly income of 18 people in a housing estate in million rupiah are 5, 5, 8, 8, 67, 68, 69, 70, 72, 73, 75, 77, 78, 81, 88, 90, 95, and 98. among mean, median, and mode as a measure of central tendency, the best measure to describe the data is mean 2 test results of 14 students in a classroom are 20, 22, 88, 95, 88, 98, 100, 95, 88, 96, 97, 89, 99, and 92. among mean, median, and mode as a measure of central tendency, the best measure to describe the data is mean 3 iq test results of nine high school students are 122, 124, 123, 123, 125, 125, 125, 124, 124, 126. among mean, median, and mode as a central tendency measure, the best measure to describe the data is mean. the data in the first statement contains outliers. as a result, the mean is not the best way to describe the data. additionally, the mode values are outliers, indicating that the mode is not the optimal choice. regarding statement 2, because there are extreme values, the mean is not the optimal measure. finally, the third statement contains data that is normally distributed. as a result, the mean, median, and mode values are identical, and they are the most appropriate way to describe the data. the interview lasted between 15 and 20 minutes. after conducting the interview, we immediately transcribed it to obtain the interview's raw data. transcribing is necessary because analyzing data in written form was easier for us. data analysis the data analysis process consisted of three stages: condensing the data, displaying the data, and concluding (miles et al., 2014). we coded, selected, and filtered interview transcripts and students' test responses to obtain pertinent information during data condensation. we categorized participants' responses that were similar and had the same meaning. this process occurred continuously until the final report was finished. we summarized students' responses and organized them into tables to illustrate the variety of students' responses to each item. part of the interview transcripts selected was then displayed in an excerpt to provide clarifications or explanations of participants' response. data display helped us determine the next course of action; we returned to data condensation or further analysis and conclusion. finally, the researchers compared the data and looked for patterns or explanations before drawing conclusions about students' comprehension of central tendency measures in decision-making. before concluding, we verified our findings by reexamining the raw or condensed data. this study used triangulation to ensure the data's credibility by administering a test and conducting an interview. triangulation was used to compare the test and interview results to identify patterns or data consistency. results and discussion results of undergraduate students' responses to the test are presented in table 3, table 4, and table 5. table 3 summary of students' reasons in statement 1 reason freq. mean is also used to determine mode and median 2 center is mean 1 mean describes average 18 mean is easier to calculate 2 explaining the formula of mean 2 mean is a grouped data 1 median is the most appropriate because it is sorted 5 mean could be calculated 2 all value is the most appropriate because all of them are computable 2 there is no average 1 the mode is easier to find, and the mode are 5 and 8 11 mean is sorted 1 mean involves all data 3 median and mode are better because it is a sorted data 1 there is no median and mode 1 repeating the statement 6 does not give reasons 34 table 4 summary of students' reasons in statement 2 reason freq. because mean describes the average 15 the mode is better because it appears the most, is easier to find, and the value is 88 14 explaining the formula of mean 1 because most of the value is around 90 1 all value is the most appropriate because all of them could be calculated 6 mean involves all data 3 easier 1 there is no average 3 mean is computable 2 repeating the statement 4 does not give reasons 43 rosidah & ikram measure of central tendency 42 table 5 summary of students' reasons in statement 3 reason freq. because we can calculate the mean 7 average is mean 2 mean is the overall value 2 mean involves all data 3 explaining the formula of mean 2 median is the most appropriate to find the middle value 3 the mode is also the right one because the data has a mode 3 all measure is right because we can calculate it 1 the mode is also the most appropriate because it involves all data 1 the mode is the most appropriate because it appears the most often. its value is 124 3 the mode is the most appropriate because we can know the average of data 1 median and mode because the value is the same, which is 124 4 repeating statement 7 does not give reasons 54 table 3, table 4, and table 5 show that no students correctly answered the questions. they provided insufficient justifications for their determination of the statements' correctness. over 36% (36.6 percent, 46.2 percent, and 58.1 percent) of students could not explain their reasoning for all items. additionally, more than half of the participants did not state why they chose a particular response. according to table 3, the most frequently stated responses to the statement were that the mode is easier to locate and that the mean accurately describes the average. additionally, some (6 students) repeated the sentences to demonstrate the statement's correctness. there was no mention of outliers or extreme values by students. similarly, in table 4, 15 students indicated that statement 1 was correct because the mean accurately describes the average, while 14 students indicated that statement 1 was incorrect because the mode is easier to calculate. additionally, table 4 demonstrates that, while some of them (3 students) understood the concept of mean, which is calculated using all data, none of the participants appeared to be aware of outliers' existence. the number of students who only rewrote the second statement is lower than the other statements (4 participants). table 5 shows that none of the students mentioned the term distribution of data. the most common answer was that the mean is the best measure because it is computable. the number of students who rewrote the statement as their reasons was the highest in this statement. the four students, who participated in the indepth interview, were coded as s1, s2, s3, and s4. three sections present and discuss their interview results. they consist of the interviewees' responses to the first, second, and third statements. participants' response to statement 1 the findings of the study revealed that s1 and s3 responses were quite similar. the following excerpts show their answers. table 6 s1's responses to statement 1 responses and questions p : in this statement, why did you say that mean was the best? s1 : because we want to know the monthly income of the residents p : how about the median and the mode? s1 : it is not necessary because we want to know the average p : have you calculated the mean value? s1 : not yet, wait, *calculating the value and then showing the results p : is it alright if i want to describe the data by this value? s1 : yes, it is the mean table 7 s3’s responses to statement 1 responses and questions p : you said that the mean is the best measure to describe the data. why did you choose it? s3 : we must find the average income of the housing, so the mean is the right choice. p : how about the median and the mode? s3 : mean, because we cannot find the housing's average income by calculating the median and mode. according to tables 6 and 7, both s1 and s3 believed the statement was correct because they assumed the task required them to calculate the average. although the instruction made no mention of it, the mean was always the best option for them without regard for any criteria. while the interviewees calculated the value in s1, the participant was unaware that outliers affect the mean value. their responses implied that a single measure applied to all types of data. the response given by s2 and s4 regarding statement 1 was different. the following tables reveal the interview excerpts. international journal of education vol. 14 no. 1, april-2021, pp. 39-47 ©2021 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: 10.17509/ije.v14i1.29408 43 table 8 s2's responses to statement 1 responses and questions p : why is it wrong? s2 : in terms of income, we have to find the break event point in the middle. therefore, i choose the median. as for mode, we also can use it by looking at the highest intensity of the value table 9 s4's responses to statement 1 responses and questions p : why did you choose the mode? s4 : because it is easy. we can directly find the mode values just by looking at the data, which are 5 and 8 as shown in table 8, s2 connected the answer to the context of income, where the break event point is a value that must be determined. the interviewee claimed that the median was the best income data measure because it represented the break-even point (bep). however, bep is a state in which a business makes no profit and incurs no losses and does not involve the middle point of income. in this instance, s2 appeared to have forgotten about the concept of the break-even point. additionally, the interviewee was unaware of the existence of outliers and their role in data mode. as for s4, the interviewee stated that the statement was incorrect because the most appropriate one to describe the data was easier to find. thus, s4 chose modes 5 and 8, even though these values were outliers in the data. it appeared as though the participant believed that the most appropriate measure of central tendency to use in decision-making was the one that is the simplest to calculate and locate. as a result, s4 was also unaware of the outliers. participants' response to statement 2 the results of the interview show that both s1 and s3 responded similarly. their responses were evident in the following interview excerpts. table 10 – s1's responses to statement 2 responses and questions p : why did you choose to mean? s1 : for the average, the average score p : why did not you choose the median or the mode? s1 : mean is the most appropriate p : why s1 : to find out the average of the score table 11 s3's responses to statement 2 responses and questions p : you said that the mean is the best for this statement. why? s3 : to obtain the average score p : how about the median and the mode? s3 : to find the average score of all students, we have to calculate the mean both s1 and s3 associated the statement with the necessity of determining the data's average. they did not refer to alternative measures of central tendency. they frequently concentrated on the mean without considering the existence of all possible values in the data. it demonstrated how there was a tendency to choose to mean arbitrarily. nevertheless, in this statement, s2 and s4 gave different responses compared to s1 and s3. the following table 12 and table 13 show their answers. table 12 s2's responses to statement 2 responses and questions p : is this statement correct or incorrect? s2 : *thinking for a while wrong, because all value can be calculated table 13 s4's responses to statement 2 responses and questions p : why did not you choose the mean? s4 : because the mode is easier to find s2 failed to contextualize the data in statement 2. rather than that, the interviewee stated that all three measures were the most appropriate due to their calculable values. as with s1, the participant chose the mode because it was easier to determine for the interviewee. s4's response was very similar to those of s1 and s3. the three believed that the optimal measure of central tendency is a single measure that applies to all data types. participants' response to statement 3 the results of the interview show that both s1 and s3 responded similarly. their responses are as follows. rosidah & ikram measure of central tendency 44 table 14 s1's responses to statement 3 responses and questions p : in this data, why did you say pick the mean as the best measure? s1 : because we want to know the average p : how about the median and the mode? s1 : it is not necessary. we need the average p : have you calculated the mean, median, and mode? s1 : no, wait, *calculating the mean, median, and the mode and then showing the results the values are the same as the mean. if the median and mode values are the same as the mean, then all three measures are the most appropriate. p : why do you always involve the average? s1 : because average is the best one to describe data and mean is the average p : so how did you choose the best measure of central tendency to describe a set of data? s1 : by checking another measure whether their values are the same as the mean or not. table 15 s3's responses to statement 3 responses and questions p : you said that the mean is the best measure to describe the data. why did you choose it? s3 : because what we must find is the average of the iq, so the mean is the right choice. p : how about the median and the mode? try calculating their values s3 : *calculating mean, median, and mode and showing the results my choices are mean, median, and mode. providing that the median value is the same as the mean and the mode is not, then the best measures are the mean and the median. whichever value is the same as the mean, then that value is also the right choice to describe the data p : so, what factors did you think could affect your decision in choosing the best measure? s3 : whether the values of the other measures are the same as mean or not. s1 and s3 considered another central tendency to describe the typical in the data based on table 14 and table 15. they compared the median and mode values to the mean, with the mean serving as the reference point. if the median or mode value was equal to the mean, then the median or mode might also be the best measure for describing data. their errors stemmed from their consideration of unrelated factors and their failure to consider other factors that might affect their decision-making. when the interviewer asked them to calculate the three measures, their decision changed because their values were identical. thus, they took into account false factors when deciding on central tendency measures and still had an inclination toward the use of mean. s2 and s4 responded differently to statement 3. their answers are as follows. table 16 s2's responses to statement 3 responses and questions p : why do you say that the statement is incorrect? s2 : because all values are the same, so the most appropriate measures are mean, median, and mode. p : in statement 2, you said that when all values can be calculated, then mean is not the only appropriate measure, and in statement 3, you said that if the values are all the same, then the three measure is the most appropriate. therefore, what factors did you think affecting our decision-making in statistics problems which involves the measure of central tendency? s2 : *thinking for a while the first one is the context. for example, in the context of income in statement 1, the median is the most appropriate. however, there are sets of data in which their context do not need specific measures to describe the typical. in this case, when all the measures could be calculated, then mean, median and mode best describes the data. international journal of education vol. 14 no. 1, april-2021, pp. 39-47 ©2021 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: 10.17509/ije.v14i1.29408 45 table 17 s4's responses to statement 3 responses and questions p : why did you choose the mode? s4 : because the best measure is one that is the easiest to find. p so, did you mean that the mean and median value is not the easiest one to determine? s4 it applies to the mean because we have to calculate the sum of all values and then divide it with the number of data. it is not convenient. however, for the median, if the data is already sorted, i think the median also could be one of the right choices to describe the data as illustrated in table 16, s2's response to their strategy, or how the participant selects the best measure to describe the data, was still ambiguous. as a result, the researchers conducted a thorough investigation by requesting clarification from the interviewee. s2 reflected on the responses to the clarifying questions that had been posed. finally, the participant concluded that while some sets of data with a particular context require specific measures to describe them adequately, others do not. in other instances, a particular type of data did not necessitate the application of special measures. as a result, the interviewee stated that all three values (mean, median, and mode) were acceptable, as long as the mode value existed. to summarize, s2 did not take distributional or outlier-related factors into account. as for s4, the interviewee still picked the mode as the answer due to the ease of calculating its value. according to the participant, the best central tendency measure for describing data is the simplest to determine. however, s4 stated that the median also became a value that best describes it if the data is sorted. it is because calculating the median is much easier in sorted data than calculating the mean. as a result, s4 was unaware of the benefits and drawbacks of using each central tendency to describe the data. they considered an irrelevant factor, which is the convenience in determining the measure values. discussion the results indicated that none of the undergraduate students who took the test could provide the correct reasoning for the statement's correctness. the majority of them related mean to average directly without considering certain factors, such as how each value affects the mean value. it demonstrated a lack of understanding regarding outliers. they were unaware of the advantages and disadvantages of using the mean, median, and mode to describe a set of data as central tendency measures. numerous students believed that a single measure would be the most appropriate for all data collection. the majority of participants selected mean and mode. some chose the former because they believed it more accurately represented the average, while others picked the latter for convenience. its value can be determined easily by comparing the frequency of data and selecting the most frequent. many undergraduate students in this study were unable to calculate the mean, median, and mode values. this step is required to compare the data's measures and select the most accurate that describes the data. even when the interviewer instructed them to compute the value, they were unaware of outliers or other conditions necessary for making a correct decision. this finding was consistent with previous research in which a large proportion of participants were unfamiliar with the procedure for calculating the measure of central tendency. they were unaware of the existence of outliers, how sensitive the mean is to outliers, or how resistant the median is to outliers (zawojewski & shaughnessy, 2000; groth & bergner, 2006; jacobbe, 2012; karatoprak et al., 2015; sharma, 2008; ulusoy & altay, 2016). according to apos theory, students' comprehension in this study is limited to the stage of process conception. at this stage, particularly in statistics, students understand only a portion of their principles or characteristics (arnon et al., 2014). they only knew that using mean benefits is beneficial because it incorporates all of the data points. additionally, as indicated by the results in tables 3 and 4, some participants were still in the action conception stage. they were only aware of the mean calculation formula and how to substitute the value. these students were unaware of the benefits and drawbacks of using the mean. the error which the students made was called mis-logical construction. these mistakes happened because the individual did not know several conditions that must be satisfied for a statement to be true (subanji, 2015). in this case, the participants did not consider the distribution of data, the existence of outliers, the number of modes, and other factors. the errors made by interviewees were also conceptual errors. it occurs when an individual is unaware of the fundamental principles or properties (nolting, 2012). in this instance, s2 was unaware of the relative merits and demerits of mean, median, and mode. additionally, their error implied that there was a flaw in their concept construction. subanji (2015) asserts that students who have a construction hole have an incomplete schema. the participants in this study were unaware that selecting the most appropriate measure to describe data necessitates some conditions, including outliers. many undergraduate students participating in this study already knew that choosing the best measure requires several considerations. they did not know the merits and demerits of using every measure of central tendency to make a decision. thus, they were unable to correctly answer the statements given. rosidah & ikram measure of central tendency 46 several unusual responses were discovered among the 93 participants' responses. for instance, several participants stated in statement 1 that they could use the mean value to determine the mode and median of data. some asserted that there was no average, and others claimed that the median or mode did not exist. in statement 3, one student believed that mode encompassed all data. these are elementary errors. it is an error that should not occur at a certain level of education (brodie, 2010). at the undergraduate level, particularly for students who have previously taken or are currently enrolled in a statistics course, the errors are unexpected. their comprehension did not even extend to the concept of action. conclusion to conclude, undergraduate students' understanding of factors affecting decision making is still lacking. they were not aware of many things, including outliers, the number of modes, or data distribution. further investigation on the topic by considering some aspects or conducting a different study is also necessary. for example, one can investigate the same theme based on their background (gender, learning styles, cognitive styles, intelligence, mathematical identity, and education level). one also can develop learning methods or designs to teach the measure of central tendency. a study exploring undergraduate students' basic errors is also necessary to determine why they made the mistakes at their current education level. the findings of this research, 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(2000). mean and median: are they really so easy?. mathematics teaching in the middle school, 5(7), 436-440. doi: 10.2307/41180850 international journal of education vol. 14 no. 1, april-2021, pp. 19-29 ©2021 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: 10.17509/ije.v14i1.31386 19 facebook messenger as an educational platform to scaffold deaf students’ conceptual understanding in environmental science subject: a single group quasi-experimental study jayson a. dela fuente northern negros state college of science and technology, philippines delafuentejayson89@gmail.com first draft received: 17 jan 2021 date accepted: 31 march 2021 final proof received: 28 apr 2021 abstract the advent of technology proliferates the evolution of social media that creates a massive breakthrough in different aspects of life, especially in education. teachers play a crucial role as they adapt to the new era of an educational system where students with special needs are mainstreamed in the regular learning environment. student’s success in learning is attributed to teachers' effective techniques, methods, and approaches to deliver quality and meaningful learning to diverse students regardless of religion, ethnic groups, race, culture, and disabilities. this context inspired the author to investigate the effectiveness of facebook messenger as an educational platform in teaching to scaffold deaf students’ conceptual understanding in environmental science subject through a quasi-experiment to a single group composed of four (n=4) deaf college students in one selected state college of the higher education institutions (heis) in northern negros philippines. the findings revealed that deaf students had a very low conceptual understanding of the subject in the pre-test, however, manifested very high after the intervention (post-test). moreover, results show that there was no significant difference in the level of the participants’ conceptual understanding between and among gender groups, however, the difference was significant in the pre-test and post-test gained scores. furthermore, facebook messenger has been proven effective and thereby recommended to maximize its potential as an educational tool in teaching to scaffold deaf students’ conceptual understanding of science fields and other disciplines. keywords: conceptual understanding; deaf students; educational platform; environmental science, facebook messenger to cite this paper (in apa style): dela fuente, j. a. (2021). facebook messenger as an educational platform to scaffold deaf students’ conceptual understanding in environmental science subject: a single group quasi-experimental study. international journal of education, 14(1), 19-29. doi: 10.17509/ije.v14i1.31386 introduction teachers are the prime agent in shaping and molding students’ knowledge, skills, and values to foster holistic development towards a successful life. the ultimate goal of every teacher and academic institution is to become responsive to the new paradigm of education, that is inclusive education. to emulate the demands on the global standards for inclusive education, teachers should be flexible, creative, and innovative to deliver quality and meaningful learning experiences not only to normal students but also to students with special needs in the mainstream learning environment (dela fuente, 2021). the world federation of the deaf (wfd) advocates and promotes the rights of the deaf to access quality inclusive education with direct instruction through sign language from the teachers and the normal students or peers to foster their social and moral facets. its main goal is to enforce inclusive educational reforms and agendas in different countries across the globe. accordingly, the united nations international children’s emergency fund (unicef, 2013) reported that most children with disabilities faced discrimination on their rights to have equal access to quality education. yu et al. (2011) in particular emphasized that there is a great number of students with disabilities who are still denied access to education. whilst the western counterparts’ struggle to mainstream students with special needs in the regular classroom (ellsworth & zhang, 2007). the phenomenon provides a clear picture that supports the school as an essential element to the education of students with special needs in an inclusive learning environment (slee, 2018; deloitte access economics, 2017). the world report on disability cited several countries in africa, asia, and south america where students with special needs are mailto:delafuentejayson89@gmail.com dela fuente facebook messenger as an educational platform to scaffold deaf students’ conceptual understanding 20 deprived of opportunities to acquire education (who, 2011). global data for the absence of students with special needs in the mainstream school has been dramatically evident in uganda (atekyereza, 2001), south africa (ward & seager, 2010), zimbabwe (chakuchichi et al., 2015); and kenya (the world bank, 2008). these global occurrences are also prevalent in bangladesh, burkina faso, cambodia, costa rica, dominican republic, ethiopia, ghana, indonesia, liberia, mali, malawi, mexico, mozambique, peru, south sudan, vietnam and zambia (male & wodon, 2017). worldwide, almost 124 million students with special needs are not enrolled either in primary or secondary education (singal, 2016) and even withdraw or leave from schooling before completing their education as cited by the unesco institute statistics (uis, 2017). similarly, the world health organization (who) observed that students with special needs in developed countries experienced worse educational outcomes than the normal students without disabilities (oecd, 2012; barnes & sheldon, 2010). the situation even worsens in developing countries (muderedzi & ingstad, 2011; who, 2011). apparently, the separation of students with special needs into the mainstream school or in inclusive education with the normal students is still evident. this happens despite several research findings that support positive learning outcomes for students with special needs in an inclusive/regular learning environment (myers et al., 2016). this was strengthened by cologon (2013) that students with special needs who are in the mainstream school or the regular classroom performed better than those who attend separate special schools. the aforementioned phenomenon is evident in england (tomlinson, 2017), canada (porter & towell, 2013), and italy (d’ alessio, 2011). in developing countries like the philippines, the number of students with special needs was observed to be increasing especially in tertiary/college higher education. the national council on disability affairs (ncda) pointed out that there are still instances where students with special needs don’t have the opportunity to go to college or not being admitted to colleges and universities mainly due to lack of awareness and preparation of the school administrators and teachers (ncda, 2013). this is very evident in the international arena, in which barely 2% of 400 million students with disabilities across the globe have a chance to acquire higher education which simply implies the fewer students with special needs are catered their rights to access quality education. based on the philippines statistics authority (psa) census among 4,446,649 million surveyed by the department of social welfare and development (dswd) in the pantawid pamilyang pilipino program known as (4p’s) 302,421 or about 6.77% are persons with disabilities (pwd) and 27,972 or about 0.63% are deaf, 97% of which does not reach the public school system despite zero rejection policy (psa, 2010). in the later census of the national statistics office (nso) in 2000 among 942,098 pwds, 13.91% are deaf which 4.13% hold an academic degree, however, the figures manifest the lesser number who finished/graduated from the college level. it was estimated that among 45,000 who have disabilities, 15% of them are to be enrolled in school. however, data gathered from the civil society revealed that the actual estimated enrollment of students with disabilities is less than 10%, and even lower for deaf students. the cited works of literature inspired the commission on higher education (ched) to respond and address certain concerns related to students with special needs which is anchored on the provisions of the united nations (un) convention on the rights of persons with disabilities (crpd) through ched memorandum order (cmo) 23 of 2000 [quality education for learners with special needs] that urges higher education institutions (heis) to consider the following provision to cater the inclusive higher learning environment for quality education to students with special needs: 1) admit students with special needs, 2) inclusion of sped programs for teacher training institutions, and 3) facilities and equipment be modified to ensure its accessibility to students with special needs. on october 30, 2018, the filipino deaf community rejoices with the pronouncement of the approved republic act 11106 by president rodrigo roa duterte of the republic of the philippines [an act declaring the filipino sign language as the national sign language of the filipino deaf and the official sign language of government in all transactions involving the deaf, and mandating its use in schools, broadcast media, and workplaces] that mandates the department of education (deped), commission on higher education (ched), and the technical education and skills development authority (tesda) the academic agencies involve in educating deaf students to coordinate with each other on the use of filipino sign language as the medium of instruction in deaf education. however, teachers in the state college of the higher education institution (hei) where the study was conducted do not have the skills in sign language. students with special needs access to quality education in mainstream school remains a challenge among academic institutions worldwide. the perspective enthused teachers to embrace the advantage of technological platforms that include social networking sites as a teaching tool to scaffolds students learning (dabbagh & kitsantas, 2012). there are several social networking sites adopted by teachers in teaching diverse students such as instagram, twitter, skype, viber, and facebook (greenhow & askari, 2017). through these platforms, the teachers, the normal students, and the deaf students have an opportunity to connect, communicate, and interact with each other in the virtual world for educational purposes (antoniadis et al., 2017). the different platforms have a vital role to play in deaf students’ knowledge acquisition since they have a challenge in conventional face-toface teaching for they have difficulty hearing sounds international journal of education vol. 14 no. 1, april-2021, pp. 19-29 ©2021 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: 10.17509/ije.v14i1.31386 21 whilst the teacher’s primary mode of instruction is through verbal communication (raike, 2011). facebook is considered to be a model environment for communication and interaction that facilitates language learning and teaching (aydin, 2012). when facebook launched its chat application through facebook messenger app, interestingly it garnered almost 1.2 billion active users in 2017 adding 200 million users in a matter of eight months (constine, 2017). chowdry (2017) believes that the popularity of facebook is certainly knotted to its desire to incorporate features to other social networking sites into its design like the messenger app. facebook messenger enables users to send text messages, make voice, video calls, and send files through this app. similarly, users can also create groups that allow them to communicate and interact with different people across the globe in the virtual world (constine et al., 2016). statista (2018) implied that the philippines had a total of almost 47 million users which hailed the country as the number one largest facebook arcade in southeast asia. in which according to vrettaros et al. (2010) students are the fastest in the adaption of facebook features and unique uses. there are several studies conducted as to the effect of social media on different aspects of the normal student’s life, however, there is a dearth researches and works of literature in the asia pacific region (alborz et al., 2013) on students with special needs like the deaf; and in the philippines the author claims. limited studies were noted on the use of social media like facebook on deaf students learning (saunders 2016). moreover, there are only a few types of researches on the effect of social media on learning, however, it focused mainly on the self-reported questionnaire that provides a mere perception of the phenomenon. notably, facebook continues to evolve as it offers a new unique feature: the messenger app which forefront teachers to become creative and innovative as to its significant value as a tool or aid in teaching deaf students. the dearth studies and works of literature on the effect of social media as to its advantage to deaf students learning inspired the author to conduct an investigative study through a single group quasiexperiment. based on the gathered works of literature through different data-based sources of researches like googlescholar, researchgate, mendeley, academia, and even in the open-access selected local and international journals, it was noted that the author piloted the study in the philippines, in the asia pacific region and across the globe which is very specific to the context of facebook messenger utilized by the author/teacher as an educational platform in teaching to scaffold the conceptual understanding of deaf college students towards the environmental science subject. the findings will shed light on the importance of technology with the essential discovery of social media in the teaching-learning process in an inclusive education learning environment that can contribute to the literature worldwide. objectives of the study the study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of facebook messenger as an educational platform to scaffold deaf students’ conceptual understanding of environmental science subject. specifically, it attempted to answer the following statements: 1. determine the level of deaf students’ conceptual understanding in environmental science subject according to gender and exposure to facebook. 2. compare the level of difference of deaf students’ conceptual understanding in environmental science subject according to pre-test and posttest between gender groups and among gender. 3. compare the level of difference of deaf students’ conceptual understanding in environmental science subject on the pre-test and post-test to determine the effectiveness of facebook messenger as an educational platform in teaching to scaffold deaf students’ conceptual understanding. null hypotheses based on the stated objectives, the following hypotheses were proposed. h0 1. there is no significant difference in the level of deaf students’ conceptual understanding in environmental science subject in pre-test and post-test between gender groups. h0 2. there is no significant difference in the level of deaf students’ conceptual understanding in environmental science subject in pre-test and post-test among gender. h0 3. there is no significant difference in the level of deaf students’ conceptual understanding in environmental science subject in pre-test and posttest. methodology research design the study employed quasi-experimental research specifically a single group pre-test-post-test experimental design. in this approach, a single group exclusively the four unanticipated deaf college students enrolled in the institution are pre-tested and was given a treatment, then post-tested (salkind, 2010) to determine any significant difference in the variables before and after exposure to facebook messenger as an educational platform in teaching to scaffold deaf students’ conceptual understanding in environmental science subject. participants the participants were four (4) unanticipated deaf college students taking bachelor of science in hospitality management (bshm) enrolled officially for the second semester of the academic year 2018-2019 in one selected state college of the higher education institutions (heis) in northern negros philippines. two of whom are males and two are females which age range from 25 to 30 years old. the participants were chosen purposively since the author taught the subject environmental science subject to this group of students dela fuente facebook messenger as an educational platform to scaffold deaf students’ conceptual understanding 22 who are mainstreamed together with the thirty-nine (39) normal students in a regular classroom. figure 1 facebook messenger chat group interface and homepage ethical consideration the study was presented and approved by the institution’s research and development office through an in-house research review. moreover, the author sought ethical approval and permission from deaf students before the conduct of the study with the purpose, and procedures were explained with the help of a student interpreter who is skilled in sign language to ensure accuracy and 100% retrieval of the needed statistical data. the participants signed a consent form to manifest their voluntary participation in the experiment, then, was given a code of the scientific name of trees (for males) and flowers (for females) to protect their identity and to assure the confidentiality of the information given especially on the transcript of class discussions and conversations in the facebook messenger chat group. research instrument to gather empirical evidence and data, the author prepared a table of specification (tos) and developed a test/examination in environmental science subject anchored on the topics covered in each term examination prelim (components of the ecosystem, biochemical cycles, food chain, food web, and ecological pyramid); for the midterm (population, the impact of population growth on the environment, and environmental issues and concern); and for the final (environmental pollution, approaches in solving environmental problems, and sustainable development) postulated in the author’s/teacher’s approved course syllabus. the test/examination was composed of a fifty (50) item multiple-choice with the given alternatives for students to choose from which was designed based on bloom’s taxonomy of objectives on test construction that includes remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating, further reflected in the tos made by the author. the 50 items test/examination was administered before (pre-test) and after (post-test) of each term examination as scheduled: september 18 (prelim), october 23 (midterm), and december 4 (final) of 2018. the validity of the instrument the author utilized researcher-made test/examination questions as an instrument of the study. it went through a series of rigorous content and face validity of experts in test construction, instrumentation, and evaluation before it was administered to students in the scheduled examination. the instrument was validated by the testing coordinator who is considered an expert in the do’s and don’ts in test construction; the science coordinator who rigorously examined the correctness and accuracy of the concepts/contents; the dean who further evaluated the questions in the test if it is aligned with the course syllabus; and finally the chairperson of the curriculum instruction materials and development (cimd) who is an expert in the content and face validity of the test/examination constructed, then by the vice president for academic affairs who signified that the examination was found to be valid and approved to administer to the students. data collection phase 1: pre-experimental the author/teacher created a facebook messenger chat group exclusively and purposively for deaf students with the homepage name ‘environmental science subject polaris group 2nd semester 20182019’ with a profile picture of a mangrove forest taken in one island situated near the school to match with the subject. to give an overview, polaris is commonly known as the northern star and the brightest star in the constellation of ursa minor of which the author/teacher referred to deaf students as the brightest among the stars in the classroom since they are a unique individual. deaf students were then added in the facebook messenger chat group with the given pseudonyms of the philippines’ pride trees (for male) and flowers (for female) with the corresponding scientific names as follows: participant 1 narra (pterocarpus indicus), participant 2 almaciga (agathis philippinensis), participant 3 sampaguita (jasminum sambac) and for the participant 4 gumamela (hibiscus rosa-sinensis linn) to hide their identity and to protect confidentiality (see figure 1). phase 2: experimental the author/teacher conducted the regular class in the time scheduled at 4:00-5:30 of the afternoon every monday and wednesday of which deaf students (n=4) are mainstreamed in the regular classroom with the normal students (n=39) using the conventional teaching approach for the whole course content for prelim from october to november 2018; for the midterm from december 2018 to january 2019; and for the final from february to march 2019 that covered 6 months of teaching for the entire semester of the a.y. 2018-2019 as reflected in the author/teacher course syllabus. in international journal of education vol. 14 no. 1, april-2021, pp. 19-29 ©2021 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: 10.17509/ije.v14i1.31386 23 the conventional approach of teaching as observed by the author/teacher, deaf students have not participated since they have difficulty hearing what the author/teacher discuss in the class. to help deaf students understand the concepts in environmental science subject the author/teacher with permission from deaf students conducted a follow up online “remedial class” through facebook messenger as a scaffold for their conceptual understanding of the subject. since the author/teacher and deaf students have scheduled class after the regular environmental science subject class, the experimental set-up was conducted every night following the same scheduled day (monday and wednesday) from 6:00-7:00 as agreed and permitted by deaf students (see figure 2). figure 2 sample transcripts of online class teaching phase 3: post-experimental the author/teacher administered the 50 items multiplechoice environmental science test/examination each term (prelim, midterm, final) on scheduled dates by the office of the vice president for academic affairs after the conduct of remedial class through facebook messenger as a scaffold to deaf students’ conceptual understanding in the different topics/lessons/course contents in respective terms prelim (november 20, 2018), midterm (february 14, 2019), and final (march 18, 2019) after deaf students were exposed to facebook messenger as education platform in teaching to scaffold their conceptual understanding in environmental science subject that serve as the posttest. the results of the pre-test and post-test were assessed and analyzed with the aid of statistical data analysis to find out the effectiveness of facebook messenger as a scaffold to deaf students conceptual understanding in environmental science subject online class discussion. statistical analysis of the data in the process of the obtained data through test items in the examination for prelim, midterm and final, the following descriptive inferential statistics were employed: mean, one-sample t-test, and paired t-test to determine deaf students’ conceptual understanding in environmental science subject through facebook messenger as an educational platform in teaching in scaffolding their conceptual undertaking towards the subject. all computation in the gathered empirical statistical data was done using the computer process statistical package for the social sciences (spss). the following mean score range and its equivalent verbal interpretation were used as a guide in the analysis and elucidation of the quantitative findings. table 1 score range mean score range verbal interpretation 40.20 – 50.00 very high 30.40 – 39.19 high 19.60 – 29.39 average 9.80 – 19.59 low 1.00 – 9.79 very low results the deaf students’ conceptual understanding of the subject was very low in the prelim and final while low in the midterm as indicated in their mean scores which ranges from 8 to 10 over a total of 50 items/questions in the pre-assessment (pre-test) examination in each term (prelim, midterm, final). results show that deaf students had a limited understanding of the different concepts of the subject matter. they expressed through sign language which was interpreted by their classmates (normal students) and relay to the author/teacher that they find the examination difficult since it’s their first time to encounter such concepts and they don’t have any idea about it. the author/teacher inferred that the notion of difficulty encountered by deaf students was due to their chosen track when they were in senior high school dela fuente facebook messenger as an educational platform to scaffold deaf students’ conceptual understanding 24 which is not aligned to the science field as such they were not able to expose themselves to science concepts specifically in the domain of environmental science subject (see table 2). table 2 deaf student’s level of conceptual understanding in environmental science subject before (pre-test) and after (post-test) exposure to facebook messenger variable n=4 mean sd interp. prelim pre-test 9.75 2.22 very low post-test 38.0 2.94 high midterm pre-test 10.3 2.87 low post-test 38.5 1.29 high final pre-test 8.75 2.50 very low post-test 38.8 2.87 high apparently, after the deaf students were exposed to facebook messenger as a teaching device it turned out that their scores in the term examination (post-test) escalates as it was demonstrated by the means of 38.0, 38.5, and 38.8 which were interpreted as high in the prelim, midterm, and final, respectively. the figures convey that the strategy of the author/teacher of utilizing facebook messenger enhances the conceptual understanding of deaf students in environmental science subject. moreover, their increasing scores from prelim, midterm, and the final is visible which means that their level of understanding was developed through the aid of the intervening educational platform used by the author/teacher in teaching that scaffolds deaf students conceptual understanding towards the subject. table 3 deaf students’ level of conceptual understanding in environmental science subject before (pre-test) and after (posttest) exposure to facebook messenger according to gender variable n=4 mean sd interpretation prelim male (pre) 9. 50 3.54 very low male (post) 37.5 4.95 high female (pre) 10.0 1.41 low female (post) 38.5 .707 high midterm male (pre) 11.0 4.24 low male (post) 38.5 2.12 high female (pre) 9.50 2.12 very low female (post) 38.5 .707 high final male (pre) 9.00 4.24 very low male (post) 38.5 4.95 high female (pre) 8.50 .707 very low female (post) 39.0 .000a high accordingly, when the deaf students were grouped as to gender data revealed that their level of conceptual understanding in environmental science subject was distinct, where males got the mean score of 9.50 interpreted as very low, while the female was at the low level (m=10.0, sd=1.41) in the prelim. on the other hand, the female had a m=9.50 and sd=2.12 that falls to the very low level while the male was at low level gained 11.0 correct scores in the standard deviation of 4.24 in the pre-assessment examination for the midterm. however, both male and female are at the very low level (male: m=9.00, sd=4.24; female: m=8.50, sd=.707) when the final pre-test examination was administered. in general, the given data shows that both genders did not exhibit scientific competence in environmental science subject before the implementation of the intervention as they garnered low scores in the given pre-examination for prelim, midterm, and final. moreover, based on the post-test or after deaf students were exposed to facebook messenger as a tool used by the author/teacher in teaching their level of conceptual understanding towards the different topics covered within prelim, midterm, and final persuasively increases. this is manifested in the scores gained by both genders. male deaf students garnered mean scores of 37.5, 38.5, and another 38.5 while female deaf students have scores of 38.5, another 38.5, and 39.0 respectively which interpreted as high. furthermore, the statistics indicate the progress of conceptual understanding of deaf students from prelim, midterm, and final. the high scores they have in the post-test is a manifestation that facebook messenger assist to develop their conceptual understanding, thus, they got high scores in the given examination. this was further supported by their positive and active interaction with the author/teacher in the online class using facebook messenger as an educational platform to scaffold their conceptual understanding in environmental science subject as reflected on the transcript of interaction in the facebook messenger chat group. international journal of education vol. 14 no. 1, april-2021, pp. 19-29 ©2021 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: 10.17509/ije.v14i1.31386 25 table 4 comparison on male and female deaf students’ level of conceptual understanding in environmental science subject before (pre-test) and after (post-test) exposure to facebook messenger variable n=4 mean std. dev. df t-ratio p-value interpretation prelim male (pre) 9.50 4.95 1 -.143 0.91 not significant female (pre) 10.0 male (post) 37.5 4.243 1 -.333 0.80 not significant female (post) 38.5 midterm male (pre) 11.0 2.12 1 1.00 0.50 not significant female (pre) 9.50 male (post) 38.5 2.828 1 .000 1.00 not significant female (post) 38.5 final male (pre) 9.00 3.54 1 .200 0.87 not significant female (pre) 8.50 male (post) 38.5 4.950 1 -.143 0.91 not significant female (post) 39.0 the data establish that there was no significant difference in the level of conceptual understanding of deaf students when they are group according to gender as to pre-test and post-test. that means regardless of male or female they have the same level of conceptual understanding in the different term examination administered before and after the intervention program was implemented. this was supported by the t-ratio of -.143 for prelim, 1.00 for the midterm, and .200 for the final at the p-value of 0.91, 0.50, and 0.87 for the male and female in the pre-test and -.333, .000, and -.143 at the p-value of 0.80, 1.00, and 0.91 in the post-test respectively. the obtained probability value is greater than 0.05 level of significance; thus, the hypothesis implied by the author that there is no significant difference in the level of deaf students' conceptual understanding in environmental science subject in the pre-test and post-test between gender groups is thereby accepted. table 5 difference on deaf students’ level of conceptual understanding in environmental science subject before (pre-test) and after (post-test) exposure to facebook messenger among gender variable n=4 mean std. dev. df t-ratio p-value interpretation prelim male (pre) 9.50 1.41 1 -28.0 0.02 significant male (post) 37.5 female (pre) 10.0 2.12 1 -19.0 0.03 significant female (post) 38.5 midterm male (pre) 11.0 2.12 1 -18.3 0.04 significant male (post) 38.5 female (pre) 9.50 2.83 1 -14.5 0.04 significant female (post) 38.5 final male (pre) 9.00 .707 1 -59.0 0.01 significant male (post) 38.5 female (pre) 8.50 .707 1 -61.0 0.01 significant female (post) 39.0 table 5 suggests that the pre-test and post-test results are significant among gender. this means that there is a positive difference in terms of the scores gained by male deaf students from pre-test to post-test similar to the female deaf students. it simply shows that deaf students' conceptual understanding of the environmental science subject was improved after facebook messenger was employed by the author/teacher as a teaching tool to scaffold their understanding of the subject. this was supported by their gained t-ratio of -28.0 (p-value 0.02), -18.3 (pvalue 0.04), and -59.0 (p-value 0.01) for male in the pre-test and post-test from prelim, midterm and final respectively. on the other hand, the female pre-test and post-test yielded the t-ratio of -19.0 (p-value 0.03) for the prelim, -14.5 (p-value 0.04) midterm, and -61.0 (pvalue 0.01) for the final interpreted as significant. the obtained probability value is less than 0.05 level of significance; thus, the hypothesis implied by the author that there is no significant difference in the level of deaf students' conceptual understanding in environmental science subject in the pre-test and post-test among gender is thereby rejected. dela fuente facebook messenger as an educational platform to scaffold deaf students’ conceptual understanding 26 table 6 difference on pre-test and post-test gain scores as to the effectiveness of facebook messenger as an educational platform to scaffold deaf students’ conceptual understanding in environmental science subject variable n=4 mean std. dev. df t-ratio p-value interpretation prelim pretest 9.75 1.50 3 -37.7 0.00 highly significant posttest 38.0 midterm pretest 10.3 2.22 3 -25.5 0.00 highly significant posttest 38.5 final pretest 8.75 .82 3 -73.5 0.00 highly significant posttest 38.8 the given statistical data manifest the strong points and the positive effect of facebook messenger as an educational platform in scaffolding deaf students’ conceptual understanding of environmental science subject. notably, the data revealed that the scores of deaf students in the post-test with the given 50 items multiple-choice examination for prelim, midterm, and final gained an increasing scale respectively. moreover, it can be concluded based on the findings that the given figures are congruent to the inference of the author that deaf students develop the mastery and understanding the concepts in environmental science subject the moment they were exposed to facebook messenger as an intervention in the experiment to scaffold their conceptual competence towards the subject. the overall 0.00 p-value strongly highlights the findings of the experiment as highly significant. thus, since the derived p-value is less than the standard level of significance, which is 0.05, thus, the author’s hypothesis that there is no significant difference in the level of conceptual understanding of deaf students in the pre-test and post-test is thereby rejected. discussion the 21st century brings transformational breakthroughs in different aspects of life, specifically in education. the world is now adopting the new educational system called inclusive education wherein students with special needs are mainstreamed in the regular learning environment that adheres to the ideals, aspirations, and principles of unesco (2017) that “every learner matters and matters equally”. however, students with special needs access to quality education in mainstream school remains a challenge worldwide. slee (2011) suggested that to achieve sustainable, quality, and effective inclusive education there must be a holistic approach in catering to the learning needs of diverse students. the author as a teacher by profession who is handling/teaching deaf students who are considered to be students with special needs designed and modified instruction through the aid of facebook messenger as the educational platform to scaffold deaf students’ conceptual understanding in environmental science subject to enhance and develop deeper comprehension to the different concepts of the subject. the significant increase in the scores gained by deaf students after the intervention is a clear manifestation of the effectiveness of facebook messenger that can enhance their conceptual understanding of different scientific concepts/knowledge they encountered in the teaching process. this was supported by olusola and rotimi (2012) stating that if teachers provide students with special needs engaging instructional materials for science classes it can result in positive outcomes in the academic performance of students with special needs. moreover, stewart et al. (2012) emphasized instructional materials is important as it creates active interaction to teachers and students with special needs in the teaching-learning process. as attested by the findings, facebook messenger can be used by the teachers as an instructional tool to help deaf students with the challenges they encountered in the conventional teaching environment where verbal communication or spoken words is the medium of instruction. the facebook messenger chat group approach used by the author/teacher provides an advantage to deaf students since they have difficulty hearing words. if they are not auditory learners, the author believes that they are still the visual type of students where facebook messenger has features to offer like written text and videos (with captions) which is advantageous to them for easy communication with the normal students/peers or to their teachers. in fact, according to lihua and jiacheng (2010), deaf students preferred text-based instead of verbal modes of communication. they are more prone to use text-based communication with the use of social media like facebook messenger (maiorana-basas & pagliaro, 2014). the high-tech age offers technologies to address barriers in the education process which is adaptive to diverse types of individuals that include deaf students (zaraii et al., 2011). it is now at the tip of the teacher’s finger on how to become creative and innovative to maximize these technologies to make it a productive tool to deliver meaningful learning experiences and quality education to students with special needs. accordingly, blom et al. (2014) stressed that to improve the performance of students with special needs teachers may consider the different features of technology as an educational platform in teaching. in conventional teaching, the author/teacher observed certain behavior of deaf students. they are passive in the classroom discussions and even did not interact with the normal students or with their peers. it was inferred that this may be due to their difficulty communicating as they cannot be grasped and misunderstood by their peers and teachers. interestingly, the identified behavior noted by the author/teacher shifted into a very active student’s international journal of education vol. 14 no. 1, april-2021, pp. 19-29 ©2021 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: 10.17509/ije.v14i1.31386 27 participation in the actual online class through facebook messenger as they are always on time which implied their interest and eagerness to learn the subject. they manifested positive interaction as they respond immediately to the virtual class and shared their insights, ideas, and even clarified concepts that they cannot understand as reflected in the transcript of the facebook messenger chat group created exclusively and purposively by the author/teacher for the deaf students. the findings were strengthened by chen (2014) and casagrande (2013) that facebook increases student’s motivation and in a similar manner develop their reading and writing skills. however, aside from the quantitative significant findings in the study, there are also qualitative interesting results revealed in the experiment. notably, it was found out that deaf students cannot understand the local dialect/language (hiligaynon) the reason why the author/teacher used the english language as the medium of teaching for the whole online class. however, they have difficulty expressing their insights and ideas in the topics of environmental science concepts being discussed. this was analyzed by the author/teacher that this may be due to the influence of american sign language (asl) used by deaf students and their competence in the english language and grammatical errors. there are responses in the transcript of the facebook messenger chat group which the author/teacher cannot grasp and sometimes misunderstood deaf students responses during the online class discussion of the environmental science concepts. moreover, they revealed that they felt shy with their english language and grammatical errors that deepen the low self-esteem that hinders them to express confidently their thoughts and ideas. the author/teacher spent more than three (3) hours explaining comprehensively with the use of simple words/terms for them to easily grasp the concepts in the environmental science subject. the significant findings of the present study negate several studies, for instance, lau (2017) found out that using social media for academic purposes is not a significant predictor of academic performance as measured by the cumulative grade point average; whilst elliot et al. (2013) stressed no significant improvement in the grade point average (gpa) and retention of deaf students who use social media for stem courses. however, the current study underscored that social media like facebook messenger has a positive impact on deaf students’ academic performance. it enhances their conceptual understanding of the environmental science subject manifested on deaf students’ high scores gained in the given examination after they were exposed to facebook messenger as educational platform utilized by the author/teacher in teaching. teaching deaf students is challenging as it requires effort, creativity, and sensitivity to deliver quality and meaningful learning. it becomes more challenging if the teacher cannot do and interpret sign language to deliberately communicate with deaf students. however, the teacher should religiously perform the responsibility as they take allegiance to their profession to educate learners with their maximum capacity to cater to different learning needs adaptable and accessible to diverse students that include students with special needs like the deaf. conclusion and recommendation education is not a privilege it is a human rights. every individual deserves to be educated and should have equal access to quality education. the academic institution is expected to accept all types of students including the deaf as they mainstream in an inclusive educational system. teaching is regarded as a noble profession. the nobleness of this profession lies in the hands of teachers who continuously pass on the torch that lights the path of success for students. in the teaching process, teachers should ensure to deliver quality and meaningful learning to diverse students that include students with special needs like the deaf. teacher’s good teaching style coupled with interactive instructional tools adaptive to the learning needs of deaf students’ foster holistic development and inspire them to aspire to tertiary/college or higher learning in an inclusive learning environment. the practice of inclusive education is no longer limited to special education centers alone but to general/regular classroom as well where students with special needs like the deaf learn side by side with the normal students or peers. the demand of the present time challenges the role of teachers to educate almost fifty (50) normal students and expected to cater for students with special needs in response to the changes of the philippines’ educational system into an inclusive education where students with special needs are mainstreamed in the regular classroom. this entails strong educational support and reasonable accommodation to students with special needs in the context of general education. the advent of technology holds promise in different aspects of life specifically in the education arena. it becomes indispensable in the life of deaf students as it serves as an ally to interact in the mainstream society and the academe with the normal students or peers. certain developed technologies had been proven effective to assist deaf students and these become their virtual teacher that provides skills necessary for survival in the mainstream classes. the essential attribute of technology where social media like facebook messenger which provides greater opportunity for teachers to become creative and innovative to maximize its unique feature as an educational tool in the teaching-learning process especially in teaching deaf students. the author/teacher suggest and recommend facebook messenger as it was a proven effective educational platform that scaffolds deaf students' conceptual understanding and enhances their academic performance in environmental science subject. this simply shows the prominence of technology in the education process that assist students with special needs to learn and teachers to become responsive in the challenges they play in educating deaf students. dela fuente facebook messenger as an educational platform to scaffold deaf students’ conceptual understanding 28 facebook messenger is widely used by deaf students as an essential tool to express their minds, feelings, and communication, especially to acquire learning. it offers a clear vision for teachers to modify functional and differentiated special education instruction to develop deaf students holistically. the current study purely focuses on the metaanalysis of the effectiveness of facebook messenger and no other contexts investigated. there are certain limitations that the study has not underscored such as it only utilized a few numbers of deaf students in the experiment. results were solely dependent on the scores provided by the single group composed of four participants in the given examination without any other intervening variables for comparison. thus, the future direction of the study may delve deeper as to the effectiveness of facebook messenger to scaffold conceptual understanding to other disciplines 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(2022). the ahp approach for determining le-learning platform in unversity. international journal of education, 15(2), 103-112. https://doi.org/10.17509/ije.v15i2 introduction the pandemic of covid-19 has changed all aspects of our life, including education and learning. the physical distancing policy made in response to pandemic covid19 advises avoiding spending time in crowded places or groups (organization, 2020). the public’s obedience due to the physical distancing policy is considered quite effective in handling this pandemic (widodo, ermiana, & erfan, 2021). this policy is also applied in the education sector. instead of learning by physically attending classes, the students and lecturers have to adapt by using e-learning platforms to continue the learning process. e-learning refers to the concept that the learning process is not conducted through physical meetings directly in the classroom. this concept uses technological assistance to ease the learning process by separating distance and time. students can learn with a flexible and personalized platform through online media to continuously enhance their knowledge, skills, and other outcomes (fazlollahtabar & muhammadzadeh, 2012). however, the transition from offline to onlinebased learning raises a challenge for both lecturers and students. a study showed that most students feel uncomfortable with online-based learning (widodo et al., 2021). to keep the quality of online-based learning be as good as offline-based learning, students and lecturers need an e-learning platform that can fulfill all student needs in the online-based learning process. many online platforms support teaching and learning activities with different characteristics and features. the platforms such as google classroom, youtube, whatsapp, and zoom are examples of platforms often used for online learning during this pandemic (hassan, mirza, & hussain, 2020). google classroom is an application that provides teachers and https://doi.org/10.17509/ije.v15i2 international journal of education vol. 15 no. 2, august-2022, pp. 103-112 ©2022 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: https://doi.org/10.17509/ije.v15i2 104 students with an online room with a set of features for enhancing the learning activities, such as delivering and tracking assignments and communicating with students and teachers (iftakhar, 2016). youtube is a social networking site that provides users to share or watch videos. many videos about education, entertainment, marketing, and science are constantly being uploaded to youtube since 2005 (moghavvemi, sulaiman, jaafar, & kasem, 2018). with its feature, youtube could enhance distance learning activities. the teacher could share learning material in video format, and the students could learn through the video. whatsapp is an instant messaging application. this application allows the user to exchange pieces of information in text, photos, voice recordings, and videos format (wijaya, 2018). these features can be used by teachers and students to share the learning material and interact with each other. zoom is an application used for video conferences. this application provides audio, video, and screen sharing for online teaching (serhan, 2020). the advancing technology today increases the number of platforms used for online-based learning. however, many factors from e-learning platforms can influence learning activities. therefore, it would be necessary to determine what platform to use for learning activities. analytical hierarchy process is one of the methods used to evaluate the platforms for online-based learning. analytical hierarchy process is a multi-criteria decision making (mcdm) model that measures through pairwise comparisons to determine the priority scale based on experts' judgment. the pairwise comparisons are made using a scale of absolute judgments representing how much more one element dominates another concerning a given attribute (saaty, 2008). ahp can help the decisionmaker select the best alternatives or prioritize a series of alternatives based on the criteria considered. ahp has been used in many decision-making types of research and successfully used in various areas, such as marketing, finance, and engineering (dorado, gómez-moreno, torres-jiménez, & lópez-alba, 2014). previous research about consumer packaging preference was solved using ahp to decide the packaging type (jatiningrum et al., 2019). ahp was also used in many kinds of research related to the educational sector, such as selecting learning methods for undergraduate students (siew, hoe, fai, bakar, & xian, 2021) and selecting simulation software for engineering education (dorado et al., 2014). one of the advantages of using the ahp model for decisionmaking is that it can be easily understood by all the judges involved because it can be described graphically (marimin, 2004). a study is conducted to analyze and explore online-based learning activities through students' perceptions. this research proposes an e-learning platform among four platforms often used for learning activities: google classroom, youtube video, whatsapp, and zoom meeting, based on the criteria, platform service, learning comprehension, internet usage, and network strength. the respondents of this research are the students of a private university conducting online-based learning due to the pandemic of covid-19. method this research aims to analyze the students' preferences for e-learning platforms. a preliminary study was conducted to find out the e-learning platforms often used by the students and lecturers and its problem during distance learning through study literature and interviews with students. the criteria for this research are developed based on the difficulties students face during online learning, namely platform service, learning comprehension, internet usage, and network strength. meanwhile, google classroom, youtube video, whatsapp, and zoom meeting are elearning platforms that are familiarly used based on interviews with students. meanwhile, google classroom, youtube video, whatsapp, and zoom meeting are e-learning platforms that are often used based on interviews with students. an online questionnaire was distributed to the students in a private university in yogyakarta, indonesia, which has conducted distance learning since march 2020. a sample of 82 respondents for this research were students who still take subjects and attend online classes using the e-learning platform. the respondents consist of 53.7% male students and 46.3% female students. the questionnaire contained a comparison between criteria and alternatives. data analysis data collection in this research was analyzed using analytical hierarchy process (ahp) method and processed using microsoft excel. ahp model is used to solve multiple criteria decision-making (mcdm) problems (siew et al., 2018). this model uses discrete or continuous pairwise comparisons to find the priority scale. ahp model was developed by dr. thomas l. salty to organize the information and judgments for selecting the best alternative. the use of ahp begins with creating a hierarchical structure of the problem to be studied. this hierarchical structure consists of 3 levels. the first level is the goal to be achieved, while https://doi.org/10.17509/ije.v15i2 jatiningrum, utami, zalfa, syafril, wachid the ahp approach for determining e-learning platform in university 105 the second level loads the criteria used for evaluating the alternatives. these criteria are compared by pairwise comparisons to get a numerical importance score for each criterion. the final level is the alternatives that are also compared by pairwise comparisons to find the final suitable solution to achieve the goal. analytical hierarchy process (ahp) these are the steps for applying the ahp for solving the problem (saaty & vargas, 1993) (saaty, 2008). (1) identify the problem and its objective. this research aims to determine the selection of elearning platforms for students in a private university in yogyakarta, indonesia. through a preliminary study, it is known that the criteria considered in selecting an e-learning platform are platform service, comprehension of learning material, internet usage, and network strength. (2) structure the problem and its goal into a hierarchy the top level of the hierarchy contains objective to be achieved, followed by the criteria in the intermediate level. then, the set of alternatives in the lowest level. the model of hierarchy is shown in figure 1. (3) construct a set of pairwise comparison matrices. compare all decision criteria and alternatives pairwise to know their relative importance to the objective. the ratio scale for pairwise comparison is shown in table 1. table 1 ratio scale for pairwise comparison scale meaning 1 equal importance 3 weak importance to the preferred 5 essential importance to the preferred 7 demonstrate importance to the preferred 9 absolute importance to the preferred 2,4,6,8 intermediate importance (saaty, 2008) the comparison is based on respondents’ judgments about the relative importance of one element over another. the pairwise comparison is arranged into a pairwise comparison matrix-like presented below. 𝐴 = [( 𝑎11 𝑎21 𝑎12 𝑎22 ⋯ 𝑎1𝑗 𝑎2𝑗 ⋮ ⋱ ⋮ 𝑎𝑖1 𝑎𝑖2 ⋯ 𝑎𝑖𝑗 )] (1) where aij is the degree of preference of element i to element j. the pairwise comparison matrix described the influence of each element on the criteria. (4) the data from all respondents were aggregated using a geometric mean. the geometric mean formulation is shown below. 𝐺𝑀 = √𝑎1 × 𝑎2 × 𝑎3 …× 𝑎𝑛 𝑛 (2) gm is geometric mean, then a1, a2, a3, and an are value from respondent 1, respondent 2, respondent 3, and respondent n sequentially. (5) normalize the matrix to determine the relative weights of each element. the normalization can be calculated by dividing the value of each element by the total value of each column. (6) check the consistency ratio (cr) of the matrix. the cr has to be less than 0,1 to indicate that the data for pairwise comparisons are consistent. suppose the cr score is higher than 0,10. in that case, it means there is inconsistency in the data for the pairwise comparison matrix, and the experts have to re-evaluate or re-judge the preferences of the elements. the formula of cr is shown below. 𝐶𝑅 = 𝐶𝐼 𝑅𝐼 (2) ci is consistency index and ri is random index. (7) repeat step 3 6 for all level in the hierarchy. results and discussion the data in this research were collected from students of private university in yogyakarta, indonesia. the university has been doing distance learning since march 2020 due to pandemic of covid-19. students who have chosen to become respondents were the students who still taking subjects and attending online classes using e-learning platform. fig. 1 analytical hierarchy process model alternative 1 alternative 2 alternative 3 objective criterion 2 criterion 3 criterion 1 international journal of education vol. 15 no. 2, august-2022, pp. 103-112 ©2022 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: https://doi.org/10.17509/ije.v15i2 106 a preliminary study was conducted through literature study and interview with some students who experienced online learning. according to the interview, students often used four e-learning platforms: google classroom, youtube video, whatsapp, and zoom meeting. those alternatives of e-elearning platform also had been studied by singh et. al. (singh et al., 2020), supriyanto (supriyanto, 2020), haratikka(haratikka, 2020), setiawan & iasha (setiawan & iasha, 2020), fahmalatif (fahmalatif, purwanto, siswanto, & ardiyanto, 2021), and hendrawati, angkarini & retnomurti (hendrawaty, angkarini, & retnomurti, 2021). they stated that the four e-learning platforms were widely used to engage students in online learning. hendrawati, angkarini and retnomurti (2021) and haratikka (2020) even explained that google classroom and whatsapp were the most popular e-learning platforms based on students' preferences. furthermore, four criteria considered for selecting an e-learning platform were also obtained from the interview. they are platform service, learning comprehension, internet usage, and network strength obtained from interviews. these four criteria are the things that students concerned during online learning activities. the conceptual framework was built according to the interview and literature study results and analytical hierarchy process was used for solving this research. the hierarchy model for this research is shown in figure 2. level 1, as shown in figure 2, states the objective of this study, determining an e-learning platform based on student preferences. then, level 2 states the criteria considered in determining of e-learning platform. each criterion are explained as follows, a. platform service means the platform's various features that can support online learning activities and educational purposes. students usually expect the e-learning platform to provide a comprehensive service. b. learning comprehension means the platform's capability to deliver learning material well for students during online learning activities. some students stated that they have difficulty understanding the material provided through online learning. c. internet usage means the amount of internet data used for online learning activities. in some cases, students have limitations in providing internet quota. d. network strength means the power of the internet network required for accessing the platforms during online learning activities. most students who live in rural areas have problems with the internet network. according to figure 2, four e-learning platforms are determined to be the alternatives option in this research: google classroom, youtube video, whatsapp, and zoom meeting. those four are the online platforms that the students and lecturers often use for online classes. the following is an explanation of the use of each of these e-learning platforms a. google classroom, can be used by lecturers to share the material of a particular course, make an announcement about quizzes, exams, or tasks, provide an assessment of student work directly, and discuss the material learned through the forum page. google classroom provides a wellorganized interface. this makes it easier for lecturers and students to access previous activities carried out at google classroom. b. youtube video, can be used by lecturers to share their learning videos or learning videos from other sources. sometimes, it is easier for students to understand the material through direct explanations from videos in certain courses. c. whatsapp, can be used by lecturers to share the material of a particular course, make an announcement about quizzes, exams, or tasks, and discuss the material learned through a chat room in a group. this is the most simple and easyto-use application for communicating, so it also can be used as an e-learning platform. d. zoom meeting, can be used by lecturers to hold lecture meetings directly with students using video conference. two-way communication can be conducted in real-time through this platform. online questionnaires were distributed using google form around june – july 2020 to students of the private university, the subject of this research. there e-learning platforms platform service learning comprehension internet usages network strength google classroom youtube video whatsapp zoom meeting fig. 2 hierarchy model of e-learning platforms https://doi.org/10.17509/ije.v15i2 jatiningrum, utami, zalfa, syafril, wachid the ahp approach for determining e-learning platform in university 107 are a total of 82 students who participated as respondents. the percentage of female respondents was 46,63%. meanwhile, the male was 53,66%. ahp could be used to solve multi-decision criteria problems based on one expert judgment as respondent. however, in the implementation, the criteria assessment usually are carried out by several respondents. data from each respondent were constructed to be a pairwise comparison matrix (pcm). then, the data were added and aggregated using geomean to formulate the pcm. the result of using geomean for pcm can be seen in tables 2 and 3. table 2 shows the decision criteria pairwise comparison matrix; meanwhile, table 3 shows the alternative pairwise comparison matrix based on each criterion. table 2 pairwise comparison matrix of decision criteria platform service learning comprehension internet usage network strength platform service 1 0.596 0.568 0.422 learning comprehension 1.767 1 1.909 1.644 internet usage 1.742 0.524 1 1.035 network strength 2.372 0.608 0.979 1 as shown in table 2, pcm is used to compare various criteria to be weighted. this pcm shows how important one criterion is to another. as an example, learning comprehension is 1.909 times more important than internet usage according to respondents. the provision in building the pairwise comparison matrix is reciprocal comparison. it is only necessary to determine the upper triangular matrix because the lower triangular matrix is only the reprisal value of the upper triangular matrix (saaty, 2008). therefore, internet usage compared with learning comprehension has a value of 1/1.909 or 0.524. it means that internet usage is only 0.524 more important than learning comprehension. table 3 shows a pairwise comparison matrix for alternatives based on each criterion. as an example, according to the internet usage criterion, respondents prefer whatsapp compared to zoom meeting. respondents experience that whatsapp is 2.480 times superior to zoom meeting in terms of internet usage. on the other hand, zoom meeting compared to whatsapp has a value of 0.408 because of the reciprocal value. table 3 alternative pairwise comparison matrix platform service alternatives google classroom youtube video whatsapp zoom meeting google classroom 1.000 0.966 0.470 1.684 youtube 1.060 1.000 0.652 1.631 whatsapp 2.148 1.533 1.000 2.248 zoom 0.604 0.624 0.451 1.000 learning comprehension alternatives google classroom youtube video whatsapp zoom meeting google classroom 1.000 0.732 0.516 1.487 youtube 1.328 1.000 1.049 2.239 whatsapp 1.953 0.953 1.000 1.480 zoom 0.686 0.453 0.689 1.000 internet usages alternatives google classroom youtube video whatsapp zoom meeting google classroom 1.000 2.106 0.530 2.539 youtube 0.468 1.000 0.407 1.879 whatsapp 1.903 2.456 1.000 2.480 zoom 0.399 0.541 0.408 1.000 network strength alternatives google classroom youtube video whatsapp zoom meeting google classroom 1.000 2.176 0.413 3.100 youtube 0.453 1.000 0.357 2.066 whatsapp 2.400 2.803 1.000 3.143 zoom 0.326 0.491 0.321 1.000 each pairwise comparison matrix was processed using the column normalization method to obtain the weights for the criteria and alternatives. the findings of weight calculation for decision criteria by using ahp is shown in figure 3. fig. 3 weight of decision criteria the findings of this research revealed that learning comprehension, network usage, internet usage, and platform service are the priority order of criteria considered in selecting e-learning platforms. based on figure 3, learning comprehension has the 0,149 0,363 0,230 0,258 0,000 0,100 0,200 0,300 0,400 service platform learning comprehension internet usage network strength priority of criteria international journal of education vol. 15 no. 2, august-2022, pp. 103-112 ©2022 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: https://doi.org/10.17509/ije.v15i2 108 highest weight (0,363) and becomes the first criterion considered by students for selecting an e-learning platform. previous research about students' perceptions of online learning stated that most students are not comfortable with online-based learning. they have difficulties understanding learning material if the learning activities are only through online classes (widodo et al., 2021). students need a platform that could deliver the learning material well and makes it easier for them to understand even though the learning activities were done by distance. the second criterion which considered students for selecting e-learning platform is network strength (0,258). some platforms for online learning activities require a stable and robust internet network to access them. poor internet connection interrupts the learning process. however, good quality internet network in indonesia is not evenly distributed. it becomes a problem for students who live in some regions, primarily rural areas with a poor internet connection, to access the learning material from their homes (basri, husain, & modayama, 2021). students need a flexible platform that is easy to access even though the internet network is not that strong. the third influential criterion is internet usage by 0.230. there are several complaints from lecturers and students about implementing online-based learning. internet usage is highly related to cost. based on the previous research, one of the student's and lecturers' complaints is about the high spending they had to purchase internet data (priatmoko, sugiri, bashori, & islamy, 2021). this makes the students are more concerned about internet usage for accessing the elearning platform. students' last criterion when selecting an elearning platform is platform service by 0.149. many online platforms can be used for the online learning process during this pandemic with different excellent features and characteristics. the students prefer selecting an e-learning platform based on its excellent features and operations. cr value was calculated in each pairwise comparison matrix to ensure no inconsistent data in this research. the result of cr value of decision criteria, elearning platform alternatives based on platform service, e-learning platform alternatives based on learning comprehension, e-learning platform alternatives based on internet usage, and e-learning platform alternatives based on network strength are 0.093, 0.015, 0.021, 0.033, 0.040. the ahp approach is acceptable and reliable if the value of cr is less than 0.10 (srdevic, blagojevic, & srdevic, 2011). according to the results, no cr value exceeds 0.10. this implies that the data and model is acceptable and reliable. there is no inconsistent data in this research. table 4. presents the local weights of decision criteria and alternatives. according to table 4, whatsapp has the highest local weight by 0.387 based on the platform service criterion. the second alternative, which has a high value of the local weight, is youtube video by 0.220. these two are online platforms usually used daily for communication and entertainment purposes. the high weight value of these two platforms can happen because these two platforms are familiar to students. the third and the fourth alternatives are google classroom by 0.220 and zoom meeting by 0.151. table 4 local weights of decision criteria and alternatives criteria alternatives criterion’s weight alternative’s weight platform service google classroom 0.149 0.220 youtube video 0.241 whatsapp 0.387 zoom meeting 0.151 learning comprehension google classroom 0.363 0.208 youtube video 0.317 whatsapp 0.311 zoom meeting 0.164 internet usage google classroom 0.230 0.208 youtube video 0.317 whatsapp 0.311 zoom meeting 0.164 network strength google classroom 0.258 0.277 youtube video 0.164 whatsapp 0.456 zoom meeting 0.104 the highest weight in the learning comprehension criterion is youtube video by 0.317. learning materials were shared through youtube in video format, providing visual and audio instruction to understand the students better. often, lecturers build learning videos about a particular course and then upload them to youtube. the lecturer will provide the youtube link so that students https://doi.org/10.17509/ije.v15i2 jatiningrum, utami, zalfa, syafril, wachid the ahp approach for determining e-learning platform in university 109 can access it. students can also repeat the learning video if they still do not understand the material presented. furthermore, many academic-oriented videos on youtube allow students to study more from various sources, not only the one shared by the lecturer. the following alternative priority based on learning comprehension is whatsapp by 0.363, google classroom by 0.208, and zoom by 0.164. whatsapp allows lecturers to share the learning material in text, document, voice, or video format. the various format of material learning that lecturers could share through whatsapp could enhance the learning comprehension of students. zoom meeting has the lowest weight in the learning comprehension criterion by 0.164. lectures using zoom have advantages, such as conducting twoway discussions simultaneously. unfortunately, students are often passive when discussing. this passive discussion may occur because students do not dare to express their opinions directly or because students are not serious about attending lectures. even though online learning has been carried out synchronously using zoom meeting, students are not ready to pay attention to the material presented by the lecturer. this problem supports the previous research, which stated that one barrier to using zoom is that students sometimes do not focus during the learning process (mannong, 2020). zoom meetings are also difficult to implement for particular courses that ask students to work on questions related to calculation, like if a student answers the question by writing on the whiteboard in front of the class. this difficulty is due to students' limited devices to support online lectures. moreover, students often cannot fully concentrate during an online class. youtube video also became the first e-learning platform alternative based on internet usage criteria. youtube has the highest weight by 0.317, and whatsapp becomes the second by 0.311. the large size of the file causes a high expenditure on internet data. both youtube and whatsapp allow users to download and save the file to the device. it can make the students save more on internet data because they can open the file of learning material again even when the device is in offline mode. based on internet usage criteria, the third and fourth alternative priorities are google classroom by 0.208 and zoom by 0.164. zoom has become the last e-learning platform alternative for internet usage criteria. zoom is usually used for the feature of a video conference. it needs plenty of internet data to access, and it can cause a high cost of internet data purchasing. an internet connection is a basic need to access the e-learning platform. the priority of alternatives based on network strength is whatsapp. whatsapp has the highest weight by 0.456 and has become the priority for e-learning platform based on network strength criterion. whatsapp is a quietly easy platform to be accessed even when the internet network is not really good. the previous research also found out the students prefer whatsapp because it is easy to be accessed and follow the discussion through whatsapp, even though there is a problem during online learning (nihayati & indriani, 2021). the following alternatives priority order is google classroom by 0.277, youtube by 0.164, and the last is zoom by 0.104. zoom relies on its main feature, video conference, for learning activities. that feature needs a stable and robust internet network for users to follow the online classes through zoom. fig. 4 global weight alternative figure 4 shows the result of the global weight alternatives calculation. the findings of this study indicate that whatsapp, youtube video, google classroom, and zoom meeting are e-learning platforms that students are interested in successively by using the ahp approach. according to the calculation for each alternative, whatsapp has the highest global weight by 0.359. it has become the priority of the e-learning platform chosen by students. whatsapp has a high local weight in each criterion and becomes the highest weight in the platform service and network strength criterion. whatsapp is a popular platform not only for students and lecturers, but also popular among many people. whatsapp will become the most popular global mobile messenger in 2021 (statista, 2021). whatsapp is a familiar platform that is used by people daily. its features are easy to use and help the students with learning activities (wijaya, 2018). whatsapp provides a simple operation scheme that makes the platform accessible to students and lecturers. the features include exchanging text, document, photo, video, group chat, voice and video call, and whatsapp on the web. therefore, whatsapp enables the students and lecturers to communicate by distance. whatsapp also allows the students and lecturers to transfer the study 0,228 0,266 0,359 0,146 0,00 0,10 0,20 0,30 0,40 google classroom youtube whatsapp zoom international journal of education vol. 15 no. 2, august-2022, pp. 103-112 ©2022 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: https://doi.org/10.17509/ije.v15i2 110 material quickly and support the students and lecturers to give immediate feedback on the learning activities (gon & rawekar, 2017). the students and lecturer can use whatsapp by making it an active discussion forum for learning activities. learning activities through the discussion forums improve learning effectiveness, solve learning activities, and enable the faster construction and sharing of knowledge (amry, 2014). the previous research network strength has become one of the students' concerns about online-based learning. internet network is not distributed well in many regions in indonesia, especially in rural areas. whatsapp became the first alternative based on the network strength criterion. the study shows that the students consider whatsapp as the best platform to access with their internet network strength. whatsapp has become a platform which easy to access even the internet network is not really good. online-based learning through whatsapp isn't need a powerful internet connection unless it has to access video call or voice call feature. this platform is easy to access as long as there is an internet connection to the device (4g/3g/2g/edge, or wifi) (manna & ghosh, 2016). this convenience is very different from lectures using zoom meetings. zoom meeting requires a strong internet signal so that students in areas with weak signal coverage will have difficulty attending lectures. according to students, zoom meetings also require extensive internet usage compared to other e-learning platforms. however, students are often constrained by the internet's limitations (fahmalatif et al., 2021; haratikka, 2020). whatsapp can save the learning materials and access the history in-room chat even in offline mode. this convenience is also related to the internet usage criterion. whatsapp is the second priority based on the internet usage criterion. it can happen because that feature supports the user in saving more internet data. whatsapp also has a high weight on learning comprehension even though not the priority. students feel easy to follow the learning activities through whatsapp. the lecturer sent the learning materials through whatsapp in document, video, photo, or link format. the students could ask for and have feedback through the chat immediately, enabling the interactive explanation of the lesson. the students also can submit the assignment through whatsapp. sending learning materials through whatsapp can be saved on the device, and the students can access it anytime. using whatsapp as a healthy discussion forum for students and lecturers could potentially increase the students' learning comprehension. all these advantages of using whatsapp consider the students to choose whatsapp becomes their selected e-learning platform. however, the advantages of using whatsapp come along with its challenge. one of the weaknesses of whatsapp is its feature that video call only involves eight people (nurdianti, 2020). meanwhile, the number of students in a class can be almost 30 people. for better e-learning activities, whatsapp can be combined with other e-learning platforms to enhance learning performance. conclusion this paper has demonstrated how to determine and analyze e-learning platform using the ahp approach as a model to solve a multi-criteria decision problem. a case study was conducted on students who take online learning during the covid-19 pandemic. the determination of an e-learning platform is based on four criteria, platform service, learning comprehension, internet usage, and network strength. the study shows that the most important criterion students consider in selecting the e-learning platform is learning comprehension by a weight of 0.363. students prefer a platform that helps them understand the learning material well even though the learning activities were carried out by distance. the finding also shows whatsapp as the selected e-learning platform by 0.359. based on the findings, it was found that whatsapp has advantages in platform service, internet usage, and networks strength. these advantages will be beneficial for students, especially in rural areas where it is difficult to get a good internet signal. whatsapp also tends not to require a lot of internet usage. however, its features can help students understand the learning material well and support 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(2018). students ’ responses toward the use of whatsapp in learning. journal of teaching & learning english in multicultural contexts, 2(1), 46–55. https://doi.org/10.17509/ije.v15i2 database connection failed! esp practitioners’ role and their ethnography: a case study of esp practitioners at the indonesian tertiary level international journal of education vol. 9 no. 1, august 2016, pp. 1-9 © 2016 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v9i1.3711 1 esp practitioners’ role and their ethnography: a case study of esp practitioners at the indonesian tertiary level kun aniroh muhrofi-gunadi diploma iv tourism program universitas merdeka malang kun.aniroh@unmer.ac.id first draft received: 28 april 2016 final proof received: 26 august 2016 abstract this current research aims at revealing factual esp practitioners’ roles at the tertiary level of education in malang city, indonesia. data were collected through semi-structured interviews and a survey using questionnaires involving 22 esp practitioners selected randomly from several universities and colleges in malang. to collect data on the roles of esp practitioners, the present study adopted two sources in the questionnaires: first, the roles of esp instructors as teachers, course designers, materials providers, researchers, and evaluators as proposed by dudley-evans and st. john (1998), and secondly as a practitioner who has intercultural competence and professional activity competence as defined by luka (2004) and ethnography (wall, 2014). the findings showed that the majority (70%) of esp practitioners realized their roles and some (30%) claimed to learn more on mastering contents, providing materials, conducting research on needs analysis, learning intercultural competence, and realizing the needs to have experiences in industries or related work places of the students. concerning their ethnography, the majority of esp practitioners did not have the opportunity to teach, to have internship, and to work in industries. only 2 (9.1%) esp practitioners studied the field of what students learn. future research on the collaboration between academics and practitioners is needed to make esp classrooms a ‘real world’. keywords: esp practitioners, role, tertiary level, ethnography, workplace to cite this paper (in apa style): muhrofi-gunadi, k. a. (2016). esp practitioners’ role and their ethnography: a case study of esp practitioners at the indonesian tertiary level. international journal of education, 9(1), 1-9. doi: dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v9i1.3711 introduction the marginalizing of english for specific purposes (henceforth esp) at the university level in the indonesian context is obviously observable in the credit load of esp courses. the course offers only 24 credits in the english department and the nonenglish department, and 6-8 credits at the colleges. studies on the implementation of teaching english atnon english departments conducted in java and sumatra as observed by sulistyo (2008) revealed the undesirable sides of the teaching of english that are associated with the teaching of esp. another study by sulistyo (2013) also revealed that college students’ readiness in academic content area reading was low. it is argued that this empirical evidence is related among other things to the marginalizing of esp at the university level. with the growth of english as a lingua franca, where english is limited to being used as a means of not only general communication but also commerce, aviation, logistics, accounting, engineering, health, and tourism, the teaching condition of esp described previously should not happen, as english will also be used in other sectors soon. this implies that esp is supposed to get more attention in terms of optimizing esp practitioners’ role in the classrooms. it might be not too far-fetching to state that for some decades english for specific purpose (esp) has been marginalized in english language teaching (henceforth elt), at the english department and the non-english department in indonesia. this is due to the fact that the credit load of the esp courses is only 2 to 4 credits (academic guidelines of universitas merdeka malang, 2014) and in the english department, esp is an elective subject of 2 to 4 credits (the catalog of english literature department of universitas negeri malang, 2015). for esp practitioners, this is not enough for developing the language skills and/or contents and implementing esp competences (luka, 2004). another fact supporting the marginalization of esp courses in indonesia is that most esp instructors are englishfor-general-purpose (henceforth egp) instructors with no adequate training in esp, and only a few esp instructors have an additional background of the subject she or he is teaching. this makes the esp instructors not motivated, and this has the effect that esp is considered unchallenging for the instructors and the students, resulting in the ineffectiveness of esp instruction (alwasilah, 2000). the fact is different for colleges of specific fields such as tourism, health, and engineering that offer more credits in english. however, in those colleges most of the english instructors are egp-based with no adequate esp training. in line with the growth of english as a lingua franca in many parts of the world, including asean economic community that specifies on engineering, architecture, nursing, doctor, dentistry, accounting, health, and tourism (lubis, 2015), egp is no longer sufficient to cater to the ever expanding communication needs. this trend challenges the http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v9i1.3711 mailto:kun.aniroh@unmer.ac.id http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v9i1.3711 muhrofi-gunadi, k. a. esp practitioners’ role and their ethnography: a case study of esp practitioners at the indonesian tertiary level. 2 practice of egp instruction into more esp ones. this implies that there is a compelling need to have a shift in the teaching orientation from egp to esp ones (muhrofi-g, 2009). in other words, if english instructors have to teach egp courses, they need to be sensitive to the issues and the development of english in the global market. thus, this paper aims at analyzing how esp practitioners position and act their roles in order to know and enhance their teaching quality. the process of working experiences to be esp practitioners known as ethnography was also conducted. the roles of esp practitioners egp and esp have been mentioned in literature, both for their theory and practice. hutchinson and waters (1987) stated that theoretically they are the same; however, there are a great deal of dissimilarities in their practice. both egp and esp practitioners share the same knowledge of teaching language. however, in actual practice, esp practitioners’ activities cover among, other things, research, including needs analysis, becoming course developers, collaborators, and evaluators (dudleyevans and st. john, 1998). meanwhile, to some extent egp instructors rarely practice these areas. esp has special characteristics on content. therefore, learning with subject specialists and learning about the students’ major constitute an important element. the main issue of esp teaching is making an effort to gain knowledge of language and the student’s topic (helsvig, 2012). lowe (2010) argued that an esp teacher has to teach reliable content and skills because learning them leads to the learning of language. with reference to the role of esp instructors, dudley-evans and st. john (1998) identified five key roles of esp practitioners: as a teacher, course designer and materials provider, collaborator, researcher and evaluator. meanwhile, luka (2004) stated that the esp competences needed by esp practitioners consist of communicative competence, professional activity competence, and intercultural competence. professional activity competence refers to professional competence in industries. intercultural competence refers to viewpoints that contain curiosity, broad-mindedness, and acceptance (luka, 2004). in this study, only the last two of luka’s (2004) ideas, professional activity competence and intercultural competence, are examined among esp practitioners. many research articles have discussed the role of esp practitioners and professionalization through apprenticeship of practice (sierocka, 2008; ghanbari and eslami, 2012; and saadia, 2012). however, since esp is specific, esp practitioners have their own points of view regarding esp teaching. they tend to conduct esp teaching based on their work experiences and their own personal experiences and research findings. these views nevertheless enrich the role of esp practitioners. another characteristic or even a critical feature of esp is that its course should involve language specialists, especially when dealing with related terms and terminologies and contents. in the majority of cases, esp teachers are not language specialists in the students’ professional fields. that is why the primary issue in esp teaching includes the struggle to master language and subject matter (helsvig, 2012 and lowe, 2010). based on the discussion of roles, it is obvious that an esp practitioner conceptually plays multiple roles. in reality, an esp expert needs to practice these conceptual roles as these are ideal for esp instructions to be optimal. considering this, therefore a study needs to be carried out to reveal the match between the ideal roles an esp practitioner needs to play and the actual roles they can do. the purpose of the present study is to examine esp teachers in terms of their practical roles as outlined in these aspects: a teacher, course designer and materials provider, collaborator, researcher and evaluator. in addition, the present study also examines their professional activity competence, intercultural competence, and the ethnography of esp practitioners of how they learn to get closer to the workplace. ethnography of esp practitioners most of esp practitioners graduated from english education department where there is not enough esp credits or training (academic guidelines of universitas merdeka malang, 2014), and they are used to being egp instructors, or novice esp practitioners. therefore, there is a need to conduct a study of ethnography that is their work experiences. ethnography is the study of past events related to indepth understanding of the group of people (case, todd, & kral, 2014). for instance, wall (2014) conducted a study from 2008-2010 to investigate work experiences of nurses. another study was about “natural habitat” and “on line habitat” of a group of people informing the way how they interact in their social communities (hallet & barber, 2014). in addition, the study of the university students’ culture and life was portrayed through ethnography for explaining the vital role and the switch of the tertiary education (illoh and tierney, 2013). how esp practitioners reach the career path to know the career path of esp practitioners is crucial because as what is pointed out by ahmed (2014), esp practitioners’ role is more complicated and accountable than that of ge practitioners. what needs to be noted is that esp practitioners are not subject specialists, but english teachers (ahmed, 2014). a study by alsolami (2014) pointed out that among egp teachers who taught esp, they had difficulties and scarcity on functional academic literacy and field of knowledge, training, materials and esp libraries. the 21st century is said to be the new world for esp teaching. in china, esp teachers have chances and problems in the sense that they must not only be aware of the teaching benefits of esp but also their role to the esp teaching development (sun, 2007). in addition, jigang (2012) mentioned that general literacy in basic english of university graduates is no longer enough, and to add with professional english abilities such as english for the firms, enterprises, joint ventures, is a great help for the students. it means that esp practitioners have the expertise, and to increase experienced skillfulness, more attention needs to be directed toward the combination of competence which does not relate to each other, muhrofi-gunadi, k. a. esp practitioners’ role and their ethnography: a case study of esp practitioners at the indonesian tertiary level. 3 disciplinary knowledge, and professional practice (bhatia, anthony, and noguchi, 2011) method for the purpose of the present study, a survey design was employed. the target population of the present study was all esp college instructors (henceforth respondents) in malang city who taught english at the college level. originally, 35 were identified as the target respondents. however, only 22 respondents (63%) completed the questionnaire. so, the present survey involved these respondents who were selected randomly from 2 colleges and 3 universities in malang, east java, indonesia. those involved in the present study are 9 novice esp practitioners, i.e. those who have less than 7 years teaching experiences, and 13 senior practitioners, i.e. those who have more than 7 years teaching experiences. a set of questionnaires was developed based on the role concept of esp practitioners to examine the respondents’ roles. there are seven main roles of esp practitioners that are elaborated in the questionnaire: the role as a teacher, course designer, researcher, collaborator, and an evaluator as conceptually proposed by dudley-evans and st. john (1997). in addition, two concepts, namely “intercultural competences, and professional competence in industries” as proposed by luka (2004, p. 7) or related workplace were considered in the questionnaire. these roles were further elaborated into their corresponding indicators, resulting in a total of 33 items: 13 in the role as a teacher, 4 in a course designer, 2 as a researcher, 3 as a collaborator, 3 as an evaluator, 2 as an intercultural competent practitioner, and 5 as a professional competent practitioner. the items in the questionnaires require the respondents to state their level of agreement on each of these seven factors from completely agree (ca) – 4 points – to completely disagree (cd) – 1 point. concerning esp practitioners’ ethnography, a set of questionnaires was developed to examine esp practitioners’ experience closer to the workplace. there are 10 questions about how to get closer to the industry which were adapted from the study of wall (2014) and hallet and barber (2014). the items in the questionnaire ask the respondents to state yes or no. prior to the distribution, the questionnaire was validated by an expert and then tried out to examine the reliability of the questionnaire and the validity of each item. based on the feedback from experts, some revisions on contents and wording were made. the tryout of the instrument involved 30 esp teachers that were not included as the respondents of the present study. inter-rater reliability was examined on the response of these five esp teachers. the alpha statistical computation was exerted to examine the reliability of the tryout data. the reliability of the questionnaires was .876. this means that the items in the questionnaire were very consistent in yielding the scores. meanwhile, out of 33 items (100%) that were generated as indicators in the questionnaire, 19 items (58%) were valid at the level of significance of not only .05 but also .01 with coefficients of pearson’s correlation in the range of .434 to .822. so, in terms of questionnaire reliability and item validity, the questionnaire was considered a good instrument with consistency and validity assurance to collect data needed. the data collected were analyzed quantitatively based on the frequency of appearance that is then made into percentages. the next section presents the results of the analysis of the role of esp practitioners seen from their role as a teacher, course designer and materials provider, collaborator, researcher and an evaluator. in each of these factors, several indicators are elaborated. findings and discussion the result of the analysis on the data of teachers’ role as a teacher is summarized in table 1. table 1. role as a teacher role as a teacher cd d a ca f % f % f % f % understanding the esp content subject 1 4.5 10 45.5 11 50 understanding content subject based on the students’ major 1 4.5 10 45.5 11 50 understanding the goals and objectives of esp 1 4.5 6 27.3 15 68.2 collaborating with students in understanding content 1 4.5 2 9.1 6 27.3 13 59.1 collaborating with subject specialists 5 22.7 10 45.5 7 31.8 consulting with departments’ local authorities on esp programs 1 4.5 9 40.9 12 54.5 teaching listening 1 4.5 3 13.6 10 45.5 8 36.4 teaching speaking 2 9.1 5 22.7 15 68.2 teaching writing 2 9.1 3 13.6 6 27.3 11 50 teaching reading for content area comprehension 1 4.5 4 18.2 17 77.3 teaching the four skills based on the students’ needs 1 4.5 7 31.8 14 63.6 listening to the input from the students on the content 4 18.2 12 54.5 16 27.3 having a high interest on esp and taking a risk in teaching though not understanding the content 6 27.3 6 27.3 7 31.8 3 13.6 the result of the survey on the role of esp practitioners as a teacher indicated that the esp practitioners played their roles. in general, the respondents stated that they strongly agreed (44%) and agreed (40%) on their role as esp teachers on the points of subject content, specific subject, goals and objectives, cooperation with the students and subject specialists, consultation with local authority department, teaching listening, speaking, reading and writing based on the students’ needs, and listening to the students ’input. however, a few (16 %) disagreed on the point of the interest on esp and did not want to take a risk to teach, as they did not know the content. the result of the analysis on the data of the teachers’ role as a course designer and a materials provider is summarized in table 2. muhrofi-gunadi, k. a. esp practitioners’ role and their ethnography: a case study of esp practitioners at the indonesian tertiary level. 4 table 2. role as a course designer and a materials provider role as a course designer and a materials provider cd d a ca f % f % f % f % using the existing materials 2 9.1 2 9.1 15 68.2 3 13.6 using the existing materials and add with other materials 2 9.1 9 40.9 11 50 selecting the existing materials based on the students’ needs 10 45.5 12 54.5 creating own materials 3 13.6 2 9.1 13 59.1 4 18.2 on the role of esp practitioners as a course designer and materials provider, several of the teacher respondents (39%) strongly agreed and most (53%) agreed on using the available materials, adding the available materials with others, selecting the available esp materials based on the students’ need, and making their own materials. of those points, few (8 %) did not agree on making their own materials. the result of the analysis on the data of the teachers’ role as a researcher is summarized in table 3. table 3: role as a researcher role as a course designer and a materials provider cd d a ca f % f % f % f % conducting needs analysis 4 18.2 11 50 7 31.8 learning and doing job analysis to know the language functions to be used by the students 2 9.1 6 27.3 10 45.5 4 18.2 the next is the role of esp practitioners as an esp researcher. the results indicated that a few teacher respondents (14%) strongly agreed and mostly (64%) agreed on the points of needs analysis and job analysis to match language function, and 23% disagreed on their role as researchers on needs analysis. the result of the analysis on the data of the teachers’ role as a collaborator is summarized in table 4. table 4: role as a collaborator role as a collaborator cd d a ca f % f % f % f % learning the subject specialist syllabus together with subject specialists 1 4.5 6 27.3 12 54.5 3 13.6 learning the genre in esp materials and discusses it with subject specialists 2 9.1 13 59.1 7 31.8 learn the syllabus, genre and materials to teach and i discuss it with subject specialists 5 22.7 14 63.6 3 13.6 concerning the role of esp practitioners as collaborators, most of the teacher respondents (59 %) strongly agreed and a few (18 %) agreed on the points of the willingness to learn the content, the materials, and the genre in the syllabus of specific subjects with subject specialists. the rest (23%) disagreed on those points. the result of the analysis on the data on the teachers’ role as an evaluator is summarized in table 5. table 5: role as an evaluator role as an evaluator cd d a ca f % f % f % f % evaluating esp course outlines and materials periodically 3 13.6 3 13.6 11 50 5 22.7 conducting achievement tests 2 9.1 8 36.4 12 54.5 suggesting the students to take standardized test and other tests based on their needs 2 9.1 5 22.7 8 36.4 7 31.8 esp practitioners have the role of not only testing the students based on their needs and conducting an achievement test and a standardized test, but also evaluating instructional materials periodically as industries, related workplaces, and other crucial issues influence instructional materials development. on those points, a few (21 %) strongly agreed, mostly (67%) agreed, a few other (10 %) disagreed, and some (2%) strongly disagreed. the last two roles of esp practitioners are those of teachers who have intercultural competence and professional competence. there are two points of intercultural competence: the capability to have a good attitude towards those who have different cultural background and the willingness to learn other cultures. the result of the analysis on the data of the teachers’ role as an esp practitioner who has intercultural competence is summarized in table 6. table 6: role as an interculturally competent esp practitioner role as an interculturally competent esp practitioner cd d a ca f % f % f % f % having the capability to have a good attitude to those who have different cultural background 5 22.7 17 77.3 learning other countries’ cultures 1 4.5 6 27.3 15 68.2 muhrofi-gunadi, k. a. esp practitioners’ role and their ethnography: a case study of esp practitioners at the indonesian tertiary level. 5 the result of the analysis on the data of the teachers as an esp practitioner who has professional competence is summarized in table 7. of those points, the respondents mostly (57%) strongly agreed, several (34%) agreed, and a few (9%) disagreed. on professional competence which consists of knowledge on the industry based on the students’ background, experience in the industry and related workplace, problem solver and negotiator, and the ability to communicate in english in the workplace, several (29%) of the teacher respondents strongly agreed, mostly (59%) agreed, some (10%) disagreed, and a few (2%) strongly disagreed. in general, the results of the overall data from the respondents are summarized in figure 1. table 7: role as esp practitioner with professional competence role as an esp practitioner having professional competence cd d a ca f % f % f % f % understanding the industry based on the students’ interest 1 4.5 4 18.2 10 45.5 7 31.8 having knowledge about and experiences in industries 2 9.1 10 45.5 6 27.3 4 18.2 being capable to be a problem solver in a team 1 4.5 6 27.3 9 40.9 6 27.3 communicating well in english 6 27.3 16 72.7 being capable to be a negotiator on the students’ needs outside the class 1 4.5 1 4.5 13 59.1 7 31.8 figure 1: summary of the results of analysis on esp teachers’ roles note: t teacher cl collaborator series 1 : degree of a role claimed already played cd course designer e evaluator series 2 : degree of a role claimed not yet played r researcher icp intercultural competent practitioner pcp professional competent practitioner concerning esp practitioners’ ethnography of their work experience, all esp practitioners 22 (100%) learned from esp books and the internet. however, the percentages of those who learned from subject specialists were 20 (90.9%), and 14 (63.6%) from esp colleagues. only 2 (9.1%) out of 22 esp practitioners learned from the students and 2 (9.1%) studied at the same department as the students, and other 2 respondents (9.1%) attended internship in the industry. the majority of esp practitioners (86.4%) did not have esp training; only 3 (13.6%) attended relevant trainings. table 8. the esp practitioners’ ethnography of work experience esp practitioner’s work experience yes no f % f % learning from esp books learning from subject specialists learning from esp colleagues learning from internet learning from the students teaching esp at industries studying at the same or similar department as the students attending on-the job training/internship as the students do understanding the workplace by working at industry 22 20 15 22 14 2 2 2 1 100.0 90.9 68.2 100 63.6 9.1 9.1 9.1 4.6 0 2 7 0 8 20 20 20 21 0.0 9.1 31.8 0.0 36.4 90.9 90.9 90.9 95.4 attending esp training 3 13.6 19 86.4 discussion the teacher respondents are english teachers who teach egp and esp at universities and colleges. the findings show that the teacher respondents are aware of their roles of esp practitioners as teachers, but 16% disagreed on the point of the interest on esp and did not want to take a risk to teach as they did not know and master the content. this means that the teacher respondents are willing to teach esp, but when it comes to the content, they do not want to muhrofi-gunadi, k. a. esp practitioners’ role and their ethnography: a case study of esp practitioners at the indonesian tertiary level. 6 have the difficulty in integrating language and content. this finding reflects the idea that esp and egp share the same things in theory, but not in practice (hucthinson and waters, 1987). this can be seen in the findings that esp practitioners were eager to train but did not want to make an effort to learn the materials (helsvig, 2012). lowe (2010) asserted that english teachers must teach the contents of specialist. this is certainly a challenge for egp teachers when they teach esp. based on my casual observation at one of the colleges, novice esp teachers tend to have difficulties in teaching. they claimed that subject content is not easy, and it takes time to learn. one of the examples is contents in tourism. in tourism, there are many subject contents or departments: hotel department, tour and travel, and tourism destination management. in order to be easier in learning the contents of those departments, esp teachers are suggested to choose what they are more interested in. they can also make their strong effort if the department assigns them to teach in a certain department. with reference to teaching contents, my experience in supervising the english education students who developed materials for esp indicates that the majority of the students got the difficulties in conceptualizing contents. they failed to understand what to be written in the topics, how to order the topics, and how to write the exercise and the assessment consistently based on the topics. as a consequence of this, it takes much time to guide them in writing about the topics. in addition, they also have difficulties in teaching confidently. there is also a tendency that they will go back to teach what they ’know’. that is, they focus more on teaching about language than content. to help them teach esp confidently, i usually suggest them to read a lot of the topics, to discuss the content with the subject specialist, industries, learning community, and the stakeholders of the education institution. becoming a course developer is actually not only the duty of esp teachers but also of egps. the problem of the esp teaching learning process deals with the scarcity of customs and guidance, specific information, and inadequacy of useful materials (sierocka, 2008). in this matter, the role of esp practitioners as course designers and materials developers cannot be avoided. similar findings with a higher percentage are also found in the role of esp practitioner as a researcher. some of the teacher respondents (5%) disagreed on their role as researchers on needs analysis and few (3%) strongly disagreed on their roles as practitioners who conducted job analysis to know the language functions. bojović (n.d) stated that “esp teachers must be familiar with investigation or experimentation. esp teachers are provided with necessary knowledge and tools to deal with their own students’ specializations” (p. 7). in conducting a needs analysis, designing a course, or writing teaching materials, teachers need to be competent in integrating the discovery of the research into their teaching practices. this is another role of esp practitioners that is not fully carried out by esp practitioners. needs analysis is the major point in esp, as one of the characteristics of esp is accommodating the learners’ needs. as chambers (1980) asserted, “the term target situation analysis and several other terms have also been introduced such as these present situation analysis, pedagogic needs analysis, deficiency analysis, strategy analysis or learning needs analysis, means analysis, register analysis, discourse analysis, and genre analysis” (cited in songhori, 2008, p. 3) with these many kinds of needs analysis, esp practitioners can start conducting the analysis based on the students’ needs, esp practitioners’ needs, and other needs which become the concerns of schools, departments, or institutions. esp practitioners also have the role as a collaborator. the result of the study shows that several (19%) agreed and few (4%) strongly disagreed on the role as a collaborator. this means the teacher respondents show their reluctance to collaborate with students or subject specialists or other related parties. the teacher respondents are not aware that teaching language solely in esp without collaboration with subject specialists is still not complete. when talking about the aforementioned needs analysis, more stakeholders are actually collaborators of esp practitioners. the more collaborative the esp practitioners, the better information they have, and this will bridge them to be a professional esp practitioner. regarding the role of an evaluator, a few (10%) of the teacher respondents disagreed and a small number of them (2%) strongly disagreed on performing these three points: achievement testing, standardized testing, and evaluating a course design periodically. evaluating course designs is a must because science and technology that become the concern of esp develop rapidly. the last year’s course design might be different from this year’s course design, as some new topics should be included and other topics might be dropped as they become irrelevant. in addition, sierocka (2008) pointed out a lack of materials, a lack of specialist knowledge, tradition and guidelines are the obstacles and the demands. the main interest is that any concern related to the students’ needs has to be discussed as the input for assessing the course design. in the global world today where the human interaction is very high, esp practitioners are demanded to have the role of practitioners who have intercultural competence. 9% strongly disagreed with learning another country’s culture. this means that the teacher respondents were not aware of the relation between esp course and intercultural competence. one of the trends in esp is targets that relate to asian esp, and in the future these mirror the advancement of internationalization, localization, business english, and field of proficient practice (sangiamwibool, 2014). internationalization and localization are unavoidable due to the international network among asean countries; for instance, asian and other network countries that accommodate the mobility of human resources of different education backgrounds, including vocational students. internationalization refers to the global world, which means a global career, and sooner or later this will be experienced by vocational students (muhrofi-gunadi, 2014). intercultural competences refer to knowledge, skills and attitudes about a particular culture, including how to interact with the different and diverse muhrofi-gunadi, k. a. esp practitioners’ role and their ethnography: a case study of esp practitioners at the indonesian tertiary level. 7 cultures (unesco,2013). this means that with the development of english into a language that is widely used not only among the native speakers and nonnative speakers, but also nonnative speakers and nonnative speakers, the mutual learning of diverse cultures is considered crucial. the aforementioned professional competent practitioner refers to competence in industry (luka, 2004). a study on professional competence in professional careers in taiwan shows that the analytical finding shows that task perspective was the dominant formulation for professional competence, and culinary professional competence was intermediary for useful knowledge presentation (ko, 2012). nowadays, communicative competence without awareness of professional competence is not complete. as my experience in conducting a study on professional activities, these competences can be carried out in the campus laboratory as long as the laboratory represents the activities and facilities of industries. another alternative is sending the esp practitioners to related industries to widen the knowledge and practical things. this means cooperation with subject specialists, including those who are in the workplace, is essential. with the global world nowadays, verbal communication is unavoidable. that is, the ability to communicate in english has to be supported by the knowledge and skills of culture of the colleagues. problem solving means always looking at the front based on the previous lesson learned so that better solution is gained. these skills need a lot of practice. the last role of esp practitioners in this study is a teacher with professional competence. a few (20%) teacher respondents disagreed and few (9 %) strongly disagreed with professional competence. the high percentage most likely lies in the absence of experiences in industries, being a problem solver, and understanding the background knowledge of the students. competent capabilities refer to the capacity of professional competencies to deal with the ability to fulfill profession-related tasks with professional expertise. the research in tourism industry shows that experience competence and professional competence are the most crucial capabilities graduates must have (zehrer and mossenlechner, 2009. to support the experience in the study period, there is a period for college students to have a real practice in the industry, so this practice has to be conducted by the students and to be learned by esp practitioners as a part of professionalism. writing experience in a certain field is one of the ethnographic studies. as watson (2012) argued, the description and implementation of managerial ethnography is based on comprehensive research and writing skill and knowledge in the field. this means that from the point of view of how esp practitioners achieve professionalism, there are many ways and steps to take. conclusion there are 7 (seven) roles of esp practitioners, namely as teachers, course developers, collaborators, evaluators (dudley evans and st john, 1998) and as esp practitioners who have intercultural competence and professional competence (luka, 2004). the following is the summary of the roles. first, on the role of esp practitioners as a teacher, the majority of teacher respondents (84 %) agreed. meanwhile, only a few (16%) of teacher respondents did not agree on the points of taking a risk of teaching esp, as they did not know the content. next, on the role of esp practitioners as course designers and materials providers, the majority (92%) agreed; very few (8 %) did not agreed on the point of making their own instructional materials. third, with the role of esp practitioners as researchers, the majority (77%) of the teacher respondents agreed and the rest (23%) did not agree to make their own materials. the next is the role of esp practitioners as collaborators. the majority (77%) of the teacher respondents agreed and 23% disagreed on the willingness to learn the content, the materials, and the genre in the syllabus of specific subjects with subject specialists. fifth, with the role of esp practitioners as evaluators, the majority (88%) of teacher respondents agreed and the rest of 12% disagreed to evaluate the materials periodically as a result of the development of industries, related workplace, and other crucial issues. finally, regarding the roles of esp practitioners who have intercultural competence, the majority (91%) of the teacher respondents agreed and very few (9%) disagreed on knowledge about industries based on the students’ background, experience on industries and related workplaces, problem solver and negotiator, and the ability to communicate in english in the workplace. finally, with the roles of esp practitioners who have professional competence which consists of knowledge about the industry based on the students’ background, experience on industry and related workplace, problem solver and negotiator, and ability to communicate in english in the workplace, the majority (88%) of teacher respondents agreed and 12% disagreed. ethnography can be said as the mirror of the career path of the respondents that will function to indicate how someone reaches a certain professional career. in the case of esp practitioners who have many roles as observed in the present study (teacher, collaborator, researcher, materials developer (dudley-evans and st.john, 1998), and as a professional competent practitioner and a cultural practitioner (luka, 2004), it might be possible that the respondents’ role will develop into ‘other roles’. it takes time for any esp practitioner to implement the roles during the journey to be professional esp practitioners. each role has its own capacity in that an esp practitioner has to learn a lot based on each role. based on the seven roles described above, the majority (70%) of esp practitioners realized their roles as esp practitioners. meanwhile, only a few (30%) still did not realize their roles as esp practitioners on the risk of continuously learning content, providing materials, conducting research on needs analysis, learning intercultural competence, and the needs to have experience in industry or related work place of the students. therefore, updating knowledge on esp by training, sending esp practitioners to the related workplaces and industries, awareness of the development of science and technology and having passion in esp teaching will muhrofi-gunadi, k. a. esp practitioners’ role and their ethnography: a case study of esp practitioners at the indonesian tertiary level. 8 be of a great help to make them professional esp practitioners. this is in line with thomas’ statement (2007) that scholarly analysis has been observed as being absent of applicability and effective operation of the the job in the present day employment and culture. bhathia and bremmer (2012) have added that in recent years we have been in growing inconsistency between study activities and proficient practice, to which the corporate world has been committed. in relation to english for business purposes (which is a root of esp), bhathia and bremmer (2012, p. 16) put it this way “the synthesis of ebp with the subject discipline and the sub-discipline to encourage a new appropriation of disciplinary practice and approaches from the disciplinary cultures rather than from applied linguistics and language teaching.” what esp practitioners have to do is to learn disciplinary practice and methodologies from those who have the expertise theoretically and practically, so that what to teach and what to do outside the classroom are not far from reality . acknowledgments the author is grateful to novice and senior esp practitioners at colleges and universities in malang, east java, indonesia, who participated in this study. references academic guidelines of universitas merdeka malang. 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(2012).the relationship among professional competence, job satisfaction and career confidence for chefs in taiwan. international journal of hospitality management, 31(3), 10041011. zehrer, a & mossenlehner, c.( 2009). key competencies of tourism graduates: the employers’ point of view. journal of teaching in travel and tourism, 9, 266-287. doi: 10.1080/15313220003445215. retrieved from http://www.tandfonline/com/loi/wtt.20. http://www.jezykangielski.org/theroleoftheespteacher.pdf http://www.jezykangielski.org/theroleoftheespteacher.pdf http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/2182/3728 http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/2182/3728 http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/2182/3728 database connection failed! international journal of education vol. 14 no. 1, april-2021, pp. 30-38 ©2021 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: 10.17509/ije.v14i1.30553 30 gender stereotypes as hidden curriculum: a case of vietnamese english textbooks anh phan1, tho xuan pham2 1university of auckland, new zealand 2university of languages and international studies, vietnam anh.phan@auckland.ac.nz first draft received: 18 dec 2020 date accepted: 31 march 2021 final proof received: 28 apr 2021 abstract gender equality and women empowerment have become a buzzword for development during the past decades with numerous national and international policies, including educational policies. however, gender equality is normally conceptualized in quantitative terms of education such as low disparity in access to education between boys and girls, while qualitative aspects of gender equality are still left uncontested, among which is gender stereotypes in hidden curriculum. gender stereotypes as a social construct, once imbedded in education and educational materials, certainly intervene the gender socialization process of students. the paper attempts to investigate this issue by employing a mixed qualitative and quantitative content analysis of the illustrations in english textbooks for upper-secondary students in vietnam. the analysis reveals stereotypes reflected in three main areas: occupations, sports and pastimes, and life duties, all of which confirm social and cultural norms of vietnamese society towards a woman. keywords: gender stereotypes; gender socialization; hidden curriculum; vietnamese english textbooks to cite this paper (in apa style): phan, a., & pham, t. x. (2021). gender stereotypes as hidden curriculum: a case of vietnamese english textbooks. international journal of education, 14(1), 30-38. doi: 10.17509/ije.v14i1.30553 introduction gender equality and women empowerment have become a buzzword for development during the past decades with ngos, igos and governments using this “fashionable concept” (medel-anovuevo & bochynek, 1995, p. 7) to include as one of their goals in policy and strategy documents. one example is the millennium development goals (mdgs) established following the millennium summit of the united nations, in which goal 3 is to ‘promote gender equality and empower women’. the target is eliminating gender disparity in primary and secondary education preferably by 2015, specifically to have more equal ratios of girls to boys in primary, secondary and tertiary education. however, it can be argued that gender equality does not simply lie in equal access to education or equal opportunities to the labour market. worldwide studies show that gender imbalances in education remain significant obstructions to achieving gender equality (unesco ibe, 2011). the study, henceforth, would like to examine such mentioned imbalance, specifically gender stereotypes in textbooks, or in other words, how women and men are portrayed in education. according to bourdieu (2005, cited in madureira, 2009), the macro-social level of analysis facilitates our perception of “the reproduction of a hierarchical structure of gender that expresses inequalities between men and women in different domains”, for instance autonomy, prestige or social status (p. 145). given the importance of textbooks in the vietnamese society, though being just a part of the national written curriculum, textbooks can be seen as either vehicles for such reproduction of social representations like gender stereotypes or tools for gender equality promotion (levtov, 2014). although gender stereotypes are traditionally examined in linguistical, verbal and textual materials, we chose to focus on the illustrations, meaning the pictures and drawings in the textbooks, and sought to answer the question of what gender stereotypes are embedded in the illustrations of english textbooks for vietnamese upper-secondary students. to examine this issue, a mixed qualitative and quantitative content analysis method will be employed to analyze the illustrations in the selected set of textbooks for uppersecondary (grade 10-12) students, coupled with the findings from previous studies conducted on gender stereotypes in textbooks for primary students and lower-secondary students in vietnam as analytical points to shed light on this issue in vietnamese education. vietnamese cultural, political and educational context in order to understand gender stereotypes in the vietnamese education in general and in textbooks in particular, it is essential to have an overall picture of the cultural and political contexts in which the vietnamese education system is located. phan & pham gender stereotypes as hidden curriculum 31 due to historical influences, the cultural construction of vietnamese women is seen to consist of two elements: confucianism and socialism (schuler et al., 2006). the vietnamese culture was colonized by confucianism for over 1000 years under the rule of chinese feudal regime and henceforth, confucian values and practices became firmly rooted in vietnamese people’s lives, even after vietnam declared its independence in a.d. 938, and have since then become code of conduct (bui, 2004). confucian’s ideas shape the order and formation of different relations at all levels of the vietnamese society. within the scope of the paper, the focus is more on women and the “culture of patriarchal authority and hierarchy” (duong, 2001, p. 209). confucianism makes a clear separation between the public sphere around which men activities revolve and the private sphere which women are supposed to belong to. a woman in the confucian ideology was obliged to the virtue of male supremacy, named the three obediences including obeying to the father as a daughter, to the husband as a wife, and to the eldest son as a mother (schuler et al., 2006). a model woman should also possess the four virtues, including diligent work, attractive appearance, modest and polite speech, and exemplary morality (bui, 2004). despite ample historical and social changes, the crux of confucian values about gender, patriarchal thinking and women image “have not disappeared from official discourse” (world bank report, 2011, p. 21) and remain visible among vietnamese people (slavicek, 2012), particularly in rural areas and among ethnic minorities. due to the prolonged wars against colonialism and poverty after independence, feminism has never explicitly happened in vietnam, “the conceptual and linguistic structure of the vietnamese culture contains no framework for feminism as a doctrine” either (duong, 2001, p. 194). nevertheless, women movements and gender equality did exist, though attached more to nationalism, socialism and communalism (nguyen, 2011; duong, 2001). in other words, men and women were seen equally and both genders were oppressed by imperialism and capitalism. women at the time were more involved in movements against such oppressional causes rather than inequality rooted from the patriarchal ideology. one example for this argument is the foundation of vietnamese women’s union in 1930 (nguyen, 2011). education around the feudal time was the privilege of only men and aristocrats (nguyen & nguyen, 2008). after the wars against french and american colonization and invasion, progressive laws have been made to eradicate the gap between men and women in every aspect of life. for example, the government, starting from the philosophy “an illiterate nation is a powerless one” after claiming its independence from colonialism in 1945, issued decree no. 17-sl in which it was stated “everyone in the country has to be literate”, and henceforth literacy was officially a right of women as well (nguyen & nguyen, 2008). the general education since then consists of three levels: primary (for grade 1 to 5, children starting from six years old), lower secondary (grade 6 to 9) and upper secondary (grade 10 to 12). later under a striking renovation policy affecting both social and economic sectors in 1986 named doi moi, vietnam initiated a vast program of legal reforms, among which were human rights and women’s mobilization into the labour market (duong, 2001). after that, more laws have been enacted to accelerate progress on gender equality, such as the law on gender equality in 2006, the law on domestic violence prevention and control in 2007, and national strategy for gender equality for the 2011-2020 period signed on december 2012 by government of vietnam. all the optimistic successful statistics and policies give vietnam ‘a reputation throughout asia for relative gender equality’ and has been considered successful in ‘being able to close gender gaps in education, access to health care, and many aspects of employment since the early 1990s’ (world bank, 2006, 2011). despite all the progress so far made with relatively equal access to education between boys and girls in vietnam (92.3% and 91.5% respectively for primary education, 80.1% and 82.6% respectively for lower secondary education), gender equality still remains an issue in education (dang et al., 2013, p. 50). the reason is that other educational factors and practices, including curriculum and textbooks, as well contribute to inequalities. in the national strategy for gender equality for the 2011-2020 period signed on december 2012 (objective 3), the solutions to this problem were proposed to incorporate more gender equality in the content of the national curricula and gender matters in policies and educational programs, and to eliminate messages and images bearing gender prejudice in the textbooks. this lights up a promising and optimistic future of public awareness of the issue. simultaneously, it is worth a critical scrutiny of how genders are currently portrayed in the educational materials. gender socialization and gender stereotypes gender is a social construct instead of “a biological given” or an achieved status since it must be acquired by learning rather than a prescribed nature that a person is born with (bandura & bussey, 1999, p. 683). the social construct refers to traits of social, cultural or psychological categories attached to males and females (lindsey, 2016). according to kretchmar (2009, p. 1), when the focus on gender entails questions to which “the answers remain elusive”, gender socialization has become an emerging area of interest within sociology. as a consequence, increasing attention has been paid to gender socialization which is defined by wharton (2005, cited in kretchmar, 2009) as the “processes through which individuals take on gendered qualities and characteristics. . . and learn what their society expects of them as males or females” (p. 1). in each of us there are two beings coexisting: the individual being, and the social being. the latter refers to a system of beliefs, ideas, traditions and practices that are not inherent in our personality but belong to the group that we are part of (durkheim, 1956; biesta, 2010). durkheim (1956) emphasizes that social being is constituted and completed by education. his thesis is partly reflected in biesta’s (2010) thesis of three functions of education, among which is socialization, meaning that through education, learners become part of “a particular social, cultural and political orders” (p. 20). having said that, education has socializing effects international journal of education vol. 14 no. 1, april-2021, pp. 30-38 ©2021 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: 10.17509/ije.v14i1.30553 32 on gender development; and gender socialization also happens through education. viewed from the sociological perspective, the pattern of the abovementioned gendered social, cultural and psychological norms, meaning gender stereotypes, shape “styles of behaviours”, lead to “gendered perception”, frame “evaluation, and treatment of males and females” in selectively pre-determined ways and even “channel men and women into different life paths” (bandura & bussey, 1999, p. 683; unesco, 2013, p. 23; marinova, 2003, p. 4). in other words, gender stereotypes intervene in the gender socialization process. as emphasized in bandura and bussey (1999), the source of stereotypical gender differentiation lies in social and cultural practices. the concept of gender stereotypes has attracted attention of scholars and researchers for a long time. as mkuchu (2004, cited in seker & dincer, 2014) demonstrates, it is the result of every culture’s assigning “particular traits to the dynamic roles” attached to the gender identity of individuals (p. 91). bohan (2011) proposes a similar definition, adding that gender stereotypes may restrain one’s natural gifts and capabilities, or may become obstacles of life and educational opportunities. other researchers like golombok and fivush (1994, cited in vu, 2008) or gaur and jain (2013) define the term as a set of popular beliefs that certain attitudes and behaviors are expected from males or females in a specific culture or society. despite subtle nuances in defining the term, there is a general consensus that gender stereotypes subsume information not only physical and psychological traits, hobbies and interests, but social relations and occupations as well (gaur & jain, 2013). this is also how gender stereotypes are conceptualized in this paper. in lieu of being planned or stated as a learning objective, gender stereotypes are implicit and hidden to teachers, students, “at least at a conscious level” (print, 1993, p. 11). in other words, gender stereotypes are imbedded in the hidden curriculum of education systems, which refers to the non-explicit aspects of the curriculum, as defined by the sociology of education, to fulfill the socialization function of education (print, 1993, biesta, 2010, hernandez et.al., 2013). hidden curriculum, according to hernandez et al. (2013), was first coined by philip w. jackson. it involves the learning of social norms, values, traditions, assumptions, which are often left uncontested or remain unarticulated (print, 1993; hernandez et al., 2013). gender stereotypes in textbooks: a hidden curriculum given the status of textbooks as “repositories of official knowledge” (ferree & hall, 1996, cited in cassese & bos, 2013, p. 214), they dictate the content, the order as well as the way learners learn (mcgrath, 2006). textbooks, furthermore, do not simply play the role as neutral educational tools but “sterile delivery systems for predetermined set of facts” (cassese & bos, 2013, p. 214), keep social cohesion sustained and are considered being contributive to socialization and instrumental for social change (brugeilles & cromer, 2009). as the most visible manifestation of the curriculum, textbooks convey messages that shape attitudes, values, and behaviours. henceforth, to acquire an insightful look into the curriculum, the textbooks are chosen as an important entry point of analysis of gender stereotypes. there is a wide literature on gender stereotypes in textbooks worldwide. cassese and bos (2013) examine the content of 22 introductory-level political textbooks and the results reveal underrepresentation of women in political science, narrow “inclusion of content pertaining to women’s behavior at both the mass and elite levels” and hence entails lower sense of political efficiency in female students (p. 221). armini and birjandi (2012, p. 135) conduct a review of the literature of the field, showing that gender stereotypes and gender bias exist in education materials. for instance, nouns which describe females’ activities are seven times less than those of males, words that describe females are mostly passive in contrast with active words for males, or females are depicted mainly as housewives doing home-care work. a number of other studies on various english as foreign/second language textbooks present consistent and prevalent male dominance and female traditional stereotypical roles, even though textbook writers do become more conscious about sexism (armini & birjandi, 2012). similar situations are also detected in children’s literature and story books (vu, 2008). in vietnam, there are also studies on the same topic for different levels of education. vu’s study named gender stereotypes in story textbooks for primary school students in vietnam (2008) aims to investigate the issue in story textbooks for students from grade 1 to 5. there exists the outnumbering of male characters, as well as the great discrepancy between females and males in terms of occupations, personalities and social status. pictorial materials incorporated in english textbooks for lower-secondary students (grade 6-9) presented in nguyen’s research (2013) named evaluation of illustrations in english textbooks for lower secondary students in vietnam also carry gender stereotypes in categories like occupations, family duties and sports and pastimes. in line with these two studies, this study examines whether a similar issue exists in the english textbooks’ illustrations for vietnamese upper-secondary students and what specific stereotypes are in the hidden curriculum. methodology the current study is based on a textbook analysis, particularly the focus will be on the illustrations of english textbooks for vietnamese upper-secondary students. english is a commonly used language by academics, international trade and communication. it became officially sanctioned as the working language of the association of southeast asian nations (asean), a strategic regional organization in which vietnam is a member since 1995 (article 34, asean charter 2009, cited in kirkpatrick, 2012). in 2008, the prime minister ratified the 2008-2020 plan for the teaching and learning of foreign languages in the national education system in which english is placed at the heart of the strategy for teaching and learning foreign languages (nguyen, 2013). we, henceforth, selected english textbooks to examine due to its phan & pham gender stereotypes as hidden curriculum 33 increasingly popular and important position in vietnamese education and society. all the textbooks chosen in this study are published by the education publishing house, the official publisher of ministry of education and training (moet). the content of the books must be approved by councils including a number of experienced teachers, educational managers and scientists of related areas (article 8, education act, cited in do, 2002/2003). these textbooks are used nationwide targeting at students in upper-secondary schools, aging from 15 to 18 years old, grade 10 to 12. english 10 (hoang van van, hoang thi xuan hoa, do tuan minh, nguyen thu phuong, nguyen quoc tuan (2006), hanoi: education publishing house) english 11 (hoang van van, hoang thi xuan hoa, dao ngoc loc, vu thi loi, do tuan minh, nguyen quoc tuan (2006), hanoi: education publishing house) english 12 (hoang van van, hoang thi xuan hoa, dao ngoc loc, vu thi loi, do tuan minh, nguyen quoc tuan (2007), hanoi: education publishing house) since gender stereotypes are not a planned objective for students to achieve, we investigated the hidden curriculum in the chosen textbooks, embedded in the illustrations including pictures and drawings accompanying texts. glache (2000, cited in dominguez, 2003, p.7) states that the analysis of images is “poststructuralist analytical techniques in deconstructing universal truth” for “enlightenment” and for challenging the taken-for-grantedness. illustrations are not only used for decorative purposes to support textual elements, they do convey meanings and messages themselves and “point to particular interpretations of experience and forms of social interaction” (kress & van leeuwen, 1996, cited in nguyen, 2011, p. 200). qualitative content analysis method is employed as the primary approach for analysis in the current study, with an aim to “provide knowledge and understanding of the phenomenon under study” (downe-wamboldt, 1992, cited in hsieh & shannon, 2005, p. 1278). this method is cost effective, generates the researcher more freedom to work with available data. nonetheless, the demerit of content analysis is that it is limited to examining already recorded messages, which means the analysis can be subjective and prone to the researcher’s bias (berg, 2007). being aware of this disadvantage, we employed quantitative content analysis method in the way that message elements were enumerated to indicate the frequency of explicit themes and topics to avoid biased interpretation of the illustrations (kondracki, 2002). results and discussion the current research examines gender stereotypes in visual elements in the english textbooks for students in grade 10, 11 and 12. visual images elicited as data for analysis only refer to photos and drawings, the former are believed to provide a sense of reality and authenticity while the latter have more flexibility and emphasis on details if necessary (tomlinson & masuhara, 2004, cited in nguyen, 2013). the findings are presented into three big themes: gender stereotypes in occupations, in sports and pastimes, and in life duties. gender stereotypes in occupations there are a variety of jobs and occupations depicted in the illustrations of the three books, which are briefly presented in table 1 below. table 1 presentation of male and female’s occupations in english 10, 11, 12 male female farmer, student (9), cyclo driver (2), artist, singer (2), music composer, footballer (5), security guard, fireman, policeman, tv show host (2), sportsperson (6), astronaut, soldier or police men (5), writer, mechanic, doctor, worker, politician farmer (3), teacher (3), scientist, student (10), gymnast (2), artist, tv show host, singer, sportsperson (3), footballer, market vendor, clerk, waitress, politician (3) 19 jobs/ 45 times 13 jobs/30 times it can be seen from table 1 that there is a significant difference in the number of men depicted with jobs and that of women (45 times and 30 times respectively). men are depicted with more and varied choices of occupations and they dominate in certain occupational areas, such as in football or military areas while females are found mostly working as teachers or farmers. however, as stereotypes in sports as an occupation overlap with stereotypes in sports that females and males tend to play, it would be thoroughly elaborated in the later section. the data yielded concurs with previous studies by vu (2008) and nguyen (2013) that the labour market is male-dominated. the results in vu’s study (2008) reveal a discrepancy in occupations between the two genders. female characters in children’s stories are more circumscribed in a significant limited range of occupations compared to male characters (vu, 2008). similarly in his research, nguyen (2003) quantifies the gender imbalance in illustrations in the english textbooks for lower-secondary students, which results in the total number of jobs that women do being just half of that done by men (11 and 22 jobs respectively) (p. 53). besides, women in the investigated set of books are found to be tied with jobs that are assumed to need more patience or verbal capability, such as a market vendor or particularly a teacher (3 times). in fact, the report on gender and career prospects in contemporary vietnamese society confirms what is illustrated in the textbooks. over 60% of the total teachers in vietnam in all levels are females (unesco, 2013). furthermore, among the 15 year olds in vietnam, the age of the targeted students of the currently examined books, most international journal of education vol. 14 no. 1, april-2021, pp. 30-38 ©2021 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: 10.17509/ije.v14i1.30553 34 professions are divided according to personal and physical traits that are supposed to be more masculine or feminine. for example, professions in mechanics, construction and the police considered “heavy occupations” and involving more strength should suit better to men while jobs that are more “people oriented” or “delicate” such as teaching, tailoring or small trade are presumed to be done by women. (unesco, 2013, p. 32) even though agreeing with the previous studies on the unequal presentation of jobs between women and men, a difference noted in the current paper is that these textbooks feature women in certain similar job categories with men, including politics or academic and scientific areas, rather than women being restrained with work revolving around their house. female politicians, another example, though depicted three times in the books, are still outnumbered by men. however, vietnamese women in particular are underrepresented. the only female scientist, for example, is a polish physicist. besides, vietnamese women’s participation in politics are not well presented. among the three pictures with female politicians, one picture represents ten country leaders in the occasion of 13th asean summit with nine male politicians and one female, indonesian prime minister. the other two illustrations are not vietnamese women either. while in a report titled vietnam country gender assessment in 2006, the time before the books were published, the world bank noted that representation of women in vietnam’s national assembly “is high by regional standards” with approximately 30% of the seats were women (p. 67), this is not sufficiently reflected in the examined study materials. the illustrations in the textbooks, in brief, reveal a disparity in the number of jobs as well as job choices between men and women, meaning that women are restrained with fewer jobs. social norms and perceptions about masculinity and femininity, male strength and female delicateness, what occupation should be done by men or what is better done by women, can also be seen through the illustrations. gender stereotypes in sports and pastimes the sports and activities for males and females in the books reveal certain patterns, implying that there are sports that are more associated with men while others with women. table 2 presents the depiction of males and females regarding sports in the books. table 2 presentation of sports and pastimes of males and females in english 10, 11, 12 female male football, gymnastics (2), water polo, swimming (3), synchronized swimming (2) football (2), running, tennis, taekwondo, judo, body-building, hand football, water polo (2), swimming (3), long-jumping, high-jumping, rowing, windsurfing, scuba diving. total: 5 sports/10 illustrations total: 14 sports/ 19 illustrations playing musical instruments (4), dancing (2), chatting (2), watching movies/tv (2) fishing (3), photography (2), playing musical instruments (3), dancing (2) total: 4 activities/10 illustrations total: 4 activities/ 10 illustrations the significant discrepancy between the number of sports that men and women play is clearly shown in the table (14 sports and 5 sports respectively). four out of five sports which women are featured to play in the studied set of books are collective sports and require more dexterity like gymnastics or less muscular strength such as swimming or synchronized swimming. females are also depicted with specific hobbies like playing musical instruments, watching a movie or chatting with each other. meanwhile, males tend to have a more outdoor activity, such as taking photographs or going fishing. the similar results are found in english books for lower-secondary students (nguyen, 2013). according to nguyen’s (2013) study, while boys are depicted in sports 55 times in 14 different sports, girls get 27 illustrations in 10 sports which normally require more dexterity and less competitiveness. besides, pastimes for females are portrayed as buying or making clothes or chatting over the phone while boys as watching tv or fishing and fixing household items. in terms of sports, men are portrayed to outnumber women. besides, in all ten illustrations, none of the females featured doing sports is vietnamese. it can be deduced that vietnamese women again are barely presented in sport activities, which traditionally were not supposed to be for them. being influenced by chinese confucianism, the model of a dignified and exemplary woman in vietnamese traditional society was to be proficient in music (lute playing particularly), chess, calligraphy and poetry, and painting (translated as cam ky thi hoa) (lockard, 2009; nguyen, 2014). however, females nowadays have more freedom in choosing their pastime activities, including sports. many vietnamese women even choose sports as a professional career to pursue, however, there exist unequal social responses between women and men doing sports. football and vietnamese national women’s football team are taken as a particular example. despite efforts and successive regional trophies in recent years, in terms of public and media attention, incomes, and bonus, female footballers are not treated equally as their male counterparts. in the historic victory of vietnam’s national women’s football team which marked first time advancement of women’s football in the asian games (asiad) in late september 2014, there were only seven vietnamese fans in the stands of the stadium to support the team while around 2,000 vietnamese fans came to support vietnamese men’s national team (tuoitrenews, 2014). the event later was named ‘the lonely victory’ by the media. the vietnam football federation (vff) phan & pham gender stereotypes as hidden curriculum 35 decided to reward the team with 1 billion vietnamese dong for their achievement. in contrast, although the national men football team was defeated in asian football federation (aff) cup in early december 2014, a football championship of southeast asia of smaller scale compared with asiad, they were awarded over 5 billion vietnamese dongs by vff as announced in bongda.com.vn, the online website under the authority of vietnamese general department of sports and physical training. this situation does not just happen only in the vietnamese society, however, such stereotypes in sports and pastimes which have effects on the socialization process of students need to be contested. gender stereotypes in life duties in this set of books, women are featured mostly in domestic settings, such as in family parties, family reunions or marriage ceremonies. women are found doing cooking, shopping for food, taking care of children or helping children with their homework. in english 11 (p. 160), the pictures tell a story of a group of students going camping. while the boys are swimming, taking photographs, there are some girls going and picking flowers and two are cooking together with one boy standing and watching. a picture in english 11 (p. 80) captures a glimpse of a common family life in many poor or rural areas in vietnam with a stay-at-home mother feeding, raising up five or six children and doing household chores. meanwhile, the father is the main labourer, normally doing farming work. nguyen’s analysis (2013) shares similar results. women are depicted to be attached to family duties in a domestic setting or situation like the mother is cooking while her husband is reading a newspaper or the daughter is doing homework while the boys are playing football. however, unlike the previous study in which there is notably no presentation of men doing any housework, the current research shows there is less depiction of women doing housework or caregiving all by themselves. an example is a picture in english 12 (p. 12) in which the mother is standing next to her daughter who is studying, while her husband is playing with the little son rather than sitting and reading a newspaper as a drawing in nguyen’s study (2013). another major finding is that the image of vietnamese women in the illustrations of this set of books reflects a modern stereotype. a typical example is the pictures in english 12, unit 15 named women in society (p. 162). the pictures feature a stereotypical modern vietnamese wife and mother who after work hurries to shop for food, helping both her children with studying or homework, taking care of the children after dinner and doing cleaning like throwing trash. the similar story is in fact described in a written text in unit 1, english 12 (p. 13), in which the mother works as a nurse with long hours in a big hospital and after a nigh shift but still is the one “running the household”, the first one to get up to prepare breakfast for every family member or the one who “rushes to the market then hurries home so that dinner is ready on the table by the time dad gets home”. given the long history under feudalism and patriarchal ideologies, all the statistics and policies do present an optimistic picture of gender equality and women empowerment in vietnam. yet, men are more often selected for advanced training opportunities or promotions involving more power and decisionmaking, and women continue to “shoulder the majority of unremunerated housework and care-work despite contributing equal time to income-generating work” (kelly, 2011, p. 5). this phenomenon reflects the reality of vietnamese women in the contemporary society. as specified in kelly (2011), “neo-traditional discourse positions women as care givers within vietnamese society” (p. 5). although the government acknowledges women’s dedication to home making through awards and certificates such as vietnamese women: good at national tasks and good at housework, there is little encouragement for vietnamese men who are contributive to both tasks. in other words, little has been done to loosen the constraints on women by traditional norms but instead the burden that modern vietnamese women have to shoulder has been doubled since the society expects them to fulfill the tasks both in domestic and public spheres (nguyen, 2011). this presentation of life duties well reflects the reality in the contemporary vietnamese society and what the society expects from women. being integrated implicitly in educational materials such as textbooks, the stereotypes confirm the regarded standard social norms and values and navigate how a woman should lead her life in vietnamese society. conclusion this study examines gender stereotypes as hidden curriculum embedded in the illustrations of english textbooks for vietnamese upper-secondary students. on the grounds of durkheim’s (1956) and biesta’s (2010) thesis on education and its function of socialization, we approached gender stereotypes as a social construct. we followed the argument that since gender stereotypes are hidden in curriculum, they will intervene students’ gender socialization by shaping their mindset of what the society expects from their masculinity or femininity. being the strong manifestation of curriculum, textbooks were chosen as the empirical data. the set of textbooks are english 10, english 11 and english 12, which are used nationwide in vietnam. a mix of quantitative and qualitative content analysis study was conducted with the aim to analyze what gender stereotypes are incorporated in visual elements in the textbooks. from what the data presents, gender stereotypes could be seen in occupations, sports and hobbies, and life duties. it must be noted that the status of vietnamese women is no longer that being oppressed since vietnamese first contact with western culture, france specifically, in the middle of the 19th century (nguyen, 2011). a remarkable example is the rising number of women in leadership and political positions and the increasingly narrow gap between the number of girls and boys having access to secondary education (dang et al., 2013, p. 49). however, gender equality is not just about quantitative aspect, but also about qualitative, which refers to social evaluation and treatment to men and women and the way women and men think they should be to reach social expectations. data emerging from the data revealed an imbalance between the number of job depictions international journal of education vol. 14 no. 1, april-2021, pp. 30-38 ©2021 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: 10.17509/ije.v14i1.30553 36 between men and women and the underrepresentation of vietnamese women particularly in professions which are seen as high status such as scientist and politician. males are featured to have a variety of occupational choices, ranging from jobs involving more muscular strength (firemen, bodyguard, police officer) to jobs more requiring talents (singer, writer, music composer). in contrast, females tend to have fewer options. they are often portrayed as students or working in the teaching or farming sectors. studies into the occupational aspirations of students have found that their career choice is under a significant influence of gcndcr stereotyping they encounter in their life, in which education is a major part (purvis, 1987; unesco, 2013). when students learn such repetition of depiction in occupation, they have certain presumptions of what is more acceptable for men and for women to pursue as a career, which, as argued by bandura and bussey (1999) and marinova (2003), directs men and women into different life choices. the stereotypes were also found in sports and leisure activities that males and females take up. men are found to be pictured with 14 different types of sports while women are in only 5 sports which are mostly gymnastics or swimming. moreover, there is no illustration featuring vietnamese women playing any sport, both professionally or as a hobby despite the fact that vietnamese athletes and sports activities are gaining more and more popularity among vietnamese citizen, including women. the traditional image of women with indoor activities like cooking, embroidery, playing musical instruments, singing and dancing is still more expected from society. this could be seen in the way girls are portrayed in illustrations of leisure activities. men, instead, are seen with more outdoor leisure activities or playing different kinds of sports. as stated in a report by sdg iwp (2008), although sport is an indispensable part of almost every country, it is often disregarded as a means to promote gender equality because girls and women are not universally surmised as suitable for doing sport. “existing social constructs of masculinity and femininity”, or what a particular socio-cultural context attaches to a man or a woman, are the determinants of the access as well as the levels of participation that each individual may have (sdg iwp, 2008, p. 131.). the stereotypes found in the illustrations of the textbooks are factors to confirm such existing social constructs. the last stereotype emerging from the data of the study was women’s life duties. vietnamese women, under a long history of confucianism influence, are confined in a traditional image of taking care of the family, raising and feeding children, and sacrificing for their husbands. rather than being independent, vietnamese women are often found to be in a domestic setting with the whole family or their husbands. otherwise, they are portrayed to be doing house chores such as running errands, cooking or taking care of children. a notable point in the study is the depiction of vietnamese women in this set of books are not just conventional housewives but modern women who are also contributive to the financial condition of the whole family. however, their housework burden is not any less. this reflects the existing responsibilities of women in the contemporary vietnamese society who are expected to be both proficient at work and social duties and at the same time take very good care of the whole family and family duties. in conclusion, all the repeated above-mentioned stereotypes shape rigid mindset of students towards the stratification of what defines masculinity and femininity, which may be the starting point of social prejudice. in other words, they actually reinforce gender inequality in qualitative terms. as stereotypes are hidden in the curriculum, they can be acquired by students unknowingly and unconsciously and have certain influences on the gender socialization process of students. hidden curriculum in gender, as argued by hernandez et al. (2013, p. 90), are made out of “social constructions of thoughts” and will therefore be “a form of power” that “establishes, supports and permeates the concepts, values”. this study contributes to the area of gender equality in education and educational materials in particular by focusing on gender stereotypes as hidden curriculum depicted in the illustrations of the english textbooks for upper-secondary students in vietnam. it will hopefully offer an insight into the issue as well as suggestions for the textbooks revision process of policy makers in vietnam. acknowledgement the corresponding author would like to thank mr. nguyen thanh van for his generosity in sharing his work with the author and for his pleasant talks and intellectual humour she had a chance to experience while being his colleague. the author would also want to thank dr. phung ha thanh from vietnam national university for her encouragement, inspiration and her opinion when the first seeds of idea for this article were sowed. last but not least, the authors are grateful to the anonymous reviewer for the comments on the initial submission of the article. references amini, m. & birjandi, p. 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(2008). gender stereotype in story textbooks for primary school students in vietnam [master’s thesis]. university of oslo, norway. world bank report (2006). vietnam country gender assessment. retrieved in 5th december 2014 from http://wwwwds.worldbank.org/external/default/w dscontentserver/wdsp/ib/2007/01/24/000310 607_20070124141846/rendered/pdf/384450e nglish0vn0gender01public1.pdf world bank report (2011). vietnam country gender assessment. world bank, hanoi. © world bank. https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10 986/26745 license: cc by 3.0 igo. http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/ http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0022/002262/226218e.pdf http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0022/002262/226218e.pdf http://wwwwds.worldbank.org/external/default/wdscontentserver/wdsp/ib/2007/01/24/000310607_20070124141846/rendered/pdf/384450english0vn0gender01public1.pdf http://wwwwds.worldbank.org/external/default/wdscontentserver/wdsp/ib/2007/01/24/000310607_20070124141846/rendered/pdf/384450english0vn0gender01public1.pdf http://wwwwds.worldbank.org/external/default/wdscontentserver/wdsp/ib/2007/01/24/000310607_20070124141846/rendered/pdf/384450english0vn0gender01public1.pdf http://wwwwds.worldbank.org/external/default/wdscontentserver/wdsp/ib/2007/01/24/000310607_20070124141846/rendered/pdf/384450english0vn0gender01public1.pdf international journal of education vol. 14 no. 2, august-2021, pp. 139-148 ©2021 universitas pendidikan indonesia https://doi.org/10.17509/ije.v14i2.43877 139 mobile moodle to support graduate students self-regulated learning: an ex-post facto study septian hanung dwi atmoko* and paulus kuswandono sanata dharma university, indonesia septianhanungda@gmail.com/kus@usd.ac.id first draft received: 7 jul 2021 date accepted: 29 jul 2021 final proof received: 12 aug 2021 abstract the use of a mobile learning management system (lms) has engendered pros and cons concerning the effects on influencing the students’ self-regulated learning (srl). a large number of research studies concerning mobile-lms have been done in the past decades. studies have also demonstrated that the use of mobile lms can facilitate the users as it can be conveniently accessed anywhere with their mobile phones. however, those studies have not comprehensively discussed the results of the students' mobile-lms on their self-regulated learning development. hence, this research aims to investigate the use of mobile learning management systems, specifically mobile moodle, to support the students' self-regulated learning. an expost-facto research study was used to gather the respondents' data after they experienced the mobile moodle and the relationship to the srl development. the respondents were 15 students from english education master program, yogyakarta, indonesia. further, the questionnaires and interviews were used to gather and analyze the data. the results showed that most of the graduate students were facilitated by the use of mobile moodle to develop their self-regulated learning. the result showed that the features, namely, upcoming events, messages, and chats, positively related to the students’ srl construction. however, the participants highlighted the easiness of using reminder and notification features since some of the students cannot receive the notification directly to their phones. thus, the mobile moodle developer should improve it to maximize its benefit in influencing students’ srl. keywords: graduate students' self-regulated learning; learning management system; mobile moodle to cite this paper (in apa style): atmoko, s. h. d. & kuswandono, p. (2021). the use of mobile moodle to support graduate students selfregulated learning. international journal of education, 14(2), 138-147. https://doi.org/10.17509/ije.v14i2.43877 introduction technology has become one of the powerful tools for human life, particularly for educational development (pelgrum & law, 2017). in the view past years, technology development in education brings about the rise of a learning management system (lms) that has been growing rapidly in this era (han & shin, 2016). this development presents the facility of conducting a class activity through the lms beyond the boundary of time and place. recently, most of the lms has built its mobile version to accommodate the feature of accessing the lms through the students' mobile phones which also offer multilingual supports (muhammad and cavus, 2017). the development of mobile lms can be a potential tool to support the learning process. further, the moodle lms develops their mobile-moodle that can be utilized to support the learning process so that universities, schools, businesses, and even individual instructors can use it as a blended learning supplementary (yeou, 2016). the development of mobile moodle brings about a flexible learning process since it can be accessed anytime. however, han and shin (2016) found that the mobile moodle is less used than the moodle accessed on the website. the moodle forum discussion initiated by lande (2016) which focuses on both mobile moodle and website moodle found that the display of website moodle is considered more interesting. nevertheless, the use of both mobile moodle and website moodle in the learning process has a factor that can influence the result of the learning process. based on the discussion, the website mobile allows both teacher and students to modify their pages based on their preferences, for example, by changing the menu display or adding and deleting the menu on the page. however, the mobile moodle app has a more rigid display that cannot be modified unless the organization/school pays for the subscription. on the other hand, ndlovu and mostert, (2018) and peramunugamage, usoof, and hapuarachi (2019) found that the mobile lms offers a number of benefits. the mobile lms allows the students (1) to access the learning contents and share them with others whenever and wherever they are (peramunugamage, usoof & hapuarachi, 2019); (2) to improve the cognitive process https://doi.org/10.17509/ije.v14i2.43877 https://doi.org/10.17509/ije.v14i2.43877 atmoko and kuswandono mobile moodle to support graduate students self-regulated learning: an ex-post facto study 140 of exploration and sharing of ideas (ndlovu and mostert, 2018). beyond this usefulness, mobile moodle is also beneficial for the students to support them to achieve self-regulated learning (srl) in their learning process. o’bannon and thomas (2015) believe that mobilemoodle extends the potential to help the students to self-regulate their learning style due to its accessibility, flexibility, ease of assessment and feedback, and the possibility to share and give comments to both students to students and teachers to students. zhu, au, and yates (2016) add that the use of the learning management system in blended learning significantly impacts the students' learning outcomes. therefore, the positive impact of moodle in blended learning could positively influence the students' srl. however, there are still doubts concerning the effectiveness of mobile lms in influencing the students' srl. raelovich, mikhlievich, norbutaevich, mamasolievich, karimberdievich, and suyunbaevich (2020) state that the use of mobile learning in the learning process should be followed by clear rules and regulations to avoid the negative effect. crompton and burke (2018) add that the utilization of mobile learning could lead to both negative and positive impacts depends on the pedagogic variable used by the educator and the students' individual. thus, the effect of using mobile moodle in the learning process is depending on how the educators directed the goals of learning using mobile moodle. in addition, there are a lot of studies concerning mobile lms such as o’bannon and thomas (2015), han and shin (2016), ndlovu and mostert (2018), crompton and burke (2018), and raelovich et al. (2020). however, none of them specifically concern the use of mobile lms (moodle) that can be a potential tool in influencing the students' srl. therefore, the research aimed to investigate the students’ perception of using mobile moodle in the learning process and the relationship to the students' self-regulated learning in the english graduate program at sanata dharma university. since the research aims are to investigate the mobile moodle relationship in influencing students' srl, an ex post facto was utilized to understand the participants' perceptions after the experience of using mobile moodle and the relationship to the srl development. an ex-post facto was used to gain natural data based on the real situation that happened without any manipulation (ary, jacob, sorensen, & razavieh, 2010). further, this research generated two research questions as the main consideration in this research. the first question was does the use of mobile moodle in the learning process gives positive or negative influences on the students’ srl. the second question was how the mobile moodle influences the students’ srl. further, to support the research questions formulated in this study, the researchers formulated two research hypotheses namely, (1) the use of mobile moodle gives positive influences on the students’ srl, and (2) the ease of accessibility and flexibility influence the students’ srl. moreover, a detailed discussion of the methodology and how it is applied is presented in the following discussion. method the method used in this research was an ex-post facto study (non-experimental), using purposive sampling for 15 participants. the participants were english education graduate students who were familiar with the use of the mobile-moodle platform in the class. those 15 participants were chosen using purposive sampling based on the criteria that they have the experience of using both mm and the website moodle in the learning process. the main variables of this research were the students' perception of using mobile lms (independent variable) and its relationship with the students’ srl development (dependent variable). the ex-post facto research was used in this study because of two reasons. the first was to gain a deeper understanding of the direct or inverse relationship between mobilemoodle usage to the students’ srl development without any manipulation (ary et al., 2010). second, the relationship of those variables should be investigated in depth because there were still pros and cons towards the benefit of using mobile-moodle to the students’ srl development. therefore, this study aimed to know the participants' opinions of their experience after using the mobile-moodle platform in their learning process and the relation to the students' srl development. this research used some instruments to collect data from the participants. the instruments consist of a questionnaire and interview. moreover, the questionnaire was used to gain the students' perception after experiencing using mobile moodle in their learning process. the questionnaire used was closed-ended questions. further, the measurement of a closed-ended questionnaire would be in the form of a likert scale developed by joshi, klae, chandel, and pal (2015). the questionnaire was employed to know the students' perception of moodle to support the students' srl. the questionnaire adapted some questions from the sol-q by jansen et al. (2018) combined with the three phases of students' srl generated by (zimmerman & schunk, 2011). the three phases, which were preparatory, performance, and appraisal phase, were specified into 6 main concerns namely, metacognitive skills, environmental structuring, time management, persistence, help-seeking, and self-evaluation (jansen et al., 2018). the researchers adapted those aspects in the sol-q and three phases of students' srl as the basis of the questionnaire and interview questions. the questionnaire results were used to answer the first research question, namely the use of mobile moodle to support the students' srl. as for the interview questions, the researchers used the respondents’ questionnaire responses as the basis to develop the interview questions. there were three respondents to be the interviewee. further, this research used a semi-structured interview. the semiinternational journal of education vol. 14 no. 2, august-2021, pp. 139-148 ©2021 universitas pendidikan indonesia https://doi.org/10.17509/ije.v14i2.43877 141 structured interview in an open situation allowed the researchers to explore what was the respondent felt (cohen et al., 2012). nevertheless, there would be a limitation regarding the questions. the limitation was based on the three phases of students' srl, namely forethought, performance, and reflection (zimmerman & schunk, 2011). however, the researchers had the flexibility in the process of the interview. various answers were indicated from the results of the interview. the more various the answer, the more it gave benefits to the research to have a deeper analysis. further, the researchers analyzed the result of the interview by categorizing the answer from the students from the interview transcripts. to answer the second research question, namely how the moodle app promotes srl in the learning process, the researchers decided to use an openended questionnaire. the open-ended questionnaire gives benefit to the research to gain various and detailed information about the participants' perception and facilitates more comprehensive data analysis (cohen et al., 2012). the open-ended questions comprise six questions that focus on how the mobile moodle promotes srl. the detailed questions were presented in the research results and discussion section as follows. results and discussion as it is an ex-post facto, the researchers did not intend to investigate the dynamic process of designing the contents of the mm. rather, the study was limited to answer the two research questions, namely whether the students' srl in the learning process is influenced by the utilization of mobile moodle and how the mobile moodle influence the students’ srl. the discussion of the findings is organized within two sub-sections focusing on each of the research questions. further, the answer to the first research question is presented as follows. mobile moodle in influencing srl the first question would be answered based on the data gathered in a questionnaire form. the questionnaire consisted of four main considerations adapted from sol-q. those four main considerations were metacognitive skills, time management, help-seeking, and self-evaluation (zimmerman & schunk, 2011; jansen et al., 2018) the first section of the questionnaire focused on the students’ metacognitive skills and the relationship of mm utilization in the learning process. the questions of this section were adapted from sol-q which focused on the students’ metacognitive skills in learning. the results of the students’ responses were gathered in the form of a table presented as follows. table 1 metacognitive skills in mm questions students' response sd d n a sa fulfill students’ needs 0% 6.7% 6.7% 40% 46.7% strategy shifting friendly 0% 6.7% 13.3% 53.3% 26.7% material preview helps to set strategy. 0% 0% 6.7% 53.3% 40% help to set goals before, during, and after learning. 0% 6.7% 20% 40% 33.3% total average 0% 5.1% 11.7% 46.6% 36.6% based on the data presented in table 1, most of the students felt that mm helped to build their metacognitive skills in learning. around 83% of the students agreed with the statements that the use of mm built positive relation to the development of metacognitive that could lead to srl. however, the other students chose to be neutral and disagreed with the statement (16%). although the percentage is not significantly high, it also imparts that some students did not yet feel that mm had a positive influence on their srl. hence, this can be further investigated to improve the implementation of mm. the result of the first questionnaire section showed that the use of mm has a positive relation to the srl improvement. khiat (2019) also demonstrates the same point in the study that the lms features that can help to fulfill the students' needs would positively affect the students' srl development. besides, the positive results proved that the mm has a significant effect to help the students in shaping their metacognitive in the learning process. similarly, oppong, shore, and muis (2018) also state in the study that the improvement of metacognitive skills could give better srl. the other important point was most of the students stated that they shifted the unsuccessful learning strategy by evaluating it and looking for the suitable one every time they have done the learning process in mm. it means that the students were helped by adapting some successful strategies used in the mm. muis, chevrier, and singh (2018) mention in the study that the evaluation phase, which is also included in metacognition, helps the students to regulate their strategies and style in the study. the next table was focused on mm in helping the students to manage their study time well. it is said by wolters, won, and hussein (2017) and wolters and brady (2020) that time management is an important self-regulatory process concerning when and how long the students spend their time studying to reach their academic goals. the detail is presented in table 2. https://doi.org/10.17509/ije.v14i2.43877 atmoko and kuswandono mobile moodle to support graduate students self-regulated learning: an ex-post facto study 142 table 2 time management in mm questions students' response sd d n a sa tasks' due date reminder 0% 6.7% 6.7% 53.3% 33.3% semester schedule 0% 0% 0% 53.3% 46.7% help to be well time management 0% 13.3% 6.7% 53.3% 26.7% help to set the time for studying 0% 20% 46.7% 20% 13.3% total average 0% 10% 15% 45% 30% the result shows that 75% of the students were helped by the features in mm, especially the feature of “upcoming events”. however, the result also gave the information that 10% of the students stated that mm should be improved in facilitating their time management in learning. the main problem discussed in this section was the interface of the features that makes some of the students confuse. khiat (2019) also mentioned in the study that a friendly user interface would positively affect the students’ self-regulated learning development. similarly, laux, luse, and mennecke (2016) argued in their study that the core of human-computer interaction should be in the usability that contains the ease interface and efficiency. therefore, the mm should develop a more interesting and easy user interface to maximize the benefit. further, the environmental structuring was also one aspect that is considered important to influence the students’ srl. therefore, table 3 would focus on the result discussion on how the environment influences the students’ srl. table 3 environmental structuring in mm questions students' response sd d n a sa accessible anywhere and anytime 0% 6.7% 20% 60% 13.3% the place affected the study efficiency 0% 0% 6.7% 60% 30.3% need a special place to study 0% 0% 6.7% 46.7% 46.6% comfortable place affects my study efficiency 0% 0% 13.3% 53.3% 33.4% physical and mental condition affects my study 0% 0% 6.7% 66.7% 26.6% total average 0% 1.3% 10.7% 57.3% 30.7% based on table 3 results, most of the students, which were 88%, were agree that the use of mm in the context of environmental structuring influence the students' srl. the environmental structuring was considered to affect the way the students learned using mm. since this research focuses on the srl and its relation to the use of mm in the learning process, the environmental structuring showed that achieving students' srl is also affected by the inside motivation of the students themselves. it is essential to note, however, that the accessibility and flexibility of mm to be used in any condition have clearly demonstrated that it is a good supporting tool to achieve students’ srl. likewise, zarouk and khaldi (2016) mentioned in the study that the accessibility and flexibility that an lms has would positively influence the students' srl. in the case of mm and based on the results, the use of mm in the learning process has become a supporting tool to construct srl through environmental structuring. however, the factor that could influence the students’ srl was not only coming from the environment but also the inside motivation of the students. therefore, the next table focused on investigating the students’ persistency in the learning process using mm. table 4 persistence in mm questions students' response sd d n a sa force to study 6.7% 6.7% 13.3% 60% 13.3% the effort to keep concentrating 0% 20% 6.7% 60% 13.3% push to study when lost interest 0% 33.3% 20% 46.7% 0% do the best in every task 0% 13.3% 20% 53.3% 13.3% stick to the plan 0% 0% 13.3% 66.7% 20% total average 1.3% 14.7% 14.7% 57.3% 12% based on the data presented in table 5, the result showed that 69.3% of the students were persistent in doing tasks in mm. however, the neutral percentage was the same as the disagree, which was 14.7%. further, there were 1.3% of students who disagree to force to study when they felt bored. it indicates that international journal of education vol. 14 no. 2, august-2021, pp. 139-148 ©2021 universitas pendidikan indonesia https://doi.org/10.17509/ije.v14i2.43877 143 there might be some problems that occurred during the learning process using mm. the problems that occurred in the learning process using mm should be fixed to meet the students' satisfaction (muhammad & cavus, 2017). however, the problem was still bias, whether it came from the mm or the individual students. therefore, further investigation of problems that occur in the learning process would be presented in the interview section. nevertheless, in facing the problems the students might be seeking help from other classmates or lecturers. thus, the next table focused on the discussion about how the students seeking help in mm. table 5 help-seeking in mm questions students' response sd d n a sa ask other classmates 0% 6.7% 6.7% 73.3% 13.3% discuss and share problems 0% 6.7% 6.7% 53.3% 33.3% student-lecturer communication 0% 6.7% 26.7% 66.7% 0% student-student communication 0% 0% 6.7% 86.7% 6.7% total average 0% 5% 11.7% 70% 13.3% in table 5, the data presented showed that most of the students were helped by the features in mm to seek help. the students have mostly used the communication features, namely message, and chat, to look for help from their classmates and lecturers. jansen et al. (2018) state in the study that help-seeking is an environmental structure that helps the students to build their regulation on one of the ways to solve problems. it positively showed that mm, which has sharing and discussion features, was considered helpful for the students to fulfill their needs. zheng (2016) found the study that fostering srl should be based on the students’ needs. therefore, the features of lms that match with the students’ needs significantly help them to develop their srl. further, the last step of srl was the ability to reflect and evaluate the learning performance they had. thus, in table 6 the discussion focused on the students’ self-evaluation using mm. table 6 self-evaluation in mm questions students' response sd d n a sa reflect on the strategies 0% 6.7% 0% 60% 33.3% evaluate the strategies 0% 0% 0% 80% 20% analyze the strategies 0% 13.3% 33.3% 33.3% 20% look for other strategies 0% 0% 33.3% 46.7% 20% total average 0% 5% 16.7% 55.6% 22.7% based on table 6 results, most of the students stated that they reflect, analyze, evaluate, and look for suitable learning strategies every time they have done the learning process in mm. it means that the students were helped by adapting some successful strategies used in the mm. muis chevrier, and singh (2018) mention in the study that the evaluation phase, which was also included in metacognition, helped the students to regulate their strategies and style in the study. therefore, the use of mm in the learning process has a positive relationship to the students’ srl development. based on the data presented in the questionnaire section, most of the students agreed with the use of mm to promote srl in the learning process. it was shown by the total average of ‘agree’ and ‘strongly agree’ perceptions of 80.4%. this average showed that the use of moodle in the learning process helps the students to promote srl in the learning process. there were still 12.7% of the respondents who answer neutral and 6.9% answer disagree and strongly disagree. thus, it can be concluded that the use of mm in the learning process has a positive relationship to the development of students’ srl. however, the researchers found that the interface of the features should be improved to make it simple and easy to be used. based on these findings, the researchers decided to interview three students to gain a deeper understanding of ma in promoting srl. those three students were chosen based on the answer in the questionnaire section. as for gaining more information, the researchers added the semi-structured interview in the second section to measure the students' srl using what socalled "self-regulated learning interview schedule" (srlis) (zimmerman & pons, 1986; erdogan & senemoglu, 2016). the srlis was applied to make flexible interviews based on the situation faced. the questions concern the students' metacognition skills using mm. https://doi.org/10.17509/ije.v14i2.43877 atmoko and kuswandono mobile moodle to support graduate students self-regulated learning: an ex-post facto study 144 table 7 students' metacognitive participant excerpts student a "knowing the topic and schedule helps me to plan my study time.” student b "easy to summarize what i have learned through the class discussion and notes that have been saved" student c "through sharing and discussion, it can enrich my knowledge by modifying exist knowledge to new knowledge." the responses above were about the features in mm that help the students' metacognition to set the learning goal. those features were the schedule that is provided in upcoming events and the chat and discussion feature that help the experience sharing and discussion. based on the result of the interview section most of the interviewees responded that they had set the learning goal. however, the goals that the interviewees have were quite mixed. the first interviewee expected to make a study plan based on the topic and the schedule provided in the mm. khiat (2019) mentioned in the study that the lms that provides a timetable increases the srl, especially in planning and managing their study. meanwhile, the second interviewee expected to be able to learn deeper by summarizing the materials, discussions, and notes of what they have learned in the class. zheng (2016) and khiat (2019) also found in the study that the features in lms that help students fulfilled their needs positively increase the students’ srl. whereas, the other interviewee expected to get new experiences by sharing and discussing new information. based on the excerpts of the interview, the researchers conclude that most of the students were helped by the features provided in the mm to apply their metacognition in learning. the features of mm help them to set up the goals based on their prior knowledge. thus, it can be concluded that the features in mm helped the students to be metacognitively aware of their learning goals. further, the ability to set up the goals indicates that the mm helped the students to promote srl. however, the second question was focus on the students’ learning strategies used in mm. table 8 learning strategies used in mm participant excerpts student a "shifting strategy helps to study in mm." student b "ask my peers' strategy and modify to adapt my strategy." student c "making a reflection and doing some evaluation after studying or doing some tasks." from the data gathered, all of the students were applying certain strategies in finishing the tasks. further, the students were able to adapt to new strategies regarding the difficulties they faced in the learning process. yamada, shimada, okubo, oi, kojima, and ogata (2017) also stated in the study that a supportive environment of lms could increase the srl skill acquisition. the fact that the students were able to change and modify the strategies demonstrated that the students successfully regulated their learning process in mm. further, the students' strategies were slightly different from each other. some of the students reflected on their experience and evaluated the strategies they used in some cases. while the other students were asking their peers and construct new strategies based on their preference. in conclusion, the strategies used by the students were various. however, all of the students confirmed that they have regulated their strategies according to the problem faced. further, related to the students’ learning strategies, time management becoming one of the important factors that influence successful strategies in learning. thus, in table six the researchers focused on the students’ time management used in mm. table 9 students' time management in mm participant excerpts student a "the due date reminder helps me to accomplish my tasks." student b "the material schedule helps me to monitor which one needs to be done first." student c "the mobile moodle helps me to set my plan and even do the task through my mobile phone." based on the results above, most of the students were able to manage their study time well. the result showed that the students were helped with the notification features given in the moodle mobile application. the notification feature could be used as a reminder of any tasks and materials that the students have not done yet. therefore, it helps the students to do the tasks and study the materials based on the international journal of education vol. 14 no. 2, august-2021, pp. 139-148 ©2021 universitas pendidikan indonesia https://doi.org/10.17509/ije.v14i2.43877 145 learning plan that has been set at the beginning of the semester. moreover, some of the students were working and studying at the same time and the moodle mobile platform helps them to do the tasks without any boundaries. it means that the students could accomplish the task whenever and wherever they were. the students' awareness of completing the tasks on time indicated that the students were able to regulate their time. the mobile application has also influenced the students to accomplish the tasks on time. as the students’ awareness in the learning process becomes an important factor in srl, the students’ persistency and the factors that influenced their persistence in learning would be discussed as follows. table 10 students' persistence in mm participant excerpts student a "i keep my pace to manage my progress in accomplishing the tasks." student b "recalling the plan that i set whenever i feel bored." student c "forcing myself to accomplish it although i feel bored." the students' persistence in the process of learning and doing the tasks became the main problem to do the tasks effectively. the result shows that some of the students were still forcing themselves to finish the task on time. based on the interview result, students were likely to stop their work and look for more interesting, such as watching films, playing games, chatting, etc. han and shin (2016) also mention in their study that online learning could lead to distraction since the students are often surfing other things outside the learning topic when they felt bored. however, the students stated that they would like to force themselves to finish the tasks. it was because the students will get extra points if they could accomplish the tasks before the due time. ndlovu and mostert (2018) and khiat (2019) stated that giving a reward to the student's effort in completing the tasks would motivate them in learning. further, it could lead the students to self-regulate themselves to learn and do the tasks given to get more points as a reward. based on the result of the questionnaire and followed by the interview in the second section, most of the students were helped by the use of mm in the learning process. the mm helped the students through some features, which were schedule/upcoming events and the messages/chat, that proven to influence the srl. the easiness to access the last meeting materials also helped the students to evaluate and re-check their understanding of that materials. as to gain more information on how the mm influences the students’ srl the researchers used an open-ended questionnaire. the result of the openended questionnaire would be discussed as follow. how mobile moodle influences srl to answer the second research question, the researchers utilized an open-ended questionnaire. six open-ended questions were focused to investigate on how the mobile-moodle influences students’ srl. those questions were formulated based on the findings in the first phase of the questionnaire, which was the features issues in mm. in the first phase, only a few percentages of participants were familiar with the timeline feature that helps them to know some important issues including the meeting schedule and the due date of the task. the moodle mobile version allows the students to set a reminder for the task due date, class meeting, and any important dates. the first question concerns the respondent's preference of using moodle in the website mode or mobile mode version. the researchers classified the respondents' answers that nearly have the same idea. based on the answer, all of the respondents have already experienced the website and mobile versions. however, based on their experienced, ten out of fifteen respondents preferred to use the website mode because when they access the website mode, they found that the bigger screen is more pleasant to their eyes and the display ratio in the website mode is surely better than the mobile one. nevertheless, the other five respondents answer that they prefer to use the mobile version because they can access it everywhere. they reported that sometimes the website moodle mode cannot be accessed because too many students access the same site at the same time. the result shows that most of the respondents prefer using website mode because the display is more interesting and makes them comfortable. however, sometimes the respondents experienced lag and crash when they accessed the website moodle in the busy traffic of class activity. therefore, the other respondents chose the mobile one because it rarely lagged or crashed. the second open-ended question focused on the mobile moodle's potential to help the students to manage their time to study. most of the participants stated that the features in moodle allow them to know the next important dates by looking at the timeline provided. further, the participants mentioned that the upcoming events features help them to manage their work so that they can finish it on time. however, some of the students mentioned that the notification cannot directly notify them through their mobile phones. the students have confirmed that they had turned on the mobile notification in the mm application and phone settings. this problem should be further investigated to maximize the benefit of mm. on the other hand, the timeline and upcoming events feature would be beneficial to be the influence https://doi.org/10.17509/ije.v14i2.43877 atmoko and kuswandono mobile moodle to support graduate students self-regulated learning: an ex-post facto study 146 to the students’ srl. khiat (2019) mentions in his study that schedule features in lms could help the students to manage their time to accomplish their tasks on time. wolters and brady (2020) also mention that well-time management could lead to better self-regulatory of a student. further, the third question was the upcoming events feature in mobile moodle that could be a tool to help the students to manage their study time. based on the participants' answers, twelve out of fifteen respondents stated that the upcoming events feature has helped them in managing their study time because it allows the user to know the next important dates such as the test, quiz, and task submission. therefore, they were able to manage their work efficiently. nevertheless, the reminder feature should be simplified because most of the respondents were not understand how to set their timeline in the mobile-moodle. thus, the reminder could maximize the benefit of using mm in giving positive influence to the students’ srl. the fourth question was the influence of the features in the mobile-moodle on the students’ srl. based on the questionnaire results all of the respondents' answers that the features provided in the mobile moodle help them to develop their self-regulated learning. however, in this section, some of the participants commented that the user experience in mobile moodle especially the layout of the features should be simplified. in terms of the feature types, the mobile moodle has already had a lot of features that could help the user to maximize their self-regulated learning development. however, the display of the application also became an issue that should be improved. the display could be more attractive and user-friendly. . khiat (2019) mentions in their study that the lms which is user-friendly to be operated and has an interesting user experience could help develop the user's self-regulated learning. the fifth question focused on moodle that could help the student to build good communication and discussion with the lecturers and mates through the features in moodle. all of the respondents answer that the discussion and message features help them to build good communication between the students-students and students-lecturer, vice versa. jansen et al. (2018) also have the same opinion that an lms should provide the feature that allows the user to communicate with each other. further, it would help the user to share their opinion and create a discussion which would be good for the development of their self-regulated learning. the last questions were asking about the respondents' opinions towards the advantages and disadvantages when they use the website moodle mode and the mobile mode. most of the respondents stated that the advantage of the website moodle mode was the interesting web display and ease to be used. further, the website mode is considered more comfortable because they could use moodle with a widescreen display. however, recently they experienced a crash and delay when they use moodle in prime time presumably because a lot of users access at the same time. further, the mm allows never to experience delay trouble while the traffic is busy. nevertheless, the respondents also stated that the mobile-moodle display was not as interesting as the website moodle. they stated that although it has the same features and content, the website moodle has a more eye-catching display rather than the mm. based on the open-ended questionnaire result, the researchers highlighted two main results. the first was the mm features have influenced the students’ srl especially the schedule/upcoming events and messages. those features have a positive influence on the students’ srl. however, the display and user experience should be easier and eye-catching. most of the respondents commented that they were often confused about operating the features provided in mm. therefore, to maximize the benefit of mm those issues should be improved. in conclusion, the result of the questionnaire and interview showed that the students were successfully regulated their learning process with the influence of the moodle mobile platform. it is shown in the students' response that most of the students were helped to regulate the learning process because of the easy access of getting the materials, information, and doing the tasks (mtebe & kondoro, 2016). joo et al.(2016) also mention in the study that college students in korea were helped to regulate their learning by the ease of using mobile moodle. further, in thailand students' case, the easiness of downloading the materials, and other content in moodle gives positive benefits to the students srl (suppasetseree, 2018). in addition to the easy access to the materials, the study found that using automated reminders in the mobile moodle gives positive benefits to the students' srl. the use of automated time management systems enables students to improve their srl (khiat, 2019). however, not all of the students know how to use the reminder feature in moodle. khiat (2019) mentioned that the user experience of an lms could become the main factor that influences the success of online learning. in short, to make moodle supportive to the students' srl, the most feasible way to promote it is to create a friendly user experience. therefore, based on the result of the questionnaire and interview, the researchers concluded that mobile-moodle utilization in the learning process has a positive relationship to the students’ srl. the features provided in the mobile-moodle, especially the schedule/upcoming events and messages, have given a positive impact on the students’ srl. nevertheless, it could be more beneficial if there were some improvements in the user interface and display, especially the simple and easy features usage. in addition, the effectiveness of mm to support the students’ srl is indeed not the only determining variable. there were some other factors influencing the students’ srl such as the way the teacher designs the learning process and the approach the students organized their learning process. however, this research focused on the students’ perception of the use of mm in supporting their srl construction. therefore, international journal of education vol. 14 no. 2, august-2021, pp. 139-148 ©2021 universitas pendidikan indonesia https://doi.org/10.17509/ije.v14i2.43877 147 there should be further research studies that investigate in details the other factors influencing the students’ srl besides the mm as a supporting tool. conclusion the data in this research has demonstrated that the use of the moodle mobile platform has a positive relationship with the perceived capacity of the students’ srl. according to the research findings, the learning plan which has been set out in the moodle mobile platform can help the students to organize the students' time management. further, the “upcoming events” feature also influenced the students to manage their work in completing the tasks on time. most of the students have attempted to oblige themselves to finish the tasks in mobile moodle before the due time because of the imagined reward if they can complete the work before the due time. nevertheless, there were other factors outside the scope of mobile moodle affecting the students’ srl development, such as students’ academic motivation, academic environment, and the situation around the students. all these variables also take an important role as the key factor of the srl process (gonzalez-torres & torrano, 2008). the user experience of moodle can also become an issue that could affect the students' self-regulation in their online learning. based on the follow-up questionnaire, the researchers found that most of the participants preferred to use the web-based moodle or the website moodle mode because it has a more interesting display and ease of use. on the other hand, the website moodle mode still needs improvement especially the crash, lag, and trouble experience when the traffic of the user is high. on the other hand, some of the participants also prefer to use the mobile version because of the easy access beyond the boundary of time and space. nonetheless, although this mobile version still requires 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(2011). handbook of self-regulation of learning and performance. routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203839010.ch3 database connection failed! database connection failed! database connection failed! database connection failed! database connection failed! database connection failed! database connection failed! database connection failed! database connection failed! international journal of education vol. 11 no. 2, february-2019, pp. 152-157 ©2019 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: 10.17509/ije.v11i2.14757 152 source-based writing among undergraduate students: students’ perspective and challenges velayeti nurfitriana ansas1, didi sukyadi2 korean education study program1, english education department2, universitas pendidikan indonesia, bandung, indonesia velaansas@upi.edu first draft received: 31 oct 2018 date accepted: 8 jan 2019 final proof received: 28 feb 2019 abstract the level of scientific publications of indonesian students at the international level is still very minimal. even when compared to malaysia and thailand, indonesia is still lagging behind. the ministry of research, technology and higher education targets that in 2019 indonesia will reach 30,000 international publications. therefore, students' interest in writing must be increased, especially writing based on sources. therefore, this study would like to find students' perspectives and perceived challenges in writing based on sources. this research was based on a case study. the research involved 68 students from one of the state universities in bandung, and it analyzed 20 selected scientific papers written by students. the instruments for data collection included questionnaire and observation. the results of this study found that 59% of students perceived that writing scientific papers is very difficult. the students found it difficult to find suitable sources for writing material and develop their ideas. they tended to use articles as the sources from the internet whose originality is unclear. one reason this happens was because 80% of students did not know where to find or get indexed journals to use as references for their writing. in addition, many students also preferred not to use journals that were majorly english-based because of their limitation of english skills. the implication is that students should be given further understanding of how to access journals and use reference sources in writing. it is expected that every lecturer will give more source-based writing assignments so that the ability of students to write and develop ideas based on existing sources can be further improved. keywords: scientific paper, source-based writing, teaching writing, writing to cite this paper (in apa style): ansas, v. n.,& sukyadi, d. (2019). source-based writing among undergraduate students: students’ perspective and challenges. indonesian journal of education, 11(2), 152-157. doi: 10.17509/ije.v11i2.14757 introduction in language learning, there are four skills that must be mastered by students, including listening, speaking, reading and writing. mcdonough and shaw (2003) interpreted that listening, speaking, reading and writing skills were not isolated skills, but they are interrelated and altogether used to improve communication in the classroom. in his research, hartley (2007) mentions that the four language skills will be interrelated, especially for foreign language learners; hence, it is not possible to teach one skill of a foreign language without the other skills. for instance, reading is considered as an integral part of writing practice in reader-response theory, writing to read, and reading to write (hirvela, 2004). as hirvela (2004) contends, during reading to write process, reading acts as the provider of the needed input in writing tasks that may encompass the knowledge of rhetorical, linguistic, and/or stylistic information. therefore, students’ writing activities will be in influenced by their reading skills, and this is especially true in the case of source-based writing. in this writing activity, students are required to be able to interpret the intent of the source they find to be presented in their writing. source-based writing relies heavily on citation of secondary sources. citation is an important convention of academic writing. it can help writers develop ideas in their writing, either persuasively or effectively, hence increasing their credibility in writing. citation can be viewed as “attribution of propositional content to another source” (hyland, 2002, p. 115) and is “central to social context of persuasion” (hyland, 1999, p. 342). this is why the ability to write academically based on sources is considered the ultimate evidence of second language learners’ successful academic writing (gholami & alinasab, 2017; cumming, kantor, mailto:velaansas@upi.edu ansas & sukyadi source-based writing among undergraduate students: students’ perspective and challenges 153 baba, erdosy, eouanzoui & james, 2005; gebril & plakans, 2016; guo, crossley, & mcnamara, 2013). it is unfortunate that in indonesian context, the level of scientific publications of students at the international level is still very minimal. even compared to malaysia and thailand, we are still lagging behind (seftiawan, 2017). the ministry of research, technology and higher education targets that in 2019 indonesia will reach 30,000 international publications. this phenomenon calls for the need to increase students' interest in writing, especially writing based on sources, such as for journal articles and other types of academic writing. several preliminary studies have discussed scientific writing or source-based writing from various aspects. sormunen, romu, heinström, and turunen (2012), for instance, tested a method to analyze the information sourced in writing. they argue that source-based writing assignment can be a method that helps students understand how information obtained from sources is processed into a new writing by avoiding plagiarism and heeding to the genre of their writing sormunen tanni alamettälä and heinström (2014) also investigated group work strategies that can be effective to be applied in sourcebased writing. the strategies include planning, searching, assessing sources, reading, writing, and editing. another study by gebril and plakans (2016) analyzed lexical diversity, textual borrowing and proficiency in students’ source-based writing assignments, while gholami and alinasab (2017) studied source-based writing in the context of independent and integrated essays. most of this research discusses strategies and assessment systems used in source-based writing. meanwhile, not much research raises the perspectives of students of source-based writing activities or the challenges they perceive in this kind of writing. therefore, this study aims at raising the perspective of students and the challenges they feel in source-based writing. by understanding their perspective and the challenges they perceive, lecturers can determine the appropriate strategies in improving student writing skills, especially in source-based writing. method the research employed a case study method. it involved 68 second year students of the korean education study program at one of the state universities in bandung, with 20 selected scientific papers written by the students. the korean education program students were selected because they were the first batch students of the then newly opened korean education program. in addition, to this date there have only been four korean departments or programs opened in four indonesian universities. hence, not much research has been conducted to these students, especially in terms of their perspectives of source-based writing. the instrument for data collection mainly used a questionnaire with 23 questions. the questionnaire consisted of items on demographic information (5 questions), kinds of reference sources students use (7 questions), students’ perspectives of writing scientific papers (5 questions), and challenges perceived by students in making scientific papers (10 questions). in addition, this study used observation guidelines to see how students use sources as material to make a scientific writing. the results of the questionnaire were statistically described and analyzed with the help of spss. the thematic descriptive technique was also used to analyze the results of observations of students’ selected scientific papers. finally, interviews to selected students were conducted to further investigate their perspectives and perceived challenges of source-based writing. all parties involved have expressed their consent to be involved in this research. results and discussion demographic information of the participants and results of observation of their source-based writing the demographic information generated from the students is focused on students’ gpa in their first and second semesters of their first year of study. on average, the students participating in this research had good or satisfactory gpa. in fact, on average, there was an increase in their gpa from an average of 3.12 in the first semester to 3.21 in the second semester. based on the gpa information, it can be inferred that the participants had good academic standing. hence, it is expected that the students can do well in their academic writing. however, that is not the case. an observation done to selected papers written by the students shows that most students still used articles from the internet without clear authenticity, so that they were vulnerable to plagiarism. students often did not give credits to the sources cited in their writing. it was also found that in making source-based writing most students did not provide significant explanation for the sources they quoted. most of them only copied without adding their own argument. meanwhile, wanrick and inch (1989) argue that every opinion conveyed by the author in his or her writing must be based on concrete evidence that supports this or her opinion, so that the reader can believe the opinions that the author presents or proposes. each statement and opinion must also produce conclusions that can be accepted by the reader. the observation further reveals that students also did not understand how to make correct references in the references section. most of them just wrote the website url they quoted the sources from. this finding is in line with that of kirkpatrick & klein (2016) who found that in some cases, students do not create any mediating documents and instead write international journal of education vol. 11 no. 2, february-2019, pp. 152-157 ©2019 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: 10.17509/ije.v11i2.14757 154 directly from the source documents, alternating frequently between researching, drafting, and revising. with this finding regarding students’ sourcebased writing skills, it is important then to understand their perspectives of this kind of writing in order to find solutions to the problems. students’ perspectives of source-based writing based on the results of questionnaire distributed to the students, it was found that as many as 59% of students found it difficult to make a source-based writing. as many as 33% of the students felt writing a source-based paper is very difficult, and only 15% of them felt that it was not too bad and a small number (3%) said it was easy. more specifically, they found it difficult to find and develop their own ideas. they also had difficulty in finding other people’s ideas that can represent their ideas or are relevant to the problems they discuss and integrating those ideas into their study. they thought that writing source-based writing was simply moving the theory in the book into their writing. the results of the questionnaire are confirmed by students’ selected writing previously observed. so often their writing only contains expert views on a topic, rather than their own views on the topic based on the theory of experts. students also felt that writing source-based writing was not something they had to do as students. they admitted that they made sourcebased writing only to fulfill assignments given as a condition to get grades. this also explains why students’ publication has not been satisfactory. despite students’ perceptions of what constitutes source-based writing and their belief in the sole academic intention of writing it, students writing a text for a university assignment are usually expected to draw from sources. in fact, lecturers attach much importance to how students integrate sources into their writing. students' argument ability can be judged by how they can develop ideas conveyed by others at the same time. in this case, students should be able to find references quickly, in the form of either experience or knowledge they have had before. the way students integrate sources into their writing is supposed to “reflect both the utterer’s voice and the voices of those from whom s/he has borrowed the text” (scollon et al., 1998, p. 228). however, similar to the findings of the present study, most research has shown that citation presents considerable difficulties for students (dong 1996; mansourizadeh & ahmad 2011; pecorari 2003), making the students vulnerable to plagiarism, albeit mostly not deliberately done this finding is also echoed by hyland (2002b) who attests that citation is a feature in which students mostly have difficulty to use effectively in their writing or understand correctly in their reading. types of references used to make scientific paper the results of the questionnaire distributed indicate that 53% of the students often copied sources without giving further explanations for the copied sources in relation to the topic of discussion. only as many as 22% of students rarely used the source immediately, sometimes providing further explanations regarding the topic or argument they quoted. it was further discovered that only 3% of the students never used the source as they were and always gave explanations and other supporting evidence related to the topic or argument they quoted. details of the finding are presented in figure 1. 7% 53% 15% 22% 3% use of sources always often rare seldom never figure 1. students’ use of resources figure 1 shows that according to students, sourcebased writing is a writing activity in which they are to copy all the writings in the sources they found into their writing. this is certainly a misconception. the questionnaire items further investigated students’ perspective of the role of resource use. it was revealed that students mostly felt that the presence of resources could help them develop their ideas. this was illustrated by 44% of the students feeling that resources were sufficient to help them develop ideas, 34% felt resources helped them to develop ideas, and 10% felt that resources really helped them develop ideas. only 9% of the students felt that sources did not help them in developing their ideas. see figure 2 for more detailed data. 10% 34% 44% 9% 3% the role of sources very helpful helpful average unhelpfull very unhelpfull figure 2. students’ perspectives of the role of resources in this context, sources in writing based on text are texts or other works that can be used to develop writing ideas or to support claims made by the author (the sources used in writing are referred to as references). in order to be able to use the sources well, the author must be able to identify the types of ansas & sukyadi source-based writing among undergraduate students: students’ perspective and challenges 155 sources used and adjust them to their own purpose of writing. by classifying the types of sources used, the author can identify how their arguments are related to or can be supported by the information they get from these sources. when writing, students are required to be able to assess and determine which sources are appropriate to use in their writing. the ability to use sources appropriately is a part of cultural literacy, which can be defined being capable not only of writing, reading and communicating, but also of doing these responsibly (hirsch, 1987). similar to the idea of writing responsible, in the context of cultural literacy relevant to source-based writing, the ability to read also includes the ability to interpret a text and also to be able to re-communicate what is in the text to others meaningfully. students with high literacy can also sort out and choose the reading text to read. it may be that the high level of plagiarism in indonesia and also the easily spreading hoax news is caused by students’ lack of ability in reading responsibly. in this globalized era, students should be able to filter and find out the truth from the information read before they re-communicate the news to public. the present study further discovered that in making source-based writing, as many as 47% of the students used secondary sources in the forms of journal articles. however, most of the articles cited were not from reputable journals. observations of students’ writing confirmed this finding, showing that sometimes the articles cited by students have no clear sources, such as the author, year of publication, etc. 21% of the students used textbooks as a source in their writing, and only 19% of the students use indexed journals as the source of their writing. this illustrates that the students still lacked knowledge regarding how to find and cite reputable journal articles. the results of interview were in line with the finding. students admitted they did not know where they could look for journals or how to do so. therefore, they only used search pages like google to find sources. they also had difficulty in choosing which sources are credible to use. these have caused students to be vulnerable to plagiarism. perceived challenges writing source-base writing based on the researcher’s observation of students’ selected source-based writing produced in their first and second semesters, more than 75% of the sources used in writing the paper were taken from various websites, whose credibility and reliability is questionable. the interview reveals that many students looked for the sources using one of the famous search engines, google. in addition, they did not give credit to the sources they cited. it can be said then that the level of plagiarism among students was very high. students seemed reluctant or most probably not understand how to use accredited books or journal articles as their source of literature. since the students had problems even in finding reliable sources to support their arguments in their writing, it is only understandable that they had more difficulty in developing their ideas and arguments based on the sources cited. in their study, alister, conttia, & hyeyoon (2016) reported that educators believed that the challenge for a student when writing for academic purposes was to effectively develop the information they got from the source and put it well into writing so as not to change the information they had obtained. they further reported that in developing ideas, student used claims. each claim made by students is supported by evidence. their study found five factors that may help students tackle the challenges in source-based writing: (1) students lack experience in writing activities, but they try to use writing strategies. the more often students write, their more likely their abilities will increase; (2) prior knowledge of students about the source of writing can help them in developing the information obtained, so that every claim they make in writing can be strengthened by more evidence; (3) differences will arise when understanding sources using their l1 or l2 languages; (4) student writing results are influenced by the type of task and the type of source they must use when writing; and (5) giving instructions or additional explanations from instructors can help them develop the ability to use resources in their writing. other challenges perceived by students in source-based writing include finding appropriate books related to their discussion topic. many of them were reluctant to go to the library and borrow books for their writing. many were even unwilling to buy relevant textbooks, not only for their writing, but also for the courses in general. it was also unfortunate that students only knew the university library, while there were other libraries, such as those owned and managed by the municipal and provincial governments. solutions to improve source-based writing skills the results of this study show urgency to seriously address the issue of cultural literacy among students. the quality of education in indonesia will be reflected in the cultural literacy of its people, in this case its students. cultural literacy is, once again, not only concerned with reading, but also in writing responsibly. drawing upon the results of this study, the following solutions are recommended: first is optimization of library’s functions. library is a center for study. in library, students can find various sources of all things. it is important for lecturers to promote learning activities which can encourage students to visit the library. in this case, lecturers’ role is required to encourage their students to do library research more frequently. from this research activity, students will get encouraged to visit the library to find some references. besides, lecturers are expected not to limit the learning sources only on one or two books. lecturers should encourage students to read as many source books as necessary to support their study or international journal of education vol. 11 no. 2, february-2019, pp. 152-157 ©2019 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: 10.17509/ije.v11i2.14757 156 writing topic. this is necessary for learning activity, so that students can find other sources and not only focus on one theory. the library meant here does not only refer to that in the university, but also included other libraries, i.e. regional library and state library which can be accessed online. second is the optimization of learning groups. learning group is a study center which provides a place for students to distribute creative ideas and put them into research. learning group can consist of students based on their interest in a certain research field. in this group, students get opportunity to learn how to develop their research reports into journal articles and students can also collaborate with lecturer to make research (sormunen, 2014). in the case of korean education study program under research, the study program has created a learning center called korean studies research center (ksrc). ksrc was established to be a place for researchers, either lecturers or students, to produce research that is publishable in accredited journals, both nationally and internationally. with the kscr, it is expected that students of the korean education study program under study develop their ideas in elaborating korean studies or other relevant fields so that their cultural literacy can be improved in answering the demand for the growing of publication in indonesia. conclusion source-based writing in the perspective of students is an activity that is fairly difficult to do. they often find it difficult to find sources that are relevant to the topic they want to write. they find it even more difficult to relate the sources to their own ideas and develop their argument based on the sources. these difficulties are rooted in students’ lack of knowledge of how to find the appropriate sources and lack of training on how to make source-based writing. hence, lecturers should be able to encourage students to write based on sources and to equip them with the necessary skills. the solutions offered include optimizing the library as the center of learning and group learning. the group learning can be with classmates or other students across program or batch facilitated by learning centers, such as the ksrc. these two strategies along with encouragement, support, and supervision from the lecturers can improve students’ source-based writing. acknowledgement the authors would like to express their appreciation and gratitude to the institute of research and community service of upi for the research funding and to students of the korean education study program for their support and cooperation in this research. references alister, c., conttia, l., & hyeyoon, c. 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(1989). critical thinking and communication: the use of reason in argument. new york: macmillan. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/s0898-5898(97)90001-2 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/s0898-5898(97)90001-2 http://www.pikiran-/ http://informationr.net/ir/17-4/paper535.htmlsormunen,e.,&lehtiö,l.(2011).authoringwikipediaarticlesasaninformationliteracyassignment–copy-pastingorexpressingnewunderstandinginone'sownwords?informationresearch,16(4).retrievedfromhttp://informationr.net/ir/164/paper503.html http://informationr.net/ir/17-4/paper535.htmlsormunen,e.,&lehtiö,l.(2011).authoringwikipediaarticlesasaninformationliteracyassignment–copy-pastingorexpressingnewunderstandinginone'sownwords?informationresearch,16(4).retrievedfromhttp://informationr.net/ir/164/paper503.html http://informationr.net/ir/17-4/paper535.htmlsormunen,e.,&lehtiö,l.(2011).authoringwikipediaarticlesasaninformationliteracyassignment–copy-pastingorexpressingnewunderstandinginone'sownwords?informationresearch,16(4).retrievedfromhttp://informationr.net/ir/164/paper503.html http://informationr.net/ir/17-4/paper535.htmlsormunen,e.,&lehtiö,l.(2011).authoringwikipediaarticlesasaninformationliteracyassignment–copy-pastingorexpressingnewunderstandinginone'sownwords?informationresearch,16(4).retrievedfromhttp://informationr.net/ir/164/paper503.html http://informationr.net/ir/17-4/paper535.htmlsormunen,e.,&lehtiö,l.(2011).authoringwikipediaarticlesasaninformationliteracyassignment–copy-pastingorexpressingnewunderstandinginone'sownwords?informationresearch,16(4).retrievedfromhttp://informationr.net/ir/164/paper503.html http://informationr.net/ir/17-4/paper535.htmlsormunen,e.,&lehtiö,l.(2011).authoringwikipediaarticlesasaninformationliteracyassignment–copy-pastingorexpressingnewunderstandinginone'sownwords?informationresearch,16(4).retrievedfromhttp://informationr.net/ir/164/paper503.html http://informationr.net/ir/17-4/paper535.htmlsormunen,e.,&lehtiö,l.(2011).authoringwikipediaarticlesasaninformationliteracyassignment–copy-pastingorexpressingnewunderstandinginone'sownwords?informationresearch,16(4).retrievedfromhttp://informationr.net/ir/164/paper503.html international journal of education vol. 10 no. 1, august 2017, pp. 82-87 ©2017 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v10i1.5042 82 glocalization of balinese language as outdoor signs in desa adat kuta bali i wayan mulyawan udayana university moelya0178@gmail.com first draft received: 1 february 2017 final proof received: 27 august 2017 abstract as a tourist destination, kuta has become an international village which forces the native to use more english than balinese in their working life. one of the most visible media of communication in kuta is in the form of out-door sign. out-door sign is considered to be the most effective mass media communication and the study is known as linguistic landscapes. the focus of this study is to investigate the glocalization of balinese language as a medium of communication in kuta especially, on out-door signs. the data of this study were collected by taking pictures of all out-door signs in kuta area, such as raya kuta st., kartika plaza st., pantai kuta st., and legian st.. the data were classified into two main types: commercial signs and non-commercial signs. the analysis started with identification of the language use and followed by a combination of language use in all signs. the finding shows that balinese language is only used in 43 signs out of 1132 signs. furthermore, from the 43 signs, there are only 22 using pure balinese, 19 signs using indonesian with balinese letters, and 2 signs using a combination of balinese and indonesian. the conclusion of the study is that the glocalization of balinese language is not yet achieved; in fact, balinese language is marginalized in bali as out-door signs. keywords: out-door signs; balinese; balinese; glocalization. to cite this paper (in apa style): mulyawan, i. w. (2017). glocalization of balinese language as outdoor signs in desa adat kuta bali. international journal of education, 10(1), 82-87. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v10i1.5042 introduction in this era of globalization, as one of tourist destinations, kuta faces an absolute threat of losing its local identity, especially its language in daily life use. giulianotti and robertson (2007) believed that globalization processes always endanger the local. therefore, kuta should try to make its local genius part of globalization and become glocalization. majidi (2013) stated that local languages can only be saved when they are in use. in order to survive in globalization era, the involvement of local language in international interactions and communications is required. the involvement of local language in international communication in a certain area is called glocalization of language. besides balinese language, many other local aspects can be glocalized in kuta, such as architectures, fashion, and ritual/ceremonies. some examples of this glocalization can be seen in figure 1 and figure 2. in terms of architecture, the government requires all buildings in bali to be not more than 15 meters in height, use balinese ornament on their front walls, and have balinese style fences. this condition already achieved its glocalization acknowledgement. balinese local costumes are used by all hospitality employees at working areas, especially during balinese holy day. the most sacred glocalization process is the adoption of balinese local temples or shrines in hotels and restaurants complete with the rituals or ceremonies. these adoptions, though, are merely recognitions of local belief by investors as they try to make a living in bali. mailto:moelya0178@gmail.com mulyawan, i. w. glocalization of balinese language as outdoor signs in desa adat kuta bali 83 fig. 1. glocalization of balinese architectural style. fig. 2. glocalization of balinese costume and ritual in hotel/restaurant glocalization process of balinese language is not to be found in daily conversation between local and foreigners, since balinese is not understood by foreigners. english is the primary language used in kuta, especially in hospitality business. this study attempted to analyse the glocalization process of balinese language in the global use of english in kuta. the glocalization focus is in the use of balinese language as a medium of out-door signs. language is an important instrument for human in social life. it is used as a means of communication, either in written or spoken language. nowadays, written language has unconsciously become a dynamic means of communication, not just between humans but also between human and the environment. in our every daily life, we encounter many signs in our environment. with or without our awareness we have active communications with those signs and they have served an essential part in our life. the signs may include traffic signs, street names, place names, billboards, and many more. saussure considered language as a communication system that involves concept and sound image. the sound image is a signifier and a concept is a signified. the bond between the signifier and the signified is arbitrary, there is nothing in either the word or the thing that makes the two go together, no natural, intrinsic or logical relation between a particular sound image and a concept (saussure, pp. 2-3) different from saussure, ogden & richards (1923) added a connecting element between signifier and signified. the connector is called thought or reference. they said that there is no direct link between symbol and referent (between language and the world)—the link is via thought or reference, the concept of our mind. the relationship between these three is known as semiotic triangle. in term of functions, out-door signs are divided into two types; they are non-commercial sign and commercial sign. mulyawan (2016) stated that noncommercial sign is used by a charitable organization and government that mainly aims to provide information or motivate people to react as a response to the information served without any profit orientation. on the other hand, commercial sign is used by producers to promote their product to gain profit. furthermore, mulyawan (2016) focused his analysis on the meaning and structure of printed noncommercial ads that were found in magazines. meanwhile, in the current study the analysis is on the use of balinese language as non-commercial ads which act as mass communication through outdoor signs, as part of the glocalization process. the occurrence of many out-door signs along the side ways of kuta area is considered to be an aspect of globalization. sign is considered to be the most effective way to communicate something to the public. the study of out-door signs or linguistic landscape (ll) is a study about written language through all signs in our environment which give a great influence on our daily activity. these signs include traffic signs, place names, commercial ads, etc. the study of out-door signs was introduced for the first time by landry and bourhis (1997, 25) as a international journal of education vol. 10 no. 1, august 2017, pp. 82-87 ©2017 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v10i1.5042 84 study of ll. they define all out door signs such as public road signs, advertising billboards, street names, places names, commercial shop signs, and public sign on government buildings as parts of mass language that forms the ll. akindele (2011, pp.1) discussed ll as a form of public communication in gabrone, botswana. he discovered that ll influences the forming and development of gabarone botswana language in the forms of common pattern of language usage, official language policies, prevalent language attitudes, and the long-term consequences of language contact, among others. similar to akindele, huebner (2006) found that the diversity of language uses in the urban area of bangkok reveals the extent of linguistic diversity in a large metropolitan area that offers evidence of a shift from chinese to english as the major language. these facts proved the significant influences of ll on the use of language in the society. furthermore, ben-rafael et al. (2006) studied the ll use in israel as a symbolic language construction in public area. they found that the language combination used in outdoor signs determines the community that lived in the area, such as hebrew-english signs prevail in jewish communities; arabic-hebrew in israeli-palestinian communities; arabic-english in east jerusalem. based on all previous studies above, mulyawan (2017) tried to find the use of outdoor signs in kuta, especially the occurrence of commercial outdoor signs. the result showed that commercial outdoor signs in kuta are a reflection of what is needed and vital as a result of global development as a tourist destination. the study also showed that all commercial outdoor signs are part of facilities to support the development and sustainability of kuta as an international tourist destination. in this study, the focus is entirely different from all previous studies. the present research is not to find about the occurrence of languages on outdoor signs in certain areas, to identify the involvement of balinese language as part of international communication in a medium of outdoor signs, or known as the process of glocalization of balinese language. method this is a qualitative research, which analyses the use of balinese language in out-door signs. the data of the study is all of out-door signs in desa adat kuta. the data were collected by taking photographs of any out-door signs found in kuta. the research areas were focused on raya kuta st., kartika plaza s.t, pantai kuta st., and legian st. desa adat kuta was chosen as the research location, since kuta is one of the most well-known tourist destinations in bali. as a tourist destination, kuta has changed from a traditional village into an international village. this condition makes kuta very suitable as research location in order to analyse the rules and existence of local language among foreign languages. all collected data were categorized into two main types; they are commercial signs and non-commercial signs. the categorization was made based on the function of each out door sign. all data of commercial signs were divided into 3 sub-members; they are service products, goods products and others. on the other hand, all data of non-commercial signs were divided into 3 sub-members, namely local signs, national signs and others. commercial service product is sign that gives information about services that are sold to the customer. they are hotel, money changer, bank, atm, massage, spa, beauty salon, car/motor bike rental, etc. commercial good product is sign that gives information about goods that are sold to the customer, such as bar, restaurant, art shop, convenience store, etc. lastly, commercial others refer to signs that are not for selling services or goods, such as leasing offer, opening soon sign, etc. non-commercial national is a sign that is made and placed by the government, such as traffic sign, trash bin, etc. non-commercial local refers to signs that are made by local people or government that use balinese language or balinese letters, such as place name, street names local building names, etc. noncommercial others are signs made by the local, but not using any balinese language or letters, such as local signage of no littering, etc. after all ll data were collected, the next step was data analysis. the analysis began with the use of language in all the signs, and then followed by analysing the use and importance of mass communication of balinese language as outdoor signs. findings as mentioned in the research method, the first step was collecting data of out-door signs photographed from all around kuta. it took one week to collect all data, because of the density of the data along the main streets of kuta. after all data were collected, the next step was sorting out the data based on their type. the study found 1132 out-door signs in kuta. there are 805 commercial signs or 71.11% and there are 327 non-commercial signs or 28,89%. the most frequently found sign is commercial of goods with a total of 451 signs (39.84%). it indicates that there are more signs selling products to the customer than those selling services. in contrast, the least frequent sign found is non-commercial local, with only 70 signs (6.18%). mulyawan, i. w. glocalization of balinese language as outdoor signs in desa adat kuta bali 85 table 1. data presentation item total percenta ge commercial signs 805 71,11% a. commercial service 345 30,48% b. commercial goods 451 39,84% c. commercial others 9 0,80% commercial product sign 327 28,89% a. non-commercial national b. non-commercial local c. non-commercial others 150 70 107 13,25% 6,18% 9,45% grand total 1132 100% from the 70 signs of non-commercial local found, unfortunately not all of them use balinese. these data can be divided into four groups; they are signs with balinese language and letters, combinations of balinese and indonesian, balinese letters with indonesian, and lastly indonesian. the use of pure balinese and anacaraka is found in 22 signs. these signs are signs of local buildings, especially bale banjar (local community services building), temples, and cemeteries. on the other hand, the use of a combination of balinese and indonesian is found in 2 signs, one of which is also combined with english. these signs are a sign of acknowledgement of local building. lastly, the combination of balinese letters (anacaraka) with indonesian is discovered in 19 signs. these signs are not balinese language signs, but indonesian with anacaraka letters. although they are not balinese, they still show balinese language features. these signs are mostly street names and some greetings signatures. more details of these findings are presented in table 2. table 2. data of non-commercial local language use total pure balinese language and letters 22 combination of balinese and indonesian 2 combination of balinese letters and indonesian indonesian 19 27 grand total 70 discussion kuta district is located in badung regency of bali, indonesia. it covers 17.52 km 2. in the northern part is north-kuta sub-district; in the middle is kuta subdistrict, and in the south is south-kuta sub-district. kuta has five villages, namely kuta, legian, seminyak, tuban, and kedonganan. the research location is in kuta village or known as desa adat kuta, which is located in kuta sub-district. figure 4. map of kuta balinese language is the mother tongue of balinese people. it is divided into 3 categories; they are basa bali alus singgih, alus madya and alus sor. besides that, balinese language has its own syllabic letters system, known as anacaraka (mulyawan, 2014). in written form, balinese may use latin word or balinese letters (anacaraka). figure 5. anacaraka (mulyawan, 2014) balinese language is expected to be taking parts in globalization that affects kuta as one of tourist destinations in bali. the glocalization process of balinese language is the process to introduce the use of balinese in active communication among balinese and tourists. ideally, balinese should be used as one means of communication for local people to the tourists, but none of the tourists. either domestic or foreigners, understand balinese. based on that fact and the need of transaction, balinese people start to learn english and indonesian as business language. english is widely used to communicate with foreign tourists and indonesian is used to communicate with domestic tourists. so, one of the best ways to have active communications using balinese is by means of outdoor signs. these signs will be read by all tourists whether they understand the signs or not. at least through these signs, balinese language is expected to be known by tourists. international journal of education vol. 10 no. 1, august 2017, pp. 82-87 ©2017 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v10i1.5042 86 the finding showed that, there are 1,132 outdoor signs found in kuta. there are 805 commercial signs, and there are 327 non-commercial signs. the most frequent sign found is commercial of goods with a total of 451 signs, and the least frequent sign found is non-commercial local, with only 70 signs. as it was stated by akindele (2011) and huebner (2006), outdoor signs are truly the representation of the environment. but, instead of determining the forming of language used, the outdoor signs in kuta are the representation of the need of a tourist destination. the language that is used is mostly english, which is considered a universal language and known by most foreign tourists and also understood by domestic tourist and the local. unfortunately, there are only few of the outdoor signs using balinese language. this is one the effects of globalization that happens in kuta. based on the distributions of the locations of the commercial signs, it was found that, the outdoor signs in kuta do not show any specific clusters. in fact, commercial signs are equally distributed throughout kuta areas. it means that almost wherever one goes throughout kuta, there will be hotels and restaurants. these conditions do not correspond to the research of ben-rafael et al. (2006), which considered that the language used on outdoor signs is the representation of the society in certain areas. besides english language, some of the signs use french, korean, chinese, russian, dutch and japanese. most of these languages are used in a combination or as a translation. for example, figure 6, the sign of an atm and phone booth (telecommunication services), uses more than one language. figure 6. atm and phone booth using a combination of several languages figure 7. signs of pure balinese as it is stated before, glocalization is a process of using local genius, in this case balinese language to be part of international communication in international community such as desa adat kuta. figure 7 shows some samples of pure balinese used as mass communication to identify local objects. although they are made for local people, these signs also have a glocalization function to introduce balinese language and letters to all tourists. figure 8. signs of balinese and indonesian combination figure 8 is a sample of a combination of balinese and indonesian with english translation. all tourists will read and understand what ‘candi bentar’ means. so, this sign is also considered as a process of balinese glocalization, in which it introduces the word ‘candi mulyawan, i. w. glocalization of balinese language as outdoor signs in desa adat kuta bali 87 bentar’ to the world as a big balinese entrance or gate. figure 9. signs of anacaraka and indonesian combination lastly, figure 9 is a sample of a combination of balinese letters with indonesian. in these signs, balinese letters are not the representation of balinese language. it was purely a direct translation from the indonesian. these signs are made as a reminder to all tourists that they are in bali, which is also considered as a process of balinese glocalization. conclusion glocalization is an important process to be done in order to save the local from globalization effect. desa adat kuta, as one of the famous tourist destinations in bali, also faces threats of globalization. in order to save local genius, such as language, art, and culture, from the effects of globalization, glocalization of local should be promoted. balinese language is expected to be glocalized in kuta in the forms of out-door signs. based on the analysis, it was found that only 22 signs use pure balinese, 2 signs a combination of balinese and indonesian, and 19 signs using balinese letters as a translation of indonesian. this finding shows that balinese has not yet achieved the glocalization in kuta, since it is not used as mass communication sign, but only by balinese people to promote their identity, such as temple names, cemetery, and bale banjar. balinese has not been used for commercial sign purposes, which could involve more interactions with the foreigners. from this study, it can be learnt that balinese language is marginalized by foreign languages in bali, especially in desa adat kuta, and it has not been fully glocalized. references akindele, d. o. 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(1923). the meaning of meaning. london: kagen paul. saussure, f. course in general linguistics. url: http://www.colorado.edu/english/engl2012kl ages/saussure.html database connection failed! database connection failed! 121 redesigning and professionalizing teacher education by piloting alternatives to traditional supervision: addressing the challenges of the indonesian context adrian rodgers 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 under new 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. key words: student teacher, preservice teacher, cooperating teacher, university supervisor international journal of education vol. 5, no. 2, may 2011, 121-133 the ohio state university, 1179 university drive, newark, ohio, usa email: rodgers.50@osu.edu 122 international journal of education, vol. 5, no. 2, may 2011 teaching and the context in which it occurs. this perspective might be especially helpful for understanding the indonesian context. teachers have defined sets of teaching practices that they can share with a student teacher, and they have considerable expertise as to the local way of doing things. however, this view suggests that teacher educators will want to give a lot of thought into how experienced teachers are selected to host student teachers and also what training teacher educators could provide to experienced teachers to better help them train student teachers. wang and odell also found that a critical constructivist perspective was important for considering how experienced teachers could work with beginning teachers. the critical constructivist perspective is based on two assumptions about learning. the first assumption is that the purpose of learning is to support people in changing their lives for the better even in challenging political or economic circumstances. the second assumption is that people learn through talking to and working with others. this view is also helpful for understanding the indonesian context. it suggests that the purpose for quality supervision is to support the development of powerful teachers who will have a significant impact on the lives of students and who support students in empowering themselves to make changes to their lives and pursue opportunities. the critical introduction: factors shaping quality supervision there are at least two sets of factors that will shape the future of supervision in indonesia. the first set of factors is perspectives on supervision that support the work and the second set of factors is the role of structure and culture in supervision. perspectives on supervision a few years ago wang and odell (2002) completed a review of the literature related to mentoring, or the support of beginning teachers who had already completed their teacher preparation courses. although this article is about student teachers and the wang and odell findings are related to mentoring, wang and odell’s work is still helpful in understanding supervision practices. they suggested that different perspectives inform mentoring and two of these, the concept of the situated apprentice and the concept of the critical constructivist, also apply to student teaching. in examining research on the situated apprentice, wang and odell found that the situated apprentice view is based on three components. the first is that as a situated apprentice, beginning teachers can move from book knowledge to skilled practice. the second is that experienced teachers who work with beginning teachers have strong teaching skills or can act as school-level experts with knowledge about how and what to teach. the third is that careful selection and training of experienced teachers who work with beginning teachers can focus on adrian rodgers, redesigning and professionalizing teacher education 123 constructivist perspective also reminds teacher educators that conversation and collaboration between experienced teachers and student teachers is essential if student teachers are to learn from those who are more experienced. structure and culture in addition to the perspectives offered by wang and odell, fullan (2007) has proposed the framework of structure and culture to understand reform. fullan writes that “changing working conditions, in common with all successful organizational change, involves two components, structure and culture” (p. 292). in this section the characteristics of structure and culture are described, and the complexity of shaping these characteristics to accomplish change is considered. it should be pointed out that the characteristics discussed below are not the only characteristics relevant to structure and culture, but they are useful in looking across many cases, as can be found in indonesia, so users should not consider them as a checklist but rather as an introductory tool to support thinking regarding change. fullan (2007) used two major sets of conditions for professional learning communities identified by kruse, louis, and bryk (1995) as a way of discussing reform efforts. “one is ‘structural—in particular, time to meet and talk, physical proximity, interdependent teaching roles, communication structures, and teacher empowerment and school autonomy” (p. 149). in other words, structural conditions include: use of time (such as time in the day to collaborate and time in the semester for planning between beginning and experienced teachers) arrangement of stakeholders in buildings (for example, the number of beginning teachers and experienced teachers within the school) and between buildings (for example, the distance between a school and the university) overlapping work (for example, experienced teachers working for both the university as supervisors and the school as experienced teachers). in summary, using this helpful list would suggest that indonesian teacher educators might consider how preservice and experienced teachers work together as a part of the larger reform effort in teacher education, and consider the importance of proximity in how teachers collaborate with the university. fullan (2007) goes on to say that the other condition is what kruse, louis, and bryk call ‘social and human resources’ (or what we refer to as culture) and includes openness to improvement, trust and respect, cognitive and skill base, supportive leadership, and socialization (of current and incoming staff). they claim, as i do, that the structural conditions are easier to address than the cultural ones.” (p. 149) in other words, cultural conditions include: interest in and willingness to explore change that might lead to improvement, 124 international journal of education, vol. 5, no. 2, may 2011 faith in the judgment of one another, knowledge about change, supervision, and quality teaching as well as the ability to put this knowledge into action, leaders interested in promoting and aiding the alternative supervision approach, and opportunities for current and incoming staff to buy into the reforms by learning about them and trying them out. this list of bullets considering cultural characteristics would suggest that indonesian teacher educators might consider identifying interested faculty and school personnel, ensuring the stakeholders involved are highly regarded both within the organization and by others outside the organization, activating opportunities to develop knowledge and skills, identifying and recruiting leaders into the initiative and sustaining this leadership over time, and creating renewal opportunities for current and incoming staffers. fullan (2007) adds one important caveat to this characterization of structure and culture which users will want to consider. when considering structure and culture, fullan elaborates on the relationship between the two: the former [structure] is important but also the easier of the two. thus, providing more time for teachers to work together during the day, as many jurisdictions are doing, is necessary but not sufficient. if the capacity (culture) is not evident in these situations, the new time will be squandered more times than not…. in sum, new policies that promulgate high standards of practice for all teachers invite the possibility of largescale reform. a corresponding set of policies is required to create many opportunities, in fact requirements, for people to examine together their day-to-day practice. it is through local problem solving with expanded horizons that new solutions can be identified and implemented. this represents a huge cultural change for schools, and as such it is going to require sophisticated new leadership. (pp. 292–293) in other words, features such as time, physical arrangements, and the way in which the work of stakeholders overlaps is important and will need to be considered. in addition to this, effort will also need to be invested in building willingness to change, providing opportunities for buy-in, building faith in one another’s knowledge and skill, and recruiting leaders who are invested in reform. discussion: the fundamental challenge posed by indonesian teacher education and possible ways to respond indonesian teacher educators interested in reforming the role supervision plays in the preparation of preservice teachers may find it helpful to consider the state of supervision in indonesia and to consider innovative practices used abroad. given the special challenges posed by the size of innovation in indonesian teacher education not everything that is done elsewhere will work in indonesia, but it may point the way for developing adrian rodgers, redesigning and professionalizing teacher education 125 and researching innovations specific to indonesia that may work on such a large scale. the challenge those interested in the challenge for indonesian teacher educators may find the rationale for the international conference on teacher education helpful. in the rationale announcing the conference which was held at the beginning of april, 2010 at universitas pendidikan indonesia the organizers summarized the “fierce debate” amongst indonesian teacher educators by suggesting that a “central concern” in teacher education was developing “conceptual coherence [that] might include entwining theory and practice… [and the] “structural aspect of coherence [that] might include organizing and aligning… student teacher placement… in an effort to construct an integrated experience.” in summary, the goal is …”the improvement of teacher quality [which] could be… continuous starting from student selection… until retirement.” (universitas pendidikan indonesia, 2010) therefore, teacher educators might conclude that determining how to balance the theory in the university classroom with the practice in the school classroom is challenging and difficult but important for reform. this might be considered as the need to re-culture the role of supervision in preparing teachers. additionally, teacher educators might conclude that re-structuring supervision so that it leads to improved teacher quality will also be a second important goal in reform. in summary, re-culturing and re-structuring supervision may help to professionalize teacher preparation to support the growth of a quality teaching force possible ways to respond in redesigning supervision rodgers and bainer jenkins (2010) worked with three sets of partners across the united states to examine how those partners had restructured the traditional way in which student teachers are supervised. a key to all three alternative supervision models was the careful articulation of stakeholders so that they could work in proximity to one another and they could build on the creativity within their team. since the three models relied on ongoing collaboration, faculty at all three institutions paid a lot of attention to how the work of the stakeholders could overlap. for example, faculty at brigham young university (byu) relied on partnership between student teachers and the cooperating teacher, faculty at the university of alabama (ua) relied on collaboration in a conference at the start of the school year, and faculty at the university of toledo (ut) relied on collaboration between faculty, teachers, and student teachers. in all of these collaborations, cooperating teachers had significant and increased roles. to support these new roles, some models had to devise new ways of talking with one another while other sites built on existing communication tools. 126 international journal of education, vol. 5, no. 2, may 2011 brigham young university (byu) model. key features of the byu student teacher supervision alternative include placing two student teachers who fully shared the placement in one classroom with one cooperating teacher. interestingly, not all potentially effective cooperating teachers wished to work with two student teachers and there are many ramifications of placing a second student teacher in one placement. these ramification include different roles for the student teachers and cooperating teacher and differences in relationships, time use, curriculum organization, and experiences. the goals of the byu model were to reduce the number of low quality student teacher placements and improve the quality of the remaining placements by increasing student teacher and cooperating teacher learning through increasing amounts of quality teacher interaction and reflection on teaching. university of alabama (ua) model. key features of the ua student teacher supervision alternative included special training for a cooperating teacher known as the clinical master teacher (cmt), alternative responsibilities for a university liason (ul), and a traditional role for the student teacher (st). the selection process for the cmt included the use of a portfolio, a record of successful teaching, a masters degree, previous supervision experience, and recommendations from other educators. the use of a mandatory cmt workshop, standardized evaluation forms for describing st performances, and a reappointment procedure and special training for the cmt also worked to assure quality. the goals of the ua alternative are to support the empowerment of teachers by providing support to one another as they assume responsibility for supervision, evaluation, and assessment of sts. an additional goal is to create opportunities for collaboration between faculty and teachers leading to strengthened sts and teacher education programs. the university of toledo (ut) model. key features of the ut student teacher supervision alternative include eliminating university supervisors who were not on a school staff, creating dyads of 1 student teacher and 1 cooperating teacher, and pairing two dyads together based on similar content and grade level (paired dyads). the roles and responsibilities of the us was given to the cooperating teacher in the other dyad and graduate-level course work was delivered at the school instead of at the university to teachers who were supervising since this was a new role for them. additionally, an undergraduate student teacher seminar was delivered at the school to sts to support the alternative supervision approach. faculty who taught both courses also collaborated to support quality supervision. the goals of this alternative were to foster supervision by individuals highly knowledgeable about local ways of doing things at the building level, create an opportunity to be ‘known by insiders’ in a district who adrian rodgers, redesigning and professionalizing teacher education 127 could be supportive in hiring, create an opportunity to take a university course at a school, and to support coherence in how course work is tied to field work. additional goals included creating new roles for cts, restructuring school time to provide opportunities to work outside the classroom, restructuring school time to provide opportunities to work with other teachers to discuss classroom teaching, restructuring school time to provide opportunities to work with other teachers to discuss college teaching, providing professional growth for experienced teachers regarding support of new teachers, and encouraging professional growth regarding how to support other teaachers. although these three alternatives have important goals, caution must be taken to avoid a situation where “tremendous efforts…of small numbers of committed educators…[which can produce] nationwide reform programs…[have only] pockets of success…. [the risk of] stalled effects [featuring]: 1. burnt-out teachers frustrated by the difficulty of, or lack of, progress; 2. problems in staying focused on, or clarifying, the vision in practice; 3. small groups of innovators being isolated from other educators in the school or school district – thus the failure to achieve whole school or whole district reform [or]; 4. inability to disseminate the innovation on a wider scale without losing quality control” (fullan et. al., 1998, p. 57) are a considerable risk. despite this emphasis on new roles for the cooperating teacher, all of the models relied on cooperating teachers working closely together with the goal of customizing the way in which cooperating teachers could work with the student teachers they supervised. a key component of these structures is careful collaboration amongst stakeholders. the byu model relies on careful collaboration within the classroom between two student teachers and a classroom teacher; the ua model relies on the clinical master teacher working carefully with peers; and the ut model relies on cooperating teachers, student teachers, and faculty working carefully with one another. these socialization processes are significant for the redesign process. current supervision practices reported by indonesian teacher educators although the alternatives pioneered at universities in the united states may be of interest to indonesian teacher educators, care must be taken in the adoption of alternatives because of the challenges posed by the large scale nature of indonesian reforms. in an effort to define some of the uniquely indonesian challenges that confront teacher educators, the international conference on teacher education held a group discussion where participants were free to pose problems and brainstorm solutions for further consideration (furqon and kadarohman, 2010). the challenges identified by indonesian teacher educators can be 128 international journal of education, vol. 5, no. 2, may 2011 divided into structural challenges to quality placement (see appendix 1) and cultural challenges to quality placement (see appendix 2). a significant structural challenge for placement felt by university administrators is the need to have faculty teach a large number of courses. since one faculty member can teach a large number of students in a class at one time, but can only serve a very limited number of student teachers placed in the field, it is not a surprise that administrators would make teaching on campus classes a priority. at the same time, school administrators are grateful to have student teachers in their building since they offer additional support so they do not feel they can ask the university to require adequate supervision of the student teacher. at the furqon and kadarohman (2010) session a number of indonesian teacher educators said that cooperating teachers often are so lowly paid that they leave student teachers in the classroom, leave the school, and go to other jobs to make money. obviously in these cases the cooperating teacher cannot offer support to the student teacher, and the professional growth that might occur between experienced and beginning teacher cannot occur. another complicating factor is the problem that many elementary school cooperating teachers have less teacher training than the student teachers they supervise. it may be the case that in these scenarios the cooperating teacher feels that the student teacher is more than qualified and therefore feels comfortable in leaving the classroom and school since they believe their class is in competent hands. at the same time, indonesian teacher educators attending the furqon and kadarohman (2010) session reported challenges for the university supervisor (us). many faculty reported that some university supervisors do not travel to the field site either because they are temporarily delayed by oncampus duties, overwhelmed by oncampus duties and decide to not visit the school, or begin travel to the school but are lengthily delayed by traffic, especially in rural or urban areas. in addition to the structural challenges, cultural challenges also complicate quality placement. both administrators and faculty value teaching and inquiry into different facets of teacher education but not always into the scholarship of teaching. therefore, since supervision is seem as something in addition to teaching it is little valued by university administrators and some faculty. for those teacher educators who do value supervision, they must of necessity place it at the bottom of a long list of priorities including teaching classes, writing grants, mentoring ph.d. students, administering programs, and writing and publishing. recommendations: borrowing from alternative supervision strategies to support indonesian solutions as a part of needed reforms because of the large scale of reform in indonesia some of the alternatives outlined above which are used in the united states may adrian rodgers, redesigning and professionalizing teacher education 129 not be suitable for the indonesian setting. therefore indonesian teacher educators will need to use their expertise to determine how innovations may be altered or developed for their settings. it is essential that indonesian teacher educators lead the redesign effort, and some suggestions for beginning the redesign phase are included in the last chapter of the rodgers and bainer jenkins (2010) book. while there are limitations as to what can be transferred, here are some starting points based on the alternative supervision models that might serve as starting points for discussion. re-structuring supervision from the ground up while the national government has considerable power to re-structure teacher preparation at the national level from the top down by lengthening elementary school teacher preparation, teacher preparation institutions have the power to re-structure preparation from the ground up. a starting point will be to impress on administrators that it is essential student teachers be supervised by a university representative. a way to do this might be to identify for administrators systems that could be implemented which will ensure some degree of university supervision even in the face of the challenges that indonesian teacher educators face. these systems might include: required documentation including observation of the student teacher by a university representative. use of doctoral students or masters students as university supervisors. selection of topics about supervision for doctoral dissertations and masters theses so that doctoral and masters students can use their supervision tasks to collect data for their studies. use of video, cell telephone, texting and facebook to support supervision by distance in rural or urban areas where travel times are prohibitive. the university of alabama (ua) redesign effort certainly made an extensive use of documentation and this seemed to help professionalize their innovation. both the ua and the university of toledo (ut) models shifted part or all of the responsibility of the us to a school-based person rather than a university –based person, but that school-based person still represented the university and was responsible for acting on behalf of the university. additionally, both the ua and ut models used masters or doctoral students as university supervisors (uss). in the ua model doctoral students worked with school partners and in the ut model the school-based uss both taught in the school and were enrolled at the university. lastly, none of the alternatives described here used technological solutions to supervision but technology in the indonesian setting is so widely used that clearly consideration of how it might be used to support supervision is essential. a second set of possibilities for future study include the careful recruitment and selection of schools and classrooms where teachers model high quality teaching. these possibilities might include: 130 international journal of education, vol. 5, no. 2, may 2011 placing more than one student teacher (st) in a room where they can be supervised by a talented cooperating teacher (ct) who models teaching techniques discussed in the university classroom. providing special course work for cts with the goal of high quality supervision. offering such course work at area schools so that faculty can meet many obligations for the university on one school visit. seeking input from sts to make sure that cts are meeting their responsibilities by being present in the classroom and providing useful feedback to sts. setting expectations for cts at the beginning of the year. the byu model certainly relied on placing two student teachers with one carefully selected cooperating teacher and this meant the university needed to find only half as many classrooms for sts. given that it is very challenging for university supervisors (uss) to meet their responsibilities in supervising sts in the field, placing two sts in the same classroom could cut travel time in half since one us could observe two sts at the same time. the ua and ut models also delivered university courses at the school rather than at the university which were then taken by both sts and cts. indeed, wang and odell found that delivering courses to cts helped them guide the student teacher more effectively. additionally, offering courses at schools will help uss with travel time since instead of returning to the university to teach a class, they can observe sts at school and then teach a course there after school. all of the alternative models also sought feedback from the student teacher which was provided anonymously and this might be helpful in the indonesian context. re-culturing supervision from the ground up although re-structuring supervision is important re-culturing supervision is also essential. it will be important to work with many stakeholders and have a lot of input since re-culturing is a process and not a product. some starting points include: supporting the development of scholarship in supervision so that it is seen as a scholarly line of inquiry by administrators and faculty. identifying faculty and graduate students who have and want to continue school-based inquiry. devising and teaching graduate level course work on supervision. devising and implementing field work for graduate level students who take graduate courses in supervision. identifying faculty around the world whose scholarship is in supervision and seeking them out as mentors, or emulating their work and career path. supporting the development of scholarship in supervision will occur only by piloting initiatives, posing research questions, gathering and analyzing data, and publishing adrian rodgers, redesigning and professionalizing teacher education 131 the results. in this way scholars will recognize and support teacher educators in devising systems that support quality supervision. faculty who have worked in and know schools will have this responsibility, so it will be important to identify both faculty and graduate students interested in and qualified to undertake this work. since heavy teaching loads conflict with supervision responsibilities, it might be helpful for faculty to devise and teach courses in supervision to masters and doctoral students at the university. as a part of such a graduate level course the masters and doctoral students might then have to practice what they learned by supervising sts in the field. in other words, university faculty could create a graduate level field experience about the undergraduate level field experience. by redesigning in this way, it may be that teaching university courses and supervising student teachers could compliment each other instead of competing with each other. as cairns (2010) illustrates, it is possible to have a highly productive scholarly career based in part on inquiry into supervision and it is important that in redesigning supervision indonesian teacher educators think about how to do this. seeking out faculty who have succeeded and building on their work may be an important first step. conclusion: tailoring resources to fit local needs when considering the transfer of alternatives attempted in one country to another there are of course many limitations that indonesian teacher educators will need to consider. the primary concern in a country like indonesia is the large scale of innovation. redesign efforts will need to be designed in a way so that they can work at considerable scale, work better, and all without significant cost (wilson and daviss, 1994). that said, it should be understood that in such a big country there does not have to be one national standard when it comes to supervision but rather local solutions to local problems. in devising local solutions it will be important to undertake local conceptual work since there are so many limitations on the work of experts from abroad who work in a very different context. to address local issues it will be important to create a design process so that supervision can be studied from both a research and a policy perspective. to begin such a design process it may be useful to make small tests of small changes to rapidly test innovation (morris and hiebert, 2009). to share findings and decide on the next iteration of work, identifying teacher educators willing to serve as contacts who can organize within and across institutions, and using national events such as the teacher educators’ conference, will be essential. the use of standing committees with representatives at different levels, including rectors, department chairs, faculty members, doctoral students, and school teachers who are cooperating teachers might provide useful input into the design process. consultation of technical experts from within indonesia and abroad can help 132 international journal of education, vol. 5, no. 2, may 2011 infuse ideas that support and move the agenda forward, so long as they do not derail the redesign process. by linking supervision to problems of practice and the re-design of teacher preparation at scale, there will be the ability to innovate using public / private partnerships. this will provide an opportunity to consider the role of public universities and the role of private universities as sites that can explore, grow, and cultivate the redesign process over time. hopefully each contributor will be able to leverage the work of the other with the goal of re-designing supervision so that it better supports the growth of preservice teachers and, in turn, supports the growth of student learning. this effort will be challenging, but properly done should also bring great rewards. references cairns, len. 2010. teacher education and the practicum. paper presented at the international conference on teacher education, april 6 – 8, in bandung, indonesia. fullan, michael, gary galluzzo, patricia morris, and nancy watson. the rise and stall of teacher education reform. washington, dc: american association of colleges for teacher education, 1998. fullan, michael. the new meaning of educational change. (4th ed.) new york: teachers college press, 2007. furqon, and asep kadarohman. 2010. group discussion: strengthening the management of clinical experience and supervision. session presented at the international conference on teacher education, april 6 – 8, in bandung, indonesia. kruse, sharon, karen seashore louis and anthony bryk. building professional learning in schools. madison, wi: center on organization and restructuring of schools, 1995. morris, anne and james hiebert. (2009). introduction: building knowledge bases and improving systems of practice. elementary school journal 109, 429–441. rodgers, adrian and deborah bainer jenkins. redesigning supervision: alternative models for student teaching and field experience. new york: teachers college, 2010. universitas pendidikan indonesia. rationale, international conference on teacher education: redesigning professional teacher education. http://www.upi.edu / agenda /id/58 wang, jian and sandra odell. (2002). mentored learning to teach according to standards based reform: a critical review. review of educational research, 72, 481– 546. wilson, kenneth g. and bennett daviss. redesigning education. new york: henry holt, 1994. appendix 1: structural challenges to quality placement university administrators need large numbers of courses taught adrian rodgers, redesigning and professionalizing teacher education 133 school administrators need students taught and more student teachers can help cooperating teachers leave student teachers in the classroom and go to other jobs university supervisors do not visit student teachers experienced elementary school cooperating teachers have less teacher training than beginning elementary school student teachers student teachers act as a substitute teacher rather than as a beginner learning to teach because there is no cooperating teacher present appendix 2: cultural challenges to quality placement administrators need courses taught and supervision is an ‘extra’ academics do not value the scholarship of student teaching some academics have ph.d.s in an academic discipline rather than in education and are therefore illprepared to collaborate or work in partnership in or with schools teacher educators have heavy teaching loads conflicting with supervision responsibilities doctoral students have limited or no interest in student teaching teacher educators place supervision at the bottom of a long list of priorities forensic linguistics analysis of virginia woolf’s suicide notes international journal of education vol. 9 no. 1, august 2016, pp. 52-57 © 2016 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v9i1.3718 52 forensic linguistics analysis of virginia woolf’s suicide notes ni luh nyoman seri malini venessa tan udayana university kmserimalini@yahoo.com first draft received: 30 april 2016 final proof received: 26 august 2016 abstract virginia woolf was a british writer. she committed suicide in 1941, leaving suicide notes for her sister and her husband. her suicide note was made public and was misquoted under the misleading headline in newspapers’ articles. this made people at that time misinterpret her suicide notes. this analysis aims to prove the genuineness of virginia woolf’s suicide notes, reveal the intention behind her suicide notes, and investigate the real motive of her suicide with linguistics inquiry and word count (liwc) program and semantic forensic analysis in forensic linguistics perspective. in conclusion, virginia woolf’s suicide notes are considered genuine and have positive emotional tone. the result of this analysis supports the statement of another psychologist that her suicide was triggered by bipolar disorder. keywords: forensic linguistics, suicide note, genuineness to cite this paper (in apa style): malini, n. l. m. s. & tan, v. (2016). forensic linguistics analysis of virginia woolf’s suicide notes. international journal of education, 9(1), 52-57. doi: dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v9i1.3718 introduction the phrase forensic linguistics first appeared in 1968 when jan svartvik, a professor of linguistics, used it in an analysis of statements by timothy john evans. olsson (2004) stated that “forensic linguistics is the application of linguistics knowledge to a particular social setting, namely the legal forum (from which the word forensic is derived.) in its broadest sense we may say that forensic linguistics is the interface between language, crime and law.” the range of topics within forensic linguistics is diverse. one of forensic linguistics areas is the language of legal text that includes the study of text types and form of analysis. olsson (2008, p. 1) stated that “literally any text or item of spoken language has the potential of being a forensic text. if a text is somehow implicated in a legal or criminal context then it is a forensic text.” these kinds of texts can be a book, thesis, phone text messages, ransom demands, or other threat messages, or even a suicide note. olsson (2004) said, “suicide notes generally have sentences alluding to the act of killing oneself, or the method of suicide that was undertaken” (p. 1). olsson (2008, p. 2) also explained, “forensic linguists have also been asked to analyse text purporting to be suicide notes. even though the police in such cases may not suspect foul play, it could be important to attempt to establish whether the questioned text can throw any light on the cause or circumstances of death.” the application of linguistics in the analysis of suicide note plays an important role in investigating the genuineness and the intention of the suicide note. the scope of this study is the semantic forensic analysis, whether it is from the lexical choice, the phrase, or the sentences’ meaning by virginia woolf in her suicide notes to her husband and her sister. adeline virginia woolf (25 january 1882 – 28 march 1941) was a british writer and one of the foremost modernists of the twentieth century. her famous works include the novels mrs dalloway (1925), to the lighthouse (1927), orlando (1928), and the book-length essay a room of one’s own (1929). woolf was known as an unstable woman. her breakdowns and depressive periods were caused by the deaths of her mother, her half-sister, and father, and also influenced by the sexual abuse by her halfbrothers. virginia woolf married the writer leonard woolf on 10 august 1912. throughout her life, woolf suffered from periodic mood-swing and nervousness. on 28 march 1941, she went for a walk, leaving notes behind, and was reported missing. her body was found on 18 april 1941 in the river ouse near her home. she was believed to have committed suicide by filling her overcoat’s pockets with stones and drowned herself. her suicide note to her husband was published and misquoted in several newspapers, which made the local coroner suggested that the onset of world war ii and the destruction of her houses that had been bombed twice during the blitz as the main reasons of her suicide. but later on, some psychologists suggested that her suicide might be triggered by bipolar disorder. the aims of this study are to prove the genuineness of virginia woolf’s suicide notes, reveal the intention behind her suicide notes, and investigate the real motive of her suicide. literature review literature review is one of the important aspects in this study in order to know how far similar studies have developed. the first literature review for this analysis is an article, “analysis of the o.j. simpson suicide letter”, taken from lsi laboratory for scientific interrogation. inc. the suicide letter was analyzed with the scan (scientific content analysis) technique. the first study elaborated on the language analysis only, but lacked in psychological side. http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v9i1.3718 http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v9i1.3718 malini, n. l. m. s. & tan, v. forensic linguistics analysis of virginia woolf’s suicide notes 53 the second article was written by aydin and dilbilim (2015) entitled “an analysis of adjectives used in suicide notes in terms of positivity/negativity/neutrality.” in the study, ten suicide notes were selected and the adjectives were classified as positive, negative, and neutral adjectives to find out whether there are mostly positive, negative, or neutral adjectives. the third article was written by sudjana and fitri (2013), entitled “kurt cobain’s suicide note case: forensic linguistics profiling analysis”. in the study, kurt cobain’s note was analyzed in terms of genuineness, and an authorship profiling of kurt cobain was made. in the third study, the analysis was mostly focused on the lexical choice which contains negative meanings that are related to cobain’s psychology. this analysis of virginia woolf’s suicide notes will take the third study as its model by using forensic semantics theory, but with different data and more elaboration by adding linguistic inquiry and word count analysis. forensic semantics is an analysis of an expert opinion on the meaning of words, phrases, clauses, paragraphs, etc., in legal, personal, and commercial communication (e.g., contracts, wills, cases of copyright infringement or plagiarism), whether in paper, oral, or electronic form. mcmenamin (2002, p. 92) stated, “primary areas of research in forensic semantics are the interpretation of words, phrases, sentences, texts, ambiguity in text and laws, and interpretation of meaning in spoken discourse.” in this case, forensics semantics can be used to interpret the suicide notes so they can be understood easily. it can be said that semantic is the element of linguistics that is really helpful in investigating crimes. for instance: the sexual abuse case described in felton rosulek (2008) as cited in coulthard (2010, p. 221), the prosecution includes many explicit details about the abuse: (1) he did not sexually abuse this young girl. (2) she testified a few days ago that my client sexually touched her. by using sexual abuse and sexual touch even in their denials, the defense silences the potentially more upsetting or off-putting details of the alleged crime. in another sexual abuse case, the prosecution describes the victim’s sexual actions as well as his violent behaviors that occurred in the same time frame in detail. the defense, on the other hand, ignores the sexual abuse in their argument, referring to it only as incidents. in this paper, the analysis of the text involving the semantic point of view. (sudjana and fitri. 2013) linguistic inquiry and word count (liwc) is a new standard in text analysis, the liwc program includes the main text analysis module along with a group of built-in dictionaries which are created in the java programming language and run identically on computers. the program uses languages dimension from the words we use in everyday language to reveal our thoughts, feelings, personality, and motivations. pennebaker (1999, p. ) stated, “focusing on specific words or classes of words, the program has been used in numerous research studies, including studies of emotional, cognitive, structural, and process components of individuals’ verbal and written language.” based on the sample words in liwc 2015, it will be easier to determine the genuineness and the emotional tone of virginia woolf’s suicide notes. method the data in this analysis were taken from the journey not the arrival matters: an autobiography of the years 1939 to 1969 by leonard woolf and virginia woolf’s handwritten suicide note: a painful and poignant farewell (1941) by josh jones. the autobiography contains woolf’s suicide notes. the steps taken for this analysis were as follows. firstly, to determine the genuineness and the emotional tone of the suicide notes, the texts were put into the linguistic inquiry and word count (liwc) program. the program read the given texts and counted the percentage of words that reflect different emotions, thinking styles, and social concern. next, the suicide notes were read several times; the clauses, phrases, and sentences were highlighted and analyzed with semantic forensic theory. lastly, the results from the liwc analysis and semantic analysis were linked to olsson’s suicide note theory and other psychological theories. findings and discussion traditional liwc dimensions reflect the percentage of total words within the text. i-words is the percentage of first person pronoun used (i, me, my). social words indicate the percentage of words that show social relation and activity. positive emotions stand for the percentage of words that show positive emotions. negative emotions show the percentage of words that show negative emotions. cognitive processes show the percentage of words that show cognitive processes and cognitive complexity. the summary variables are research-based composites that have been converted to 100-point scales, where 0 = very low along the dimension and 100 = very high. analytic refers to analytical or formal thinking. clout taps writing that is authoritative, confident, and exhibits leadership. authenticity refers to writing that is personal and honest. emotional tone is scored higher when considered more positive than negative. the tables below show virginia woolf’s suicide notes percentages and compares it with the average for personal writing. table 1. liwc analysis result of suicide note 1 (written for her sister, vanessa bell) traditional liwc dimension your data average for personal writing summary variables i words (i, me, my) 9.2 8.70 analytic 1.0 44.88 social words 13.5 8.69 clout 42.7 37.02 positive emotions 4.3 2.57 authenticity 96.5 76.01 negative emotions 1.8 2.12 emotional tone 71.8 38.60 cognitive processes 20.2 12.52 malini, n. l. m. s. & tan, v. forensic linguistics analysis of virginia woolf’s suicide notes 54 the total word count is 167 words. i-words (i, me, my) percentage is 9.2, higher than the average, which is 8.70. the percentage of social words, as can be seen by the words used in “if i could i would tell you what you and the children have meant to me,” is 13.5, higher than the average, which is 8.69. cognitive processes can be seen by the words used in “i think you know”, and the use of exclusive words (e.g., but), is in the percentage of 20.2, higher than the average, which is 12.52. the text shows high positive emotions based on the verbs, nouns, and adjectives used, like “happy”, “loved” and “good” with a percentage of 4.3, higher than the average (2.57). on the other hand, the small percentage of negative emotions (1.8) can be seen in the words “mad” and “horror”, which is lower than the average (2.12). analytic can be seen in the words used in “i think you know.” the percentage is 1.0, lower than the average (44.88). clout taps writing percentage is 42.7, higher than the average (37.02). authenticity percentage is 96.5, higher than the average (76.01). emotional tone is scored higher when considered more positive than negative; in this table the percentage is 71.8. this shows that the positive emotions are more dominant than negative emotions. the emotional percentage also shows higher percentage than the average (38.60). both clout taps writing and authenticity can be observed in the frequency of the first personal pronoun and word count. table 2. liwc analysis result of suicide note 2 (written for her husband, leonard woolf) traditional liwc dimension your data average for personal writing summary variables i words (i, me, my) 9.8 8.70 analytic 3.1 44.88 social words 11.9 8.69 clout 32.1 37.02 positive emotions 5.2 2.57 authenticity 79.3 76.01 negative emotions 2.1 2.12 emotional tone 81.7 38.60 cognitive processes 20.7 12.52 the total word count is 193 words. i-words (i, me, my) percentage is 9.8, higher than the average (8.70). social words (e.g., people, everybody) percentage is 11.9, higher than the average, which is 8.69. cognitive processes can be seen in the words used in “i don’t think two people…,” where the percentage is 20.7, higher than the average (12.52). the text shows high positive emotions based on the verbs, nouns, and adjectives used, like “good”, “happiness” and “greatest” with a percentage of 5.2, higher than the average (2.57). on the other hand, negative emotions can be seen in the words “mad” and “terrible”, the percentage is 2.1, lower than the average (2.12). analytic refers to analytical or formal thinking, e.g.: “everybody knows it.” with a percentage of 3.1, which is lower than the average (44.88). clout taps writing percentage is 32.1, lower than the average (37.02). authenticity percentage is 79.3, higher than the average (76.01). emotional tone is scored higher when considered more positive than negative; in this table the percentage is 81.7. this shows that the positive emotions are more dominant than negative emotions. the emotional percentage also shows higher percentage than the average, which is 38.60. both clout taps writing and authenticity can be seen in the frequency of the first personal pronoun and word count. based on newman, pennebaker, berry, and richard’s investigation on lying behavior (2003), when the participants were lying, they used more negative emotions and fewer first-person singulars. they also used higher total word count. cognitive processes can be seen by the use of exclusive words. exclusive words are used at higher rates among people telling the truth (newman et al., 2003). based on these percentages, virginia woolf’s suicide notes are considered genuine and have a positive emotional tone. the structure of virginia woolf’s suicide notes: date the writer did not write the date, only the day of the letter. suicide note 1: sunday suicide note 2: tuesday greetings the writer used salutation “dearest” in both notes. suicide note 1 is addressed to her sister, vanessa bell, and suicide note 2 is addressed to her husband, leonard woolf. content 1. the first sentence suicide note 1: you can’t think how i loved your letter. suicide note 2: i feel certain that i am going mad again. in suicide note 1, the writer started the letter with a friendly pleasantry, which shows that the writer and the addressee exchanged letters regularly. on the other hand, in suicide note 2, the writer started the notes with a statement. the first sentence in a statement is a very important one. it is usually the point where the writer decides to start the statement, including the reason for writing the text or for the events that follow. 2. the body in personal letter, the writer usually writes about what events that have occurred and what emotions they feel. suicide note 1: but i feel i have gone too far this time to come back again. i am certain now that i am going mad again. it is just as it was the first time, i am always hearing voices, and i shan’t get over it now. we have been perfectly happy until these last few weeks, when this horror began. suicide note 2: i feel we can’t go through another of those terrible times. and i shan’t recover this time. i begin to hear voices, and i can’t concentrate. so i am doing what seems the best thing to do. you have given me the greatest possible happiness. you have been in every way all that anyone could be. i don’t think two people could have been happier ’till this terrible disease came. i can’t fight any longer. i know that i am spoiling your life, that without me you could malini, n. l. m. s. & tan, v. forensic linguistics analysis of virginia woolf’s suicide notes 55 work. and you will i know. you see i can’t even write this properly. i can’t read. in both suicide notes, the writer wrote about what was happening at that time. the writer seems aware that she was suffering from a mental illness, and it was not the first time she was in that state. both notes also show the writer’s hopeless state and depression which was caused by her worsened mental condition. in suicide note 2, the writer shows guilt, she blamed herself and considered herself a burden, believing that her husband could work and live better without her. olsson (2008, p. 149) noted that “suicide note is brief, concise, and highly propositional yet there seems to be a degree of evasiveness”; in this case, her notes contain “evasiveness” because the writer did not explicitly state her intention to take her own life to the person she loved. the sentence, “i can’t fight any longer.” shows her exhaustion and hopelessness. the strongest sentence is “so i am doing what seems the best thing to do.” she was clear she had made the best decision (to end her life). 3. purpose in personal letters, people also write about what plans they have for the future or the purpose of writing a letter. suicide note 1: all i want to say is that leonard has been so astonishingly good, every day, always; i can’t imagine that anyone could have done more for me than he has. we have been perfectly happy until these last few weeks, when this horror began. will you assure him of this? i feel he has so much to do that he will go on, better without me, and you will help him. suicide note 2: what i want to say is i owe all the happiness of my life to you. you have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. i want to say that — everybody knows it. if anybody could have saved me it would have been you. everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. i can’t go on spoiling your life any longer. in suicide note 1, the writer wrote “will you assure him of this? i feel he has so much to do that he will go on, better without me, and you will help him.” this part of the note is very interesting, because it is more of a request to her sister to help leonard after her suicide. “i feel he has so much to do that he will go on, better without me…” can be seen as a signal of hope for her husband after her death. meanwhile, in suicide note 2 we can see that most of her note shows her gratitude and other positive feelings towards her husband. note the way the writer seems to stress the word “everybody knows it” as if she was asking people to accept or agree with her next statement which is, “if anybody could have saved me it would have been you.” this sentence shows the trust she had in her husband. but then, the writer used a repetition “i can’t go spoiling your life any longer” which shows her guilt was bigger than all those positive feelings. 4. final suicide note 1: i can hardly think clearly anymore. if i could i would tell you what you and the children have meant to me. i think you know. i have fought against it, but i can’t any longer. suicide note 2: i don’t think two people could have been happier than we have been. in suicide note 1, “i have fought against it,” shows her struggle, yet then met with the strong rebuttal of “but i can’t any longer.” this is the strong indicator that she was serious about ending her life. in suicide note 2, note the repetition of “i don’t think two people could have been happier than we have been.” it seems the writer wanted to emphasize it, showing that she was genuinely happy. closings suicide note 1: the writer ended her note with her name, virginia. suicide note 2: the writer ended her note with her initial, v. forensic semantics analysis in this part of analysis, some interesting parts of virginia woolf’s suicide notes were analyzed to investigate the real motives behind her suicide. 1. “we have been perfectly happy until these last few weeks, when this horror began.” based on this sentence, we know that the writer was genuinely happy and her condition only worsened in the last few weeks before her death. it is said that before she died, she had been unproductive because her condition worsened until she was unable to work. but her last work, between the acts, was written in 1941, the year of her death. it proves that she still could write even during the blitz, because the blitz occurred from 7 september 1940 to 21 may 1941. her suicide could not have been prompted by the blitz. 2. the writer seems aware that she was suffering from mental disorder based on the sentence, “i begin to hear voices, and i can’t concentrate.” it was common to hear the cries for help caused by explosions during the blitz bombing. but, the sentence does not seem to show her fear. instead, it seems the said voices had disturbed her concentration. those “voices” might be auditory hallucinations, which are one of the symptoms of psychosis that is related to bipolar type 1 disorder. 3. “you see i can’t even write this properly. i can’t read.” virginia woolf did not suffer from blindness, so it cannot be a literal meaning. bipolar disorder is often accompanied by changes in cognitive processes and abilities. best (1999, p. 15) explained that “cognition is the set of all mental abilities and processes related to memory, association, concept information, pattern recognition, language.” if we link this to the sentence, it is most likely that virginia woolf was unproductive and unable to continue her work because of the changes in her cognitive processes and abilities accompanied by her bipolar disorder. we think this is the main reason of her depression. 4. “you have given me the greatest possible happiness.” “i don’t think two people could have been happier than we have been.” these sentences make us curious; if she was happy, malini, n. l. m. s. & tan, v. forensic linguistics analysis of virginia woolf’s suicide notes 56 then why would she take her own life? most of the sentences in this note contain positive feelings, yet she still committed suicide. if we link this to the previous assumption that she was suffering from bipolar disorder, it answers the reason behind her mood-swing. anderson et al. (2012, n.p.) stated, “bipolar disorder is a mental disorder characterized by periods of elevated mood and periods of depression.” in this case, “…the greatest possible happiness” is related to periods of elevated mood, and “i feel we can’t go through another of those terrible times” is related to the period of depression. conclusion from the liwc analysis, it can be concluded that virginia woolf’s suicide notes are genuine. the emotions expressed in the notes towards her family were positive, especially towards her husband. in both notes, virginia woolf shows her gratitude for her husband, leonard. even though the writer did not explicitly state her intention to commit suicide to the people she loved, her sentences show she was serious about ending her life. based on the analysis, the writer shows guilt and depression. she appears to blame herself for her suicidal act. in the note which virginia woolf left for her sister, we can see her request for her sister to help her husband after her death along with the hope that her husband could do better without her. it seems the intention of virginia woolf’s notes were not to explain why she was going to kill herself, but to comfort her beloved family after her death. based on the forensic semantics analysis, virginia woolf’s suicidal act was caused by her depression. but, it was not because of the onset of world war ii and the effects of the blitz like the local coroner suggested at that time. the result of this analysis supports the statement of other psychologists that her depression was caused by bipolar disorder which was also accompanied by changes in her cognitive processes and abilities that made her unable to work, and thus, leading on to her suicide. references analysis of the o.j. simpson suicide letter by lsi laboratory for scientific interrogation.inc. retrieved from http://www.isiscan.com/o_j__simpson_suicide_l etter_.htm anderson, i.m, haddad, p.m., & scott, j. (2012). bipolar disorder. b.m.j. (clinical research ed.) aydin, l. & dilbilim, a. (2015). an analysis of adjectives used in suicide notes in terms of positivity/negativity/neutrality. retrieved from http://www.academia.edu?12268498?an_analys is_of_adjectives_used_in_suicide_notes_in_ter ms_of_positivity_negativity_neutrality best, j. b. (1999). cognitive psychology, 5 th ed. belmont, ca: brooks/cole. colon, b. (2002). bipolar disorder: the case of virginia woolf. retrieved from http://www.psychohelp.at/h/college/abnormal/bip olar_disorder.shtml coulthard, m. & johnson, a. (2007). an introduction to forensic linguistics: language in evidence. new york: routledge. jones, j. (2013). virginia woolf’s handwritten suicide note: a painful and poignant farewell (1941). retrieved from http://www.openculture.com/2013/08/virginiawoolfs-handwritten-suicide-note.html mcmenamin, g.r. (2004). forensic linguistics: advances in forensic stylistics. new york: cambridge university press. newman, m. l., pennebaker, j. w., berry, d. s., & richards, j. m. (2003). lying words: predicting deception from linguistic styles. personality and social psychology bulletin, 29, 665–675. olsson, j. (2004). forensic linguistics: an introduction to language, crime, and the law. london-new york: continuum. olsson, j. (2008). forensic linguistics, 2 nd edition. london: continuum. pennebaker, j.w. (1999). linguistic inquiry and word count. new jersey: lawrence erlbaum associates. sudjana, e. t.s. & fitri, n. (2013). kurt cobain’s suicide note case: forensic linguistics profiling analysis. international journal of criminology and sociological theory, 6(4), 217-227. retrieved from http://ijcst.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/ijcst/articl e/viewfile/37943/34410 woolf, l. (2008). the journey not the arrival matters: an autobiography of the years 1939 to 1969 by leonard woolf. new york and london: harcourt brace jovanovich. appendix suicide note 1 (written for her sister, vanessa bell) “sunday dearest, you can’t think how i loved your letter. but i feel i have gone too far this time to come back again. i am certain now that i am going mad again. it is just as it was the first time, i am always hearing voices, and i shan’t get over it now. all i want to say is that leonard has been so astonishingly good, every day, always; i can’t imagine that anyone could have done more for me than he has. we have been perfectly happy until these last few weeks, when this horror began. will you assure him of this? i feel he has so much to do that he will go on, better without me, and you will help him. i can hardly think clearly anymore. if i could i would tell you what you and the children have meant to me. i think you know. i have fought against it, but i can’t any longer. virginia.” suicide note 2 (written for her husband, leonard woolf) “tuesday dearest, i feel certain that i am going mad again. i feel we can’t go through another of those terrible times. and i shan’t recover this time. i begin to hear voices, and i can’t concentrate. so i am doing what seems the best thing to do. you have given me the greatest possible happiness. you have been in every way all that anyone could be. i don’t think two people could have been happier ’till this terrible disease came. i can’t fight any longer. i know that i am spoiling your life, that without me you could work. and you will i know. you see i can’t even write this properly. i can’t read. what i want to say is i owe all malini, n. l. m. s. & tan, v. forensic linguistics analysis of virginia woolf’s suicide notes 57 the happiness of my life to you. you have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. i want to say that — everybody knows it. if anybody could have saved me it would have been you. everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. i can’t go on spoiling your life any longer. i don’t think two people could have been happier than we have been. v.” 160 one of the important aims of the national philosophy of education in malaysia is to develop the potential of individuals in a wholistic manner and shape a harmonious individual with the ability to maintain balance in the intellectual, spiritual, emotional and physical aspects, based on belief in and obedience to god (ministry of education malaysia; 1990 ).the cabinet committee report on the education policy 1979 has outlined that the objective of education in malaysia is to nurture individuals to inculcate discipline in themselves, the family, society, educational institutions and the country. this would ensure the generation of malaysians who have completed schooling can become citizens who can make a meaningful contribution to national harmony. after almost three decades it is evident this objective is still relevant in solving current challenges especially in an environment of globalization fraught with tribulations. hussein ahmad (2001) has commented on the worrying increase in social and moral problems in several nations especially aberrant behavior, wildness and various forms of violence including bullying, vandalism, conflicts between students, stealing, murder, and other crimes reported as increasing from time to time. in fact, a study by unesco on 10 countries namely jordan, colombia, ethiopia, israel, slovakia, elsalvador, guatemala, nicaragua, peru dan malaysia found that incidences of student violence in these countries have risen from year to year. challenges in shaping student character in the future: implications for curriculum planning in malaysia habib mat som abstract mankind is facing a crisis and needs to find a way to overcome several moral, political and economic challenges. this article discusses the challenges faced in building the character of students to enable them to withstand the challenges of moral degradation, globalization and rapid change. this article also considers the reasons for developing moral character in students, the present challenges they face and the preparations curriculum planners need to give added value to the present curriculum. an alternative curriculum designed to shape students’ moral character is suggested to enable them to face future challenges. key words: challenges, curriculum planning, political and economic challenges universiti pendidikan sultan idris international journal of education vol. 5, no. 2, may 2011, 160-174 habib mat som, challenges in shaping student character in the future 161 life in this century and in the future will continue being challenged by the concept of the global village and borderless world which have and will continue having a serious impact on student life. these phenomena will make the school curriculum pressed for change such as in curriculum revision, giving value-added, launching innovations in the teaching and learning process, improving the content and implementation strategy and so on, to ensure the school curriculum remains relevant with changing needs over time. this is because the curriculum has a major impact in shaping the individual mind, influencing thinking and behavior and will serve as the individual’s most important element for facing life’s challenges. why do students need to develop resilience? the human being has been created by allah s.w.t. with natural tendencies for positive actions and good behavior. however at times environmental factors such as family, school environment and society expose the individual to negative behavior, thought and deeds. abdul raof dalip (1993) has outlined several characteristics that are required in shaping a harmonious individual, which are self-worth, humanity, kindness, spiritual and physical resilience, self-control, dynamism, sincerity, honesty and responsibility. jafni hassan (1987) has proposed several justifications for building selfreliance in students, namely: • nurturing a stable and calm emotional state: this will give the individual the ability to face global challenges amidst an environment fraught with competitiveness and declining human values. emotional stability will help prevent actions such as revenge, destructiveness, vandalism, and acts of retaliation. this will also free the individual from feelings of anxiety, fear, stress, hatred, jealousy, envy, dishonesty, being overly judgemental and other negative emotions. • ability to improve quality of life: this is an important characteristic to ensure the individual continues to achieve success in his undertakings.this trait will drive a person to be highly motivated, creative, innovative, with a craving for knowledge and always upgrading his skills. • ability to attain moral and behavioral maturity. this characteristic provides the individual with a protective barrier to face challenging off-school influences. a student needs a set of behavioral benchmarks that could guide him in facing the increasingly complex and competitive global scenario. • an individual with the required moral maturity will be able to adapt to the “ecosystem” within his environment, will manifest values such as honesty, tolerance, cooperativeness, will strive for truth, and is in tune with social issues. these traits, when cohesively harmonized, will help create strong social interaction in the community. 162 international journal of education, vol. 5, no. 2, may 2011 kamal hassan (1988) had described several benefits that can be derived by an individual who possesses traits such as sincerity, compassion and piety, as follows: • the individual will maintain positive values such as helpfulness, compassion, kindness, love for peace and fellow human beings and respect for parents. • he will strive to avoid negative activities that are shunned by religion and society. • he will strive to be an“occupant of the earth ” who propagates virtue and kindness and avoids evil or unkind actions. • he will cooperate with all members of the community, transcending religion, beliefs and values. the reality of global life today: a reflection current global challenges have been attributed to tremendous and widespread changes that can be seen within society. hussien ahmad (2001) in his summary on the global environmental phenomena states that this “wave” has penetrated throughout the whole planet, in every country big or small, the huge continent or the smallest island, even the hills and valleys, all of them are affected by the wave and currents of globalization. a notable aspect of the challenge is the change in lifestyle especially of the young. general observation has shown signs that basic cultural and family values are on the decline. this is evident in the rise of incidences of promiscuity, punk groups, skin head, vandalism,ullying, rape, sexual abuse, and others. the lifestyle changes have also impacted the schools, evident with the increase in incidence of absence from school, bullying, immoral activities among students, retaliation against teachers, drug abuse, vandalism, threats and even murder. school authorities and teachers are facing difficulties in addressing the situation. a twin feature of globalization is advancement in communication and information technology.this is visible with widespread use of the internet. the advent of the internet has led to wide dissemination of entertainment-based information to the young and to humanity at large. according to a unesco report, while the internet provides an educational gateway and access to knowledgebased information, it also comes with major inherent risks. the risks faced by children and teenagers surface in the form of lewd, and pornographic sensational information that defy moral and religious values. what is even more worrying is that children and young teenage students are currently being nurtured within a digital information environment that is growing. pornographic materials are accessible and easily disseminated among friends via home computers, at cyber cafes, and through mobile phones. violent acts, sexual activities, lewd acts and other negative elements have now seeped into students’ minds like a “tsunami” that arrives any time it pleases. the implication is that habib mat som, challenges in shaping student character in the future 163 students would imitate the styles and trends that they observe through these materials, thereby compromising their own moral and spiritual values. what about the school curriculum?: preparation for the student students, as guardians of future generations need to be equipped with the right values such as honesty, sincerity, kindness and strong religious principles. sound moral values need to be inculcated to ensure they can face the challenges of life with kindness and sincerity, coupled with strong leadership qualities. to this end, moulding the students’ personality and behavioral patterns should be given priority with emphasis on enhancing three major elements as follows: a) spiritual faculty: the young students should be equipped with adequate understanding of elements of faith and doctrine of god’s oneness. this knowledge must be available from the moment they enter preschool up to tertiary level. activities should include prayers, invocation of god’s names (zikir), and the recitation of the quran in an organized and continuous manner, whether individually or in a group. b) mental faculty: the mental makeup of the student should be free from elements of “contamination of the mind as it goes against the normal human tendency to do good. we need to fill the mind with reading materials that help bring progress including success stories and other beneficial branches of knowledge. at the same time, there should be continuous guidance and monitoring to ensure students avoid materials that are harmful including pornography, and films depicting violence and sexually explicit scenes. c) physical faculty: a strong and healthy physique is required for a student to face the vagaries of a learning environment. students must be encouraged to adopt a well-balanced nutrition regime and a healthy lifestyle that would help them maintain an acceptable level of physical fitness. hamid fahmy zarkasy (1990) quotes islamic thinker al ghazali who states that parents and teachers must consider both theoretical and practical aspects of character building when introducing elements of piety, devotion and faith in the hearts of children. he says children should be exposed to normal practices that help in their mental and behavioral development. he also suggests the following: • not to expose children to poetry and reading materials that stress on relationships and passion? • distance them from interacting with children who misbehave. interacting with children who behave well will help mould the child to be more humane,warm and caring • guide the children to possess qualities such as courage, honesty and truthfulness • discourage children from boasting and bragging about their family 164 international journal of education, vol. 5, no. 2, may 2011 wealth and materialism to their peers. children must be coached and guided by teachers on the importance of humility, mutual respect and good manners. • explain to the children the need to observe good habits such as according respect to everyone especially towards parents, teachers, relatives, neighbors, their peers and those older than them. al ghazali has outlined three approaches in moulding and shaping an outstanding character and personality. they are the formative approach, the preventive approach and the curative approach. a) the formative approach: this approach involves bringing into practice normal acceptable habits and mannerisms. for example, when an individual wants to inculcate values such as patience, generosity and kindness in himself, he would need to manifest these values at home, at the school, in public, when he is alone and everywhere else. b) the preventive approach: this approach entails distancing the individual from external and internal factors that can harm and damage his morals and character. in this context , it is good to introduce “needs education”, where one coaches and trains the individual on managing his many needs. the individual is given guidance on developing his intuitive skills and will be trained in skills to address harmful environmental influences. c) the curative approach: under this approach, the “moral ailments” and destructive behavior that are ingrained in the individual need to be “treated” with the following methods: • identifying the immoral and destructive habits • understanding the curative methods • understanding the individual approach in addressing each “moral ailment” • interacting with groups that are knowledgeable, such as teachers, religious leaders, psychologists, counselors, for their input, guidance and advice. this includes parents, good friends and community leaders. in the context of the multi-racial population in malaysia, one of the key characteristics that should be held by students is readiness for tolerance and mutual understanding among the racial groups. this will be a sensitive issue and unnecessary situations could arise if the post-merdeka generation is not well informed of the reality of living together among the racial groups. what is even more worrying is that this current generation is not aware of the historical implications, political reality and the “social contract” endorsed by past leaders. therefore as a precautionary measure there is a need to fine-tune the attitude and mentality of the present generation to mould them into loyal and responsible citizens. this is in line with the national education philosophy. habib mat som, challenges in shaping student character in the future 165 hussein ahmad (1993), in this context has outlined the scope for the proposed curriculum to shape citizens who hold to the principles of tolerance and mutual trust. the three basic values are: a) to be trusting of others, b). readiness to interact with everyone, regardless of race, religion and origin and c).readiness to cooperate to achieve common objectives that would benefit all parties. other aspects of the curriculum that need attention include ensuring the five tenets of the rukunegara are fully understood in a more meaningful way. first: belief in god: when all members of the community, although professing different faiths, believe in the existence of god, several universal values can be shared within a peaceful and tolerant environment. these values comprise patience, kindness, cleanliness, good manners, tolerance, avoiding taking of lives, slander and back-biting, among others. second: loyalty to king and country: this tenet states that all citizens should possess feelings of love and loyalty to king and country. this value can be developed via activities that promote unity among the communities at school level, through text book content, and through cocurricular activities that would involve participation from all groups. third: the rule of law: the laws of the land serve as protection for the people, to ensure there is no injustice and to protect the rights of the community. schools should be made aware of the sensitivity of certain issues such as the position of islam in the constitution, the position of the malay sultans, and the position of the malay language. the school curriculum should create awareness of these issues in the learning and teaching processes so that students are aware of the realities of living within the multi-racial environment. they should view the situation with maturity to prevent racial tension and continuing restlessness with each other. fourth: upholding of the constitution the constitution that forms the basis of nation-building needs to be fully understood by all students. students are required to understand the reality of living within the context of a parliamentary democracy. this is to ensure they are not easily influenced by irresponsible elements. fifth: good behavior and morality: the school curriculum should give more emphasis on shaping the behavior of the individual citizen. this is important to ensure his life is more meaningful. noble values that were propagated since independence need to be given greater focus among the younger generation, to ensure they turn out to be organized, kind, and well-mannered individuals, in their speech, thought and actions. new imperatives in the curriculum after fifty years of independence and after spending some time “experimenting” with the school curriculum, there has been some measure of success. however to value add and to ensure the curriculum remains relevant amidst increasing global challenges, this article proposes 166 international journal of education, vol. 5, no. 2, may 2011 some improvement measures that include the spiritual approach as an alternative to the implementation of the current curriculum. the article suggests the emphasis on noble attributes (mahmudah) as a guide to shaping individuals who are devout and who possess strong moral values and virtues. the attributes are as follows: • trustworthiness: emphasis should be given to this value in the wake of issues such as “corruption” and “irresponsible” attitude of the people towards public amenities and in carrying out their responsibilities. this attribute is based on the verse in the quran that states, “o you who believe! betray not allah and his messenger, nor betray knowingly your amanat (things entrusted to you, and all the duties which allah has ordained for you). (quran: 8: 27). in this context, teachers need to exhibit elements of honesty and trustworthiness in the teaching and learning processes. apart from that these elements should also be found in the curriculum support materials such as text books, cd rom and other interactive learning resources. • affection: this attribute is a manifestation of a heart that is full of kindness, gentleness and empathy. every individual wants to be loved and to receive affection. with feelings of affection comes the culture of mutual cooperation that transcends racial, religious, political and color barriers. a hadith from the prophet muhammad (blessings and peace be upon him) that is an advice for society states, “whoever is given the characteristic of caring, he has been given part of the good of this world and the hereafter. and whoever is prevented from showing care and loving kindness, has been prevented from receiving part of the good of this world and the next” (hadith narrated by ahmad). • truthfulness: in life, everyone is encouraged to be truthful. in the context of daily living, one is expected to speak the truth, as well as be truthful in thought and actions. this attribute will motivate an individual to keep his promises, not be pretentious nor a hypocrite. allah s.w.t. has warned the people in this verse: verily, the hyprocrites will be in the lowest depths (grade) of the fire; no helper will you find for them. (quran: 4:145) • courage: this attribute has a direct bearing to strength of character and faith in god. an individual strong in faith will not hesitate to speak the truth, aligned with a malay proverb “berani kerana benar” which means “courage comes with truth”. values of courage should be ingrained in students in a serious manner so that they can counter all negativity courageously.this includes addressing unhealthy situations and complex issues that go against the norm such as promiscuity and homosexuality, among others. habib mat som, challenges in shaping student character in the future 167 • modesty: focus must be given to the concept of modesty among students as this attribute is closely linked to honesty. modesty is a yardstick for the level of courtesy, moral values, politeness and strength of personality. an individual possessing sense of modesty would restrain from committing any sinful and immoral deed, out of sheer modesty towards god and the society around him. the prophet muhammad s.a.w. has reminded us, “verily, when allah s.w.t. intends to destroy a human being, the first attribute taken is the feeling of modesty. when the person no longer feels shame, he or she will become full of hate. when he or she becomes hateful. trustworthiness will be taken away. he or she will become a wrongdoer who often breaks the rules. then, when he or she becomes a wrongdoer, feelings of love and care will be taken away and when such feelings disappear from the heart the person will become a caller of names and wisher of evil who often resorts to violence” (narrated by ibn majah). framework of the alternative curriculum: a recommendation apart from the five attributes stated, enhancement of the curriculum would also require aspects and attributes of godliness as a basis for shaping and moulding a student’s character and personality. this is a manifestation of the muslim’s prayer to god: o lord, give us in this life happiness, and in the hereafter happiness, and save us from the fire. (quran: 2:201). in this context, this writer proposes that a study on a revelation-based curriculum framework be conducted for analysis and implementation. the proposed framework will be based on the following components: a. curriculum philosophy b.curriculum objectives c.curriculum contents d.curriculum implementation e. evaluation curriculum philosophy the statement of philosophy is an important component in a curriculum framework. the philosophy helps planners to think in a critical and logical way. it assists curriculum planners in analyzing concepts and studies how it can help realize the needs of the proposed curriculum. in the context of this article, god’s revelation has been selected as the highest resource based on his might and power, as creator and possessor of the universe. allah states, “alif laam miiim. these are the verses of al-quran full of wisdom, as a guide and a mercy for the doers of good. those who are constant in prayer and pay the zakat and are certain of the hereafter. they receive guidance from their lord and they are the victorious. (quran, 31:1-5). the implications of the philosophy are as follows: • guidance towards doing good and intelligent actions needs reference to a higher and definitive source, 168 international journal of education, vol. 5, no. 2, may 2011 that cannot be questioned or refuted. god almighty has outlined guidelines that will enable human beings to be guided on the true path. this implies that the revelations have authority over the shaping and moulding of a well-balanced individual based on good moral values, truthfulness and universal attributes of kindness. • human tendencies to do good should be included in the context of moral and behavioral education at schools. commitment towards daily prayers should be given focus, to mould students into faithful and highly disciplined individuals. an individual who is meticulous about his prayers is concerned about his relationship with god. he will put in place attributes of virtue and humility and will avoid being arrogant and boastful. understanding the concept of brotherhood, and showing concern for the less privileged are the educational elements that can be applied to mould future generations. the social elements will shape them into individuals who are not selfish and greedy, and are always ready to contribute towards the poor, through donations and charity work. • each individual is responsible for his own actions. god’s revelation has provided a spiritual mechanism that keeps in check the feelings, emotions, thinking and behavior of the individual, to shape him into a strong-willed and resilient personality. belief in the hereafter is a form of internal check and control for the individual to be cautious and wary of god’s retribution for sinful acts and god’s pleasure for kind deeds. in another context, belief in the hereafter will render the individual to be aware and careful over all his actions, and not to stray from the right path. • belief in the hereafter will mould the individual into a dynamic character, and to do good deeds, expecting allah’s pleasure in return. indirectly, people who always have the hereafter in their thoughts will give their best in their efforts and actions and will always strive to serve others and the community to the best of their ability. curriculum objectives the luqman chapter in the quran, which serves as a framework for the curriculum, is the basis for student character-building. the chapter outlines the prerequisites for a wellbalanced personality. as such learning and teaching activities should meet the following objectives: • to shape students into individuals with courtesy and good moral standing • to imbue values such as faith and devotion, benefiting society • to mould a muslim personality for others to emulate • to shape a muslim who is responsile for himself, his parents, family, society and god • to create a generation of indivduals who propagate doing good habib mat som, challenges in shaping student character in the future 169 in meeting the above objectives, this paper proposes approaches or five core elements or pillars in building the personality of integrity: first pillar : love for parents second pillar : love towards doing good deeds third pilllar : integrity fourth pillar : courtesy fifth pillar : human/social skills curriculum contents first pillar: love for parents (surah 31, verse 14) components of knowledge : a) “and we have enjoined on man (to be dutiful and good) to his parents. his mother bore him in weakness and hardship upon weakness and hardship, and his weaning is in two years. so give thanks to me and to your parents, unto me is the final destination”.(31; 14) b).” but if they (both) strive with you to make you join in worship with me others that of which you have no knowledge, then obey them not, but behave with them in the world kindly, and follow the path of him who turns to me in repentance and in obedience. then to me will be your return, and i shall tell you what you used to do”.(31; 15) in this regard, the student is offered an explanation on the stages of life, on gestation, and how a newborn depends on the mother after birth. the mother, after delivery, is weak and lacks sleep and rest. this verse reminds the individual of the need to count his blessings and be aware of the creator and the rigors the mother had to undergo to bring him into the world, in feeding and caring for him. the child should count his blessings by expressing thanks to the almighty, and the best way to repay the mother’s contributions is by doing good. he should also be grateful by showering kindness, and affection to his parents and others. he should regularly offer doa and prayers for both parents, be they alive or dead. second pillar: love towards doing good deeds (verse 16) component of knowledge: “o my son! the evil if it be even to the weight of a grain of mustered seed, then it be in a rock or in the heavens or in the earth, allah will bring it forth. undoubtedly allah is knower of every subtlety”,(31; 16) . in this regard, the student is given background on the greatness of allah the most powerful over everything. the knowledge of allah encompasses all and is so fine that anything done by anyone on earth does not escape his awareness and evaluation. this gives justification that all human beings need to strive continuously to give service and do good in whatever form however small. a good deed even if a minor one will be valued in the estimation of allah the almighty because allah the almighty will not let a good deed go in vain as long as a human being is on earth. the background on the greatness and the subtlety of allah the almighty should also be the motivator for mankind that good deeds can be done in any place, time and moment. whether the deed is 170 international journal of education, vol. 5, no. 2, may 2011 open or hidden, allah the almighty is aware of it and will take it into account in the hereafter. third pillar: integrity (verse 17) “‘o my son! establish prayer and enjoin doing of good and forbid evil and be patient over whatever befall upon you.” (31: 17) explanation: this message from allah the most high encourages humans to concentrate on four basic aspects in a life of integrity, namely: • to do solat as a duty of the servant of allah. • be njoining fellow humans to do good and useful acts that lead to more goodness. • enjoin mankind in a proactive way to prevent doing any act that is useless and brings hardship, destruction and pain. • advising human beings to always be patient and persevere whenever faced with trials and tribulations and challenges. a) the main emphasis in life is prayer (solat) as the proof of loyalty and integrity towards allah the most high as the creator. those who guard their prayers are regarded as having high self discipline and can be trusted to bear other duties that are heavier and more challenging. the rationale is that if a duty given by allah that is not evaluated by human beings is carried out with discipline, it is highly probable that other tasks evaluated and monitored by humans and systems will be carried out well. b) the culture of enjoining good should be emphasized so that people can socialize in a conducive and pleasant environment. when people compete in doing good, they will collaborate in doing good works and show care and concern for others. the caring society, helping each other, being tolerant and eager to give help to those in need will color the life of mankind. to advise mankind to avoid large scale destruction is a praiseworthy act on the part of the student. wrongdoing and lewd and evil acts such as stealing, vandalism of school and public property, polluting the environment, illegal racing,drug addiction, loafing, and fornication can be avoided if each student and member of society functions by preventing these negative acts from happening. c) patience is an important recipe to be inculcated in every student and every individual facing the challenges of life. cultivaing patience can prevent one from taking rash actions if an unexpected challenge befalls. the challenging world of schooling where students are forced to undergo all types of tests and examinations and problems of peer relationships and family finances, and the pressure of life outside school with its propensity for hedonism, are among the elements that “challenge” the resistance to temptation. if a person loses his or habib mat som, challenges in shaping student character in the future 171 her rationality and discrimination, he will take unwarranted actions such as running away from home, loafing, killing, vandalism of school and public property, cursing and vilifying, fornicating with fellow students and so on. perseverance is needed as an element of spirituality that can motivate a person towards success in learning and achievement in life, because patience enables one to continue without despair and be ever creative in resolving problems faced. fourth pillar: courtesy (verse 18) “and turn not your face while talking to any one and strut not on the earth. undoubtedly allah loves not any arrogant boaster”. (31; 18). explanation: pride and arrogance and considering oneself great compared to others is a spiritual ailment that must be eradicated in a spiritual manner. the source of spiritual guidance, the holy quran reminds mankind to avoid arrogance, to avoid degrading others and to avoid demeaning others just because they are of a different social status. the pride shown by strutting about on earth should be avoided. pride that becomes a second nature can be lessened by spiritual training in the form of prevention. the words “and do not turn your face” are symbolic of arrogance that has been deeply ingrained in a person’s soul. such arrogance is usually accompanied by proud actions. so students should be imbued with good behavior to prevent them from developing such character. fifth pillar:human skills (verse 19) “and walk moderately and lower your voice when speaking. undoubtedly in all voices, the most hideous voice is of an ass”. (31; 19) to ensure that human skills are developed in the school environment, a few guidelines are offered based on revelation, that is, enjoining us to: a) be moderate; b) not to act rashly but with deliberation; c) be polite when speaking; d) avoid using rude words. the combination of four acts are important elements to create students of outstanding behavior and communication skills. the communication skills developed will benefit the student well beyond school life. curriculum implementation all five foundations of character development can be implemented during the teaching and learning process in the classroom. the implementation would need: • teacher’s creativity • moral and ethical values in the teacher • teacher knowledge of strategy of teaching moral/ethical values • use of various types of appropriate media • extra-curricular activities • parental support • support from school administration among various teaching strategies to be used are: a) story telling; b) practical work; c) group work; d) use of electronic and print media or real 172 international journal of education, vol. 5, no. 2, may 2011 objects; e) visits; f) individual projects; g) simulations; h) debates and forums. besides that, other methods and approaches can be used in effective management of the classroom. effective classroom management enables teachers to emphasize good acts and behaviors so that they reflect the student. among the recommended acts are: a) greeting the student; b) affecting the emotional and spiritual facultuies of the student; c) acting as a role model; d) showing care and concern ; e) culture of advice; f) readiness to help; and g) wisdom. the teacher as guide and mentor and role model of good behavior and morality must practice several good acts that can be emulated by the student. the teacher’s exemplary behavior can contribute to a conducive learning environment. among others, the teacher would need to: • not act according to impulse and emotion when faced with problems related to wrongdoing or indiscipline in the student. • be forbearing (halim) towards the student especially when dealing with them in class or outside the classroom. • be caring towards the student. good teachers are those who love the students as they love their own children or family members. this can be shown by the way the teacher communicates, the attention given when listening and in solving the students’ problems and awareness of their condition and concerns. • avoid from doing violence and making threats. teachers who approach students through harshness will only alienate them. this will erect a psychological barrier that blocks the giving of advice, good example and admonition. • cultivate the characteristic of patience in facing the students and in the teaching process. the teacher must use all his or her knowledge and experience to control anger in whatever situation faced. • the teacher must be generous with smiles, give good advice, teaching, admonition, be generous with money, give thoughtful comments and help in resolving the students’ problems. evaluation the component of evaluation is very important in assessing the effectiveness of any new curriculum framework. through evaluation, teachers can identify the weaknesses in implementing the curriculum and at the same time ascertain its effectiveness in changing student behavior. evaluation can be done during any part of the process, be it in setting objectives, choosing content, or implementing strategy. each process can be evaluated using an appropriate instrument designed for the purpose. even so, the main basis of evaluation criteria is that it has to show coordination between what the teacher intends by the objective and what behavior changes are seen in the habib mat som, challenges in shaping student character in the future 173 student. if there exists deviation from the performance and objective, the curriculum goal must be refined such that it is more “practical”. several value added characteristics have to be thought out, such as implementation aspect, student’s ability, school situation, student background, teacher readiness, as well as community and parental support. as a consolidation activity after evaluation, several steps can be taken, among them are: • encouraging students to read the holy quran to soften their hearts and at the same time fill their souls with the call of revelation. this regular discipline will be a perpetual attempt to safeguard the student from wrongdoing. • guide the student to evaluate themselves from a spiritual perspective. for example, to ask why mankind was created, appreciating our parents’ good deeds and sacrifices. we must make the students aware of the true purpose in life of allah’s creation. belief in the reward and punishment of the hereafter should be implanted in the heart and soul of the student. • ensure that the student improves his or her behavior over time by keeping a record of performance and progress to be evaluated by the parents and teacher. a checklist of activities that should be done by a muslim can be given with the set time for prayers, ziarah, study, revision, tuition, mosque attendance, watching television/ movies, recreation and so on. scores and grades can be given for every action completed. conclusion students are an asset to the nation and community in the future. the younger generation are entrusted with the responsibility and hope to continue and strengthen the building of a more progressive civilization with high competitiveness and capability to meet challenges of fulfilling vision 2020. nation building should be directed towards perfecting human kind to realize the fitrah or innate propensity towards doing good and inborn impulse to live the religious life. we need to persevere even though this vision is not easy to achieve because fierce competition will happen in realizing the objectives given that a dangerous world awaits beyond the school fence. even so, if each one of us accepts that building a spiritual character is a religious duty, the undertaking will be more directed because the goal is to create well-being of the ummah. as we face the currents of globalization, the task of shaping the student’s character is one not given to compromise if we love a peaceful country where each citizen plays his or her role with integrity and responsibility. references abd. ghafar md. din (2003). prinsip dan amalan pengajaran. kuala lumpur:utusan. 174 international journal of education, vol. 5, no. 2, may 2011 abdul rauf dalip (1993). peranan pendidikan sepadu membentuk ummah dan masyarakat: teras kbsm. in adnan kamis (ed.). kurikulum bersepadu sekolah menengah: pandangan dan maklum balas. bangi: universiti kebangsaan malaysia. hamid fahmy zarkasyi (1990). pemikiran al-ghazali tentang pendidikan. kuala lumpur: dewan bahasa dan pustaka. hussein ahmad (1993). pendidikan dan masyarakat: antara dasar, reformasi dan wawasan. kuala lumpur: dewan bahasa dan pustaka hussein ahmad (2001). mandat unesco dan cabaran globalisasi. kuala lumpur: utusan. jafni hassan (1987). pendidikan moral dalam kurikulum bersepadu: ke arah memupuk seorang insan harmonis. jurnal pendidikan, fakulti pendidikan universiti kebangaan malaysia, 12, 83-91 kementeria pendidikan malaysia (1988). falsafah pendidikan negara. kuala lumpur: pusat perkembangan kurikulum kementerian pelajaran malaysia. laporan jawatankuasa kabinet mengkaji pelaksanaan dasar pelajaraan (1979). kementerian pelajaran malaysia. kuala lumpur: dewan bahasa dan pustaka. mohd. kamal hassan (1988). pendidikan dan pembangunan: satu perspektif bersepadu. kuala lumpur: nurin. muhammad yunus (1973). tafsir quran. jakarta: p.t. hidakarya agung. 134 home-school link a key factor to explain an impressive performance of chinese-australian high school students ranbir singh malik abstract this study focused on congruency of culture of home and school of children from chineseaustralian families as a major factor in their academic success. qualitative approach was used for uncovering three key things, namely, 1) conditions and interactions at home; 2) children’s behavior and interaction in classroom; 3) children’ activities after school hours and at weekends. the approach considered to be appropriate to capture what teachers, parents and children say and do as a product of how they interpret the complexity of their world. data collected by using ethnographic techniques, mainly participant observation and conversational interviews. there were seven children from five chinese-australian families residing in perth metropolitan area involved in the study. the families immigrated from malaysia, singapore, and hong kong. analysis indicated that chinese-australian parents pushed their children far beyond their limits in their drive for academic excellence. they made their home suitable for studying and ensured continuity between homes and school. impulse control, deferment of short term gratification, effort/hard work, and scholastic achievement were chinese cultural values implanted by the parents. chineseaustralian children met most of their teachers’ demands. consequently, their interactions with their teachers were in more positive ways. key words: chinese-australian families, impressive performance students the characteristics developed at home do not support school learning, the resultant discontinuity experienced by children, when they go to school, will affect scholastic performance. ogbu (1987, 1991) calls it the discontinuity hypothesis. this hypothesis is based on the premise that an environment fosters the development of the particular knowledge, skills, learning styles and values that have adaptive value for individuals living in it. when people move from one setting (e.g. home) to another (e.g. school) their success in meeting the demands of the new environment will depend on the extent to which they can apply the competencies introduction the home-school interface is perhaps the most widely recognised aspect of the family-community relationship. the congruence between home and school can have a large and significant effect on child development, particularly on academic success. a home environment that promotes learning can operate so that a child with only average inborn ability does well in school. a very good school can operate also to compensate a child for a poor home environment (levine and havinghurst, 1989, p. 115). home predisposes the child to an acceptance or rejection of the school values. when international journal of education vol. 5, no. 2, may 2011, 134-149 edith cowan university, australia ranbir singh malik, home-school link a key factor to explain an impressive performance 135 in the original environment. when this reasoning is applied to children making the transition from home to school, all children experience some problems with discontinuity when they go to school. it is argued that where parent-child interactions resemble more closely the types of interaction that one would expect to find in a school, children tend to perform well (laosa, 1982). impressive academic performance of students from southeast asian families, settled in the western world, is a remarkable phenomenon which has captured the imagination of social scientists. cross-cultural studies conducted in the united kingdom (gibson, 1988), the netherlands (pieke, 1991), the united states (flynn, 1991; lee, 1960; lynn, 1982; schneider et al., 1994; stevenson and stigler, 1991); and australia (bullivant, 1987; chan, 1988; malik, 1988, 2000) have reported consistent evidence about the impressive performance of children from southeast asia. of particular interest is the outstanding performance of children from what ho (1994) calls ‘cofucian heritage cultures’ (china, japan, and korea). in the united states the policy makers have referred to the asian-americans as ‘model minority’ (wong, 1980) or ‘quiet americans’ and their children as ‘whiz kids’ (brand, 1987). however, social scientists have divergent views about this high performance of southeast asian children. lynn (1982) attributes the superior performance of southeast asian children to their innate ability. stevenson and stigler (1991, p. 50), on the other hand, regard such assertion “without merit”. instead, they argue that the superior performance of children from the confucian heritage cultures is due to their everyday experiences at home and school. they spend most of their after-school time on academic activities. some studies in the united states (flynn, 1991), hong kong (briggs, 1991, 1994) and australia (malik, 2000) have examined the ways young children divide their time between home and school. osajima (1988) attributes asian success to sheer effort. the proponents of this argument say that children from the southeast asian migrant families spend most of their after-school time on academic activities. in dedicating themselves to assisting the child to negotiate the challenge of formal schooling chinese parents share the burden of failure as well as the uplift of success with their children. the assistance of the parents paves the way to channel effort on subsequent tasks, provides the instrumental and moral guidance to ensure that children’s efforts culminate in success rather than aimless floundering (osajima, 1988). because the chinese families believe their children’s primary responsibility is to apply themselves seriously to their schoolwork, they arrange their home life so that it is conducive to academic activities. culturally transmitted values, beliefs and behaviours play an important role in high academic performance of the chinese children. while the parents believe that it is their responsibility to instil in their children 136 international journal of education, vol. 5, no. 2, may 2011 the value of education and to protect their children’s time by discouraging part-time jobs, children on their part identify their self esteem with academic success and failure reflect on the family and close social group, which puts correspondingly greater pressure on students to succeed (briggs, 1994, p.17). students from the confucian heritage cultures never lose contact with their teachers and school mates. their school activities merge into home activities quite naturally. by contrast, argues briggs (1994), westerners do not alter their child rearing practices according to child’s age. they begin to pull back, satisfied that they have provided a favourable foundation that will enable their children to take advantage of what the school will offer (stevenson and stigler, 1986). anglo-european children spend less time in academic activities (malik, 2000). the purpose of this paper is to argue that chineseaustralian parents motivate their children to take school seriously and the teachers interact with these children positively. this study in this paper the author argues that the congruency of the culture of home and school of chinese-australian children from four families residing in perth metropolitan area is a major factor in their academic success. chineseaustralian families, with their ancestry from mainland china immigrated from malaysia, singapore and hong kong. the pseudonym of the school is paramount senior high school and the suburb where paramount senior high school is located is referred to as southside. pseudonyms are used for children and their parents. methodology my choice of qualitative methodology was influenced by three key questions: what goes on in the homes of children from chineseaustralian families? how do chineseaustralian children behave and interact in classroom? what activities are chinese-australian children engaged in during after-school hours and at weekends? qualitative methodology was deemed appropriate to capture what teachers, parents and children say and do as a product of how they interpret the complexity of their world. by using ethnographic techniques, mainly participant observation and conversational interviews, i could enter into the home life of teenagers to understand their view of success at school. interviews were conducted fortnightly and later monthly for three years (1993-1996). children and their parents were interviewed in their homes. at school, children were observed in my own classes, in the classes of the other teachers, in the playgrounds and on the way to home after school hours. teachers who taught these children were interviewed formally and informally. between 1993 and 1996 i had paid 253 visits to these families and spent 556 hours interviewing parents and their children. with some parents i played a few games ranbir singh malik, home-school link a key factor to explain an impressive performance 137 table-1 descriptive information about the sample cheong goh kok kwang target children victor year 9 pearl year 7 chi chen year 9 tein year 11 lee kuan year9 hogzia year 9 miran year 7 ordinal position first born second born second born first born first born first born second born family size parents, one boy and one girl parents, grandmother, one boy and one girl parents and three boys parents and two girls parents’ education father b.a. mother year 12 father b.a. mother year 12 father year 12 mother year 12 father year 12 mother year 12 parent’s occupation father accountant mother secretary father computer technician mother nurse father car salesman mother housewife father porter in a hotel mother factory worker year of immigration malaysian born parents-1988 malaysian born parents-1980 singapore born parents-1988 hong kong born parents-1989 language spoken at home mandarin mandarin english, mandarin cantonese of golf and tennis, while with most of them i shared meals and went for picnics. such occasions were beneficial to develop rapport and maintain relationship with parents and to understand their social network. children from four chinese-australian families, those who agreed to participate and provide information on long term basis, were included in the study. these families resided in southside, predominantly a middle class suburb of perth, which in recent years had attracted a large number of immigrants from southeast asia, mainly because of the academic reputation of paramount senior high school. the growing reputation of paramount senior high school also attracted experienced teachers. the principal was a dynamic and innovative leader who took pride in academic excellence as well as in good sports results. the parents were very supportive of these policies. i taught at this school for several years, including the period when this study was conducted. description of the participating families is given in table-1 reasons for immigration in their native countries male parents in three families and both parents in the goh family were employed in white-collar middle class jobs. they were all originally economically wellplaced in their countries which, when they were teenagers, were british colonies. their own parents (the grandparents of research students) were self-employed in small businesses like street hawkers, small grocery stores or owning coffee shops. these parents had seen hardships which their own parents had to go through and the sacrifices they made to provide them with education. they worked hard at school and settled in white-collar jobs 138 international journal of education, vol. 5, no. 2, may 2011 which enabled them to lead a much more comfortable life than their own parents did. three factors motivated these families to immigrate to australia: better educational opportunities for their children, an appealing life style in australia, and socio-political problems in their own countries. an excerpt from an interview with yu chin kwang is typical of the other families’ reasons for immigrating to australia: we liked the open space (in australia), fresh air, and cheap food..... in hong kong there are only two universities. there is so much competition for education. my daughters could not be sure of a place at the university even if they could get good marks. you have to be very smart to enrol in the university in hong kong. in australia, there are so many universities and competition is not so much.... also, in 1997 hong kong will become part of china.... we wanted to get out before china took over. the choice of southside as a place of residence, where paramount senior high school is located, was not a coincidence. they bought their houses in this suburb because of the academic reputation of the school. the kok family had heard about the academic reputation of paramount senior high even before they immigrated to australia. overcoming the initial problems with the proceeds brought from their native countries, these families bought houses in the catchment area of paramount senior high. each family bought two cars and all the necessary household items. they deposited some money in banks and left some in banks in their native countries (in case they decided to go back). with their australian qualifications and relevant work experience in their own countries, the gohs and the cheongs were quite confident about getting jobs commensurate with their qualifications and experience. the kwangs and the koks wanted to start businesses but did not have a great deal of success. but all of these families confronted more problems than they had anticipated. unable to get suitable jobs, (interestingly enough, all of them tried their luck in starting ethnic food restaurant with not a great deal of success. yu chi kwang, an assistant hotel manager in hong kong, got a job of a porter at a city hotel as well as driver instructor for chinese community. tuan kok, a flight attendant with singapore airlines, started to work in car sales yard. kwan wen cheong started to work as an accountant. ming sen goh and his wife yan form bought a news agency. while the parents from these families struggled to make a living, their children’s experiences at school were like night mares. they faced language barrier and problems in adjusting with their anglo-australian counterparts. excerpts below encapsulate the school experiences of children from these families. when i started going to school in perth at first copied someone’s work all the time, because i did not know what to do. so they called me a “copy ranbir singh malik, home-school link a key factor to explain an impressive performance 139 cat”, “ching chong”, “hongkie bitch”. they teased me all the time.... i was afraid to tell my teachers. one day i wet my underwear because i was afraid of some kidshongzia kwang. miran had similar experiences when she started schooling in australia. my early days in australia were the hardest days in my whole life. i didn’t speak or understand english. i didn’t know what to do at school. i was teased all the time for being an asian. words like “ching chong” and “hongkie” were said in front of my face. although i didn’t know what it meant, i knew it wasn’t a nice thing to say. i couldn’t make friends because i couldn’t communicate with others. i not only had problems with speaking english, but understanding the australian accent-miran kwang. lee kuan kok was bullied in primary school as well as high school. he ended up getting the psychiatric treatment. the heart-broken experiences of the family are discussed elsewhere (malik, 2000). commitment to education parental emotional support and the provision of social and cultural capital (coleman, 1988) were evident in these families. they brought with them a cultural view that scholarship and effort was the route to social mobility. although these families were new to australia and did not understand the australian education system well, they had one common goal: keeping their children committed to schoolwork. one strategy they followed was that they worked hard on low-paid jobs and showed frugality in spending on their personal comforts but invested heavily on educational resources for their children. fully aware of their children’s social and academic problems, the parents adopted the strategy to suffer themselves but help their children overcome language-related and social adjustment problems. parental commitment to the education of their children was wellreflected in their investment of time, educational resources and the provision of home tutors in english, maths and science even when the possibility of success was already high. (e.g. chi chen, hongzia, pearl and victor) or very low as in the case of tien goh and lee kuan kok. the kwangs were the most persuasive and even coercive in their demands for high grades. mr. kwang’s illness (died of liver cancer in april, 1996), unemployment of husband and wife (mrs. kwang had resigned from her job in order to look after her ailing husband) and financial hardship did not stop hongzia and miran from employing a home tutor in maths. both girls improved in english and were no longer in english as second language classes. the dying wish of mr. kwang to his older daughter was: “if something happens to me you don’t give up your studies. we came to australia for your sake. we would like you to be a doctor”. these parents’ commitment to the education of their children was well-reflected in their daily routine. after observing the cheog family for two years i wrote in my field notes: 140 international journal of education, vol. 5, no. 2, may 2011 most days mrs cheong is home before 4 p.m. she works three and a half day per week. children return from school before 3.15. before mrs cheong comes, victor and pearl are busy doing their homework. the days when the tutor comes (to teach maths and english) both children are ready for him by 4.30. other days mrs cheong sits with them (drinking chinese tea and reading chinese novels) while they complete their homework. mrs cheong takes them to the local library if they need to go. this happens at least once a week. it is at the dining table mr cheong instils chinese values and cautions his children about the “ills of the western culture”. when he talks to them they listen to him with their heads down and with no eye contact. during the weekdays after 8 p.m. their children are not allowed to watch tv. pearl goes to her favourite hobby (book reading) and victor goes to his parents’ bedroom (which has a bigger study desk and a computer) to do schoolwork. around 10 p.m. children go to bed. with minor variations the parents in other families also had similar commitment to the education of their children. in response to a question “if the class average is 70% what score would you be satisfied with”? these parents were not satisfied with an average score. as shown in table-2 parental expectations from their children were very high. when tein goh decided to repeat tee mrs goh demanded, “if you want to repeat you will have to get minimum of 80% marks. i will nag you. i don’t care what you say”. in advising their children the parents were not driven as much by the interest of their children as by the career which they wanted them to pursue. table-2 parental expectations family expected score child one expected score child two s a t i s f i e d w i t h child one satisfied with child two cheong victor 80 pearl 75 90 90 goh chi chen 100 tein 60 90+ 75 kwang hongzia 100 miran 95 95 90 kok lee 55 70 parental control the most striking feature of these families was their control over their children’s after-school hours activities. by controlling where and when children go, the parents controlled the activities of their children. there was a marked parental curtailment of children’s spatial parameters outside the home. even at home, activities were outlined and most time was spent in doing something which the parents considered purposeful. two factors appeared to be operative in parental control strategies: belief that they owe responsibility to discipline their children, and their fear that if they allowed them to mix with the angloaustralians or “some asians who had become too much australians” they ranbir singh malik, home-school link a key factor to explain an impressive performance 141 might lose interest in studies. tight control and restrictiveness exerted by parents were not accompanied by hostility or coercion. the parents monitored the routine learning activities and provided corrective feedback and imposed sanctions to reinforce their children’s behaviour. strongly ingrained in chinese culture mr cheong explained: how come the australians allow their 15-year olds to start their own lives? instead of asking my children to do part-time work i will work longer hours and provide them with tutors in maths and english. instead of going to the pub i will like to take my children to play golf. chinese parents not only encourage their children to work hard in their schoolwork but they are all the time behind them... (do) you know why the asians do well in studies? it is because of the culture. children are taught to respect their elders and teachers from the early age. in an interview (a few months before his death due to liver cancer) mr kwang gave this information: i reckon people are born lazy. they are only pieces of white papers and parents paint them colourfully. we start educating them when they are young as 4 or 5 years old. in hong kong children do not talk back even if parents are wrong..... children should be raised under supervision of parents. when they make a mistake we should always correct them. if they make a big mistake we do not only beat them but tell them the consequences of their actions. when these parents were asked: what worries you most about your child when s/he goes out with the angloaustralian children? they invariably said, “they may catch some australian (bad) habits like questioning parents’ authority”. in order to protect their children from “picking up the wrong habits” the parents gave them frequent “ mini lectures” to guard against the “negative influence of street kids”. one afternoon mr cheong, looking through the window of his lounge, told me: in this park there are so many children who come to smoke. most of them are from paramount senior high. they bring bottles of beer. i tell my children, “look at these kids. where are their parents? may be in the pub. i tell my children to beware of such kids. hard work key to success the single most important factor contributing to the improved performance of chinese-australian students was their predisposition towards schoolwork and the inordinate amount of time they spent on schoolrelated activities. table-3 shows that the number of hours per week these students spent on school-related activities ranged from 15 hours to 25 hours. this stands in sharp contrast to the abysmal amount of time they spent in sports, part-time jobs, and socialising with their friends. all of them had hired tutors in maths, science and some in english. victor explained how concerned and committed his parents were about his education: 142 international journal of education, vol. 5, no. 2, may 2011 my parents tell me to study and work hard. they always ask me and my sister when our test or exam is. most of the time, i finish my homework before i watch tv. when i have an exam i always go to my parents’ (bed)room to study so they know i have an exam and they won’t disturb me. when my sister or i get bad result they always tell us to study very hard. they restrict our watching of the tv but when we get good marks they are very happy and proud, and they tell us to keep up. my parents are aware of everything about us. hongzia kwang gave a similar account: our parents tell us all the time to take schoolwork seriously. they tell us ‘educated man is better than uneducated’.... mum comes tired from work. she tells, ‘if you have a test, you do your studies, for your sake i will do the house chores’ if we have an assignment to do they take us to the library to get some books. before we were not allowed to watch too much tv. they expected us to study all the time. now they know we are studying hard, they allow us to watch more tv. now (year 11) i work so hard my dad says, ‘don’t give yourself too much pressure’. our family doctor (chinese) tell me that i should relax as well. but how can i relax until i finish tee and get a good score to get into medicine. table-3 number of hours spent in doing various activities per week student homework parttime job sports tuition tv/ stereo and computer socialising with parents socialising with friends household chores chi chen 17 2 4 2 20 4 8 --tien 15 --1 24 5 6 4 lee kuwan 15 -1.5 2 26 4.5 -1.5 hongzia 24 --2 18 6 -2 miran 22 --1 7 4 4 victor 23 -6 2 8 6 2 2 pearl 25 -4 1 18 7 -3 even though the parents in the kok family were shattered by what had happened to their son lee kuan (victim of bullying at school), they wanted their other son two sons to live up to their expectations. mrs kok explained: we are very disappointed about what has happened to lee. we will not be satisfied if our other two sons did not aim for university degree. lee faced language problem and to adjust in australia. lit wey started in grade two and zen sunn was born here. for them language is not a problem. lit wey is doing very well in year 7. i spend all my time looking after our children, taking them to school and other places of interest. we have employed private tutors in maths for lit wey and lee. on their part children from these families had internalised their parents’ ranbir singh malik, home-school link a key factor to explain an impressive performance 143 values and virtues of hard work. mrs goh described the work habits of her son chi chen: chi chen will do his homework first. when he studies he concentrates. he tries his best to produce good work. about his schoolwork we do not have to remind him. he tries to look for information from different sources. he gets annoyed with himself if he cannot complete his work. he asks for our help. before giving the final copy of his work he writes the final draft. hongzia assured her dad that she would do her best to fulfil his wish. how can i slow down when i haven’t done my tee? i cannot sleep because i want to improve my score. i got ‘a grade’ in all subjects but my average was below 88%. unless i get 88% aggregate i cannot get in medicine. my dad always wanted me to do medicine. the data reported in table-4 shows that in the final report of year 7(primary school) chi chen was rated outstanding but the others were average students in all subjects, except in english and were enrolled in english as second language classes. as reported elsewhere (malik, 2000) the most frequent words that featured in teachers’ comments about the behaviour and attitude of chineseaustralian students were ‘quiet’, ‘diligent’, ‘obedient’, ‘pleasure to teach’ and ‘cooperative’. table-4 ability (inter-d score) and performance in year 7 inter-d score inter-d score student final report language % quantitative % attended esl class chi chen goh outstanding 85 95 no tein goh average 35 40 yes pearl cheong above average 80 70 no victor cheong average 30 34 yes hongzia kwang above average 70 70 yes miran kwang above average 75 68 yes lee kok below average 20 80 yes except for chi chen all of these students faced enormous problems related to social adjustment and lack of efficiency in spoken and written skills in english. when the goh family arrived in australia chi chen was only two years old. so his socialisation took place in australia. all of them reported that they faced some degree of racism and bullying at school. at the end of high school in year 12 except for lee kok, all of them did extremely well in tee and enrolled in the university to study for professional degrees, as indicated in table-5. equally important to note is that they selected the career paths where not a great deal of language skills were required. this pattern of career path was in tune with the findings of other studies that argue that the asian children tend to give preference to quantitative subjects. 144 international journal of education, vol. 5, no. 2, may 2011 chinese-australian students were labelled by their teachers as “they put their heads down and got on with their work”. although not all of them were academically bright, majority of them were what hargreaves (1967) called “docile conformists”. generally speaking, chinese-australian students were guided by their parents into thinking that school was a place for learning, that teachers were to help them, and that their duty was to respect their teachers. they acted unquestionably on the advice of parents and teachers alike, and the latter spoke highly of most of them. the general feeling among teachers was that asian children were model pupils, against which australian children compared unfavourably. only the physical education teachers disagreed. a senior physical education summed up: “asian kids obey the rules, participate in all activities but they are not in our team games. all our sports stars are the aussie kids”. typical comments of teachers about chinese-australian children were very positive. chi chen’s teachers gave almost identical comments: he is bright and capable..... he wavers up and down depending upon his interest in the topic. like the company of low achievers and sometimes wastes time but always gets high marks-maths teacher. his standard of work is extremely high, well above the year standard. he works without seeking attention. his presentation of work is excellent. he is self-motivated and achievementoriented-science teacher. he works at a level. he is inclined to be talkative but still works well. in class he asks questions which are very intelligent and analyticaljapanese teacher. he is an a-grade student and works well in all situations. always aims at a perfect score. in class he sits next to the average ability angloaustralian boys at the back. perhaps so as not to be seen as too conformist. his performance in class is outstanding.english teachers. he participates in all activities and enjoys sports-physical education teacher hongzia’s maths teacher commented about her: table-5 academic performance and occupational aspirations name tee/tafe score career pah/aspirations chi chen goh 450/510 science/engineering tein goh 335/510 business hongzia kwang 399/510 dentistry miran kwang 354/510 optometry victor cheong 367/510 commerce pearl cheong 350/510 commerce lee kuan kok completed tafe course landscaping/horticulture school experiences ranbir singh malik, home-school link a key factor to explain an impressive performance 145 hongzia is a perfectionist. she cannot accept anything less than hundred per cent. she has got to understand that seventy or seventy five per cent also is a good score. this end of term test she stuffed badly. she got fifty five per cent marks, which is a c grade. she was shattered. but during the term she had worked hard and still ended up with b grade. she is not naturally talented but she is one of those who work hard. i believe as the difficulty of the work increases hongzia will experience problems in being anything less than top in the class. if things don’t go her way then others have to put up with the ‘shit’. i really wonder how many friends in school hongzia would have. i suspect none. victor’s english teacher gave a similar description about his positive attitude. (he is) very keen to do well, very attentive but rarely asks questions in class. i praise this delightful student who is friendly, very polite, organised, prepared and willing to learn. his manners and level of maturity set a fine example for the others to follow. he has a wonderful effect on other students near him. some slightly silly and immature behaviour from certain students diminishes when victor worked in the group. in classrooms, unless teachers enforced a seating arrangement, chinese-australian boys and girls mixed very little with angloaustralians. whenever there was a single chinese-australian pupil in class, he or she tended to sit alone or at the front of the class. except for hongzia and chi chen, during lesson time none of them asked questions but all of them listened attentively. they were never disruptive. this is not to say all chinese-australian students at paramount senior high were paragons of schoolroom morality, for outside my small sample there were a few nonconformists some of whom caused teachers to get upset, if not outright angry. at one stage a teacher sent a chinese-australian student out of his class and scolded him. “you should be thankful to be here. you shut up and listen to what i tell you”. the school system tends to favour the chinese-australian children because with their positive attitude toward schooling and ‘docile disposition’ (ho, 1994) they impress their teachers who interact with them in a warm and positive manner. thus, the culture of the chinese-australian homes tends to match the culture of the school which is not quite the case in anglo-australian homes (malik, 2000). chinese-australian children have a dual advantage: academically supportive homes and teachers who reward students who follow the rules of classroom and try hard. with their docile dispositions (mainly attributed to their home life) these academically-oriented students tended to get favourable attention from their teachers because they were distinctively competitive, hard working, enthusiastic and pleasure to teach. it was their conformity to authority of teachers at school, that contributed considerably to their higher educational achievements. as a group, 146 international journal of education, vol. 5, no. 2, may 2011 chinese-australian students in this study were punctual, had a very low rate of absenteeism, were not reported for misbehaviour, were regular users of libraries, laboratories and computers, were not involved in serious antisocial behaviour like vandalism and took their schoolwork seriously. discussion there is compelling evidence from these families that the family life of chinese-australian families was structured; parents organised their life-style around the education of their children; guided their children to certain career paths; were less satisfied with their children’s performance even if they got ‘a grade’; were very involved with their children’s homework; were regular, rigid, and task-oriented in their children’s educational activities and provided stable home learning environment. customarily, activities taking place in chinese-australian homes were related to the education of their children. parents hold high expectations and set high goals for their children and remain physically and emotionally involved with them. regular family discussions on educational matters and career pathways have a modelling effect. the key feature of these families was that parental involvement in their children’s school-related activities remained high throughout the high school time of their children. the latter obliged their parents by working hard at schoolwork. their children internalised their parents’ values and took their schoolwork seriously. peng (1995, p. 172) noted similar pattern about the asian-american students. the socialisation of asianamerican students follows a complex interpersonal process that transforms into intrapersonal one. the need for approval through doing well becomes internalised, though children are typically unaware of the process. the pathways chineseaustralian families choose to motivate their children is partly based on their cultural values which emphasise scholastic excellence, and partly on their own experience in their native countries as well as in the host country. this investigation lends support to takanishi’s hypothesis (1990, p.359) which states that the children of parents who were middle class professionals but in the host country own small businesses are likely to have the attitudes and values that place great emphasis on educational and economic success. gibson (1987, p. 273) made similar observation: “parents of immigrant children are more willing to work hard at low paying jobs and to endure prejudice because from their perspective there will be return from their investment”. the folk theory (ogbu, 1987) to success of these chinese-australian families appeared to have its roots in their cultural values which emphasise impulse control, deferment of short term gratification, effort and scholastic achievement. ogbu’s (1987) cultural thesis purports that the asian minority groups are voluntary immigrants. they perceive their social identity as primarily different from the social identity of ranbir singh malik, home-school link a key factor to explain an impressive performance 147 the dominant society. initially, the immigrants tend to accept the dominant group’s folk theory of getting ahead with the belief that they can get ahead through hard work, school success and individual ability. coming from the large urban cities, with middle class values and with ancient culture which traditionally has valued education, chinese-australian parents gave secondary importance to their own interests and saw the vision of social mobility through their children by encouraging them to work hard at school to get good grades in order to facilitate their entry to tertiary institutions to pursue professional degrees. even though the migrant drive (smolicz and wiseman, 1971, p. 8) was noticeable in these four families, they tended to achieve such goals through acculturation without assimilation (gibson, 1983) or alteration model (ogbu, 1984). according to this model while immigrants may not give up their benefits and practices they strive to play the classroom game by the rules and try to overcome all kinds of difficulties in school because they believe so strongly that there will be a pay off later. it is, perhaps, this belief system which explains parents’ strong involvement with their children and their protection strategies from the peer group influence. parents in these families acted strongly to overcome their children’s initial problems, adjust socially and motivate them to take schoolwork seriously. in each family children were guided and encouraged to develop good academic habits and perseverance, and their children obliged parents with good grades. conclusion to sum up, in their drive for academic excellence chineseaustralian parents pushed their children far beyond their limits. they made their homes suitable for studying and ensured there was continuity between homes and school. the mental illness of lee kok and occasional depression of hongzia kwang were stressrelated problems caused by such very demanding homes. on the positive side, chinese-australian parents succeeded in converting average children into high achievers. at school, chinese-australian children fitted the stereotype models of their teachers who consequently interacted with them in a more positive warm way. chinese-australian parents appeared to guide their children by holding the hand (stigler and stevenson, 1990). it is hard to say whether the folk theory to success in education of chinese-australian families has its origin in their experiences in australia or whether they brought these values with them. values such as impulse control (e.g. not to question parents’ authority), deferment of short term gratification (e.g. no part-time work, no intimate friends of opposite sex), effort (e.g. we are new to the country we must work hard to establish ourselves), and scholastic achievement (e.g. with australian education you can get good job) can be attributed to the chinese cultural values as much as 148 international journal of education, vol. 5, no. 2, may 2011 parents’ perceptions of opportunities for their children in australia. this approach appears to have its origin partly in parents’ cultural values, and partly in their own and their children’s experiences in the host society. teachers’ comments on students’ reports indicate that the former make higher evaluations and give greater pedagogic commitment to those students whose academic and social behaviour is closest to the classroom standards and rules set by them. some of the most common behavioural signals teachers expect to see pupils give are quiet social interactions, ask questions, participate in class activities, be 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(1987). mathematics classrooms in japan, taiwan, and the united states. child development. 58, 1272-1285. takanishi, r. (1994). continuities and discontinuities in the cognitive socialisation of asian-originated children: the case of the japaneseamericans. in p.m. greenfield and r.r. cocking (eds.). crosscultural roots of minority child development. new york: lawrence erlbaum associates inc. publishers. tf_template_word_windows_2013 international journal of education vol. 12, no. 2, february 2020, pp. 73-79 ©2020 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: 10.17509/ije.v12i2.18287 73 including value education in tertiary level: what bangladesh think rajib ahmed faisal, jarin akhter institute of education and research, university of chittagong, chittagong, bangladesh faisal.ier@cu.ac.bd first draft received: 14 jul 2019 date accepted: 23 dec 2019 final proof received: 10 jan 2020 abstract bangladesh is a nation with a great diversity of cultures, economy, and religions. it is not easy to identify the common values to be taught in such a pluralist society. therefore, the values of pupils must be established to show respect for the cultures of others and to foster mutual tolerance and understanding through value education (ve). the purpose of the research was to explore teachers’ and students’ opinion to include ve as a course in higher education level in bangladesh. it was a qualitative study and data was collected from the university teachers and students via semi-structured interviews. religion was found in this study to be a sensitive issue to be taught in the ve class that can cause conflict between teacher and student. participants suggested that the content of ve should be practical rather than theoretical. one of the difficulties found ways to include ve is the impact of the labor market environment that would make students find the course to be a burden and not fit for future employment. one of the recommendations of this study was that teachers of ve should be open, liberal, and respectful of the beliefs of students. keywords: curriculum; social and religious values; tertiary education; value education to cite this paper (in apa style): faisal, r. a., & akhter, j. (2020). including value education in tertiary level: what bangladesh think. indonesian journal of education, 12(2), 77-79. doi: 10.17509/ije.v12i2.18287. introduction bangladesh's society is pluralist, living among different cultures, religions and ethnic minorities. not everyone in a pluralist society has the same beliefs and even the same definition of what values are (halstead & taylor, 2005). therefore, educating people about common values and behavioral standards is necessary. in addition, it has been found that the world of today is experiencing the highest level of hatred, conflict, and intolerance between different groups, cultures, and religions. in this case, value education (ve) may promote community respect and tolerance and refuse violation (halstead & taylor, 2005). one-third of bangladesh population is youth. a significant number of these young people are involved in various socially and morally unacceptable issues such as eve teasing, alcohol and drug abuse, juvenile delinquency (ara & mahjabeen, 2010). the fact that educated people are also interested in unethical problems and bribery is disgraceful. anisul haque, a renowned author and engineer, quoted an instance of his university life, asked the students how many of them would bribe during their future service life, and 86% of them shamelessly answered that they would bribe (billah, 2012)). haque said, “there are hundreds and thousands of educators, doctors, engineers and researchers in higher education institutions. yet the country's situation is so miserable. what's the reason? the morals[sic] is gone” (billah, 2012). to explain this regrettable phenomenon, moral actions are the product of the reciprocal interplay of personal and social influences (bandura, 2002). conflicts arise between self-sanctions and social sanctions (bandura, 2002). an example for this is when people committed crimes that might be right from their own point of view but not appropriate to society. moreover, the social norms, values and ethics could not be ignored by students as a social well-being. educational institution could play an intermediate role in transferring these norms and values to individuals, as well as national laws, judges and universal virtues. development should not be aimed at developing things, but at developing people (mishra, 2010). to promote moral development of students, halstead & taylor (2005) recommended the inclusion in educational institutions of several values. they are cultural diversity values, cultural identity, national awareness, intellectual and academic values, peace, international understanding, human rights and values of the environment. equality between men and women, antiracism, job and economic values, education and common human values like peace, unity and cooperation. since ve is necessary for ensuring cultural coherence, human development, environmental mailto:faisal.ier@cu.ac.bd faisal & akhter including value education in tertiary level 74 sustainability and promoting peace, it has been taught in several countries of the world like usa, uk, canada. it has been taught with different names as moral education, character education or ethical education. if we consider bangladesh education system, religious and ethical education has been taught in primary and secondary levels. there is no such a separate course where the common cultural, religious and social values have been taught. in bangladesh's latest education policy, which was published in 2010, moral education was suggested in this policy as one of the fundamental courses at the secondary level (rahman, hamzah, meerah, & rahman, 2010). most of the teachers have a positive perception of ethical issues, few of them have different behaviors and practice (jahan & islam, 2014). under this circumstance, the importance of ve at the higher education level in bangladesh has not yet been investigated. therefore, this study aims to uncover the value of including ve at the higher education level through the perspectives and experiences of teachers and students. considering the current situation of developed countries, we can see that they have been facing challenges in regulating in-school bullying and violence. as for an example of the united states, violence, harassment, and antisocial behavior have reached epidemic proportions in schools and on the streets (b. white, 2015). the demise of these types of character was caused not only by individual moral failure, but also by the inclusion of multinational capitalism, pluralism and social mobility, communication media and popular culture. in addition, the education of character could be related to the education of value. eleven principles for the launching of character education at school have been established (lickona, 1996). the related concepts were promoting core ethical values; providing incentives for moral action for students to build character; involving a substantive and rigorous academic curriculum that recognizes and encourages all learners to succeed; aiming to improve intrinsic motivation for students; and requiring moral leadership from both staff and students. india as a representative of asian developing countries also acknowledges the necessity of incorporating ve in educational insitution. mishra (2010) suggested ve is so important for india's higher education and should be included in india's universities as a separate course. considering gandhian peace and religious outlook, it is possible to combine meditation, yoga, moral values and social activities with ve course (mishra, 2010). inversely, through an interdisciplinary approach, ve could be taught as part of other subjects. a powerful secret ve system could also mediate the moral construction of students on ' the good student ' and ' the good citizen ' in the long term (thornberg, 2009). ve is important not only for the students but also for the teachers’ professional and moral development. in india, casteism, political influence, bribery and many more unfair practices have weakened and demoralized the teaching profession (kalita, 2015). professional value development of the teacher is therefore mandatory for ve teaching. in this case, educators need only remember the differences that were universally correct or wrong, seek information and choose to act to overcome the moral malaise that enables ethical violations to go unchallenged (johns, mcgrath, & mathur, 2008). in addition, ve could play an important role in science education. it can construct science students ' ethical perspective, attitude and behaviour for scientific knowledge. in dutch universities, a pilot survey was conducted on the values of education and sustainable development. the study found that the dutch university curriculum should incorporate an ethical perspective for sustainable development in science education to enhance the professional and responsible attitude of students towards the use of scientific knowledge (muijen, 2004). students must learn to answer theoretical and practical problems in a more complex and multidimensional manner than simply finding a ' technical solution (muijen, 2004). a discourse could be an effective way in this regard to defend their own reality and other people's truth. besides, religious education may play a major role in improving the importance and ethics of students. one of the results of a research carried out in the uk church school in perish found that religious education has an impact on the value development of students (hawkes, 2005). the research participants reported that the reason behind the value creation of the students was not only to express importance to the students by role modelling, but also to care for the relationship between teachers and students (hawkes, 2005). uk church school parents were also told that church-based education helped their children develop moral values and ethics (hawkes, 2005). since the research was conducted at primary school, it would have different outcomes to consider adult students at higher education level. in contrast, british schools and europe have been influenced by greater religious involvement (halstead & taylor, 2005). there has been a clear official view that religious education and collective worship are fundamental to the moral and spiritual development of children (halstead & taylor, 2005). eventually the number of british people who strongly believe in god was increasing, which could impact people's attitudes towards religious education (b. white, 2015). on the other hand, the u.s. education system lacked such a link with religion and church as britain and europe (halstead & taylor, 2005). this could therefore be said that america has experienced extreme levels of violence lately, such as school-shooting. considering all the previous research findings, it has been perceived that ve is necessary in all the disciplines of education. ve could promote social coherence, tolerance and peace in the society. ve is therefore necessary in both developed and developing countries. it is also very significant in developing and promoting scientific knowledge. it could construct students’ and teachers’ ethical values and attitudes to obtain, promote and sustain scientific knowledge. reflecting on all the studies, the researchers therefore international journal of education vol. 12, no. 2, february 2020, pp. 73-79 ©2020 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: 10.17509/ije.v12i2.18287 75 attempted to search for an answer of the question, what do teachers and students think about the necessity, scope and challenge to include ve at higher education level? since students are the core of the education systems and teachers are the facilitator in learning, both of them can explain their thought, perception and feelings with their practical experience. therefore, the researchers aimed to reach both of them to collect the data to identify the necessity, scope and challenges to include ve in he level. methodology this research followed the qualitative method, while the literature might yield little information about the phenomena and researcher needs to learn more from participants through exploration (creswell, 2002). the central phenomenon of the research was to explore the participants’ views, opinions and perception in including ve as a course in higher education level. since the researchers didn’t find adequate information on this phenomenon in bangladesh context, qualitative research was conducted to learn more about the central phenomenon from participants via semi-structured interview. semi-structured interviews allow participants the freedom to express their views in their own terms (cohen & crabtree, 2006). in total, 30 participants were selected purposefully. among them were 10 university teachers, 10 graduate students from the institute of education and research (ier) who had a ve course in their higher studies, and 10 graduate students from different disciplines who didn’t have a ve course in higher studies were selected for sampling. teachers were from 10 different fields of study: chemistry, institute of modern language, sociology, microbiology, political science, marine science and fisheries, pharmacy, communication and journalism, accounting department were selected as participants. students from 10 different majors: chemistry, language (pali), botany, statistics, human resource management, physics, accounting, english language and literature, institute of modern language, islamic history and culture were selected for interview. university teachers were in group 1, students who had ve course were in group 2 and students who don’t have ve course were in group 3. the purposeful sampling technique was applied where researchers intentionally select individuals and sites to understand the central phenomenon (creswell, 2002). here in this study, researchers tried to select participants, whether they were “information rich”. in qualitative approach, researchers’ trustworthiness is crucial for data collection and data analysis. this trustworthiness could be defined as to eliminate researchers’ bias perspective and increase their truthfulness of a proposition about social phenomenon (golafshani, 2003). since both of the researchers were university teachers, participants who were students might feel imbalance power between themselves and interviewers. therefore, before collecting data, the researchers asked for the consent from participants and recorded the consent in an audio tape. the participants were told that they could withdraw their participation in anytime during the interview session. the researchers were committed to participants to preserve the data in a secured device. they were also committed to participants that their information wouldn’t do any harm in their academic or personal lives. researchers used the pseudo name of participants and their information was not used for any other research purposes. researchers collected data from different sources (teachers & students) via semi-structured interview questionnaire. the questions were organized under four areas: participants’ view on ve, possibilities and challenges for including ve, suggestion for course content & how important teacher attitude is. both teachers and students were asked the same questions which could be related to ‘triangulation (golafshani, 2003). then, the data were analyzed through coding to identify categories and themes. findings & discussion six trends are defined after the process of data analysis. these themes are chosen according to the frequently mentioned statements of the participants. significance of ve teachers and students from different fields of study shared the importance of ve in the development of ethical values and ethics for students. they agreed that to grow students as a good human being, ve is important and useful. one of the science teachers said that, there are many courses like this in foreign countries. i have studied philosophy courses such as ethics or science ethics. there is a connection between science and ethics. i always advise the student to be frank. students in science collect data and use it as they wish, but staying honest in their own position is important. which data collect from the laboratory, they should properly give their teacher. it is also very important for medical students. (liakot, group 1) researchers asked the student group who took the ve course a question: do they think they're different from the other students who couldn't get the chance to take the course? on this topic, the students have mixed reactions. many students (7 out of 10) shared that they thought they could describe having knowledge, of values and that they thought they felt responsible in their lives to reflect their values. one of the students said: yes, with other students who had no ve course, i found the difference with me. i haven't found them respectful of teachers. they weren't building a good teacher relationship like us. we do have a really strong junior and senior relationship. for any faisal & akhter including value education in tertiary level 76 problem, we support each other. i think values are helping us to develop empathy. yet i haven't seen this kind of action from other field students. i think it would be beneficial for them to create value if ve could be included in their subject. (fazlur, group 2) on the other hand, a few students said that at higher education level they did not think they could grow their value. rather, their ideals and morals were established by families, communities, and friends throughout their youth. they argued that it might not be feasible for adult students to develop new values and ethics at a higher level. many of the teachers said that ve should not be included as an additional course at the higher education level. they suggested incorporating a few value-related topics as a hidden curriculum with regular courses. for example, one of the opinions of the teachers was, to practice value education, we don't need extra classroom here. it can also be used for topics that have already been taught as mandatory subjects. (nazmul, group 1) all but three respondents agreed that ve is very important to students. participants expressed that the ugc and other regulatory bodies should take initiative in including ve as a higher education level course. ve and job market economy some of the teachers and students shared that if ve includes students in each department of higher education level because it is an extra subject for them, they would oppose it. in their future career, they might not find it useful. because ve has no advantage over skill development and job creation, they will consider it a burden. inversely, there was a counterargument among many respondents that ve is also necessary for career life. one of the objectives of our education is to help students have a job after their graduation completion. david blunkett, the british secretary of state for education and employment, argued on the knowledge economy and higher education that "globalization and the arrival of the knowledge economy undoubtedly intensify competitive pressures on higher education institutions. learning has become big business” (graf, 2009). german universities concentrated on a non-profit venture, while britain, the united states and australia are closely linked to the commercialization and export of higher education services (graf, 2009). teachers recommended here in this study that ve should not be included as a compulsory subject. rather than being taught with regular subjects. as education becomes a commodity that has forced universities to analyze academic programs in terms of costs versus benefits that could neglect the institution's core values (berg, 2005), it also has an ethical responsibility. one of the duties of business is to meet ethical obligations, which means upholding a set of values, standards or behavioral principles that represent a concern about what customers, staff, investors, the society and other stakeholders find to be equitable, fair, or in accordance with the moral rights or reasonable expectations of stakeholders (carroll, 2000). in this study the respondents accepted that ve could be useful to increase the professional development, transparency and trustworthiness of students throughout the career life in every field of study. despite the labor market economy's influence on higher education, another respondent clearly explained why ve should be included. he said so, the most troubling thing in today's world is the "decay of morality...!" and to find the cause of it, we noticed that the education system has no value education and its lack of practice. when a human being grows up, he mixes himself with different complicated functions every day, where moral education becomes looser and faded. so at the higher level, students get busy with their careerrelated study where there is no connection between value educations. they become what they want, but without morality, when they become a professional! ultimately, it makes them heinous. we should remember that our study's objective is to serve humanity. and that is why we badly need education to value. (amin, group 1). classroom conflict and teaching value education several challenges and opportunities are shared by respondents to implement ve at a higher level. to settle on a certain quality, one of the possible obstacles would be to resolve classroom conflict. some of the respondents at the higher education level who had the ve course shared their experience on religious issues in classroom conflict. they believe teachers should be neutral, liberal, and show respect for the opinion of the students. jasmine said that we had a dispute over a religious issue in our class. another group of students argued that religions should be modified according to our present requirement, while another group of students argued that we should be adjusted according to religious education. the first group was persuaded by the teacher and another team left the classroom. without expressing his own view, i think the teacher should offer a neutral opinion. i think it hurts the feelings of any group of students. furthermore, i don't think students have acted responsibly because in the future, you may face any kind of conflict, it doesn't mean you will leave the situation. (jasmine, group 2) in this study, it was found that the attitude of their ve teachers does not satisfy students who have already had a ve course at the undergraduate level. few of them were in conflict with the opinion of their teachers in the classroom. they said teachers should be progressive, open-minded and tolerant of their opinions. research was conducted by (meyers, bender, hill, & thomas, 2006) showed that teachers could avoid conflict in the classroom and manage the classroom by communicating with students showing respect, clarifying the student's international journal of education vol. 12, no. 2, february 2020, pp. 73-79 ©2020 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: 10.17509/ije.v12i2.18287 77 goal; addressing students outside the classroom, focusing on the feelings and empathy of students and involving students in the problem solving. in addition, some of the students claimed in this study that the grading of the course had also created tension between students. we felt their ranking would be reduced by writing dissimilar views, values and viewpoints on the examination paper from educators. a finding from another research could be mentioned here that students accused their teachers of having the most frequent conflicts for grades, examinations and excuses (tantleff-dunn, dunn, & gokee, 2002). to resolve these disputes, researchers suggested that teachers are able to carefully clarify the policies before classes, improve the objectivity of grading and exams, and enforce policies that eliminate the need to determine the validity of the arguments of students that could strengthen the sense of equality among students (tantleff-dunn, dunn, & gokee, 2002). value & religious education in this study, it was found that teaching religious issues at the higher education level would be a sensitive topic. researchers therefore attempted to find the opinion of the participants on religious study in the course of ve. except for one, all participants expressed the importance of teaching religious issues as part of the ve. the participant who opposed the religious study said there are many countries where religious books are not needed, because religion makes certain confined values. they teach values through ethical books... in this situation, motaher hossain chowdhury's "songskritir kotha" is a good article. it's going to be the best article written about culture around the world. it's about value education. his first line isreligion is the culture of the mass people, but in the educative and elegant people “culture is the religion”. value education is more than the religious lesson. (bishal, group 1) religion, a sensitive issue in bangladesh, has been discussed in this report. most people would not accept the opinion of any unbeliever towards religion. in this situation, avoiding conflict over religious issues in the classroom would not be easy for a non-believer educator. researchers therefore attempted to understand the importance of including religious education in the context of ve. the majority of the participants said that religious education should be included as a vehicle of moral education in the ve course. books of religion and spiritual knowledge tend to promote an attitude of respect for values, morality and ethics (kalita, 2015). in this case, white (2004) argued that students should recognize all religions in order to respect the opinions of others and should be motivated to assess them and improve their credentials. therefore, the ability to study all religions should be integrated into the curriculum of ve. valueoriented learning with a comparative religion course could promote social harmony, liberal attitude and a less fanatical approach to religion (rama, anitha, & vasudhakar, 2014) on the other hand, mason (2003) argued that all the students of a pluralist society should have the right to know about the neighbours’ religions which is not easy to incorporate in a religious school. therefore, at higher education level students could have the freedom to know different religions and core ethics. at higher education level students are treated as adult and if they could have the opportunity to know about core values of different religions it could be expected that they could develop the respect to others’ beliefs, thoughts and rituals. teacher as role model all participants shared that a ve course instructor should be a role model in practical life to draw on their values and ethics. having their instructors as role models would encourage the growth of students' values and ethics. hawkes (2005) found that the respondents of his study believed that in addition to role modelling, the relationship between teacher and student is essential to communicate values to the student. all teachers and students should therefore demonstrate mutual respect, compassion and kindness. managing the classroom dispute and other obstacles would be beneficial to educators. one of the respondents gave an example to why an educator should be an icon with values that are followed. the attitude of the instructor is very significant. because whenever my teacher says that i should not smoke, and when i see him smoking, it is clearly contradictory. .... what he believes is important and what he really does in his real life, because unless you do it yourself, you can't implement the stuff. (itu, group 2) aligned with the participant’s comment the researchers from different fields also argued that teacher should demonstrate ethical behaviour to teach ve to students. one of the researchers of physical education argued that “teachers with character serve as role models for telling the truth, respecting others, accepting and fulfilling responsibilities, playing fair, earning and returning trust and living a moral life” (lumpkin, 2008, p. 49). therefore, teachers should be concerned in practicing ethical behaviour to encourage students to lead a moral life. there were various opinions on the competence of the teacher. many of the respondents thought it was necessary to teach ve to students by a particular specialist. on the other hand, many of them thought there was no need to have a specialist in the subject. instead, specialists can train teachers on how to teach ve through tot (training of teachers). teaching method most students who have completed ve courses were found to be disappointed with the teaching methods of their teachers. students believed more realistic approach than theoretical approach should be taken. they faisal & akhter including value education in tertiary level 78 expressed that group discussion, teamwork, real-life experience-based assignments could be incorporated into their curriculum, and many more creative learning methods and techniques. for example, one of the opinions of the participants is given bellow teacher taught us by the method of lecture that we did not like. i think it should be based on practical work on the ground. the teacher could let us go out of the classroom at least once a week to find out how we can implement values. (champa, group 2) most of the participants expressed in this study that ve at the higher level should focus on practical rather than a theoretical approach. adults tend to believe and learn from action instead of words (anthanasou, 2008). learning through practical life experiences could therefore be a useful technique for effective teaching of ve. therefore, adults want to know significant and relevant things in their lives (sutherland & crowther, 2008). ve subjects should therefore be linked to the social context of students and applicable to real life. if they are allowed in real life, self-regulatory mechanisms for ethical actions do not work (bandura, 2002). activities of practical life experience could therefore be valuable for the ethical and quality growth of students. teamwork helps students learn from peers and through dialogue solve a problem. developing interpersonal and communication skills is also beneficial. group learning is a valuable tool to help adults learn more and become more aware of it (rogers & horrocks, 2010). adult education is challenging because the purpose of adult education is not only to achieve the personal gain of learners, but also to address inequality issues (racial, gender, religious, etc.), to lead the individual empowerment and/or social transformation (rogers & horrocks, 2010). ve course would address social inequalities to engage students in critical thinking about their own opinions and acting as a responsible person through transformative learning (mezirow, 1991). the dialogue could be an effective approach in this case. an effective dialogue between facilitator and learner is a very powerful way to listen (vella, 2002). therefore, for effective learning, both teachers and students need to listen carefully to each other. in the same note, lumplin (2008) argued that to build students’ ethical values it is necessary to develop their moral reasoning process. the author suggested that student could easily rationalize their unprincipled behaviour like telling lie, cheating during the test, or stealing something. if their moral reasoning is developed, they can identify their wrong and unethical deeds (lumpkin, 2008). eventually, they could take action according their moral reasoning process. conclusion ve would help to enhance social cohesion, tolerance, moral values, and justice. individual and social life, it can have a positive impact. it is necessary not only for a country, but also for the whole world, to develop a student as a responsible citizen. it might therefore lead to universal solidarity and compassion. higher-level ve will help a learner thinks critically about the moral values, morals, and norms that might turn their consciousness into action. when the topics relate to their life experiences, adult learners could learn effectively at a higher level. the teacher should therefore be careful in choosing the material, respecting the students, and being free, progressive, and neutral. in this regard, the teacher can keep the famous words of socrates in mind: “i cannot teach anybody anything, i can only make them think.” references anthanasou, j. 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(2004). should religious education be a compulsory school subject? british journal of religious education, 26(2), 151-164. international journal of education vol. 11 no. 1, august 2018, pp. 18-26 ©2018 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v11i1.12390 18 perceiving and dealing with culture shock: the study of chinese indonesian-language students wang qun, syihabuddin, yeti mulyati, vismaia s. damaianti universitas pendidikan indonesia, bandung, indonesia semiya123@hotmail.com; syihabuddin@upi.edu; yetimulyati@upi.edu; vismaia@upi.edu first draft received: 03 april 2018 accepted: 31 june 2018 final proof received: 25 august 2018 abstract this study reports culture shock issues such as pragmatic failures, social anxiety or loss of motivation encountered by international students, and specifically focuses on chinese indonesian-language students during study abroad in indonesia. the data were collected through in-depth interviews and participant observations and were analyzed using qualitative approach. a total of eight chinese students responded to the research that specifically stressed culture shock symptoms and the influence in respect to intercultural communicative competence. the findings put forward that students of this study had all experienced culture shock in view of intercultural communication, which could lead to inconvenience living in indonesia. the results indicate that before entering a new cultural environment, it is very important to prepare as much beforehand as possible, especially for foreign language learners in host countries. the researcher proposed several recommendations that certain encouragement and support from teachers, media and method development from educational institutions, and a confident attitude from oneself should be provided and built as a solution for students who need to deal with culture shock problems. keywords: culture shock, chinese indonesian-language students, study abroad, intercultural communicative competence to cite this paper (in apa style): qun, w., syhabuddin, mulyati, y., damaianti, v. s. (2018). perceiving and dealing with culture shock: the study of chinese indonesian-language students. indonesian journal of education, 11(1), 18-28. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v11i1.12390 introduction in recent years, more and more students choose to go abroad to receive higher education. it is believed that study abroad is a worthy investment which not only enhances learners’ foreign language communicative competence, but also is precious learning experience which is significantly different (chen & zimitat, 2006). empirical research has examined gains in oral fluency (freed, 1995; segalowitz & freed, 2004), pragmatic comprehension (taguchi, 2008), and sociolinguistic skills (barron, 2006) in second language acquisition during study abroad. however, it is important to note that students do not study language exclusively. they also attend social and cultural activities in the foreign community. because language and culture are inseparable, learning a foreign language well means not only mastering the pronunciation, grammar, words and idioms, but also means learning the ways in which their language reflects the ideas, customs, and behavior of their society, and learning to understand their “language of the mind” (huang, 2014). the culture learning process could be both positive and passive, for example, active learning in class and forced assimilation in community. it has been researched that by emerging oneself in a study abroad environment, students will need to learn about the behavioral style and beliefs of local people, and also acquire the social skills of the host culture (rinehart, 2002; yang, webster & prosser, 2011). numerous studies show that nearly all of the study abroad students have encountered an array of acculturative stressors, including the language barrier, educational environment, sociocultural situations, discrimination, loneliness, and practical or lifestyle stressors (lin & yi, 1997; smith & khawaja, 2011). “no matter for what length of time, (the study abroad students) are responding not just to one event, but to a series of events and experiences” (naysmith & corcoran, 2001) which are so different from their own and some of which are quite “shocking” to them, that the term “culture shock” is used to refer to these events and experiences (hu, 2008). mailto:vismaia@upi.edu qun, syhabuddin, mulyati, damaianti perceiving and dealing with culture shock: the study of chinese indonesian-language students 19 culture shock is one of the common experiences by students abroad (zhang, 2014). culture shock is a well-known term used to define the initial experiences of immersion in an unfamiliar culture (lombard, 2014). it was first used by the anthropologist kalervo oberg in 1954 and was defined as “the anxiety which results from losing all familiar signs and symbols of social intercourse”. in recent years, researchers have proposed more findings on culture shock. amongst them, guinapa (1998) pointed out that culture shock is “the physical and emotional discomfort one suffers when coming to live in another country or a place different from the place of origin. this term expresses the lack of direction, the feeling of not knowing what to do or how to do things in a new environment, and not knowing what is appropriate or inappropriate.” to illustrate culture shock’s influence, logically we need to ask, “what is culture?” the word “culture” was defined by british scholar e. b. tylor as “a complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society” (tylor, 1871). the american anthropologist peacock provided his perspective that culture is “the taken-for-granted but powerfully influential understandings and codes that are learned and shared by members of a group” (peacock, 1988). moving to a new culture, study abroad students experience a multitude of problems affecting their communication competence (chapdelaine & alexitch, 2004; charles & stewart, 1991; lewthwaite, 1996). culture impacts on communication at a number of levels (liddicoat, 2009). in other words, communication is never culture-free (cetinavci, 2012). communicative competence is a prerequisite for the successful development of a professional (spencer & spencer, 1993), a demonstrated area (or areas) of successful communication activity on the basis of acquired tools and strategies of verbal communication supported by linguistic and language skills (lukyanovaa, daneykina, & daneikina, 2015). more specifically, communicative competence is influenced or constituted by ability for language use and communication as a form of social interaction. an emerging idea about has been that, even if contextualized and linguistically adjusted, communication may not be sufficient unless it is accompanied by multidimensional cultural awareness supposed to lead to a relationship of acceptance where self and other are trying to negotiate a cultural platform satisfactory to all parties involved (guilherme, 2000). such ideas engendered the notion of intercultural communicative competence, i.e. the knowledge, motivation and skills to interact effectively and appropriately with members of different cultures (wiseman, 2002). culture shock can be studied in many aspects such as linguistics, psychology, and anthropology. this current research attempted to investigate how culture shock impacted on chinese indonesian-language students’ intercultural communicative competence in the light of they are language major students. for example, intercultural communication sometimes breaks down in real-life conversations, not because of the students’ errors in syntax as a non-native speaker, or their inaccurate pronunciation in the target language, but because of their pragmatic incompetence in cultural understandings, which leads to pragmatic failure. in other words, they may be unable to use language effectively in order to achieve a specific purpose and to understand language in context. another example is, in intercultural communication, a student may know the literal meaning of an utterance, but fail to understand its contextual meaning, or fail to accurately understand the speaker’s intended force, which is particularly normal and unavoidable in asian culture (huang, 2014). therefore, the primary purpose of this research is generally to seek to ascertain the following questions: first, whether chinese indonesian-language students were suffering from culture shock in view of intercultural communication when studying abroad in indonesia? second, how they might typically perceive and deal with culture shock? in addition, the researcher went on to explore some of the implications on what teachers and students should do to prevent culture shock before entering a new cultural environment. method to address the research questions, the researcher adopted qualitative approach, more specifically qualitative case study. the qualitative data were collected by using in-depth interviews and participant observations. the data were collected to explore issues of culture shock, its influence in respect to intercultural communicative competence, and participants’ reaction and responding solutions to deal with it. the interview was semi-structured, which means it had a general outline but allowed for flexibility within that in order to gain a detailed picture of a respondent’s beliefs about, or perceptions or accounts of, a particular topic (smith, harré & langenhove, 1995). there were two sessions of interviews with an interval of 3 months (from october to december, 2017). the participant observations data were acquired from both class attendance and outdoor activities of the researcher (from october to november, 2017). participants’ classroom performance was noted and evaluated by researcher and another chinese indonesian language teacher from the perspective of intercultural communicative competence, which embodied the relatively formal communicative performance. meanwhile, outdoor intercultural communication performance was noted as informal communicative performance. eight chinese indonesianlanguage students took part in the research while they were studying in an indonesian university. research techniques the in-depth interviews were conducted on october 8 th , when participants had studies in indonesia for over a month. the interview questions were developed based on mumford’s culture shock questionnaire (1998) and aforementioned findings on students’ communicative behaviors. this semi-structured schedule included international journal of education vol. 11 no. 1, august 2018, pp. 18-26 ©2018 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v11i1.12390 20 objective items to identify whether the participants were suffering from culture shock and also subjective items to investigate what feelings they might have and how they would do to deal with these problems. in the actual interviews, the mentioned schedule was used as a guideline in case the participants had more detailed and useful information that could be applied in the research. all interviews were done in mandarin by the researcher, who was a friend and senior to all participants. therefore, participants’ real sentiments and culture shock symptoms could be elicited to the maximum extent. the participant observations were conducted indoors (speaking courses in language center in indonesia university of education (upi)) and outdoors (daily activities) in tandem with in-depth interviews. the observation session lasted for over two months, which allowed the researcher to build a holistic picture of participants’ intercultural communicative competence and its insider-knowledge and presuppositions. during classroom observations, data collected from the daily lesson with its usual participants in real time under natural settings could constitute coherent “emic” world (liu, 2013). in addition to that, the research was assisted by an indonesian language teacher who created naturalistic intercultural communicative conversations such as topics about dietary habits in china and indonesia. the researcher used a loose checklist of preplanned observation categories that focused on students’ culture shock symptoms and intercultural communicative competence, including four aspects of content, structure, language performance, and interaction. during outdoor observations, the researcher focused on culture shock influence on participants’ verbal and nonverbal intercultural communicative behaviors through basic activities of daily living. participants the research involved eight chinese indonesianlanguage students (4 males, 4 females) (see table 1) who were sponsored by scholarship programs (university-to-university program and china scholarship council) and had just begun their overseas study on september 4 th , 2017 in upi. they were all undergraduate students in a “3+1” program which means three years’ university in china (freshman year, sophomore year, and senior year) and one year’s university studying in indonesia (junior year). their indonesian language proficiency test (ukbi) grades ranged from 642-702 (outstanding). table 1. eight participants of the research 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 sex f f f f m m m m age 19 19 20 20 20 20 23 20 ukbi 680 673 660 690 702 685 642 661 data analysis qualitative approach was adopted to explore and understand the meaning individuals ascribe to a social or human problem (creswell, 2009), or in this case, culture shock. first, from the data obtained during indepth interviews (i.e. instances of culture shock symptoms) the key information was grouped under similar concepts then formed into categories, which were the basis of the hypothesis. then, participants’ intercultural communicative competence manifested in observations was analyzed in order to triangulate the hypothesis. findings and discussion culture shock is unavoidable the results of the five questions from in-depth interviews are giving below in table 2. the researcher further asked the participants who suffered from culture shock to give detailed instances and psychological descriptions on how they perceived and experienced culture shock. table 2. results of culture shock (objective items) no. items answers (percentage) most of the time sometimes never 1 i miss my family members and friends in china. 87.5% 0% 12.5% 2 i find things in this new environment shocking or even disgusting. 87.5% 12.5% 0% 3 i feel strained when trying to adapt to this new culture. 25% 62.5% 12.5% 4 i would more like to communicate with my chinese classmates rather than with local people. 25% 62.5% 12.5% 5 i have a desire to escape from this new environment. 25% 62.5% 12.5% the participants’ answers to the first interview question illustrated that most of them didn’t enjoy being away from home country and familiar cultural environment. they described the new environment as “too challenging (participant 2)”, and they had feelings such as “i would better study in china with indonesian teachers there (participant 3)” and “i’m isolated from the mainland and nobody could save me if there’s tsunami (participant 5)”. the answers to the second question indicated that most participants were averse to living in indonesia. most of the feedback was about food qun, syhabuddin, mulyati, damaianti perceiving and dealing with culture shock: the study of chinese indonesian-language students 21 sanitation (“food was served on an unwashed leaf (participant 1)” and “they eat with bare hands (participant 4)”) and living condition (“there was no hot bath nor shower (participant 7)” and “there was a curfew time before 22:00 (participant 8)”). seven out of eight participants had moved from a “kos” (boarding house) to a villa next their campus and hired a housemaid to help with the cleaning and laundry. the answers to the third question demonstrated that many participants were not confident or motivated when exposed to indonesian social and cultural situations. to illustrate his opinions, participant 6 explained that he found indonesian taboos “way too superstitious”. in the meantime, participant 5 also argued that the religious system perplexed him as an atheist. the answers to the fourth question showed that many participants had obstacles when engaging in communication with local people and chose to turn to fellow countrymen from china for consolation. there was a consensus amongst participant 4, 6, 7, and 8 that indonesian people were accustomed to prying into private affairs of others, such as “do you have a boyfriend” or “when will you get married”. participant 2 shared her “awkward” experience that she was asked to take “selfie photos” by over twenty local tourists in a scenic spot in indonesia. participant 8 reported that he never wanted to be involved in a group discussion with indonesian students because “i just don’t get them, and vice-versa”. the answers to the fifth question indicated that the occurred culture shock was so strong that participants started to have second thoughts about studying aboard, even studying the indonesian language. participant 3, 5, and 8 mentioned that they initiated to skip class from time to time. participant 5 specifically mentioned that he had trouble “giving a speech in front of the class because he couldn’t master the indonesian pragmatic habits”. participant 6 pointed out that “even though i was graded ‘outstanding’ on indonesian written and listening competence, i’m barely an ‘average’ student when it comes to indonesian speaking practice in class.” beyond that, it is worth mentioning that participant 1 that had rather mild culture shock reactions was a chinese muslim who had the same belief system and semblable behavioral customs with the majority of indonesian people. to sum up the data collected from in-depth interviews, participants were all suffering from culture shock. they wanted to stay away from anxious foreign cultural environment as far as possible, and went to their chinese classmates as a care-free shelter. as a matter of fact, previous research has suggested that communicating with same culture members is minimally helpful for intercultural adjustment (lin, 2007). participants need to remain an open heart to foreign cultures and build multicultural competence in order to survive in the age of globalization (syhabuddin, 2014). pragmatic failures in intercultural communication the indoor participant observations were conducted in speaking courses, where the participants were asked to practice their communicative competence in roleplaying exercises in front of the class. the data were collected from each participant’s three exercises (two dialogues and one speech). table 3 elaborated the frequency of students’ less satisfactory performance into a ranked order. table 3. students’ performance in communication practice aspects description frequency percentage content incorrect descriptions on indonesian culture 4 50% monotonous content 4 50% structure failed to use fixed patterns in a speech (i.e. openings and endings) 5 62.5% unfamiliar with fixed expressions in greeting people 3 37.5% language performance reliance on translation 6 75% strong chinese accent 2 25% interaction reticence 2 25% low self-esteem 5 62.5% no eye contact 6 75% the teacher remarked that all participants demonstrated great ability in memorizing words and grammatical patterns. this was also confirmed in their ukbi tests. nevertheless, it can be seen from the classroom observations results that participants were less competent when it came to oral communication. the outdoor observations complemented the classroom observations by revealing more examples of culture shock symptoms in a naturalistic intercultural communication environment where participants need to apply what they learned in class to real pragmatic scenarios. the researcher found that participants acted quite intrigued when facing the exotic indonesian culture for the first time. whereas when taking part in the cultural activities in person, the participants were sometimes startled even overwhelmed by the immense and endless culture shock aftermath. for instance, participant 8 once used a word “kemaluan” to express his feelings of embarrassment, because he had learned that the word “malu” which stood for “embarrassing” in indonesian language, and the circumfix “ke-an” international journal of education vol. 11 no. 1, august 2018, pp. 18-26 ©2018 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v11i1.12390 22 referring to a state or condition. however, he was laughed at by his indonesian friends since the word “kemaluan” actually means “genitals” in indonesian language. participant 8 reported that he couldn’t break out of that awkwardness, because not only was it a subtly inappropriate slip of tongue, but also an impossible mistake made by him as a student majored in indonesian language. pragmatic fault aside, seven out of eight participants’ behaviors illustrated that they were fed up with constant “basa-basi (small talks)”. for instance, participant 5 was often asked about her marriage status, while participant 7 was often asked about his whereabouts. they argued that even though they well acknowledged that “small talks” was part of indonesian culture, it was still annoying to be frequently pried into. moreover, another prominent culture shock symptoms in intercultural communication was that the participants didn’t know how to refuse in case not to offend the couterpart. participant 1 reported that she didn’t know how to reject a “pengamen (busker)” begging for money without offending him or her, notwithstanding she was not a submissive type of person. other than that, participants came across difficulties when seeking for solutions of intercultural communicative incompetence. for example, participant 6 recited that his indonesian friends found his oral expressions weird because his diction was “too formal” when engaging in a daily conversation, that he should use more “bahasa gaul (social language or slang)”. nonetheless, he wasn’t taught any social language on campus, nor could he find appropriate self-educated materials. the results of indoor participant observations show that intercultural communicative incompetence may leave deep and long-lasting psychological impacts on participants. in the meantime, academic educational system was not a perfection to aid students in foreign cultural environment. recently, academic adaptation has been found to be a core issue of intercultural adaptation (yu, 2009; zeng, 2006), which is closely and positively related to sociocultural adaptation (yu, 2010). therefore, yu (2009) suggested that academic adaptation should be taken as one important facet to study intercultural adaptation. however, academic adaptation, emphasizing college impact on students’ positive learning outcome in higher education (tinto, 1993), has unfortunately been largely ignored in the literature and research of study abroad students’ intercultural adaptation. intercultural adaptation and adjustment the last interview in the research was conducted four months later (december 30 th , 2017) since participants’ first time landing on java island. six out eight participants reported that they had made adaptation and adjustment in intercultural communication. intercultural adjustment and adjustment refer to a long-term process in which new comers adjust to and finally feel comfortable in a new cultural environment (kim, 2001). through the improvement and remodeling of communicative competence, participants had achieved remission of culture shock symptoms (based on the same interview schedule aforementioned). this may be exemplified by excerpts from four participants. participant 3 reported that she was assisted by an indonesian student after class with her language ability. “she’s not only a tutor, but also a friend of mine. she even invited me to her house and showed me how to cook indonesian cuisines. she practically uses only indonesian language since she isn’t fluent in english. for sure, i cannot understand every word, but i can grasp the main idea and guess the whole meaning. i think this is the reason why my indonesian has gained much improvement.” participant 4 reported that she started to watch indonesian soap operas and viral videos on youtube. “i’m not an outdoor person, so i turn to internet to browse the outside world. i didn’t know that indonesian people were this funny and talented. i also learned many catchwords in indonesian language and common words in dialects. my indonesian friends were amazed when they heard me saying ‘hatur nuhun’ (‘thank you’ in sundanese dialect) instead of ‘terima kasih’ (‘thank you’ in standard indonesian language). i feel that i’m bridging the distance between indonesia and myself.” participant 7, who used to dislike indonesian small talks and alienate himself from indonesian people, reported that he was more willing to participate in class discussions and meeting indonesian friends. “i searched online get to the root of the small-talk culture in indonesia. it turns out that many foreigners have the same complains like mine. i also found out that the intention of small talks was not to pry into privacy, but more of a custom of socializing. now, i am the one who addresses a small talk to my indonesian friends.” participant 1, who was the least culture-shockeffected participant in the research, had joined in local student entrepreneur club and traveled to several major cities in indonesia. she claimed that she had “fallen in love with indonesian and never want to leave.” the adaptation and adjustment in intercultural communication was made because participants changed their perspectives on indonesian culture, and made a further and more particular knowledge of its content. some of the participants admitted that at first they were compelled to adapt the foreign cultural situation so to survive in indonesia, but they were satisfied with what they had experienced and achieved. simultaneously, participant 5 and participant 8 reported that they were still reluctant to blend in indonesian community. they both showed low selfesteem in intercultural communication. “it is funny that my english is getting better in this non-englishspeaking country, because i always hang out with qun, syhabuddin, mulyati, damaianti perceiving and dealing with culture shock: the study of chinese indonesian-language students 23 foreign friends (indonesian excluded),” reported participant 5. “i tried to get involved in indonesian community, but i yielded because it wasn’t as easy as i expected. now, all i have to do is to struggle through the rest of the semester then fly back home. my main task here is to earn enough credits, i suppose.” it can be drawn from the interviews that selfconfidence, self-efficacy and self-motivation play key roles in decreasing anxiety and overcoming culture shock issues (saylag, 2013). people with high selfefficacy usually believe that they have abilities to perform tasks well. lack of confidence is one of the most important reasons for failure. although different people use various techniques to try to minimize the impact of culture shock, it seems that a high degree of self-confidence and optimism may be among the most effective. however, as aronson and sues have indicated, dealing with many people undergoing a cultural transition can be difficult since people’s personalities are diverse. many people are optimistic and self-confident naturally, but others may be less so and in fact may have a more pessimistic view of life (aronson & sues, 1987). thus, moderate selfconfidence and an optimistic mood are necessary to help people deal with culture shock. what should always be emphasized in supporting people through this process is that it is a normal stage of cultural adjustment rather than threat, and should be seen and dealt with as a new challenge (saylag, 2013). abc framework applied to intercultural communicative competence teaching a pattern was concluded from the participants’ data that incompetence of intercultural communication was regarded as both the cause and consequence to culture shock in this study case. in intercultural communication, being unaware of each other’s respective social and cultural tradition, the interlocutors may participate in the communication with their own cultural values and use their own cultural systems to interpret the new situations they experience (huang, 2014). this is particularly pivotal and prominent for students majored in foreign languages. without the improvement on intercultural communicative competence, the mentioned culture shock phenomenon is but an infinite loop that might cause acculturative stress (berry, kim, minde, & mok, 1987), adjustment strain (crano & crano, 1993), and even permanent damage (bratt-paulston, 1992). considering the great culture shock symptoms and intercultural communicative barriers faced by the chinese indonesian-language students, mediation and scaffolding are needed from teachers and the surrounding community (daniels, 2005). the participants in the research expressed concerns about their language learning and desired more learning support from the university. contemporary theories and approaches to culture shock are currently based on its affective, behavioral, and cognitive components, referred to as the abc framework of culture shock (ward, bochner, & furnham, 2001). applying abc framework to enhancing intercultural communicative competence might be a workable model in language teaching. first, the affect aspect. teachers or supervisors should be sensitively aware of the individuals who are undergoing the culture shock process. teachers should use examples of similarities in between chinese and indonesian cultures to gradually draw students’ attention and interest into intercultural communication study. after affection basis is built, teachers should point out the contrast in between chinese and indonesian cultures, then identify and explain the significance of life changes during crosscultural transitions, the appraisal of these changes (lombard, 2014), and the application of coping strategies so as to help students grow confidence in dealing with inherently stressful situations. besides, teachers are required to use indonesian language as the language of instruction to build an immersion teaching environment. translation method is not recommended as it may cause students’ reliance on mother tongue. second, the behavior aspect. this is a stage of cultural learning as an understanding of the attitude and behavior in the host country with regard to social skills (furnham & bochner, 1986). indirect approach (transfer approach) can be used in intercultural communicative training (goh, 2013). it focuses on the production of speech rather than isolated structure accuracy, pronunciation, or language forms, which involves students in practicing spoken language for special purposes. in order to help chinese students overcome the culture shock issues, teachers may assign topics incorporated indonesian cultural context or background with several clues of cultural features into the whole process of language teaching. after that, teachers should further assess students’ verbal and nonverbal communicative competence. finally, teachers should give meaningful feedback to students on their behaviors to encourage and improve their achievements. third, the cognitive aspect. this aspect is anchored in the theory of social identification where identity is the fundamental issue for cross-cultural (ward, bochner, & furnham, 2001), which means these students that have encountered and traversed cultural differences should define new perspectives of identity that enable them to perform roles such as being academically successful (pham & saltmarsh, 2013). teachers should encourage and motivate students to apply what they have learned in class to experiencing real-time cultural activities. in the meantime, teachers should provide adequate local peer support and communication channels for students. this could accelerate the alleviation of “shocking” symptoms and build students’ self-esteem in intercultural communication. implications for students international journal of education vol. 11 no. 1, august 2018, pp. 18-26 ©2018 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v11i1.12390 24 ward, bochner, and furnham (2001) argued out that international students are probably the most intensely studied group in the culture shock literature, which indicates that culture shock is frequently experienced, normal, and unavoidable. students should recognize that there are many approaches to alleviate the mentioned issue. at the same time, students should reconceptualize abroad study. as being proved in the subsection “intercultural adaptation and adjustment”, one should be bold and confident to take responsibility of their own communicative development and choose to participate more in a foreign cultural environment (lantolf & johnson, 2007). accordingly, a self-reliant attitude needs to be established so that students can survive in a different and unfamiliar cultural environment. conclusion this research explored culture shock issues encountered by chinese indonesian-language students when studying abroad in indonesia and attempted to investigate the causes from the perspective of intercultural communicative competence by adopting qualitative approach. through analysis of eight chinese students’ cultural experiential accounts in a span of three months, and two months’ indoors and outdoors observations, the pattern is shown that chinese indonesian-language students had suffered from culture shock. they had shown uncertainty, anxiety, stress, and alienation through the concretization of intercultural communicative incompetence. it is found that they had tried adapting and adjusting themselves to intercultural communicative system, including looking for peer relationship, augmenting extracurricular involvement, improving language proficiency, and interacting with local people. but not all of the participants had achieved remission of culture shock symptoms. the two most heavily affected participants were not confident or motivated enough to take a step out from their comfort zone to foreign cultural community. based on the findings, the researcher suggests that a self-restraint attitude should be built so that students can survive in a different and unfamiliar cultural environment. it is also suggested that teachers should encourage and support students to frequently engage in intercultural communions, and the educational institutions should provide peer support and develop certain media and methods on improving intercultural communicative competence to help students alleviate culture shock symptoms. this research, as most do, was conducted with a number of limitations. first, the interviews were done in mandarin then translated into english. therefore, it is possible that the context meaning was not delivered intactly. second, although highly unlikely, it remains a possibility that students who participated in the research were the only ones who had experienced culture shock in the research scope. it is suggested that further research might focus on teaching media and methods development or how to well prepare students who are going to study abroad both in culture and communication. references aronson, r., & sues, h. d. 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(eds.), second language acquisition in a study abroad context (123–48). amsterdam: benjamins.. goh, c. c. m. (2013). globalization and teacher development for spoken english instruction. qun, syhabuddin, mulyati, damaianti perceiving and dealing with culture shock: the study of chinese indonesian-language students 25 indonesian journal of applied linguistics, 3(1), 29-38. guilherme, m. (2000). intercultural competence. in, byram m. s. (eds.), routledge m., encyclopedia of language teaching and learning (298-300). london and new york: routledge taylor and francis group. hu, x. (2008). the culture shock that asian students experience in immersion education. changing english, 15(1), 101-105. guanipa, c. (1998). culture shock. deptartment of counseling and school psychology, san diego state university. huang, y. (2014). constructing intercultural communicative competence framework for english learners. cross-cultural communication, 10(1), 97-101. khawaja, n. g., & dempsey, j. 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(2014). a brief study on culture shock over overseas students and the solution to new cultural environments. overseas english, 23, 219-220. 150 improving basic education: hearing the silenced voices of teachers in brazil a. akkari1 abstract this article aimed at providing an overview of the findings of a joint research project of several swiss and brazilians institutions on brazilian basic education. in brazil, teaching is governed by the law of directives and foundations of national education (ldb) stipulating that brazilian schooling has a compulsory length of nine years of teaching. to measure the progress in basic education of the nation as a whole the basic education development index was created by the brazilian education minister. the measurement results showed that quantitative development of schooling in brazil needs to go hand in hand with a concern regarding the quality of education. besides, analysis indicated necessity of taking into account structural factors along with the contributions of fundamental participants, especially teachers. several teachers’ opinions concerning with current situation were gained. first, in dealing with their profession, brazilian teachers considered that they were lack of social recognition, had incomplete training, and earned insufficient salary. second, concerning with school, there were distant school-family relations; politicalpedagogical project was too far removed from the day-to-day; accountability was especially at the administrative level. third, in connection with class, situations covered solitude of the teachers, many teachers had given up, and social and familial difficulties of the students. key words: basic education, teacher, hearing the silence voices basic education in brazil: what has been done and what remains to be done in the last few years the question of basic education has taken an important position in educational policies and debates. the notion of basic education incorporates the idea that children need to acquire basic literacy knowledge (reading, writing, arithmetic, etc.) by attending school for several years. basic education targets both the learning of skills used in daily life and preparing for the possible continuation of schooling in secondary education as well as socializing children 1 university of geneva, switzerland 2 this project received financial support from the rector’s conference of the swiss universities of applied sciences (kfh) under the program entitled “research partnerships between swiss universities of applied sciences and developing and transition countries”. many thanks to c. pompeu (catholic university of parana and santa maria college, brazil), a. s. fernandes costa & r. v. souza e silva (federal university of uberlandia, brazil) for their contribution to this project. international journal of education vol. 5, no. 2, may 2011, 150-159 a. akkari, improving basic education: hearing the silenced voices of teachers in brazil 151 in a common setting that transcends sociocultural differences. on the international level, the world conference on education for all in jomtien, thailand, in 1990, and the world education forum in dakar, senegal, in 2000, were not isolated events but underlined the international community’s desire to insure education for all the world’s children. the most recent unesco report on education for all discussed key developments since 2000. it shows that the number of pupils attending primary school throughout the world increased from 647 million students in 1999 to 688 million in 2005. the largest increase was 36% in sub-saharan africa and 22% in southern and western asia. consequently, the number of nonschooled children has decreased, and this decrease has accelerated since 2002. furthermore, the net school enrollment total has gone from 83% to 87% from 1999 to 2005, and this was a quicker progression than the one recorded from 1991 to 1999 (unesco, 2007). on the national brazilian level, basic education has shown important progress in the past decades. teaching in the country is governed by the law of directives and foundations of national education (ldb)3. the latest version of this law is from 1996 and stipulates that brazilian schooling has a compulsory length of nine years of teaching labeled “fundamental” and has as its objective basic citizen education. 3 lei nº 9.394, de 20 de dezembro de 1996 the basic education development index (índice de desenvolvimento da educação básica) (ideb) was created by the brazilian education minister to measure the progress in basic education of the nation as a whole, of the federate states and of the municipalities. this statistical index combines two parts: (a) indicators of student fluctuation (rates of schooling, of remaining in and dropping out of the school system), (b) indicators of student results on standardized tests taken throughout their school careers. this index is on a scale from zero to ten, with a six being the level of basic education achieved by developing countries according to international surveys. figure 1 shows the observed and projected index for 2005 through 2021 for the first four primary grades (children aged seven to ten). a clear improvement can be seen from 2005 and 2007, especially in the municipal schools and those of the federate states. on the other hand, one can see the long road ahead in order to achieve the objectives for 2021. furthermore, roughly 20% of the municipal schools failed to achieve the projected ideb for 2007 (inep, 2008). these schools are concentrated in the poorest regions of the country. 152 international journal of education, vol. 5, no. 2, may 2011 figure 1 observed and projected index of the development of basic education in brazil 2005 2021 (first four grades of primary school) 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 ideb observed in 2005 ideb observed in 2007 ideb projected for 2007 ideb projeted for 2021 brazil overall public schools federal schools state schools municipal schools private schools source: inep (2008) regional differences can be seen in table 1. among the states where we conducted research, three have an ideb above the national average: sao paulo, minas gerais and goiás, while two are below the national average: amazonas and bahia. table 1 the evolution of ideb between 2005 and 2007 in the brazilian states under study ideb 2005 ideb 2007 brazil 3,8 4,2 paraná 4,6 5,0 são paulo 4,7 4,9 minas gerais 4,7 4,7 goiás 4.1 4,3 amazonas 3,1 3,6 bahia 2,7 3,4 source: inep (2008) furthermore, an analysis of illiteracy in brazil shows how much work remains in order to improve the performance of the education system. figure 2 shows that the southern and southwestern regions are going in a positive direction. other regions, particularly the northwest, are lagging behind in terms of basic education results. with close to 95% of all children currently enrolled in primary schools, the challenge facing brazilian education has to do more with quality than quantity (preal, 2005; unicef, 2006). it also has to do with having basic education of comparable quality to that of its closest neighbors who are partners in mercosul or in comparison with emerging countries experiencing similar economic development. figure 3 shows the education for all development index (edi) for brazil in an international comparison. this composite index is used by unesco, ranges from 0 to 1 and is based on pertinent indicators which are combined in a straightforward calculation: universal primary schooling, adult a. akkari, improving basic education: hearing the silenced voices of teachers in brazil 153 literacy, sexual parity and education quality. the closer the edi is to one the better the results in education for all. we notice that brazil is the only country where the edi decreased slightly between 2002 and 2005. moreover, the brazilian index is much lower than that of economically comparable countries such as argentina, chile, mexico and indonesia. figure 3 brazilian basic education in international comparison 0.8 0.82 0.84 0.86 0.88 0.9 0.92 0.94 0.96 0.98 edi 2005 edi 2002 argentina uruguay chile bolivia paraguay brazil indonesia mexico source: unesco (2005), unesco (2007) taken as a whole, the data given in the first part of this article show that the quantitative development of schooling in brazil needs to go hand in hand with a concern regarding the quality of the education. 2. what is meant by quality in basic education it would seem important to define the meaning of quality when referring to basic education. several dimensions can be brought up when defining basic education quality in a given context. first, it is clear that “quantity” precedes “quality” in education. put differently, all education systems currently recognized for the quality of the education they provide began by greatly increasing access to schooling (i.e., increasing the quantity of individuals who attend school). the history of contemporary formal schooling began, even in western europe and north america, with overcrowded classes and an exponential expansion of school enrollment. it is not unrealistic to think that the current quantitative progress being made in brazil will not turn out to be qualitatively efficient in the near future. 154 international journal of education, vol. 5, no. 2, may 2011 however, a risky international trend has ended up making it that education quality is solely measurable by educational indicators or standards based on quantitative data of the school system and student achievement. at the international level the pisa (program for international student assessment) study by the oecd (organization for economic cooperation and development) is an example of this problem of measuring quality by exclusive quantitative indicators. several national evaluations (prova brasil, saeb, enem) have taken place in the past few years in brazil. nevertheless, these studies stop short of documenting the intrinsic and extrinsic characteristics that impact the quality of basic education. at the same time as recognizing the importance of such quantitative indicators in evaluating basic education, it would seem that the quality of basic education is mainly linked to the meaning that students and teachers to learning and of the future perspectives that they open up. many factors that are not taken into account with quantitative indicators need to be examined in order to better understand how to achieve quality in basic education. first of all it would be necessary to know if the students are gaining knowledge that is seen as useful for their local community and for the continuation of their schooling. it would also be necessary to know if they have an obvious pleasure in attending school or if they feel that while necessary school is mainly a chore. another important limitation of international comparative education research is that it homogenizes outcomes for a country sometimes obscuring disparities within a country. for example, it is not necessary to do a great deal of educational research to see that the quality of basic teaching in brazil is not the same if one compares municipal or state schools to private ones. similarly, when looking at regional inequalities, the children of the north and the northwest do not receive a quality of education that compares with the one received by children in the south or south-west. additionally, children belonging to the afrobrazilian community and of diverse indigenous communities do not receive an education that can be compared to the national average. finally, and this is the point that interests us the most for the remainder of the article, a quality education is not possible without a motivated, well-paid teaching body that has received an adequate training and is socially recognized for its educational mission. in the final analysis, basic education is a collection of processes and results which are qualitatively determined. the quantity of children attending school is certainly a fundamental but insufficient condition to improve basic education. (3) the necessity of listening to teachers in this section we report opinions which are rarely taken into account in educational research and in public a. akkari, improving basic education: hearing the silenced voices of teachers in brazil 155 policy regarding basic education: those of teachers. our research team carried out over 45 semi-directive interviews lasting forty-five minutes in four brazilian states4 (minas gerais, são paulo, paraná, goiás) in different types of schools (municipal, state or private) to collect primary school teachers’ opinions regarding the quality of the basic education in their schools, their profession and their pedagogical efforts. the interviews took place in the schools and were combined with the gathering of diverse data on the schools and their sociocultural environments from the administrations. we also organized a seminar5 to discuss the results of the research with the teachers. this study is in progress and additional interviews will be conducted. the following paragraphs contain the most salient elements of the analysis of interviews conducted to date. (a) becoming a primary school teacher: between a vocation and a lack of options one of the key moments of the interviews was a discussion regarding the motives and circumstances of choosing the teaching profession. while the traditional vocation of working with children can be found in certain interviews, a lack of options dominated the discussions, especially for teachers coming from rural zones. 4 interviews are planned for 2009 in the states of bahia and manaus which are known for their low quality in basic education. 5 this seminar was organized in order to share our analysis and interpretations of the data with the teachers. in the first place it was a lack of job opportunities in my home region, where a woman became a teacher or a housewife, i preferred teaching. the school was the only option i had. becoming a primary school teacher in brazil is seen by the teachers themselves as a choice by default, which does little to improve educational quality. (b) the contribution of initial training if there is one element that the majority of the teachers we spoke with agree on, it would be the insubstantial contribution of the initial training for their daily teaching. two major problems are mentioned. the first concerns the over-representation of theory in these classes and the disconnect with real world of teaching. the second touches on the fragmentation of different training elements (classes, seminars, internships…) and the lack of a global coherence. it would be important to note that to become a teacher in brazil there are two parallel channels. one channel is the “magistério”, a secondary-level training which closely resembles the former “normal schools”, which favors the methodological and practical aspects of teaching. the other channel is university-level (curso de pedagogia), which consists more of theoretical and professional aspects of teaching. the brazilian government has recently set the goal of all primary school teachers completing a degree in higher education (minister of education, 2006). 156 international journal of education, vol. 5, no. 2, may 2011 the interviewed teachers were much less critical of the “magistério” than of the university “curso de pedagogia”. moreover, the teachers who were the least skeptical regarding initial training, in either channel, were those who had worked for several years with no training but who later worked towards a degree. our research hopes to contribute to the current debate in brazil regarding the best way to prepare teachers. the university channel of teacher training that is being promoted by the brazilian government does not seem to have convinced people working in the teaching profession. (c) desperately seeking social recognition the lack of social recognition is an element present in all of the interviews, even though teachers working in private schools feel slightly more appreciated than those working in state or municipal schools. in their professional and personal lives our interview participants feel that their profession stands for suffering, sacrifice and low salary. in other words it is seen as a “profissãozinha” (a diminutive of profession in portuguese): in society teachers really aren’t valued. when you’re in a group of people having a discussion… no way, you’re a teacher? it feels like you’re swimming against the current. no way, didn’t you have any other job possibilities? didn’t you try to study something else? you must not want any challenges in your life. you didn’t try another path but took the easy way, teaching… that’s why you took education classes? these classes of looking and waiting for a husband!... i hear this type of talk when i tell people i’m a teacher. (d) pedagogical project and teaching methods in brazil there is currently a rather original innovation called “projeto político-pedagógico”. this is a school project generally in the form of a pedagogical orientation text that shows the connection between national or regional educational policies and the life of the school. all of our interview participants underlined the importance of the existence of a pedagogical project in improving the educational quality of a school. however, two major problems have been brought up regarding this innovation. the first has to do with the authorship of the project. the most pertinent projects are those involving the largest number possible of teachers in its drafting. if the project is the solitary creation of a principal or of education managers it will be hard pressed to change very much in an institution or to mobilize a teaching body. the second concerns the operationalization of the “projeto político-pedagógico”. the teachers interviewed said that some projects stay in a drawer in the desk of principals because they are disconnected from the everyday reality of teaching in a classroom. a. akkari, improving basic education: hearing the silenced voices of teachers in brazil 157 regarding the most appropriate teaching methods for quality lessons the interviewed teachers point to the need of diversifying the pedagogical methods. for many, an efficient method is one that can adapt to various classroom contexts, diverse situations of students, and to the subject matter: one possible method consists in the teacher being well-prepared and instructing in a systematic way because often the teacher doesn’t really have clear objectives, many teachers don’t have a precise method to follow, so we need to fix goals. the appropriate method is to take the traditional and to mix it with the modern, make the student think about what he/she is doing… it’s also important to diversify the teaching style. findings also reveal the following themes as important improving the quality of basic education in brazil: higher salaries, school-family relations and a serious commitment by public authorities in favor of public education. table two looks at the conditions that the interviewed teachers see as necessary for improving basic education. table 2 how brazilian teachers think basic education can be improved profession school class current situation lack of social recognition incomplete training insufficient salary distant school-family relations (inexistent) or parents seeing themselves as clients (in private schools) political-pedagogical project too far removed from the day-to-day (topdown) accountability (cobrança) especially at the administrative level solitude of the teacher many teachers have basically given up (acomodados) social and familial difficulties of the students. measures that could improve basic education commitment of public authorities in favor of education salary increase will help reducing work overload political-pedagogical project participative and operational. accountability especially at the pedagogical level and giving priority to student learning improving school infrastructure diversification of teaching methods (not a single orientation) conclusion the last two decades have seen a public debate in brazil on the need to improve the quality of basic education. this debate essentially has centered around two points: 1) the legislative measures promoting the reform of the brazilian education system which resulted in the passing of the ldb (lei de diretrizes e bases) and (2) the reduction of inequalities connected with the financing of public education which took shape in the launching of two federal aid 158 international journal of education, vol. 5, no. 2, may 2011 programs for basic education (fundo de manutenção e desenvolvimento do ensino fundamental e de valorização do magistério – fundef and fundo de manutenção e desenvolvimento da educação básica e de valorização dos profissionais da educação – fundeb). these funds aim to redistribute resources from the richest regions to the poorest and to introduce financial incentives intended to improve working conditions for the teaching body. these initiatives, for example, force federate states and municipalities to allocate at least 60% of their budget to education and 12% of their total budget to primary education (neri & buchmann, 2007). in the indispensable effort to identify ways to improve basic education, our research project has developed along two lines. in the first place, there is a need for a reconceptualization of educational quality as incorporating both quantitative and qualitative aspects. for a country like brazil, the goal to strive for is to increase the number of students attending school, especially among the poorest population, at the same time as improving the quality of education that schools offer. in the second place our project has shown the necessity of taking into account structural factors along with the contributions of fundamental participants, especially teachers. in this sense, in spite of the good intentions declared at international conferences and by education ministers, work conditions have continued to deteriorate in many countries. teachers have been demoralized by their low salaries and poor working conditions. the necessity of investing more in the teaching body is a high priority if we hope to reach the goal of education for all and to improve the quality of basic education. being a teacher should no longer mean feeling part of a professional category that sees itself as unheard, subordinate, that sees itself as pawns. the role which has currently been passed on to teachers is seen as being more and more spread out and covers not only the individual development of students but also the transformation of the school establishment into a “community of learners” (oecd, 2005). references araújo, c.h., & luzio, n. (2005). avaliação da educação básica. em busca da qualidade e eqüidade no brasil. brasília: instituto nacional de estudos e pesquisas educacionais anísio teixeira. minister of education. (2006). resolução nº 1. diretrizes curriculares nacionais para o curso de graduação em pedagogia, licenciatura. available online at: http://www.mec.gov.br. inep. (2008). sinopse estatistica da educacao basica: censo escolar 2006. brasilia: instituto nacional de estudos e pesquisas educacionais anísio teixeira. neri, m., & buchmann, g. (2007). monitoring the dakar education goals: evaluation of the brazilian case. background paper for efa global monitoring report 2008. paris: unesco. a. akkari, improving basic education: hearing the silenced voices of teachers in brazil 159 oecd (2005). teachers matter: attracting, developing and retaining effective teachers. paris: ocde. preal. (2005). quantity without quality. a report card on latin america. santiago: preal. unesco. 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(2006). situation des enfants dans le monde. new york: unicef. international journal of education vol. 15 no. 2, august-2022, pp. 78-84 ©2022 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: https://doi.org/10.17509/ije.v15i2 78 feedback strategies: an effort to enhance the critical thinking skills of daflearners in indonesia primardiana hermilia wijayati1*, dewi kartika ardiyani1, edy hidayat1 1universitas negeri malang, indonesia *corresponding author: primardiana.hermilia.fs@um.ac.id first draft received: 4 apr 2022 date accepted: 15 jun 2022 final proof received: 28 aug 2022 abstract this study aims to describe the strategy of providing feedback to improve the critical thinking skills of or german as foreign language (gfl) learners in indonesia. the research data were collected through observations and interviews with german students and lecturers at universitas negeri malang, indonesia and presented descriptively qualitatively with observation and interview instruments. the results showed that asking questions to students, providing comments, encouraging output, and giving praise are the feedback strategies that can improve students' critical thinking skills. lecturers provide several questions that lead them to think and answer these questions. the questions should be given to all students in the class, so that students gradually are encouraged to be more active. through those feedback strategies, learners are triggerred to memorize, understand, apply, analyze, reformulate and evaluate the learnt materials. all those strategies are implemented to lead the students to a better critical thinking skill. it is recommended that lecturers apply more types of feedback so that students have more opportunities to improve their language skills. keywords: critical thinking skill, feedback strategies, german learners to cite this paper (in apa style): wijayati, p.h., ardiyani, d. k., & hidayat, e. (2022). feedback strategies: an effort to enhance the critical thinking skills of daf-learners in indonesia. international journal of education, 15(2), 78-84. https://doi.org/10.17509/ije.v15i2 introduction critical thinking has become one of the main education goals in this 21st century as the trend in the global market also requires graduates to be able to apply critical thinking skills to work settings. education in general should then be geared towards the development of students’ critical thinking. critical thinking refers to students’ ability to remember, understand, apply, analyze, evaluate, and create (anderson & krathwohl, 2001). in the context of language teaching in particular, in addition to developing students’ skills in using the language, language teachers need to build up their critical thinking. the language being learned should eventually function for students as a tool for communication as well as a tool for thinking critically and for solving problems (cummins, baker & hornberger, 2001; tapper, 2004; živković, 2016). equipped with such skills, students might later be able to collaborate harmoniously, think critically and analytically, communicate effectively, and solve problems efficiently in the workplace. in order to develop students' critical thinking skills, teachers have been advised to design teaching materials and learning activities which can promote elements of critical thinking skills (živković, 2016). in other words, language teachers need to regularly and explicitly teach their students ways how to think critically through their teaching and learning materials and activities. one of the ways to improve students’ critical thinking skills is by guiding students to use feedback strategies (retna & cavana, 2013). feedback is crucial input for learning that is openly delivered to persons or groups as responses to or interpretations of their behaviors (reich, 2008; wilkening, 2016). feedback in learning can guide students to close the gap between their current performance and the desired performance (retna & cavana, 2013). besides, positive feedback can have a significant impact on learning outcomes (nicol & macfarlane-dick, 2006; young, 2000). in this case, feedback is provided not to assess student performance, but to improve the quality of learning and performance. additionally, when students are skillful in using feedback, they have the potentials to learn how to assess their own performance in the future. lyster and ranta (2013) have developed six types of feedback used by teachers to respond to students’ errors; they are: (1) explicit correction, which refers to the explicit provision of the correct form, as the teacher provides the correct form, he or she clearly indicates that what the student has said is incorrect; (2) recasts, which involve the teacher’s reformulation of all or part of a student’s utterance, minus the error; (3) international journal of education vol. 15 no. 2, october-2022, pp. 78-85 ©2022 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: https://doi.org/10.17509/ije.v15i2 79 clarification requests, used when students’ utterance has not been understood by the teacher or that the utterance is ill-formed in some way, so a repetition or a reformulation is required; (4) metalinguistic feedback, which contains a comment, information, or questionrelated to the well-formedness of the student’s utterance, without teachers explicitly providing the correct form; (5) elicitation, referring to a technique that teachers use to elicit the correct form from students directly. teachers elicit completion of their utterance by strategically pausing to allow students to “fill in the blank.”; (6) repetition, which refers to the teacher’s repetition, in isolation, of the student’s erroneous utterance. in most cases, teachers adjust their intonation to highlight the error (lyster & ranta, 2013; muhsin, 2016). in the indonesian context, (ratnah, 2013) found that the types of feedback which have been often used by teachers are (1) praises, (2) affirmation, (3) repetition or echoing, (4) recasts, (5) clarification requests, (6) elicitation, (7) explicit correction, and (8) prompting. feedback enables teachers and students to get engaged in dialogues about what distinguishes successful performance from unsuccessful one as they can intensively discuss certain expected criteria and standards (limbach et al., 2008; nicol & macfarlanedick, 2006). as also highlighted by isnawati, et. al (2019) written feedback which was followed with interactions between teachers and students may lead to students’ better understanding of feedback. several research studies on feedback strategies in learning have revealed some important findings. at a university in california, won, et al. (2019) conducted a classroom action research to explore students’ perceptions of feedback. one of the results is that all the students communicated a positive feeling about the usefulness of feedback. besides, feedback helps to increase students’ learning performance. in addition, a study in a university in south korea analyzed factors affecting student satisfaction with feedback implementation in science classes (cho & baek, 2019). one of the affecting factors is feedback provision in class. the result shows that feedback positively affects student satisfaction, they need to be especially in a laboratory class compared to a theory one. in thailand, the critical thinking skills of university students were promoted through peer feedback activity in an online discussion forum (ekahitanond, 2013). the result shows that the application of the critical inquiry model and peer feedback strategy can promote critical thinking skills. similarly, a study conducted in the indonesian context indicated students’ acknowledgment that feedback given by university teachers had a positive impact on improving student learning (wijayati, 2014). through the feedback, the students can find out the aspects of their weaknesses, become more open-minded, know the progress of their learning, feel guided in making work improvements, and become more confident. the students seem to feel satisfied when their weaknesses are shown and when corrective suggestions are offered to them. furthermore, research about feedback in new zealand showed that feedback helps students to improve their learning and produce better performance and achievement (retna & cavana, 2013). feedback not only clarifies what is expected from students but also improves students’ self-confidence and positive selfesteem. our previous research findings have indicated that many students were suffering from stress and a certain kind of anxiety which lead them to be passive in the class and to rely too much on lecturers and class meetings (wijayati, et al. 2018). such a suffering might have been caused by several factors, such as the flat expression of lecturers' face when students speak or answer questions wijayati, et al. 2018) or certain ways lecturers employ in giving feedback on student academic performance (aina & wijayati, 2019). the learners’ dependency on lecturers in the learning process needs to be gradually reduced. they need to be encouraged to be more independent and think critically. thus, we need to explore strategies that can enhance students’ critical thinking, particularly students of deutsch als fremdsprache (daf) or german as a foreign language. feedback strategies appear most relevant as they have the potentials to promote university students’ critical thinking as proven by ekahitanond (2013) through the use of online discussion forum as well as to train students in critically reflecting on their weaknesses (wijayati, 2014). the finding that students did not know their weaknesses is a proof that they have less feedback in the class. they need to be led to realize their weaknesses in certain language skills through feedback from lecturers. even though, we have to consider the way of giving feedback, because as stated before, certain ways lecturer employ in giving feedback could cause students’ stresses (aina & wijayati, 2019). besides, there is still less study about feedback related to critical thinking skill, especially in daf context in indonesia. this present study is intended to explore how lecturers of daf provide various types of feedback in order to develop their students’ critical thinking. as studies on feedback strategies for daf students are still few in number, the results of this present study can provide empirical data concerning the utilization of feedback strategies for the development of critical thinking. it also offers various strategies of giving feedback that can be used by teachers or lecturers in language classes. method this study employed a descriptive research design, meant to describe various types of feedback that can enhance students' critical thinking. the instruments used were observation and interview guidelines. the data collection was conducted from 9 september 2019 to 31 october 2019. the data was taken from the learning processes in the german language education study program, faculty of letters, universitas negeri malang (um). the classes being wijayati, ardiyani, hidayat feedback strategies: an effort to enhance the critical thinking skills of daf-learners in indonesia 80 observed were deutsch i (2 classes), konversation i (2 classes), deutsch auf b2 niveau (2 classes), and freier vortrag (1 class). each class was observed six times, once a week. the focus of the observation was to identify various feedback strategies that the lecturers used in the classes in order to develop their students’ critical thinking. in addition to observations in the classroom, the data were collected through interviews with the lecturers and the students to crosscheck the data that had been collected through observations. the selection of the students to be interviewed was determined based on those who were responding to the feedback given by lecturers in order to explore the follow-up information they had done after receiving the feedback. the research data were analyzed by using content analysis techniques (krippendorf, 2004), sorted into components that show the same aspects under investigation, that is, the types of feedback provided by lecturers to be analyzed further to examine the feedback potentials to develop the students’ critical thinking. results and discussion the strategy of providing feedback in the learning process can lead learners to think critically. the results of this study reveal that gfl lecturers used various feedback strategies in the classes, as shown in the following figure: figure 1. strategies that are presented or used feedback through questions giving question is one type of metalinguistic feedback strategies (lyster & ranta, 2013) that is given by the lecturer in the class. the questions were delivered in plenary class so that the other students could listen or evaluate the answer to the question; the lecturers could also evaluate whether the students understood the material well or check if other students paid attention to their classmates' answers. following data are examples of the questions raised by the lecturer. 1. ,,was macht man im feierabend? wann habt ihr feierabend?” (what are people doing during afterwork? when do you have afterwork?) the question above was addressed in the class hoping any students who knew the answer would explain it so that all the other students would understand the term feierabend. this question also led the students to associate the theme with their own experiences. 2. warum im herbst machen die leute fotos? (why do people take photos in autumn?) in this sample question, the students are required to think critically about the reasons why many people in germany take photos in the fall or why they think that germans do that. the students were indirectly asked to analyze and find out the reasons for the question. feedback in the form of questions used by lecturers is also related to the grammar and vocabulary mastering such as the following data: 3. was ist “beschweren”? (what is beschweren?) 4. was ist der unterschied zwischen als und wenn? (what is the difference between “wenn” and “als”) that question tests the students’ grammar knowledge and evaluates if they have truly mastered the material they have learned. through this kind of feedback, they can enrich and strengthen their language knowledge. the lecturers use the feedback strategies through questions aimed at correcting the use of words and sentences by the students as well as to provoke their responses. regarding feedback through questions, according to ellis (2009), lecturers can use feedback through questions so that learners can find out what was wrong. questions can aim to correct learners’ errors and to test learners’ knowledge about german vocabulary and structure. giving feedback through questions is useful both for the lecturers and the students. the lecturers can simply self-evaluate whether they already transfer the knowledge well or not and know how far the learners receive it. at the same time, students can self-evaluate whether they already understand a particular structure or vocabulary they have learned or not and even learn something new; in this case, they have not learned it yet. it strengthens one of the research findings from (won et al., 2019) that feedback is useful and it also can increase learning performance. it could be seen from the student’s response of an interview in the following data. 5. “if there is new vocab, sometimes the lecturer writes it on the board and asks us what does it mean or if anybody knows this word. thus, we look forward about that word and its function or how we should apply it in a sentence”. from that statement it could be seen that learners are having process to think and get a new information about particular vocabulary and learn even more about the structure. the questions that are delivered as feedback from the lecturers are guiding the learners to think critically. through questions from data 3, the learners need to recall their prior knowledge. it belongs to the first stage of critical thinking skills based on 21st revised taxonomy bloom (anderson & krathwohl, international journal of education vol. 15 no. 2, august-2022, pp. 78-85 ©2022 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: https://doi.org/10.17509/ije.v15i2 81 2001), remembering. there, the learners are required to recall and remember the information. the second stage, understanding, can be seen from data 1. the question on data 1 leads learner to explain ideas or concepts. the third stage, applying, can be found on data 5. through lecturers’ questions, learners are provoked to know certain information more and then apply it in a sentence. the process itself (looking forward about the meaning of the word and its function, and then apply it in a sentence with their own version) shows that this question leads learners to use information in a new way, which belongs to the stage applying as well. the fourth stage, analyzing, is shown by data 4 through that question, the learners are required to distinguish the difference of certain language structure. data 2 also shows the stage of analyzing, because it leads learners to develop their awareness of context and they are expected to imagine, to share their experiences as well as their opinion and to think independently. feedback through comments giving comment, also as one of metalinguistic feedback (lyster & ranta, 2013), is intended so that learners can understand the material taught in a proper context. comments are given as a form of confirmation that what learners have done is correct or not. the following data are some examples of situations, in which comments are delivered. 6. the learners made a poster about common activities of certain season in germany and presented it together with their group in front of the class. the lecturer gave comments about the poster look from each group and confirmed its content. 7. lecturer gave a comment on a presentation from the learners about german local food, confirmed its content, and then explained it further and compared it to indonesian local food. through those kinds of feedback, the lecturer guides learners to imagine and compared the information they already have with the information they get from lecturer. the lecturer also invites the learners to understand the context of the material through comments such as the following data: 8. the lecturer responds to the student’s presentation that the preposition “nach”is not appropriate use to refer to the place referred to in the sentence. example: ich gehe nach park. (i am going to the park). 9. the lecturer corrects the inaccurate sentence from “er geht nach hause” (i am going home) to “ich bin zu hause” (i am home.) those kinds of feedback aim to confirm whether the learners’ answers are correct or not. not only confirmative, but comments can also be corrective. this type of comment is given to complete and correct incomplete sentences and refine them so that they are correct and understandable. the following are examples of lecturers giving comments. 10. a learner made a mistake using conjunction “denn” in a sentence. as that learner finish the sentence, the lecturer commented, “repeat it. if we use denn, then the verb stands normal (in the second position of the sentence, not in the end of it), repeat it, please”. 11. a learner made a mistake using praposition “zu”. after the presentation, the lecturer commented on that and explained the structur of zu + dativ. in this study, learners are getting feedback through comments. the comments in this study are delivered verbally and face to face. it is different with the study from (al-bashir, et al. 2016) which are giving feedback through comments as well. both studies are online-based. cavanaugh and song (2014) offered comments through written and audio feedback, while (al-bashir et al., 2016) study that suggested comments as feedback in a various ways such as through email, audio and video, screencasts, and recycling written comments. comments as feedback are mostly given after the learners presented or finished a task. it leads learners to evaluate their work and their understanding which is the fifth stage of critical thinking according to 21st revised taxonomy bloom (anderson & krathwohl, 2001). it also provokes learners to make their work better. feedback through output-prompting the strategy of giving feedback through outputprompting is related to corrective feedback (ratnah, 2013). hinkel (2011) also present findings regarding to corrective feedback. in the research findings, as well as the result of the study conducted by wijayati (2014), learners almost always show expressions in order to be given corrective feedback by lecturers. it is also found in this research, where the learners expect corrective feedback from the lecturer as follows. 1. “...if we do mistakes, we should be corrected 2. “...correct us if there is grammar mistake which are quite fatal and dominant while speaking. 3. “when i’m making mistakes, i have to be corrected”. corrective feedback both oral and written is effective because it increases language acquisition in terms of linguistics. the positive effect of corrective feedback is that learners can use language knowledge learned implicitly and explicitly. implicit in this case is that learners understand the meaning and the use of language unplanned, whereas what is meant explicitly is learners use language that has been learned and after they got feedback by the lecturer with caution and planned (hinkel, 2011). however, we should consider the way we provide corrective feedback, whether it should be given directly or indirectly, because each has certain impact. according to some studies on second language acquisition, indirect feedback is more preferable to direct, because it involves learners in the correction process which may help them foster their long-term acquisition of the target language feedback (chandler, 2003; ferris & robert, 2001; o’sullivan & wijayati, ardiyani, hidayat feedback strategies: an effort to enhance the critical thinking skills of daf-learners in indonesia 82 chambers, 2006; sheen, 2007). while mahfoozifard and mehdiabadi (2016) argued that indirect feedback is more effective compared to direct feedback. in this study, most learners are glad to get indirect feedback because it does not push the learners and drop their mental health. many learners worldwide suffer fear of negative feedback (awan, et al. 2010; barahmeh, 2013; fischer & modena, 2005; nazir, et al. 2014). one of examples from negative feedback is giving corrective feedback directly. thus, lecturers use output-prompting as one of feedback strategies such as following data 4. “...if there was something wrong, (the lecturer) lets us to speak freely and then corrects it”. 5. “...(the lecturer) was not directly lecturing, prompting first, ... we were not immediately corrected but we were given the opportunity to think as well”. it is called output-prompting feedback because they withhold the correct form and invite selfcorrection (li, 2018). output-prompting is a form of indirect corrective feedback and positive feedback that can encourage learners to keep learning and increase their skills. following data show some examples of output-prompting: 6. the lecturer prompts a learner to reformulate a sentence, as she forgot the subject and verb in a sentence. “die frau…”. die frau fährt im frühling nach hamburg.”(“the woman...”. “the woman goes in spring to hamburg) 7. as learner made mistake to use the word student, the lecturer tried to correct it through prompting, “er ist student oder er ist studenten?”.(“he is student or he is students?”) from those data it could be seen that the lecturers do not give the learners direct feedback. the lecturers give the learners a chance to make selfcorrection. the self-correction itself contains a complex process which reflects the critical thinking skills. the learners have to recall and memorize, understanding the idea or concepts, apply it in a new sentence, analyze and then evaluate (anderson & krathwohl, 2001; zapalka, et al. 2018). this study shows us that feedback strategies in the classroom can be used as alternative strategies as en effort to enhance learners’ critical thinking skills. it is supporting the result study conducted by (ekahitanond, 2013) which states that university learners’ critical thinking skills can be promoted through peer feedback activity. the difference was that study was in an online discussion forum and the feedback was a peer-feedback, while the feedback in this study is face to face in the classroom from the lecturers to the learners. in addition, as the research findings conducted by (retna & cavana, 2013) and (wijayati, 2014), the result of this study also reveals that feedback strategy has a positive impact to the learning process. feedback helps the learners to improve their learning and produce better performance and achievement. feedback through praises praises are also given by the lecturers as a strategy of giving feedback to the learners in the classroom. praising is a form of approval expressions to show learners that they have done the task properly. praising is also a form of lecturer’s appreciation because the learners have completed the task as expected by the lecturers. usually the praise is in the form of phrases or expressions like: 8. gut! (good!) 9. sehr good! (very good) 10. super! no problemo! (super! no problem!) 11. perfekt! (perfect!) 12. alle sind richtig! (all of them are correct!) praises are used as motivation that can improve learner’s performance in the classroom and motivate learners to talk in the class. in this study, the lecturers appreciate the answers to both the correct and wrong answers. various praises given by the lecturers in class are as follows. 13. the lecturer praises "danke schön, gut!" (thank you so much, good!) as the learner presents dialogues about unique houses in germany even if the learner still made some grammar mistakes. 14. as a learner said das ist kein buch, sondern eine mappe, the lecturer complimented, “sehr gut, am 1. semester benutzt er “sondern” (very good, in the first semester he already uses the word “sondern”) 15. “ich glaube alle haben versucht deutsch zu sprechen. das ist schon gut. viellecht noch fehler ist kein problem. fehler ist menschlich. sie sind noch am 3. semester. das ist sehr gut. ich bin stolz auf euch”. (i think everybody tried to speak in german. it’s good. maybe some mistakes are okay. doing mistake is human. you are still in the third semester. it’s pretty good! already. i’m proud of you) from the learner’s perception, praise is the most pleasure feedback that boost their motivation and willingness to perform better. the result of the interview show that all learners are happy to get praise-feedback and they even need it, so that they are more motivated and not feeling down. it could be seen from students’ responses from an interview as follows. 16. “...praise can also give encouragement rather than (mental) dropping or just telling mistakes without being rewarded with praise”. 17. “...during our presentation we were praised super or sehr gut”. 18. “i want to get more praise from lecturers when we have courage to answer, (the praise) like the phrase "good" because we feel more appreciated. 19. “what i want for me and others after presentation, even though the presentation was not good, we were praised first and then criticized”. the expected feedback of learners in improving understanding in the lecture is input that motivates and does not drop their mental. lecturers are expected to show the strengths of the presentations first, then international journal of education vol. 15 no. 2, august-2022, pp. 78-85 ©2022 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: https://doi.org/10.17509/ije.v15i2 83 provide a solution to the weaknesses of the presentations. about praise as feedback, grief and breckwoldt (2012) stated that praise was included in the minimal feedback because lecturer only gave praise with the aim of appreciating learners. nevertheless, we should not underestimate the role of praise “only” as a compliment. we should consider the effect of the praise to the learners. praise is a powerful tool for improving academic performance and it can promote a warm and lovely mood in classrooms (al-ghamdi, 2017). praise may not relate to the process of enhancing critical thinking skill directly, but it has strong effect toward learner’s motivation and willingness to perform in a right and better way. praise is an effective way of giving positive feedback to learners that can increase their motivation so they can be triggered to advance and develop their abilities including the ability to think critically. however, we must pay attention to the way how to praise learners, because praise can also lead them to a variety of negative attitudes such as deficiency in hard work and lack of creativity (alghamdi, 2017). lecturers have to consider how to use praise effectively. conclusion based on the findings of the study, one of the strategies of giving feedback that can lead learners to think critically is throwing questions to learners. questions given by lecturers aim to correct errors in the use of words and sentences by learners and provoke learners’ responses. in addition to giving questions to learners, feedback strategies are provided through comments. giving feedback through comments is aimed to improve language acquisition in terms of linguistics. both of them are a form of metalinguistic feedback that can be a trigger to learners to think more critically. besides, output-prompting is also used by lecturer as one of feedback strategies to enhance learners’ critical thinking skills, while giving feedback through praise can motivate learners to improve their ability to continue learning in the classroom. through those feedback strategies, learners are triggerred to remember, understand, apply, analyze, and evaluate. all those strategies appear to lead the students in the end to create, which reflects the critical thinking skill taxonomy. the tendency of most of learners being passive in learning can be encouraged to actively respond to learning activities in class through feedback strategies provided by the lecturers. the lecturers can give provoking questions which lead them to think and answer the question related to their daily life or backgrounds. the questions that have been prepared by lecturers to guide students to think can be followed up with the following questions to deepen the topic or material. questions should be given evenly to all students in the class, so the students who tend to be passive, feel ashamed or inferior to speak without being asked by the lecturer, can be gradually encouraged to be more active. in addition, it is suggested that the lecturers apply more types of feedback in order to provide learners with opportunities to repair or improve their language. this study has been done pertinent to a language skill: speaking. for further researcher, it will be better to extend the study to another language skill or even to another language or subject. references aina, q., & wijayati, p. h. 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(2016). a model of critical thinking as an important attribute for success in the 21st century. procedia social and behavioral sciences, 232, 102–108. 186 developmental guidance and counseling in a family setting (an islamic psychological approach) anwar sutoyo abstract this article puts forward an idea of implementation of developmental guidance and counseling principles with islamic perspectives in raising children in a family. some concepts of islam closely related to the implementation of developmental guidance and counseling in a family cover concepts of human nature, purpose of human creation, potencies of human, human characteristics, disaster happened to human, and death of human. as for implementation of developmental guidance and counseling for children, it should start from the smallest unit of society, that is, family. the role of family in helping a child to develop his/her potentials is very important because a child is born to and brought up by parents. a child learns to develop in his/her environment. he/she also learns how to interact with the environment properly from his/her parents. although the role of a family is very significant, not every family is able to play the role well. this is probably because of the mistakes in choosing spouses, feeding the family, and educating the child. this could probably because of a role model crisis and lack of parent observation. considering the weaknesses, a preventive idea in the form of developmental guidance and counseling is suggested. this idea can be applied by a family to help develop the biological, psychological, social, and faith potentials of a child. therefore, the child can grow and develop optimally in line with their age level and in accordance to the will of his/her creator. key words: developmental guidance and counseling, islamic guidance and counseling, human potentials family a child learns how to develop his/her conscience and to control his/ her emotions. it is from the family too that a child knows god and worships him. this is achieved through the role models and teachings from the parents and family members in everyday life. it is therefore understandable to say that a family is a part of a success key for the future of a child. introduction a family is the basis for the formation of a child physical, psychological, and faith potentials. an offspring develops, is born, and is nurtured in a family (father and mother). in a family, a child learns to know the names of things around him/ her and the people around him/her. he/ she also learns how to interact with things and people correctly. from the semarang state university-indonesia international journal of education vol. 5, no. 2, may 2011, 186-200 anwar sutoyo, developmental guidance and counseling in a family setting 187 although the role of a family is important, not every family understands and is able to play its role well. this may be because of (1) the mistake in choosing spouses. the mistake may result in unexpected child, (2) the mistake in feeding the family. in this case, the child is fed with illegal drink/food the child as a result tends to think badly, (3) the mistake in educating and choosing the education for the child the mistake prevents the child’s potential from growing optimally, (4) the role model crisis of the family especially the parents. the crisis causes a child not to have a definite example or correct reference in developing him/herself, (5) the lack of supervision from parents. due to the lack of supervision, the child grows without any clear direction because he/she is always swayed by what is happening around him/her. b y c o n s i d e r i n g t h e a b o v e mistakes of family guidance and its possible consequences, this paper suggests a preventive idea in the form of developmental counseling. the idea can be applied by a family to help develop the biological, psychological, social, and faith potential of the child. it is hoped that the child will grow and develop optimally according to their age level and according to the will of the creator. this paper is written for that purpose and is based on the psychological and religious principles. psychological and religious approach is considered very important remembering that the subjects of the counseling are human beings who are the creatures of allahallah knows the strengths and weaknesses of human beings. allah surely knows the potentials of human beings and how to develop them correctly. allah of course knows the essence of the problems faced by human beings and the best way to solve them. psychology provides theories related to the guided subjects. psychological theories are usually used to understand human beings and to understand verses of the quran which are related to human beings. d e v e l o p m e n t a l g u i d a n c e a n d counseling 1. definition of developmental guidance and counseling b l o c h e r ( 1 9 7 4 : 6 7 ) w h o writes a book entitled “developmental counseling” states that there is no solid definition found on the developmental counseling. however, the essence of developmental guidance and counseling is found as an effort to help individuals to achieve freedom, to fully aware of themselves, and to have appropriate ways in responding to the influences of the environment. schmidt (1999: 31) defines developmental guidance and counseling as follows: ... activities and services that are designed to help student focus on the attainment of knowledge and skills for developing healthy life goals and acquiring the behaviors to reach these goals. sometimes these activities can be delivered in large or small group guidance sessions. at other times they are designed especially for targeted audiences in small group counseling sessions. 188 international journal of education, vol. 5, no. 2, may 2011 the above definition means that (1) developmental guidance and counseling is a form of assistance, (2) the assistance can be in the form of giving knowledge or skills, (3) the goal is that the assisted individuals attain healthy life, (4) the way is by caring and empowering the potentials owned by the individuals properly, and (5) the assistance can be individual or in groups. developmental guidance and counseling is viewed by myrick (1993: 8-11) as one of four guidance and counseling approaches-althongjh it is admitted that there is an overlap between one approach and the other. they are (a) crisis approach, emphasizing on helping to solve various problems which disturb someone’s welfare, (b) remedial approach, focusing on the effort to compensate weaknesses. this approach is basically the same as the remedial approach, (c) preventive approach, emphasizing on preventive efforts, for ex pie the guidance to overcome or avoid ones from extra marital pregnancy, drug abuse, and (d) developmental approach, focusing on developing individuals’ potentials. 2. principles of developmental guidance and counseling myrick (193: 34-37), muro and kotman (1995: 50-53) based on the definition of developmental guidance and counseling of some experts, finally formulate principles of developmental guidance and counseling as follows: a developmental guidance and counseling is needed by every child. therefore, the program of developmental guidance and counseling should provide continues assistance, support, and meaningful experience for the development of a child every child needs to understand him/ herself, to have a good self control, to have maturity in interacting with the environment, to be able to make a decision, to be able to solve problems by considering the existing values in the society, and to be able to understand his/her own strengths and weaknesses. b. developmental guidance and counseling focuses on lessons for a child. there is a tendency that modern schools tend to be more specialized. they provide special teachers to teach reading, playing musical instruments, and physical skills. a counselor is a specialist for growth and development. he/ she works by focusing on the effort to help the development of intelligence, feeling, growth, and development by emphasizing on human learning and human learner. this means that counselors are members of a team which consist of parents, teachers, administrative staffs, and other specialists. their job is to focus on knowledge and skills to help a child learn. students who face problems have to study. those who are slow in learning must be assisted to be able to learn as much as possible. all students have to be involved in the learning process. c. developmental guidance and counseling involve every school anwar sutoyo, developmental guidance and counseling in a family setting 189 staff. it is admitted that a successful developmental guidance and counseling program requires a serious effort from every school staff. cooperation among people who have special knowledge and skill on individual counseling, group counseling, assessment, and child development is necessary. a counselor is an important part of a dynamic process which motivates the involvement of teachers and administration staffs. d. an organized and planned curriculum is an important part of developmental guidance and coun seling. this means that the curriculum of mathematics, science, and social science should contain a goal that can help normal growth and development. the curriculum needs to support the development of child’s intelligence, emotion, and physical. the curriculum implementation should at the same time help the development of self este em, achievement motivation, decision making, goal setting, planning, problem solving skills, communication skills, and responsible behaviors. e. developmental guidance is related to self-acceptance, selfunderstanding, and self-enhancement in helping a student with a problem, a counselor has to plan an activity which can help him/her understand how actually he/she is, to be able to accept him/herself, and to be aware of his/her strengths and weaknesses. for example, the counselor plans group counseling in three meetings to discuss the best thing that they have to do. the counselor can also plan an individual counseling to discuss one’s strengths and weaknesses. f. developmental guidance and coun seling focuses on encouragement process. a counselor should create a joyful atmosphere to help the children’s development according to the developmental stage. the counselor should also be trusted by the child. referring to dinkmeyer & dreikurs, murro and kotman point out the characteristics of a counselor as a motivator: 1) being able to place a child as he/she is 2) presenting him/herself as an individual with faith so that children will also grow as a faithful person 3) believing in the child’s ability so that the child becomes selfconfident 4) appreciating a child’s work which has been successfully com pleted, so that it en courages the child to try better 5) using groups to support and encourage the child’s development 6) involving the child in group activities so that he/she is convinced that he/she can develop there 7) helping the development of child’s skill continuously and psychologically can support the child’s success 190 international journal of education, vol. 5, no. 2, may 2011 8) recognizing and focusing the attention on the child’s strengths and assets 9) utilizing child’s interest to support teaching and learning activi ties developmental guidance and counseling appreciate sequential deve lop ment rather than just an end result. a developmental counselor understands that children are in the process to be. then their physical development will undergo changes before reaching maturity. therefore, in planning and evaluating activities for the children the counselor always refer to the level of age development. he/she prioritizes sequential progress rather than just the end result. g. developmental guidance and counseling is related to initial identification to child’s special needs. for this, the counselor and teachers work together to understand the child’s needs. if the needs are ignored, they can cause pro blems which need fixing in the future. h. developmental guidance and counseling is related to applied psychology. for a long time, educators have been observing the result of the measurement of aptitude, interest and attitude, and child and adult’s personalities. educators have also been observing how children use and develop their abilities for their future. i. developmental guidance and counseling has a strong foundation on child psychology, child development, and learning theory. if the counselor is really a develop mental follower, the guidance program is planned by always considering its suitability with the age level and child’s needs. therefore, the counselor borrows terminologies and refers to theories of child psychology, child development, and learning theory. j. the program of developmental guidance and counseling is arranged sequentially and flexibly. in order that developmental guidance and counseling run effectively, it needs to be planned sequentially and flexibly in facing individual differences. h u m a n b e i n g s i n t h e q u r a n i c perspective and its implication to developmental guidance and counseling 1. human beings according to the quranic pertive t h e s t u d y o f m a u d h u ’ i q u r a n i c interpretation which discusses human beings reveals that human beings in the quranic perspective are as follows: a. the material of human being according to general medical theory, human beings are created from “sperm cells” and “ovum” (harun yahya, 2003: 60). the quran informs that human is made of dirt, essence of dirt, nutfah, essence of weak water (essence of anwar sutoyo, developmental guidance and counseling in a family setting 191 cement). the first human (adam) was created by allah from “dirt”, “al-ardh “ (earth), “at-tiin “ (dirt), “turba” (dirt), and “shalshalin “ (dry clay) and “sulalatin min tim” (the essence of dirt). human is not created through the process of father and mother. it is also not created through the process of cement turning into nutfah. apart from dirt, another component is “soul” which is created by allah (quran, 15-29-30). b. allah’s purpose in creating humans from the day they were born to the day they die, humans are not supposed to only have fun. they have orders and rules to be obeyed and prohibition to be avoided. there is a purpose behind the creation. there is hiknah and advantages behind the purpose. there is a secret behind what is ordained by allah, which is not always easily understood by hi man-, (quran, 3: 185, 4: 78, 21: 35). humans who live on this world are not just let free to play and have fun. on the hereafter, they will be asked about: (1) how they have spent their life, (2) what they did when they were young, (3) how they earned and spent their wealth, and (4) how they applied their knowledge. this is based on the following hadits: the messenger of allah says: “on the judgment day, the feet of a slave will not move until they are asked about four matters: about how they spent their age, how they spent their young age, how they earned and spent their wealth, and how they applied their knowledge” (narrated by turmudzi). after they are asked about the four matters, they will receive reward/ punishment from the almighty god for what they have done in the world there is a job humans must perform, that is as a caliph of allah on earth. the caliph here is promoted and laid off by allah to perform duties according to his rules and wills. the duties are in the field or authority according to what is given by allah to them. therefore, the essence of humans’ duties as allah’s caliph on earth is to perform amanah (responsibility) according to what is taught by allah and his messenger. in performing the duty as a caliph, there are rules in the forms of orders and prohibitions which have to be obeyed. performing the duties is reckoned to be ibadah (worship). the purpose of human creationto act as the caliph of allah on earth and to worship allah is not for the sake of allah, but for human itself. it means that the benefits of performing amanah and ibadah according to allah’s rules are for humans themselves, not for allah. c. human’s fitrah (potentials) allah created humans and their fitrah (potentials). fitrah is elements and systems given by allah to every man. the elements include physical, psychological, soul, and faith the potential “to believe in allah” becomes a basis and core for the other three fitrahs. the faith potential is considered as the “basis” and “core” because when one’s iman (faith) develops and functions properly, the other fitrahs (physical, psychological, and soul) develop and function well, 192 international journal of education, vol. 5, no. 2, may 2011 too. therefore, islamic guidance and counseling focus on the development of frtrah of faith. the physical furah is a biological aspect which is prepared as the container of the psychological fitrah the psychological firrah in fact has a potential to develop the biological process. the potential is called the living potential (al-hayat). the living potential is not yet able to generate actual behaviors if it has not been powered by the psychological fitrah the psychological fitrah is the essence of human character. the psychological fitrah lies in the material and immaterial worlds. the psychological fitrah is more eternal than the physical fitrah the soul fitrah is also sacred it fights for spiritual dimensions. it is able to exist and becomes actual behaviors when it integrates with physical fitrah the soul frtrah is a combination between physical frtrah (biological) and soul filrah (psychological). it has three main components: heart, intelligence, and desire which interact each other and is manifested in the form of personality. the tafsir (quranic interpretation) study conducted by the writer when he was writing his dissertation in the indonesian university of education found that the `faith fftrah” works as a director and controller for the other three fitrahs (biological, soul, and psychological). d. human characteristics based on the verses of the quran and the explanation of the messenger of god, there are unique characteristics of humans which are different from that of other creatures. the characteristics are: 1. humans are created by allah. humans comprise of two inseparable elements: physical and divine soul (intelligence and soul) (quran, 39: 7). the physical is a biological aspect which is prepared as the container of the soul. the soul aspect is not found in a jinni, devil, and animal. with the soul humans are able to recognize allah, have a subtle feeling, and have noble behaviors. 2. since their early creation, humans have been equipped with “religious fitrah” which witnesses the oneness of god and is obedient to him (quran, 30: 30). 3. humans are created by allah and are equipped with intelligence which enables them to differentiate the rights from the wrongs. 4. humans are created by allah and are equipped with feelings which enable them to know the hidden and unseen things. 5. humans do not know for sure what they will attempt in the future and what they will gain. however, they are required to make an attempt. 6. created by allah, humans are equipped with conscience (fu’ad) and heart (qalb). they are not like animals who are only equipped with hearing andd sight. with their heart, it is possible for humans to think about what is outside the sensible worlds and its details. then, they generalize them and produce general and comprehensive laws. anwar sutoyo, developmental guidance and counseling in a family setting 193 7. there was a place for humans before they were born, namely the backbone of the father. after they were born, they live on earth until the due day (quran, 7: 24). there is also a place before birth, the womb of the mother. after humans are born then they die. their place after they died is in the grave, before they proceed to the life in the heaven or hell (quran, 6: 98). 8. for each individual, there are two angels who always follow him/ her consecutively in front and behind him/her. the angles take care of him/her under allah’s order (quran, 13: 11). humans are not fully capable of taking care of themselves, because there are many things which are beyond their capacity. there are things that human thought are good, but are proven to disadvantage them. hnmans’ knowledge about themselves is also limited. 9. humans are always observed by two angles who keep recording what they do, both the good deeds and the bad ones. the record will be shown to humans in the judgment day in the form of record book of deeds. every individual will know what he/she has done and what he/ she has overlooked during his/her life in the world. 10. every individual will receive reward of what he/she has done (quran, 20: 15 & quran, 74: 38). for individuals who are afraid of allah and is able to control their desires their place is in the heaven. if there in an individual who is trapped in the hell, that is because of what he/she him/ herself did (quran 6: 70). every individual who commits a sin will receive its consequence and is not able to transfer the consequence to somebody else. e. disasters happening to humans a disaster is any undesired thing which happens to humans. because a disaster is not desired, people see it as a problem. if it is looked closely, a disaster can be categorized into: (a) a disaster as a “reward” or “punishment” for the wrong doings, as a form of disobedience to allah’s guidance (quran, 3: 54), (b) a disaster as a “warning” or “reprimand” for humans to immediately go back to the way that pleases allah (quran, 32: 21), and (c) a disaster as “test” from allah to improve human’s obedience to him (quran, 2: 155). a d i s a s t e r m a y h a p p e n t o anyone. it may happen to a pious and to a criminal. if a disaster happens to a pious, it serves as a test for his/ her faith. when a disaster happens to a criminal, it serves as a punishment from allah. to know whether a disaster is a punishment, warning, or test from allah, one can check his/her deed in his/ her daily life and its compliance with the religious teachings. the purpose of allah to test humans is for allah to know (a) who is actually serious and patient, (b) who is really faithful and who tells lies, (c) who is obedient and who is disobedient, (d) who has the best deed. the final goal is to prepare humans to bear the responsibility or trust to develop the world, to guide 194 international journal of education, vol. 5, no. 2, may 2011 humans, and affirm the words of allah on earth (khalifah fil ardh). t h e r e a r e t h r e e p o s s i b l e responsibilities that an individual must bear: (a) easy and can be accomplished, (b) cannot be accomplished by humans, (c) can be accomplished by humans but with a lot of struggles. however, allah does not burden somebody except according to his/her capacity, he/she is rewarded for the good deeds he did, and is tormented for his/her crimes. l human’s death humans do not live on earth forever. there is an ending time of life which is called death (a1 hadits in al-gha7-qli, 1999: 26-27). death happens when the soul and the body separate completely. there is someone whose soul is separated from the body temporarily. after that the soul is sent back to its container (physical) until the time for complete separation arrives. it happens to someone who is sleeping. there is also someone whose time of complete separation between the soul and body has arrived. after that, he/she is returned to the creator (quran, 6: 60). every living being will die (quran, 3: 185). allah creates humans. it is allah who will decide the ending of their lives (quran, 6: 2). when the time of death arrives, no one is able to delay it or to make it earlier even a second (quran, 7: 34, 10: 49, 15: 5, 23: 4, 7: 34, 16 : b 1). nobody knows when, because of what, and where he/she will die (quran, 31: 34). death may occur to an offspring, baby, adolescent, adult, and elderly (quran, 22: 5, 40; 67). after their death, on the due time humans will be resurrected to be accounted for what they have done in the world after that, they will receive reward/punishment (quran, 11: 7). death is something definite for hi mans without considering their jobs. death will come to humans even if they hide themselves in the most secret hiding place (quran, 4: 78). when death comes, no one will be able to prevent it. a child will not be able to help his/ her parents. parents will not be able to help their children at all (quran, 31: 33). however, death will not happen without allah’s will (quran, 3: 145). before death occurs, allah warns humans about several things: (1) check their preparation to return to allah any time (quran, 59: 18), (2) what should be prepared to return to allah is taqwa to allah, that is being obedient to his rules anytime, anywhere (quran, 31: 33), (3) hiimans must not worship other than allah, (4) humans must always apologize and repent to allah (quran, 2: 132, 3: 102). (5) people who die in apostasy belong to the infidel and all what they have done will be meaningless (quran, 2: 217), (b) if someone feels he is about to die, he/she should leave a will to parents or family (quran 2: 180, 5: 106). 2. the implications of humans in the quranic perspective in the islamic developmental guidance and counseling from the basic concept of the nature of human beings according to the quran presented above, the implications for the developmental guidance and counseling are summarized as follows: anwar sutoyo, developmental guidance and counseling in a family setting 195 human beings according to the quran and the implication to the developmental guidance and counseling no human beings in the islamic perspective the implication to developmental guidance and counseling 1 humans do not exist by themselves. they are created by a creator, named allah. humans are the slaves of allah. humans must always submit and be obedient to him. children should be introduced early that they are the slaves of allah. they must always submit and be obedient to him. 2 . the first human (adam) was created from dirt. his descendants are created by allah from the essence of dirt whichenters the mouth of parents through food. to obtain quality children, one should begin with choosing the right spouses, that is one whose faith is right, born to a good family, and has good personalities. 3. humans are created from sperm and ovum, the raw material of which is dirt. t h e s p e r m a n d o v u m g r a d u a l l y develop into a complete human. to obtain a good child, feed the family with good wealth in terms of its substance and the way to obtain it. 4. allah creates hearing and sight. • accustom children to feeling grateful to allah every time they obtain pleasure however small it is. • accustom children to using hearing and sight to listen and to see things which please allah. 5 in creating the descendants of adam, sending messengers, giving sustenance, and sending torments, allah involves other parties. • accustom children to thanking to everybody involved in their success ( p a r e n t s , s i b l i n g s , f r i e n d s , a n d teachers). • teach children a cooperative life which needs and respect each other 6 humans are created to be khalifatul frli ardh (ruler of the world) and to be worshippers of allah • give students opportunity to bearing responsibility based on their level of development. • accustom children to performing worship according to the religious rules. • introduce the life oriented towards the hereafter not only the worldly life. 196 international journal of education, vol. 5, no. 2, may 2011 7 there is a purpose behind the creation of the physical and psyche of humans. • accustom children to using the physical and psyche according to their purpose, that is according to the purpose of their creation. 8 humans are not created to only have fun. there are orders and prohibitions i which have to be obeyed. • introduce children to what is ordered and prohibited by the religion • accustom children to obeying orders and avoid prohibitions of allah for even a small matter, such as eating, drinking, clothing, getting along with others, etc. 9 the duty of humans is to worship allah throughout their age. • accustom children to performing worship according to allah’s rules since their early age. • make family members role models for the worship and faith of the children. provide opportunity and facility to worship at home or at school. 10 there are two kinds of acts of ibadah (worship) that humans must perform ii mnhdhoh “(prescribed) and “ghairu mahdhoh “ (non prescribed) • introduce children to the wisdom behind the prescription of various kinds of acts of worship. • give children opportunity to figure out and feel the wisdom behind the acts of worship they perform. 11 allah has ways to develop humans potentials (physical, soul, psychological, faith), so that the potentials develop well and will be useful for the life in the world and in the hereafter, that is through the acts of worship. • accustom students to performing worship correctly so that their faith is nurtured. • accustom children to fasting and giving alms so that their emotions develop well. • keep children away from what is prohibited by allah so that their physical, soul, and psyche develop well. 12 there are rules and regulation humans; have to obey. humans are judged from their loyalty to allah’s rules and regulations. • send children to schools which have religious teachers who practice the same religion as that of the children, who is in charge of educating children according to their religion. • educational assessment at schools and homes should evaluate not only knowledge but also behavior. • reward and punishment should also consider loyalty to thereligion. anwar sutoyo, developmental guidance and counseling in a family setting 197 13 there is allah’s divine decree which must apply to all humans. • introduce children that there is allah’s divine decree which must apply to all humans. • accustom students to accepting allah’s divine decree submissively. 14 human life will end at an unknown time. • introduce children that life is not only here and now. there is an eternal life after this life. • accustom children to doing good deeds as a provision for the life after death. 15 every baby is born free of any sin and there is no descended sin. • bear in mind that every human will be held accountable for what they have done in the world. 16 every human, including the child of a polytheist, has had religious potentials since they were born, that is admitting the power of allah and is submissive to him. •the faith potential needs to be cared and nurtured by studying allah’s guidance and apply it in everyday life. • family should provide facilities and educators for developing child’s aspect of faith. • it is necessary to relate lessons to religion so that the child’s faith grows stronger. 17 if faith potential does not develop, it may be because of the ignorance of parents in caring it or there is an intention of a particular party. • family has to provide an atmosphere which enables the child’s faith potential to develop optimally. • children should be protected from anything that harms the faith potentials, such as drug abuse and free sex. 18 allah has equipped humans with various potentials: senses, hearts, mind, feeling, the sending of messenger of god who brought the holy books. therefore, humans are capable of knowing allah and are submissive to him. • children should be accustomed to using senses, heart, minds, and emotions for good things. • children should be accustomed to studying the qauliyyah (the written) verses and the kauniyyah (the created) verses through teaching and learning. • children should be accustomed to memorizing and applying the hadits of the messenger in everyday life. 19 every child has a potential of easiness i of obeying the order of allah and also i the nobleness of behavior as a reflection of the faith potential • give children opportunity to perform religious duties since their early age. • assessment to the education result at both schools and homes should evaluate not only knowledge but also behavior. 198 international journal of education, vol. 5, no. 2, may 2011 20 if there is an individual who deviates from allah, the deviation is actually only temporary, because in a certain time (customarily in a difficult time) they will return to the faith potential. do not be easily desperate if there is a child who temporarily is not willing to obey his/her parents and teachers’ advice. they should not be hated and treated with hostility, because there is a possibility that one day he/she would realize that the teacher’s advice is true. 21 to care for and nurture potentials, individuals have to be steadfast in allah’s religion. try step by step to make children understand religious teachings and practice them correctly in everyday life 22 every human is equipped with physical, soul, psyche, and faith. if the faith potential develops well the other potentials will be good and correct, too. what a teacher and parents have to do first is to implant the correct belief to children, that is the belief of the oneness of god. 23 human potentials cannot develop well because of the devil’s act which always deviates humans from allah’s way-the way of faith and piety. • help children to be able to develop as humans who have faith, sincerity, piety, and submissiveness. with those characters, evil has no power to mislead humans. 24 devil misleads humans by: a motivating humans to ccumulate wealth disregarding its legality b. raising nonsensical dreams, expect the impossible, prefer imagining than thinking c. encouraging people to perform worship but not according to allah’s way and not for allah d encouraging people to do what does not please allah e. deviating people from the righteous path (sin, polytheism, infidelity) f. altering allah’s creation such as vasectomy, tubectomy, and tattoo g. influencing people to consider something bad as good • accustom children to living moderately especially through the role model of teachers and parents. • keep children away from gambling and drug abuse. • implant to children the sincere habit in doing various activities. • implant the right belief and accustom them practice the right belief correctly in everyday life. • reinforce that the right is right and the wrong is wrong although some people do not like it. • implant to children the habit to accept submissively what is given by allah. it is not necessary to alter what allah has created if it does not comply with the religion. anwar sutoyo, developmental guidance and counseling in a family setting 199 conclusions and suggestions i t i s c o n c l u d e d t h a t ( 1 ) developmental guidance and counseling does not begin from childhood it begins as early as when someone chooses his/her spouse, (2) to obtain a quality offspring, one has to feed the offspring with legal food in term of its substance and the way it is obtained, (3) the primary mentors are parents and immediate family members, (4) what the mentors can do is to implant the right faith and its consequences, to help children to understand the religion, to help children practice the religion for small and big matters according to the level of development, accustom children to behaving in line with the religion, to pray for the children to be enlightened and well behaved, (5) the media that can be used as models are parents and immediate family members, peers, stones in the holy book, films with moral values according to children’s level of development, and (6) the final goal is that the children’s potentials (physical, soul, psychological, and faith) develop optimally and finally the children enjoy true happiness in the world and in the hereafter. the ways to optimally develop i individuals’ potentials: a. implant righteous principles early b. using religion as the main reference in every step c. always pray to allah that he will keep us away from devil’s temptation and also for getting guidance and strength in taking the right path • implant the habit to perform worship to family members and to do the good deeds correctly and steadfastly. • facilitate every member of the family to understand religious rules correctly and comprehensively. • facilitate every member of the family to study quran and the hadits and to apply them. • teach students to memorize prayers in the quran and the hadits. it is suggested that (1) young people who are about to get married choose their spouse whose faith is right, who is born to a good family, knowledgeable, and well behaved this is considered important since parents are the main and first mentor for children. if one of the parents do not have one of those aspects, they may find difficulties in bringing up their children, (2) married couple should feed their children with legal food (both its substance and the way it is obtained), because food is the raw material of an offspring. food also influences one’s mind and behavior towards goodness or badness (depending on the quality of the food). one should make him/herself and all of his/her family members as good role models. people should always advise each other for goodness and give sufficient support for the development of children’s potentials (physical, psychological, soul, and faith) according to needs and level of development. 200 international journal of education, vol. 5, no. 2, may 2011 bibliography al-quran dan terjemahnya, khadim al-haramain asy-syarifaindepartemen agama republik indonesia. al-baqi, m fu’ad `abd (2001). aimu jam almufahras li-alfad; alquranil karim. alqahirah: darul hadits. al-jutjawi, syaikh ̀ ali ahmad. (2003). hikmah & falsafah di balik penetapan syari’at. (translated by: yusuf burhanuddin). bandung: pustaka hidayah. ai-qardhawi, yusuf. (1999). berinteraksi dengan ai-quran. jakarta: gema insani. al-qarni, aidh. (2003). laa tahzan: jangan bersedih. (translated by samson rahman). jakarta: qisthi press. anwar sutoyo. (2009). bimbingan dan konseling islami: teori & praktik. semarang: widya karya. ar-riva’i, m. nasib. (2002). kemudahan dari allah: rlngkasan tafsir ibnu katsir. (translated by: syihabuddin). jakarta: gema insani. blocher, d.d. (1974). developmental counseling. new york: john wiley & sons. hamka. (1984). tafsir a1 azhar, juz 1-xx. jakarta. pustaka panjimas. hawari, dadang. (1999). ai-quran ilmu kedokteran jiwa dan kesehatan jiwa. yogyakarta. pt dana bhakti prima yasa. ibnu mandzur, al-anshari, alifriqi al-mishri, al-imam alalamah jamaluddin abi alfadhl muhammad bin makram. (2002). lisaanul ‘arab. juz i-xv. beirutlebanon: daar al-kotob alilmiyah. myrick, r.d. (1993). developmental guidance and counseling. minneapolis: educational media corporation. quthub, sayyid (2000). tafsir fi zilalil qur’an: di bawah naungan alquran. juz ixi. jakarta: gema insani. santrock, j.w. (2002). life span development: perkembangan masa hidup (translated by: ahmad chusyairi and juda damanik). jakarta: erlangga. schmidt, j.j. (1999). counseling in school. boston: allyn & bacon shihab, m.q. (2000). wawasan alquran. tafsir maudhu’i alas pelbagai persoalan umat, juz i-xv. bandung: mizan. .(2002). tafsir al-misbah: pesan, kesan, dan keserasian al-quran. juz i-xv. jakarta: lentera hati. database connection failed! international journal of education vol. 11 no. 2, february-2019, pp. 143-151 ©2019 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: 10.17509/ije.v11i2.14558 143 exploring the use of learners’ first language in english as a foreign language classroom laxmi mustika cakrawati universitas pendidikan indonesia, bandung, indonesia laxmicakrawati@student.upi.edu first draft received: 20 nov 2018 date accepted: 15 jan 2018 final proof received: 28 feb 2019 abstract the use of learners’ first language has been debated for years. some of the researchers think that using learners’ first language can be a help for foreign language learning, while others argue that it can be hindrance. therefore, this study focuses on investigating students’ and teachers’ perceptions of the use of learners’ first language (l1) and the problems they encountered in using english in the english as a foreign language (efl) classroom context. the study involved 150 students of grade tent and grade eleven and two english teachers in a high school in rural karawang, west java. the data were collected through questionnaire, interviews, and classroom observation and were analyzed using mixed methods approach. the results of the study reveal that the participants showed various responses related to the use of l1. most of the participants perceived l1 as a facilitating learning tool that can help both teachers and students in learning process. thus, it is suggested that teachers should be able to not only use l1 wisely but also encourage their students to use more english in the classroom. keywords: efl classroom, learners’ l1, perception, use of l1 to cite this paper (in apa style): cakrawati, l. m. (2019). exploring the use of learners’ first language in english as a foreign language classroom. international journal of education, 11(2), 143-151. doi: 10.17509/ije.v11i2.14558 introduction the use of students’ first language (l1) and the use of target language in english classroom have been debated for years. the proponents of the l1 use argue that l1 can help students in many ways to acquire competences in english as the target language. meanwhile, those who are against the use of l1 in the classroom argue that the use of l1 can retain the acquisition of english since students should be exposed to english as much as possible (bozorgian & fallahpour, 2015; ford, 2009; inbarlourie, 2010). language experts and researchers have debated and investigated whether or not learners’ l1 is effective to use in english class. some researchers believe that using l1 can reduce the effectiveness of english learning process and hinder students in using the target language in the classroom (mcdonald (1993) and miles (2004) in bozorgian & fallahpour, 2015). they argue that the use of l1 will make students stop trying to practice and communicate in english because they can switch to l1 whenever they want. moreover, students will likely to keep thinking in l1 and do not work hard in acquiring english because they know their teacher will use l1 and can always explain the lesson or answer students’ question in their l1 (ford, 2009). some researchers also believe that l1 should be banned in english classroom because they think that the target language should be learned through maximum exposure and the only use of english as the target language provides students the experience of closely real english context in which they think and communicate in the target language. therefore, they think that the use of l1 and code switching in english classroom can diminish students’ exposure to the target language and lengthen delays in english learning in the classroom (cook (1991) and macaro (2001) in bozorgian & fallahpour, 2015). on the other hand, perceptions of the role of using l1 in english classroom have undergone changes. many researchers believe that instead of ignoring learners’ l1, l1 should be utilized as a resource in language learning (inbar-lourie, 2010). willis (1996) in mart (2013) argues that l1 should not be banned in english classroom. however, he adds that teachers should engage students in activities which allow them to use the target language. although there have been many debates about the use of l1, whether it hinders or helps learners in learning english, whether the teachers are native or non-native speakers, or whether the learners are in beginner or advanced level, learners’ l1 can be considered as a natural resource in l2 learning and it cannot be avoided (mart, 2013). the benefits of using l1 have been emphasized by the researchers who support the notion of l1 use in english classroom. harbord (1992) believes that l1 can be used to facilitate communication in the classroom as well as to facilitate student-teacher relationship. tang (2002) in mart (2013) mentions that learners’ l1 can be used in language teaching to cakrawati exploring the use of learners’ first language in english as a foreign language classroom 146 manage classroom, analyze language, present grammar rules, discuss cross-cultural issues, give instructions or prompts, and check learners’ understanding on the lesson. using l1 may help students in identifying connections and difference between the l1 and the target language. teachers also may use l1 to help students in understanding things that are likely to be difficult for students (harmer, 2007a). furthermore, harmer (2007b) suggests some points that should be considered by teachers in using l1. language teachers, whether or not they share the same l1 with the students, should be aware of the importance of l1. thus, teachers have to design appropriate activities involving l1 and the target language. the activities may include translating or comparing the two languages in terms of grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, or discourse. teachers should also be aware that the use of l1 related to students’ proficiency level. the better the students’ comprehension in english, the less l1 may be used in the classroom. both teachers and students have to agree clear guidelines in using l1. students need to know when the use of l1 can be beneficial or not and they have to aware of the appropriate condition in which they can use their l1. finally, in learning english, teachers have to encourage and persuade students to speak more english as the target language learned. several studies related to the use of l1 have been conducted by many researchers (bozorgian & fallahpour, 2015; carson & kasihara, 2012; ford, 2009; inbar-lourie, 2010; manara, 2007; mohebbi & alavi, 2014; varshney & lanziti, 2006). to find out the use of l1 in the classroom, mohebbi and alavi (2014) conducted research by distributing a questionnaire to more than 150 l2 teachers in various private language schools di different cities in iran. the result of the research shows that learners' l1 is an invaluable asset and needs to be employed effectively. teachers use learners l1 to teach new lexical items, provide feedback, and explain learners' errors, and explain grammar. teachers also use learners' l1 to build rapport with them. it shows that learners' l1 is quite important in enhancing l2 learning. however it does not mean that l1 should be used comprehensively. l2 teachers should be encouraged to maintain a balance between l1 and l2 use. bozorgian and fallahpour (2015) conducted similar research by observing some pre-intermediate classes. the study, which involved six male and female efl teachers and 155 pre-intermediate students in iran, reveals that teachers and students used a small amount of l1 in the classroom, but it was used when they thought it was needed. teachers and students use l1 as a facilitative tool for achieving a wide range of their purposes. l1 can be used as an aid to convey meaning, manage classroom, make a friendly environment, reduce students' anxiety, elaborate on the course objectives and clarify ambiguous points in the pre-intermediate level. inbar-lourie (2010) who conducted a study which involved six teachers teaching efl to young learners in hebrew and arabic medium school in israel reported that the use of l1 in the l2 classroom is influenced by teachers’ pedagogical beliefs and assumptions regarding the teaching objectives in young learners program. similarly, the previous study conducted by ford (2009) in a university in japan showed that although the english teachers participated in the study used english as much as possible, they consciously used learners’ l1 to create a friendlier atmosphere during teaching and learning process. regarding students’ preference in the classroom, varshney and lanziti (2006) conducted a study to figure out whether students see the use of l1 as help or hindrance. the study reveals that students are aware of the use of l1 and see it as a double-edged sword. l1 can help students in comprehending grammatical items, but they think it is also necessary to learn structure in a natural context. the use of l1 can also reduce students’ anxiety during the learning process, but on the other hand, they think it could lead to the absence of challenge and motivation to use the target language. likewise, carson and kashihara (2012) conducted a study focuses on students’ view on the use of l1 in their english classes. the result of the study reveals that the majority of the students think that l1 should be used less than 40% during the learning process. students believe that the use of l1 can be beneficial in explaining difficult materials or summarizing materials. it is also stated that students’ proficiency in english influences their preference on the use of l1 since beginner students tend to rely on l1 support than advanced students. in indonesian context, manara (2007) conducted a study which involved teachers and students in three universities in central java. the result of the study indicated that the majority of students and teachers agreed that maximum use of english should be used during teaching and learning process in the classroom. however, l1 can be utilized as a supporting tool in providing comprehensible input, explaining vocabulary and grammar, giving feedback, and asking for clarification. although the theories and the results of the studies mentioned above indicate that l1 is permitted to use in english classroom, atkinson (1993) in manara (2007) suggests that learners’ l1 should not be overused in the classroom. he thinks that l1 should be used to create meaningful communication as well as to encourage learners to speak in target language. nonetheless, little research has been done on teachers’ and students’ perception of the use of learners’ l1 in the rural school context where the majority of the students acquire english only at their school. thus, the study seeks to investigate students’ and teachers’ perceptions on the use of l1 in efl classroom in a rural area and obstacles they encountered in using english as the target language. to achieve aforementioned purposes, the issue to be discussed in this paper will be summarized in the following research questions: 1. how do students perceive the use of l1 in the efl classroom? 2. how do teachers perceive the use of l1 in the efl classroom? 3. what obstacles do students and teachers encounter in using the target language in efl classroom? international journal of education vol. 11 no. 2, february-2019, pp. 143-151 ©2019 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: 10.17509/ije.v11i2.14558 145 research methodology research design the study employs a mixed methods approach to put quantitative and qualitative data together. the paradigm of the research involves the collection and analysis of quantitative and qualitative data to provide better understanding in answering research questions investigated in the study (malik & hamied, 2016). it is in line with creswell (2009) who states that mixed methods utlizes the strength of both qualitative and quantitative research. the concurrent triangulation design was adopted in the study. the design allowed the researcher to collect both quantitative and qualitative data concurrently and to compare the data to figure out if there is convergence, differences, or some combination (creswell, 2009). data collection the study was conducted in april 2017. it involved 150 students in four classes of grade ten and eleven and two english teachers in a senior high school located in rural karawang, west java. many students of the schools tend to have low comprehension in english and some participants of the study get a little exposure both in and out of the school. the english instruction was mostly conducted in either indonesian language or sundanese. therefore, these participants were ideal for this study for several reasons in terms of motivation, achievement, and l1 use in english classroom. questionnaire, interview, and observation rubrics were used to collect the data in the research. the questionnaires for the teacher and student versions was adapted from ma (2016), manara (2007), and mohebbi and alavi (2014). the questionnaires were administered to the research participants to investigate students’ and teachers’ perceptions on the use of l1 in the classroom. the teacher’s questionnaire consists of 18 closed-ended questions using a five-likert scale, divided into three parts. the questionnaire is intended to find out teachers’ opinion about using english, the condition when they use l1, and the condition when students use l1 in the classroom. meanwhile, the students’ questionnaire consists of 21 closed-ended questions and two openended questions. the closed-ended questions which are divided into two sections are intended to figure out the real use of english and students’ opinion on the use of english in the classroom. teachers’ interview and observation were conducted to gain in-depth explanation and description on the use of learners’ l1 in the classroom. two female teachers who have been teaching english for five and ten years participated in the interview session. the seven questions proposed in the interview attempted to investigate teachers’ opinion on the benefits and drawbacks of the use of l1 as well as obstacles they encountered when they use english in the classroom. furthermore, the classroom observation was conducted to provide better description of l1 use in the classroom. the observation was organized two times in one tenth grade class and one eleventh grade class. data analysis the data from students’ closed-ended questionnaire were statistically computed to find out the percentage of each statement and then was interpreted descriptively. meanwhile, the teacher’s questionnaire and students’ open-ended questionnaire were analyzed descriptively to support the data gained from the closed-ended questions. the interview data were all transcribed and analyzed for repeating key features which were related to the use of l1 and the obstacles faced by teachers. the reappearing of particular opinion can be assumed as the participants’ concern on the issue. the classroom observation data was collected through the use of observation checklist. the frequency of l1 use in the classroom was tallied and quantified in terms of percentages out of overall amount of language used by the teachers. the data from the questionnaire, interview, and classroom observation were used to provide description of students’ and teachers’ perception on the use of l1 in the classroom and the obstacles they experienced in using english as the target language. results and discussion this section presents and discusses the results related to the research questions on students’ and teachers’ perception on the use of students’ l1 in english classroom. the discussion is shown through the interpretation of the results shown in the tables elaborated with the findings from the open-ended questions and interviews. the results and discussion section is divided into three subsections that describe each research questions. students’ perception of the use of l1 in the efl classroom the first subsection will display the result of the questionnaire administered to the students to find out their perception of the use of l1 in during english learning process. the use of english in the classroom the following table 1 is about the use of english in the classroom based on the students’ point of view. cakrawati exploring the use of learners’ first language in english as a foreign language classroom 146 table 1. the use of english in the classroom questions always often sometimes rarely never 1 the teacher uses english during the learning process 55.3% 43.3% 1.3% 2 i feel confused when my teacher uses english in explaining learning materials. 9.3% 30% 54.7% 5.3% 3 i speak english in my english class. 2.7% 38.7% 54.7% 4% 4 i use english when i propose a question in english class. 1.3% 2.7% 14% 48% 34% table 1 shows what the students think and feel towards the use of english in the classroom. the percentage shows that students thought their teacher used english quite often (often = 55.3%, sometimes = 43.3%). it also shows that most of the respondents felt confused when their teacher used english in explaining the lesson. the table shows that half of the students chose rarely for question 3. the response indicates that the students used only limited english in the classroom. moreover, it is also shown that most students did not use english when they asked questions to their teacher (rarely = 48%, never = 34%) table 2. the use of english in the classroom questions always often sometimes rarely never 5 i answer my teacher's questions in english. 0.7% 5.3% 34.7% 39.3% 20% 6 i use english to interact with my friends in the class. 2% 27.3% 38.7% 32% 7 i am shy and uncomfortable when i have to speak english in the class. 8% 9.3% 47.3% 12% 23.3% 8 i am afraid my friends will laugh at me when i speak english. 12.7% 10.7% 35.3% 9.3% 32% questions 5 and 6 in table 2 show how the students used english in the class. the table shows that students’ frequency in using english when they answered their teacher’s question was still low (sometimes = 34.7%, rarely = 39.3%) and 20% of the respondents stated that they never used english in answering teacher’s questions. questions 7 and 8 show the students’ feeling when they used english in the classroom. in question 7, although there was only 8% of students who chose always and 9.3% who chose often, a big number of students (47.3%) chose sometimes, indicating that they were usually shy and uncomfortable to speak english in the class. for question 8, almost half of the students (always = 12.7%, often = 10.7%, sometimes 35.3%) stated that they were afraid of making mistakes in front of their friends because their friends would laugh at them. students’ opinion on the use of english and l1 in the classroom the second part of the questionnaire deals with how students think about the use of english and l1 during english learning process. table 3. students’ opinion on the use of english and l1 in the classroom questions strongly agree agree neutral disagree strongly disagree 9 english teacher should only use english in the class. 4% 12.7% 62% 21.3% 10 students should always use english during the learning process. 2.7% 14% 62.7% 20% 11 the more the teacher use english, the better students master english. 19.3% 62% 16% 2.7% 12 english materials should be explained only in students' l1. 8% 25.3% 38% 27.3% 1.3% table 3 shows the students’ opinion on the use english and l1 in the classroom. 62% of the students chose neutral to the statements whether or not the teachers and the students use english as the only language in the classroom. there was only 16.7% of the students who agreed that both teachers and students should always use english and about 20% of them disagreed if english is used as the only language in the classroom. meanwhile, the students realized the importance of using english in helping them to master english better. it is shown by 62% of the students who chose agree to the statement “the more the teacher use english, the better they will master english.” furthermore, in question 12, students international journal of education vol. 11 no. 2, february-2019, pp. 143-151 ©2019 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: 10.17509/ije.v11i2.14558 147 chose more various answers. 38% of them could not decide whether or not english materials should be explained only in students’ l1. however, 27.3% and 1.3% of them disagreed with the statement. table 4. students’ opinion on the use of english and l1 in the classroom questions strongly agree agree neutral disagree strongly disagree 13 the use of students' l1 can help students in understanding the materials. 16% 63.3% 17.3% 3.3% 14 the teacher should use students' l1 in explaining difficult materials, such as grammar. 23.3% 64% 11.3% 1.3% 15 the teacher should use students' l1 when he/she gives information about test, homework, etc. 14.7% 63.3% 20% 2% 16 the teacher should use students' l1 when he/she proposes questions. 9.3% 38% 46.7% 6% table 4 shows the students’ opinion on the use of l1 in english classroom. from the table, it can be seen that there were many students who chose agree to the statement. the students thought that the use of l1 can help them in understanding the lesson (sa = 16%. a = 63.3%). they also agreed that teachers should use l1 in explaining difficult materials such as grammar and the teacher should l1 in giving information related to test and homework. question 16 shows that 46.7% of the students cannot decide whether or not teacher should l1 in proposing questions. on the other hand, 47.3% (sa = 9.3%, a = 38%) of them agreed that the teacher should use l1 in proposing question. table 5. students’ opinion on the use of english and l1 in the classroom questions strongly agree agree neutral disagree strongly disagree 17 the teacher should use students' l1 when he/she gives compliment related to students' achievement. 2.7% 34% 51.3% 12% 18 the teacher should use students' l1 when he/ she corrects students' answer. 10% 35.3% 50% 4.7% 19 i should try to use english more when i learn english. 22% 58.7% 16.7% 2.7% table 5 shows the students’ opinion on the use of l1 in english classroom. half of the students could not decide whether or not teacher should use l1 in giving compliment related to students’ achievement and in correcting students’ answer. however, more than 30% of them agreed that l1 should be used in giving compliment and correcting students’ answer. moreover, from question 19, it can be assumed that the students realized the importance of trying to use english. 80.7% (sa = 22%, a = 58.7%) agreed that they should try to use english more when they learn english. the data show that the students gave various responses towards the use of l1 in the efl classroom. cognitively, the students think that the use of l1 can help them in understanding the lesson better. they think that teachers should use l1 in explaining difficult parts of the lesson such as grammar. affectively, students feel that using l1 can help them to be more comfortable in foreign language class. because many students tend to be embarrassed to speak in english and some of them are shy and afraid of doing mistakes, l1 can help them to reduce their anxiety (brook-lewis, 2009). since using target language can be a source of embarrassment, especially for shy students, allowing students to use their l1 can help them to speak in the classroom (nation, 2003; shimizu, 2007). furthermore, since students tend to be more comfortable when they use l1, l1 can increase students’ self-esteem (gaebler, 2014; murray & wigglesworth, 2005). however, by stating that english should be used more in the classroom, students have already realized the importance of using the target language during the learning process. teachers’ perception on the use of english and l1 in the efl classroom the second part deals with the teachers’ perception on the use of english and l1 in efl classroom. the data was obtained from the questionnaire given to the teachers. international journal of education vol. 11 no. 2, february-2019, pp. 143-151 ©2019 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: 10.17509/ije.v11i2.14558 148 table 6. teachers’ opinion on the use of english and l1 in the classroom no. teachers’ opinion on the use of english and l1 in the classroom teacher 1 teacher 2 1 teachers should use more english during teaching and learning process. agree disagree 2 students should try to use more english in the classroom. strongly agree agree 3 the use of students’ l1 in the classroom can hinder english acquisition. disagree disagree 4 comparing the use of language in english and students’ l1 can help students to understand english. agree agree table 6 shows teachers’ perception on the use of english and l1 in efl classroom. the data was gained from two teachers. teacher 1 has taught english for 10 years and teacher 2 has taught english for five years. the table shows that the two teachers had similar opinions on the use of english in the classroom, except for statement no. 1. teacher 1 agreed that more english should be used during teaching and learning process while teacher 2 disagreed to the statement. moreover, the teachers agreed that the students should try to use more english during the lesson. they also agreed that comparing the use of language in english and l1 can help students in understanding english. therefore, they disagreed to the statement that the use of l1 can hinder students’ english acquisition. table 7. teachers’ use of l1 in the classroom teacher: the use of l1 in the classroom teacher 1 teacher 2 5 giving instruction sometimes often 6 giving feedback sometimes often 7 explaining new vocabularies sometimes often 8 explaining grammar often often 9 explaining the differences between english and students’ l1 in terms of the use of words and grammar. often often 10 giving information about test and assignment sometimes often 11 giving announcement sometimes often 12 encouraging students to be braver and confident in the classroom often always table 7 shows the frequency of the use of l1 based on teachers’ perception. from the table, it can be seen that teacher 1 often use l1 in explaining new vocabularies, explaining grammar, and encouraging students to be braver and confident in the classroom. teacher 1 occasionally use l1 in other aspects such as giving instruction, giving feedback, explaining new vocabularies, giving information, and giving announcement. on the other hand, the table shows that teacher 2 used l1 more than teacher 1. she stated that she used l1 frequently to give instruction, give feedback, explain new vocabularies, explain grammar, explain the differences between english and l1, give information, and give announcement. moreover, she used l1 to encourage her students to be braver and confident. table 8. students’ use of l1 in the classroom students: the use of l1 in the classroom teacher 1 teacher 2 13 asking questions to the teacher often often 14 asking for clarification often sometimes 15 answering teachers’ questions sometimes often 16 asking questions to their friends often often 17 discussing the lesson with their friends often often 18 having interaction with their friends often often table 8 shows the teachers’ perception of the use of l1 by the students during the teaching and learning process in the classroom. teacher 1 stated that the students occasionally used l1 to answer teachers’ questions, and they often used l1 to ask questions to the teacher, ask for clarification, ask questions to their friends, discuss the lesson, and have interaction with their friends. meanwhile, teacher 2 stated that students occasionally used l1 to ask for clarification and they used l1 for other activities. international journal of education vol. 11 no. 2, february-2019, pp. 143-151 ©2019 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: 10.17509/ije.v11i2.14558 149 table 9. classroom language classroom observation checklist teacher purposes teacher 1 teacher 2 l1 english l1 english pedagogical eliciting answer 67% 33% 78% 22% explaining meaning of new words 61.5% 38.5% 71.43% 28.57% giving feedback 75% 25% 57.14% 42.86% teaching pronunciation 28.57% 71.42% 37.5% 62.5% checking understanding 62.5% 37.5% 78.57% 21.43% explaining grammar 67% 33% 70.83% 29.17% classroom environment control giving instruction 52.94% 47.06% 62.5% 37.5% explaining administrative information 67% 33% 78% 22% establishing social relationship giving encouragement 71.43% 28.57% 75% 25% making jokes 100% 100% average 75% 31% 83% 23% students functions of l1 use teacher 1 teacher 2 asking teacher questions often often asking teacher clarification often often answering teacher’s questions often often asking peer questions always always discussing with peers always always interacting with peers always always to explore the use of l1 and english during the learning process, the classroom observation was conducted. table 9 shows the result of the class observation. from the average, we can see that the teachers tended to use more l1 than english. to establish social relationship between teachers and students, the two teachers made jokes in students’ l1 because it is totally understandable by students. teacher 1 used l1 especially for giving feedback, explaining grammar, explaining administrative information, and giving encouragement. meanwhile, teacher 2 used l1 mostly for eliciting answer, explaining new words, checking students’ understanding, explaining grammar, explaining administrative information, and giving encouragement. however, it can be seen that both teachers used more english when they have to teach pronunciation during the lesson. based on the class observation checklist, it also can be seen that the students participated in the study rarely use english in the classroom. they often used l1 to ask questions and clarification and to answer teachers’ question. moreover, during the lesson, they always used l1 to interact, ask questions, and discuss with their friends. the data above show teachers’ perception of the use of l1 in the classroom. both teachers use l1 mostly for explaining grammar, giving instructions, giving feedback, and giving encouragement. it is in line with the result of the previous studies mentioned that l1 is used frequently as a facilitating tool in managing classroom. teachers usually use l1 to clarify meanings, clarify the differences between l1 and l2, translate difficult concept of the lesson, give instructions, increase students’ comprehension, create friendlier atmosphere in the classroom, and facilitate the learning process (al-nofaie, 2010; bhooth, azman, & ismail, 2014; de la campa & nassaji, 2009; jan, li, & lin, 2014; ozaki, 2011). it also means that teacher use l1 to build rapport with their students. from the data presented before, it can be seen that teacher used l1 for giving encouragement, making jokes, and giving compliments related to students’ achievement. the use of l1 can be effective in managing students’ behavior, giving compliments or confirmation, and having personal talk (liu, an, baek, & ahn, 2004; mohebbi & alavi, 2014). obstacles in using english in the classroom based on the open-ended questions and teachers’ interview, it was found that there were several reasons underlying the use of students l1 in the school. the reasons are also related to obstacles encountered by both teachers and students. 61.3% percent of the students think that l1 sometimes should be used during english lessons to help the students in understanding the materials. besides, because they thought that not all students in the classroom can understand english, they stated that it is better for the teacher to use 30% to 50% l1. furthermore, the students felt not comfortable enough to use more english in the classroom because they thought their english pronunciation was not good and they were afraid of mispronouncing the words. they were also shy and afraid of making mistake and being laughed at by their friends. few of them also mentioned that because their english was not fluent yet, they were afraid if their friends thought that they were trying to act cool by speaking english. international journal of education vol. 11 no. 2, february-2019, pp. 143-151 ©2019 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: 10.17509/ije.v11i2.14558 150 on the other hand, the teachers mentioned that although ideally teachers should use english in the classroom and they expect to use about 70% english, they could not use the target language because of the students’ input. many students seemed to have low ability in english and they got english lessons only from school. they stated that from all students in the school, only 10% of them joined english course to support their english learning. they also added that the students got little exposure to english. the high percentage of l1 use as shown in the study needs more attention. l1 may be beneficial in rapport building and it can also help teachers to explain difficult materials. however, teachers should be aware of the l1 frequency used in the classroom because if teachers depend too much on using the l1, students may get discouraged to acquire english (turnbull & arnett, 2002). mart (2013) also argues that because students’ l1 will make the lesson easier, it does not mean that teachers are allowed to use too much l1. teachers play a crucial role in creating a friendly classroom environment in which students feel safe and free from humiliation that possibly happens during learning process. teachers should also make sure that students will not laugh at each other’s mistake. conclusions the results of the study indicate that both students and teachers think the use of l1 can help them during teaching and learning process. the students participated in the study think the use of l1 can improve their understanding about the lesson. meanwhile, the teachers perceive students’ l1 as a learning tool that can facilitate them in explaining grammar, translating new vocabularies, giving instruction or announcement, and building rapport with the students. some problems in using english mentioned by the students are related to students’ confidence and anxiety. some of the students were afraid of doing mistakes or being laughed at by their friends. furthermore, the teachers added that students’ input and achievement were some of the problems they encountered in using english. they thought the use of l1 would make students understand the lesson better. therefore, due to its benefits, we can conclude that students l1 can be utilized as a learning tool in efl classroom. however, as the main objective of language teaching is to be able to use the language in the real context of communication, teachers should be aware of the frequency in using l1 and encourage students to use more english. based on the results of the study, some recommendations are drawn. for teachers, since students’ l1 can be used as mediating tool, they have to use l1 wisely. teachers should be able to find learning methods that encourage students to use more english. the learning methods should also meet the students need as well as suitable for students’ development and cognitive skills. for other researchers, since this study has several limitations, further studies involving more participants or different areas such as urban area are suggested to be conducted to explore more findings related to the use of students’ l1 in efl classroom. references al-nofaie, h. 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(2011). teaching collocations effectively with the aid of l1. the language teacher, 35(3), 37–40. shimizu, m. (2006). monolingual or bilingual policy in the classroom: pedagogical implications of l1 use in the japanese efl classroom. maebashi kyoai gakuen college ronsyu, 6, 75-89. turnbull, m., & arnett, k. (2002). teacher’s uses of the target and first languages in second and foreign language classroom. annual review of applied linguistics, 22, 204-18. varshney, r., rolin-ianziti, j., varshney, r., & rolinianziti, j. (2006). student perceptions of l1 use in the foreign language classroom : help or hindrance ?, journal of the australasian universities language and literature association, 105, 55-83. doi: 10.1179/000127906805260338 international journal of education vol. 14 no. 1, april-2021, pp. 11-18 ©2021 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: 10.17509/ije.v14i1.25533 11 professional teaching and learning effectiveness: a case of english language teaching in indonesia bachtiar universitas bosowa makassar/bpsdm prov. sulawesi selatan greatiar74@gmail.com first draft received: 18 june 2020 date accepted: 20 nov 2020 final proof received: 2 apr 2021 abstract this study aims to find out the effectiveness of teacher professional learning (pl) as an effort to increase english language teaching quality in south sulawesi, indonesia. it used descriptive qualitative and quantitative case study approach to find about the continuous learning and development activities. data were derived from questionnaire, observation, and semi-structured interviews. the results revealed that inservice training program is considered effective for sharing knowledge, skills and information among english language teachers. the findings also revealed that information and communication technology (ict) should be learned in-depth during professional learning activities. in addition, the respondents perceived subject teacher’s meeting or teacher study groups as an effective collaborative model of professional learning activities. this study suggests that the need to involve english language teachers in a training at least once a year as an effort to help them gain new insight and experience in the acquisition of new knowledge and skills and to experience in solving problems both at school and outside school. keywords: teacher’s competence; professional learning; study group to cite this paper (in apa style): bachtiar. (2021). professional teaching and learning effectiveness: a case of english language teaching in indonesia. international journal of education, 14(1), 11-20. doi: 10.17509/ije.v14i1.25533 introduction a growing body of research suggests the importance of continuous learning process (clp) for teachers (e.g., creemers et al., 2013; king, 2019; lipowsky & rzejak, 2015). this is because clp is a determining factor in the success of producing teachers who have knowledge, skills and attitudes. darling et al. (2017) stress clp for teachers as a vital component to enhance the quality of teaching and learning because it promotes a responsible, creative, and proactive approach. therefore, according to king (2019), clp as part of professional development should be able to help teachers increase the aspects that have a strong link to teachers’ practices in the classroom, namely knowledge, skills, and attitude. this is also in line with what lipowsky and rzejak (2015) informed that professional learning for teachers is a process of transferring knowledge, skills and understanding and helps them improve their teaching practice and shared responsibility. craft (2000) indicates that if schools are intended to meet student learning in a changing world, then teachers’ professional learning throughout their careers are inevitable. correspondingly, creemers et al. (2013) define professional learning as a process aimed at 1 some researchers called innovative pd as reform or collaborative models of pd. throughout this article, the term innovative forms will be used. increasing teachers' knowledge and revising their teaching practices to improve students’ learning outcomes as a result of both externally offered and jobembedded activities. both emphasize that learning will occur both in formal and informal ways. this concept of professional learning thus challenges the traditional, training-focused approach to teacher’s learning that more emphasis on formal approach. in current trend of educational practices, there is an increasing demand of using both formal and informal approaches in professional learning activities. heikkinen et al. (2012) inform the need to realize and employ formal and informal learning opportunities in teachers’ professional learning. they further convince that formal and informal learning are complementary to teacher’s professional learning and should be leveraged by professional learning community to utilize the two kinds of learning opportunities. in the current literature, researchers agree that innovative1 pl is much more effective than traditional pl (attema-noordewier, et al. 2012; van veen et al., 2012). van veen et al. (2012) define traditional form in which pl activities are not addressed to teachers’ classroom practice, teachers can’t play an active role during pl mailto:greatiar74@gmail.com bachtiar professional teaching and learning effectiveness 12 process, and the content is not situated to the problems and issues of teachers’ daily practice. one-day workshops, seminars, and conferences are identified as some examples of traditional forms of pl. innovative forms, on the other hand, refer to pl interventions in which teachers play an active role during pl process and the issues and the content are in line with teacher’s teaching practice. study groups, coaching, mentoring, and research by teachers are some examples of innovative forms. the problem with traditional forms are that these activities fail to deepen teachers’ capability and being inadequate to change deep-rooted views in practice (gemeda, 2015). teachers mostly feel boring and find irrelevant, and experience to forget more than seventy five per cent of what they learn through traditional models of pl. another problem with traditional approaches to pl is that the activities do not capitalize on the expertise of teachers, rather they operate from a deficit model (olin & ingerman, 2016). on the other hand, many researchers claim that innovative forms of pl are more effective to meet teachers’ needs because most of these activities are in the form of collaboration and are grounded in teachers’ classroom practice (penuel, fishman, yamaguchi, & gallagher, 2007). innovative forms of pd take into account teachers’ existing frames of knowledge and experience, as well as a classroom practical focus. this is important as professional learning should become opportunity for teachers to grow professionally and that the pl should promote and support that growth. in the indonesian context, pl for teachers has become tradition since 1970s (bachtiar, 2017). pl becomes one of the efforts of the government of indonesia to improve the quality of teachers and increase student’s achievement. pl has been implemented to attempt to fulfil the needs of teachers to increase their knowledge, skills, and attitude. among pl activities are subject teacher’s forum, coaching, mentoring, seminars, workshops, and in-service training (sudarminta, 2000). in indonesia, pl programs have particularly been carried out to introduce new curriculum or strategies in teaching. mostly, the ministry of education invites teachers’ representative to participate in pl activities (i.e. workshops and/or in-service training). later, the teachers’ representative will disseminate the information and knowledge they get from pl activities to their colleagues in their school/district or through subject teacher’ forum. pl for teachers in indonesian school setting has increased since 2005 (iwani, 2014). in the past two decades, the indonesian government has made vital expansion in the aspects of education, including the education system, which is intended to improve learning achievement. increased access to education is driven by government’s promises to meet its official educational goals such as the implementation of the six years compulsory education for 2 tct is well known as ukg (ujian kompetensi guru) in indonesia. primary school age children (7-12 years) since 1984. the result of this new policy was a significant increase in the level of participation in primary schools which reached 92 percent in 1993 compared to 79 percent just 10 years earlier (bachtiar, 2017). ten years after the compulsory primary education program came fully into effect, indonesian legislation required all children to attend nine years of compulsory schooling, comprising six years in primary school and three years in junior secondary school (coleman, 2011). in addition, the government of indonesia has also implemented many professional learning for teachers which were intended to improve teachers’ teaching practice. pl has become one of tools to disseminate new curriculum, education policies and/or strategy in teaching (bachtiar, 2017). the indonesian government efforts, as noted above, have mandated and have become the goal of the national educational system to enhance intellectual capacity and develop the character and civilization of the nation. the demand to improve the quality of national education is clearly indicated in the government regulation which mention that “the quality of education must be constantly improved … so that future generations who will continue to lead the nation can be prepared in advance so that they are in a high-level and competitive position in national life and globally” (depdiknas, 2010, p.1). the quote above points out that education has been considered by the government of indonesia as the keystone of future development of indonesia. the government of indonesia has been trying to achieve the goals of national education through legislation and through increasing the expenditure on education to nurture the quality of education. despite tremendous efforts have been done in terms of quantitative expansion, the quality of education and student achievement are still low (iwani, 2014). the research results found that teacher competence, both in terms of teaching content knowledge and in other knowledge, especially knowledge of pedagogical content and teaching approaches is still dubious (mahsunah, et al., 2012). this evidence of doubt is supported by the results of the online teacher competency test2 (tct) which was carried out in 2012, where most of the teachers have not yet reached the established competency standards. the online tct in indonesia had been held for the first time by the ministry of education and culture, aiming to assist the guidance process for teachers who did not succeed in the exam (tarmizi, 2012). the head of education department of south sulawesi province informed that, based on the 2012 ctc results, south sulawesi province ranked 13th with an average rating of 39.40 below the national average value of 42.25 on a score ranging from 0 to 100. for pedagogical competence, south sulawesi has an average value of 39.93 from the national average international journal of education vol. 14 no. 1, april-2021, pp. 11-18 ©2021 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: 10.17509/ije.v14i1.25533 13 value of 43.20. meanwhile, for professional competence, south sulawesi has an average value of 40.16, compared to the national average score of 44.05 (nugraha, 2016). these results indicate that teacher competencies in south sulawesi province, especially pedagogical and professional competencies are still low. very much similar results of the ctc which was carried out in 2015 that show an average value of 52.55 compared to national average of 56.69. that result placed south sulawesi at position 18th nationally. based on the data above, there is a need to implement appropriate and practical professional learning for teachers to meet indonesian education national standard. there are at least six main agendas that need to be implemented to increase teachers’ competence (bsnp, 2010; kuswandi, 2006). first, the agenda of enhancing teacher’s motivation continually by increasing their capabilities and skills in planning, implementing, and evaluating teaching and learning process as the effort to increase their self-confidence as professional teachers. second, the agenda of teachers’ achievement and skills in implementing learning to improve the quality and equity of education. third, the discussion forum to discuss the problems faced and experienced by teachers in carrying out their daily tasks and look for alternative solutions to problems in accordance with the characteristic of each subject, and the condition of each school and environment. fourth, the agenda for disseminating technical information related to science and technology, curriculum, methodology, and assessment systems that are relevant to subject matter. fifth, the agenda of sharing information and experiences in attending teacher professional development activities (e.g. seminars, workshops, training, classroom action research). these teacher’s information and experiences need to be discussed together among teachers themselves. sixth, the agenda of decomposition and compilation of school reform activities, especially learning reform in the classroom to achieve active, innovative, creative, effective, and fun learning processes. finally, empowering learning process activities (e.g., in-service training) should be interpreted as a process that continues to develop over time (kuswandi, 2006). through continuous empowerment, training process is expected to play a role as a leader in classroom reform, lead to the development and improvement of teacher competencies, act as driving agents in classroom management and school management innovation, and contribute to professional organizations. the success of continues professional learning process in empowering teachers is influenced by the work ethics of administrators, resource persons and teachers of similar subjects in developing a spirit of togetherness and brotherhood in a learning forum that has character and identity. the learning forum plays a vital function to build networks with related units and the ability to eternally work as a teacher. in this research, the effectiveness of teacher’s professional learning, especially training programs, is explored in relation to the effort of improving the quality of teaching, especially english language teaching, in south sulawesi province of indonesia. this is important as so far, very few studies have explored the relationship and effectiveness of teacher’s professional teaching and learning practice, especially in south sulawesi context. in addition, a growing body of research has suggested the need to optimize professional learning of teachers in addressing the complex and challenging educational developments. method this research used mixed method research (mmr), placing the quantitative and qualitative data equally. this was done because the purpose of this research was not only to identify, but also to understand the relationship between teachers' participation in professional learning activities, especially in-service training, and their knowledge and understanding of teaching. data collection purposive sampling was used to identify fifteen schools within the population that met the specific criteria and could be accessed. the criteria for the selection included: 1) schools which were willing to participate in this research; 2) schools which have at least four english language teachers; and 3) schools that were different from each other in term of geographical location (i.e., rural or urban). there were 65 english language teachers from fifteen senior high schools who participated in the questionnaire and 10 of them were involved in the semistructured interviews. a questionnaire is a useful selfreport tool to obtain data quickly and cheaply from large numbers of respondents (ciesielska & wolanik, 2018). the questionnaire consisted of closed-ended and openended questions to find out participants' perceptions of the quality of professional learning they have participated in. there were 15 questions in the questionnaire, consisting of closed questions and open-ended questions. closed questions required the participants to tick their choices or to rate each statement on a given five-point scale, ranging from ‘strongly disagree’ to ‘strongly agree’. for the open-ended questions, the participants were asked to give their comments or opinion regarding with pl/tsg activities they had participated in and its relation to their teaching practice. the questionnaire by bachtiar (2017) that consist of 15 items was adapted and administered for this study. in this research, the 15 items were modified to suit the research context. the second research tool was observations. according to gebhard (1999), an observation is an unbiased description of events that can be analyzed and interpreted. this research involved non-participants observation of some subject teacher forums conducted by participants using a loosely organized observation protocol. to triangulate the data, a semi-structured interview was used. the semi-structured interviews were conducted in bahasa indonesia and employed openbachtiar professional teaching and learning effectiveness 14 ended questions that were organized into two categories: characteristics of good quality professional learning activities, and teachers' perceptions of the effects of these activities on their teaching classroom practice. these two categories are related to the questions in the open-ended questions in the questionnaire. this was done to double-check and expand on what the participants’ stated in the questionnaires and what they informed in the semi-structured interviews. the main questions that were asked in the interviews were given to the participants three days before the actual interviews. this allowed the participants to have sufficient time to read and understand the questions. once an interview was transcribed, the transcript was returned to each participant for member checking which allowed them an opportunity to read their transcriptions, and to prevent researcher’s bias and misinterpretations of the participants' words (mertens, 2005). data analysis there are two types of data sources in this study, namely qualitative and quantitative data. quantitative data were obtained from closed questions in the questionnaires, while qualitative data were gained from open-ended questions in the questionnaires, observations and semistructured interviews. each data (qualitative and quantitative) was analyzed separately. the quantitative data from the questionnaires were transferred and analyzed using the computer software statistical package for social sciences (spss). for the qualitative data, thematic analysis was used. daly, kellehear and gliksman (1997) informed that thematic analysis is a search for themes that appear as being important aspects that describe phenomenon. for these questionnaires and interviews results, the coding reference used for the data indicates the participant and the level of teaching experience. for example, the reference t.03 refers to the teacher 03. the letter "vet" refers to a very experienced teacher, "et" refers to an experienced teacher and "nt" refers to a novice teacher. for example, t.03.vet would refer to teacher 03, a very experienced teacher. findings and discussion of the 65 respondents who gave responses on the questionnaire, 29 (44.6 %) are males and 36 (55.4 %) are females. the participants have a variety of teaching experience. for data analyses purposes, the participants’ teaching experience were separated into three different categories (see table 1 below). table 1 range of teaching experience teaching experience gender total more than 15 years male 13 female 17 6 – 15 years male 13 female 16 less than 6 years male 2 female 4 total 65 based on the results, most of respondents who returned the questionnaire were either very experienced teachers (more than 15 years) or experienced teachers (6-15 years). there were 6 novice teachers who involved in this research. although only 65 teachers who participated in this research, it is hoped that the three range of teaching experiences represented senior high school efl teachers in south sulawesi province. in terms of professional learning activities, all participants have been involved in seminars and tsg, and most of them have participated in workshops, coaching and mentoring. however, just over half of them (34 of 65 teachers) who have attended in-service training. one of the questions in the questionnaire was intended to examine the participants’ views of the quality of pl they have participated in. following are the participants’ views of the quality of pl they have participated in. table 2 the quality of pl the participants types of pd quality good average poor seminars 14 (21.5%) 39 (60%) 12 (18.5%) tsgs 44 (67.7%) 19 (29.2%) 2 (3.1%) workshops 24 (36.9%) 34 (52.3%) 7 (10.8%) in-service training 46 (70.8%) 19 (29.2%) 0 mentoring 37 (56.9%) 27 (41.5%) 1 (1.5%) coaching 39 (60%) 26 (40%) 0 observing colleagues 23 (35.4%) 34 (52.3%) 8 (12.3%) table 2 shows that from various pl activities the participants had participated in, in-service training, tsgs, coaching, and mentoring were considered as good forms of pl that could help them to increase their teaching international journal of education vol. 14 no. 1, april-2021, pp. 11-18 ©2021 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: 10.17509/ije.v14i1.25533 15 competence. in addition, more than half of the participants saw the quality of seminars, workshops and observing colleagues as ‘average’. some of them even stated ‘poor’ for the quality of seminars, observing colleagues and workshops they had attended. furthermore, based on the analysis of qualitative data, themes were obtained regarding the involvement of teachers in professional learning. the professional learning is a process of providing some kinds of information to teachers to help them improve their teaching practice and/or activities designed and implemented by teachers themselves to develop their professional knowledge. the analysis found three themes related to the involvement of teachers in the professional learning activities: professional learning helps increase teachers’ knowledge and skills; ict becomes an important training material for teachers; and tsgs as an effective collaborative model of professional learning. professional learning helps increase teachers’ knowledge and skills the first theme and one that most (90%) of the respondents articulated as fundamental to maximizing learning outcomes is teachers’ good understanding of content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge. the participants perceived that to achieve learning outcomes, teachers not only need to master the lesson content, but also know the teaching strategies that are appropriate to be used for the lesson content. teachers' understanding of these two aspects helped them manage their teaching activities. in addition, the participants in this research identified in-service training as being a significant source of knowledge and skills for them. the results of this research are in line with the study by kalinowski, gronostaj and vock (2019) who found that inservice programs were reported by teachers to be by far the biggest source of influence on their decisions, prompting them to change their teaching and beliefs. the participants in this research indicated that they found the experience of socializing with their colleagues and sharing of ideas and experiences through professional learning activities are valuable and informative. the findings of this research on the importance of knowledge and skills about lesson content and teaching strategies are important to be noted. darling-hammond and richardson (2009) argue that knowing how students understand lesson content and having a repertoire of strategies to help students engage with learning ideas are the essence of pedagogical content knowledge. similarly, attema-noordewier et al. (2012) point out the need for teachers to know the subject matter they teach. however, as attema-noordewier et al. indicate that simply knowing a subject well may not be sufficient for teaching without knowing the teaching strategies to convey the content lesson. therefore, good pl activities 3 paikem is the acronym for pembelajaran aktif, inovatif, kreatif, efektif dan menyenangkan, which means active, are needed to help teachers better understand content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge to help them improve their teaching practices. most of the participants in this research saw the link between improving teaching and improving learning. they agreed that implementing a targeted innovation alone would not be enough to create valuable change from a broader perspective of things. as olin and ingerman (2016) indicate that in such contexts, teachers must demonstrate that a change in teachers’ part can make a difference to learning. the participants seem to recognize the vital connection between teaching and learning, where to improve learning, the teaching itself need to improve. interestingly, two of the novice teachers in the interview informed that they were willing to take risks and try an innovation even if they were not convinced that it would work, rather than simply blaming other factors for the lack of student achievement. this is in line with what kalinowski, gronostaj and vock (2019) say that teachers in the early stages of their careers were most open to change, and those nearing the end of their careers showed the most resistance while mid-career teachers who were relaxed in their professional duties were also fairly flexible and positive towards change. ict becomes an important training material for teachers the content of professional learning that the participants considered need to learn during pl process was one of the questions in the questionnaire and interview. the analysis shows that the majority of respondents (86.2%) suggested that information and communication technology (ict) as a content that need to be learned during pl activities, especially in in-service training. besides ict, the participants also recommended pedagogical content knowledge (70.8%), curriculum (58.5%), and content knowledge (43.1%) as other training contents for pl program. majority of the participants in the questionnaire perceived that teachers need to understand well about ict, especially how to integrate ict with classroom learning activities. therefore, there is a need to involve teachers in trainings, especially a training about information and communication technology. the participants’ views are exemplified in the following quote. the training i had attended is very useful; particularly the training about information and technological communication because it increased my understanding of how to integrate technology into teaching activities ... this training is essential for teachers. (t.32.et) in the interview, most participants also mentioned their wish to integrate technology into their teaching practice because it is related to paikem3. they reported that some teachers are still struggling to integrate innovative, creative, effective and joyful learning, commonly referred to as active learning. bachtiar professional teaching and learning effectiveness 16 technology into their teaching practice and so valued pl in this area. according to the participants, teachers' understanding of how to integrate technology into their practice is important in creating paikem, as well as in encouraging students to be actively involved during learning process. the importance for teachers in indonesian to integrate technology into their teaching practice was also highlighted in a study by hermawa et al. (2019). they found indonesian teachers are often challenged to adapt and integrate technology into their teaching practice as a way to improve student’s learning and achievement. therefore, pl implementer need to consider providing teachers with the appropriate technological knowledge and skills. teachers' knowledge and skills about technology will help them build good relationships with students, find good models of learning, and may contribute to education reform as a whole. tsgs as an effective collaborative model of professional learning of many types of professional learning activities, the participants had participated in, tsgs (hereinafter refer to english language teacher forum) was considered as a good form of pl that could help english language teachers to increase their teaching competence. one of the reasons, as mentioned by most of the participants, is that english teachers can share their knowledge and skills, as well as collaborate with their colleagues in the tsgs. all of the participants in the interviews informed that, basically the tsgs are very good forum for english teachers to increase and update their knowledge, skills and understanding of how to teach english well as a foreign language in indonesia. teachers have also opportunities to collaborate and give ideas during the meetings in the tsgs. the benefit of collaboration in tsgs is supported by social constructivist theories of learning (packer & goicoechea, 2000). social constructivist theories of learning believe that learning occurs when individuals hear and share their thoughts and ideas, and articulate their existing understandings. on some occasions, the participants in this research agree with the idea that learning is more effective when the opportunity exists to interact with others and with their environment (williams, 2010). the results of this research are consistent with the study by psychoyos (2012) that found that the combined strengths of each member in a professional learning community helped to develop each teacher’s knowledge and teaching skills, and produced a better understanding of quality teaching. the participants in this research perceived tsgs as learning forums that might empower english teachers because these forums are interactive and collaborative in nature. some of the participants reported that they became more reflective, critical and analytical when they reflected and discussed their english classroom teaching activities in the tsgs. the findings from this research are supported by evans et al.’s (2009) study that elaborated the aims of the tsgs are to help teachers develop their professional competence, to improve their capability in preparing lesson plans, and to discuss teaching and learning issues. this view is also supported by jalal et al. (2012) who indicate the benefits of tsgs are to allow teachers to collaborate, to focus on practical rather than theoretical knowledge, and to allow for ongoing consultation and discussion among teachers. therefore, all of the processes that the english teachers in this research experienced in the tsgs have the potential to make them feel more empowered. the findings from this research also indicate that in the context of english language teaching, especially in indonesia, english teachers need to be allowed for collaboration and sharing their expertise to find the most appropriate strategies in teaching english. in addition, due to the collaborative nature of the tsgs, the participants saw the tsgs as a good forum to share their knowledge and expertise, as well as to combat isolation. since the tsgs were interactive, the english teachers who participated in this research found that these forums had helped them improve teaching practices and they felt not isolated. for example, the participants informed that tsgs routinely incorporated teambuilding activities through informal social conversations before, during, and after tsg meetings. this finding is consistent with previous studies (dufour & dufour, 2010) about professional learning communities in which teachers share and learn together while combating isolation, improving teaching practice, and improving student achievement. similarly, admiraal et al. (2019) found that when teachers made time to talk to each other about specific aspects of daily teaching needs, they grew into a learning community. conclusion this research explored the benefits and challenges of professional learning for teachers in indonesia and drew some implications for educational reform. the findings of this research revealed that the meaning devoted to teaching and learning corresponds to the transformative concept of teaching and learning which portrays teaching as an active learning process in transferring knowledge and skills. in the current professional learning context, teachers position themselves alongside the transfer of knowledge for the improvement of the school and become educational providers for the students. the results of current research also show that factors surrounding teaching and learning context are interrelated threads woven to shape participants' perceptions. as a result, the perceptions of efl teachers of the effectiveness of professional learning have been influenced by their past and current experiences in teaching and participating in pl activities. this research confirms the need to implement collaboration and practice-oriented professional learning activities for teachers of english as a foreign language in international journal of education vol. 14 no. 1, april-2021, pp. 11-18 ©2021 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: 10.17509/ije.v14i1.25533 17 indonesia. the participants in this research valued pl activities that can help them increase their understanding of content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge and provide opportunities for collaboration because these activations helped them experience in meaningful learning activities. in addition, the findings highlight the need and the potential to develop a culture of collaboration among teachers through professional learning community. references attema-noordewier, s., korthagen, f., zwart, r., kooy, m., & van veen, k. 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(2009). professional learning in the learning profession: a status report on teacher development in the united states and abroad. national staff development council. admiraal, w., schenke, w., de jong, l., emmelot, y., & sligte, h. (2019): schools as professional learning communities: what can schools do to support professional development of their teachers? professional development in education. doi: 19415257.2019.1665573. williams, m. l. (2010). teacher collaboration as professional development in a large, suburban high school (doctoral dissertation). university of nebraska, lincoln, united states. http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1094&context=cehsdis. http://edukasi.rakyatku.com/read/23701/2016/10/11/tingkatkan-kompetensi-guru-disdik-sulsel-gelontorkan-rp5-m http://edukasi.rakyatku.com/read/23701/2016/10/11/tingkatkan-kompetensi-guru-disdik-sulsel-gelontorkan-rp5-m http://edukasi.rakyatku.com/read/23701/2016/10/11/tingkatkan-kompetensi-guru-disdik-sulsel-gelontorkan-rp5-m http://edukasi.rakyatku.com/read/23701/2016/10/11/tingkatkan-kompetensi-guru-disdik-sulsel-gelontorkan-rp5-m https://mospace.umsystem.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10355/15110/research.pdf?sequence=2&isallowed=y https://mospace.umsystem.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10355/15110/research.pdf?sequence=2&isallowed=y https://mospace.umsystem.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10355/15110/research.pdf?sequence=2&isallowed=y http://www.antaranews.com/berita/325037/lpmp-prihatin-masih-banyak-guru-gagap-teknologi http://www.antaranews.com/berita/325037/lpmp-prihatin-masih-banyak-guru-gagap-teknologi http://www.antaranews.com/berita/325037/lpmp-prihatin-masih-banyak-guru-gagap-teknologi http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1094&context=cehsdis http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1094&context=cehsdis imas kania rahman and furqon, gestalt game to improve students’ adaptability in pondok pesantren 17 gestalt game to improve students’ adaptability in pondok pesantren imas kania rahman and furqon abstract this study aims at finding the effectiveness of guidance and counselling through gestalt game technique in improving students’ adaptability in two islamic boarding schools. the study was conducted by using a pretest-posttest nonequivalent group design involving four groups of students from two different islamic boarding schools. the study considered the influnce of gender and boarding school environment towards the effectiveness of gestalt game. it was conducted by controlling heterogenity in students’ adaptability before the treatment as well as students’ religiosity. the study shows that gestalt game is effective in improving adaptability of the students in the two islamic boarding schools involved in the study. moreover, the study reveals that gestalt game does not affect gender and islamic boarding schools’ environment. keywords: gestalt game; students’ adaptability; students’ religiosity. though there is no involvement of game technique at all, as long as the therapy includes an interaction between the counsellor and the counselee that leads the counselee to have a better awareness, gives a chance to the counselee to experience an internal conflict, solves some dichotomies and passes through a dead-end situation, as well as faces and solves their unfinished problems in the past, it can be ensured that the therapy is a gestalt therapy (woldt 2005). the term of gestalt game in the study refers to the approach in guidance and conselling that uses games, which does not only involve introduction gestalt game guidance and counselling is a therapeutic technique applying gestalt principles and theurapetic technique where the counselee is involved in a game (bloom, 2006). through the technique, the counselor tries to build a particular theurapeutic relationship and contact, where the counselee is given a chance to affirm what he/she feels, either by using verbal or non-verbal language. he/she is also given a chance to express his/ her ideas in order to maintain his/her own awareness. gestalt therapy, however, is not only a set of technique or games. imas kania rahman, the study program of guidance and counselling of school of postgraduate studies at indonesia university of education bandung furqon, lecturer at indonesia university of education bandung 18 international journal of education, vol. 6, no. 1, november 2011 games offered in perls’ gestalt therapy (cave 1999; smith, 2010). therefore, gestalt game is an approach created by the counsellor as to help the counselee that uses games as the technique based on the basic assumptions, principles, objectives, and phases used in perls’ gestalt therapy. basic assumption in the gestalt game is that every person has his/her own capacity to manage him/ her self as well as his/her environment, so that he/she can manage his/her own problems effectively. the basic principles of gestalt game are holism, field theory, the figure formation process, and organismic self-regulation (corey 2005). pertaining to holism, latner (1986), said that ”all of nature is seen as a unified and coherent whole, and the whole is different from the sum of its parts”. field theory, however, is a principle seeing that ”the organism must be seen in its environment, or in its context, as part of the constantly changing field”. the figure formation process describes how an individual organizes his/her world from time to time, known as figure and ground principle (latner, 1986). organismic self-regulation is a principle seeing that an individual is able to take an action and build connection that may take them to the stabil condition. the stabilization process is carried out by determining priorities among various feelings or interests. the aims of gestalt game is similar to what gestalt therapy wants to achieve, namely getting awareness. however, they are different in defining the terms of awareness. in this case, awareness can be seen in a way that the counselee is able to choose. within the process of getting the awareness, the counselee should not only understand his/her environment and his/her own self, but also accept his/herself and be able to build a relationship. the process to get the awareness is within the context of here and now, as well as based on immediate experience (blom 2006; brownell 2010; mann 2010; fagan and shepard 1970; hardy 1991; magill and rodriguez 1996). in gestalt game, however, the awareness does not only comprise what has been defined before. in this context, the counselee, is eligible to make a decision if the options are based on his/her understanding towards his/ her existence as a human creature in front of allah and his/ her position as the messenger of islam in the world. this awareness leads the counselee to maintain vertical and horizontal contact and to consider every decision and action he/she takes. this different concept encourages the emergence of a new technique as a creation of the counselor in a form of game known as sdbhsm card game (sdbhsm card game is an interactive game between a counselor and his/ her counselee as to encourage the counselee to enter a weaker awareness leading to a full awareness on here and now principle. sdbhsm is an abbreviation of five slogans, namely: (s) siapakah anda? (who are you?); (d) dari mana anda berasal? (where are you from?); (b) berada di mana anda saat ini? (where are you now?); (h) hendak kemana tujuan anda? (where imas kania rahman and furqon, gestalt game to improve students’ adaptability in pondok pesantren 19 will you go?); (s) sedang apa anda saat ini? (what are you doing now?); and (m) manfaat apa yang anda peroleh? (what can you get?). the technique is conducted as a basic service in gestalt game guidance and counseling before the counselee uses perls gestalt therapy teachnique approach. within boarding school environment, students get guidance and counseling by using the pattern and tradition of islamic boarding school. the dynamics and problems experienced by the students that change from time to time should be accompanied by the development of a sistematic guidance approach. previous studies found that there were some students who had some problems with adaptation that often time lead the students to move or drop out from school. the study aims at (1) finding the effectiveness of gestalt game in improving students’ adaptability in islamic boarding schools; (2) finding the influence of gender and school environment towards the effectiveness of gestalt game in improving students’ adaptability in pondok pesantren. method the study on the effectiveness of gestalt game in improving students’ adaptability in islamic boarding school was conducted in pondok pesantren salafiyah miftahul huda islamic boarding school, in the regency of tasikmalaya and amanah muhammadiyah sambongjaya islamic boarding school in the city of tasikmalaya. the test effectiveness of gestalt game was conducted by answering the following four hypotheses (1) by controlling adaptability of pretest score, there is any difference in the adaptability level, that is between the students having guidance and counselling through gestalt game and the group of students guided through the islamic boarding-school-style guidance; (2) by controlling students’ religiosity variable, there is any difference in students’ adaptability level, that is between the treatment group and the control group (3) gender influences the effectiveness of gestalt game in improving students’ adaptability in pondok pesantren; and (4) the environment of the school influences the effectiveness of gestalt game in improving students’ adaptability in the school. this experimental study used pretest-posttest nonequivalent group design (heppner, wampold and kivlighan 2008:183-186). variables in the study were students’ adaptability as the dependent variable (y), gestalt game technique as the independent variable (x1), religiosity as the control variable (x2), gender and school environment as the first (x3) and second moderator variable (x4). the research intruments used to measure each variable were previously tested in the terms of validity and reliability before being used in the study. the students’ adaptability instrument resulted from validity and reliability test included 102 question items, developed from the dimensions of crisis, culture, work stress, interpersonal, learning, 20 international journal of education, vol. 6, no. 1, november 2011 physics, creativity, uncertainty, skills related to the care of one’s belongings, skills related to the maintenance of the environment, and skills related to the completion of routine activities. students’ religiosity instruments included 86 question items developed from the dimensions of ritual involvement, ideological involvement, intellectual involvement, experiential involvement, and consequential involvement. result and discussion table-1 shows the result of the analysis of covariance of effectiveness of gestalt game in order to improve students’ adaptability in the islamic boarding schools, by controlling the students’ adaptability before the treatment. the table shows that gestalt game was significantly effective in improving students’ adaptability at p < 0,01. table-1 result of the first hypothesis test the different level of students’ adaptability, between those who are in the experimental group and the control group by controlling religiosity, can be seen in the table-2. the table shows that h0 is rejected at p < 0,05. table-2 the second hypothetical test imas kania rahman and furqon, gestalt game to improve students’ adaptability in pondok pesantren 21 table-3 shows that gender and school environment do not influence the effectiveness of gestalt game in improving the students’ adaptability in islamic boarding school. table-3 the influence of gender and school environment towards the effectiveness of the treatment tests of between-subjects effects 8168.065a 7 1166.866 1.423 .204 .089 7190906.146 1 7190906.146 8770.559 .000 .989 4735.579 1 4735.579 5.776 .018 .054 1676.941 1 1676.941 2.045 .156 .020 60.495 1 60.495 .074 .786 .001 87.341 1 87.341 .107 .745 .001 123.888 1 123.888 .151 .698 .001 .867 1 .867 .001 .974 .000 631.708 1 631.708 .770 .382 .007 83628.926 102 819.891 9470253.000 110 91796.991 109 corrected model intercept eks_kntrl jkelamin asal_pst eks_kntrl * jkelamin eks_kntrl * asal_pst jkelamin * asal_pst eks_kntrl * jkelamin * asal_pst error total corrected total type iii sum partial eta a. hinksman’s study (2009) on gestalt therapy through theological approach entitled “the compatibility of feminist theology and gestalt therapy: a study of practicalvalues”, shows that the combination between gestalt therapy and feminism theology has a significant influence in improving the acceptance towards practical values. the convergence between gestalt therapy and feminism theological approach indicates that the gestalt therapy is able to be integrated into religious field and education. gestalt game experimental study in improving students’ adaptability in islamic boarding school is a combination of perls gestalt therapy and the awareness concept of islamic lesson. gestalt game is effective in improving students’ adaptability in the two islamic boarding schools in the study. the empirical evident shows that gestalt game guidance and counseling can be implemented in islamic boarding school, either in that of salafiyah or the modern one. the findings also proved that the students, either those of salafiyah islamic boarding schools (represented by students of islamic boarding school of miftahul huda manonjaya tasikmalaya) or of modern islamic boarding school (represented by the islamic boarding school of amanah muhammadiyah sambongjaya tasikmalaya) were open to guidance and counseling through a new approach, therefore, the thesis stated that salafiyah students are different from the modern ones in terms of openness towards new things and outside world (luar (hidayat, 2009) was not proven in the study. 22 international journal of education, vol. 6, no. 1, november 2011 testing the effectiveness of gestalt game in improving students adaptability in islamic boarding school should consider other variables predicted to influence the students’ adaptability. table 4.9 shows that after controlling the first covariate, the effect of treatment of gestalt game guidance and counseling towards the adaptability of the students is as much as 10.6 %. besides students’ adaptability level before the treatment, religiosity was also one controlling factor. assegaf (2005: 154) conveys that boarding school environment is full of efforts in developing religious awareness. in the similar tone, rahim (2001: 32-35) asserts that islamic boarding schools always try to teach knowledge, attitude and skill related to religion. three main missions of islamic boarding school are belief and obedience to allah swt; development of useful knowledge; loyalty towards religion, nation and country (noor 2006: 19). it is then undisputable that religiosity is the main factor to be maintained in islamic boarding school environment. the relationship between students’ religiosity and adaptability can be seen in zalfa’s study (2010) that there is any significant correlation betwen the level of religiosity and students’ coping strategy. other studies indicate that there is also any significant influence of religiosity towards self control (rahmawati, 2005); self resilience (monterde 2007); and attitude towards environment (widianta 2005). findings from duffy and blustein’s (2005) study show that there is any solid correlation between spirituality, religiosity and one’s ability in carrier adaptation. broenen’s study (2006) supports the previous study that there is any significant correlation between adaptability and spirituality of western people in united states. the main findings of the study show that religiosity is a factor that may influence students’ adaptability. the result of ancova test shows that after controlling students’ religiosity, gestalt game is proven effective in improving students’ adaptability in the two islamic boarding schools. the effect of the game is as much as 5.9%. besides students’ religiosity, it is suggested that any other factors influence students’ adaptability called gender and school environment where the students live and study. the assumption is based on the fact that in traditional islamic boarding school, male students’ adaptability is better than the female ones (hidayat 2009); female students tend to be more adaptable with the hope of adult people than the male ones (bashori, 2003: 8990) the findings from roinson in several schools in district of oklahoma show that there are any differences in the term of adaptability between female and male. males tend to have a higher adaptability with themselves and the environment compared to the females. the similar findings can be found in mendez’s study (2005) which shows that in the school, male students imas kania rahman and furqon, gestalt game to improve students’ adaptability in pondok pesantren 23 have a better adaptability than female ones. based on the two-way anova test result, it was proved that gender does not influence the effectiveness of gestalt game in improving students’ adaptability. the empirical facts are as follows: first, the two different islamic boarding schools, either salafiyah or the modern one, do not use gender issue as an important variable in determining policies or in the process of teaching and learning. though policies and educational practices still involve different treatment towards female and male, the policies and educational practices are in accordance with the nature and the existence of female and male. gender issue is not accentuated since there are bigger issues such as education, knowledge mastery on clasical islamic knowledge, and etc. therefore, the problems faced by female and male students are relatively same, including requirements/ challenges in knowledge mastery, time management, obedience towards rules, etc. it shows that students’adaptability in islamic boarding school does not depend on given factor such as gender, it is rather to be an acquired factor. second, the development of communication and information technology such as computer, internet, telephone, handphone has bridged the gap of the differences between the male students and the female ones, so that knowledge, insight, attitude and behavior of female and male students are hard to define. besides religiosity and gender, school environment is also assumed to be a variable that may influence the effectiveness of gestalt game in improving students’ adaptability. this assumption is based on the theory stating that the uniqueness of boarding school is based on the three elements that build the school, namely (1) leadership pattern, (2) referenced text books, and (3) grading system. hidayat’s finding (2009) shows that students’ adaptability in salafiyah boarding school is better than those of the modern one. the result of a two-way anova shows the effectiveness of gestalt game was not influenced by the school environment. the empirical facts cannot be separated from the influence of infomational and communicational technology that has bridged the gap between salaf boarding school and the modern one. television, computer, internet, telephone and other communication tools have cut the gap and broken the border that differ students of salafiyah boarding schoool from those of modern one. therefore, it is logical that the effectiveness of gestalt game in improving the students’ adaptability in boarding school does not depend on the school environment. though the study shows that guidance and counseling through gestalt game is effective in improving students’ adaptability in islamic boarding school, there are also some other factors that may influence students’ adaptability such as iq, the level of motivation, and bilinguality, which were not tested in the study. it is the limitation of the experimental study. 24 international journal of education, vol. 6, no. 1, november 2011 conclusion the findings of the study conducted in islamic boarding school of miftahul huda manonjaya in the regency of tasikmalaya and islamic boarding school of amanah muhamadiyah sambongjaya in the city of tasikmalaya shows that guidance and counseling by gestalt game is effective in improving students’ adaptability in pondok pesantren. based on the finding, it is suggested (1) to the head of pondok pesantrens to consider the use of the idea of guidance and counseling through gestalt game in improving students’ adaptability in order to support the guidance commonly used in boarding school; (2) to counselors to have gestalt game as an alternative in guidance and counseling; (3) to researchers in guidance and counseling to develop the study to use the gestalt game in different boarding schools or in the same boarding schools but considering other factors that may influence the effectiveness of gestalt game which were not included in the study, such as iq, motivation, bilingual factor, or other factors such as a longer guidance and counselling time period. reference bloom, r. (2006). the handbook of gestalt play therapy: practical guidelines for child therapists. london: jessica kingsley publishers. broenen, p. (2006). transpersonal and cross-cultural adaptability factors in white european american men: a descriptive and correlational analysis. journal of institute of transpersonal psychology, dai-b 67/05, p. 2873. brownell, p. (2010). gestalt therapy: a guide to contemporary practice. new york: springer publishing company. cave, s. (1999). therapeutic approaches in psychology. new york: routledge. corey, g. (2005). theory and practice of counseling & psychotherapy. usa: thomson learning, inc. duffy, r.d. & blustein, d.l. (2005). the relationship between spirituality, religiousness, and career adaptability. journal of vocational behavior, volume 67, issue 3, december 2005, pages 429-440. fagan, j. & shepherd, i. (1970). gestalt therapy now: theory, techniques, applications. new york: harper & row. ginger, s. (2007). gestalt therapy: the art of contact. london: karnac books. hardy, r. (1991). gestalt psychotherapy: concepts and demonstrations in stress, relationships, hypnosis, and addiction. london: c.c. thomas. heppner, p. et al. (2008). research design in counseling. belvest: cengage learning. hidayat, d. (2009). perbedaan penyesuaian diri santri di pondok pesantren tradisional dan modern. malang: fakultas psikologi unm. imas kania rahman and furqon, gestalt game to improve students’ adaptability in pondok pesantren 25 latner, j. (1986). the gestalt therapy. highland, ny: center for gestalt development. magill, f. n. & jaclyn, r. (1996). survey of social science: psychology series, volume 2. michigan: salem press mann, d. (2010). gestalt therapy: 100 key points and techniques. new york: routledge. mendez, j.l. (2005). identifying and promoting social competence with african american children: developmental and contextual considerations. h t t p : / / o n l i n e l i b r a r y. w i l e y. com/doi/10.1002/pits.10039/ abstract monterde. (2007). pengaruh dimensi religiusitas terhadap persepsi ketahanan diri remaja akhir. jakarta: unika atmajaya. noor, m. (2006). potret dunia pesantren, bandung : humaniora. rahmawati, d.p. (2005). hubungan antara sikap religiusitas dengan pengendalian diri dalam pergaulan heteroseksual pada siswa man kendal: semarang: fip uns. robinson, l. c. (2004). interpersonal relationship quality in young adulthood: a gender analysis statistical data included. journal of vocational behavior, volume 66, issue 3, december 2004, pages 29-40. smith, t. e. & clifford e. k. (2010). sourcebook of experiential education: key thinkers and their contributions. new york: routledge. widianta, a. (2005). sikap terhadap lingkungan dan religiusitas. usu e-journals psikologi vol.1 no.2. woldt, a. l. & sarah, m. t. (2005). gestalt therapy: history, theory, and practice. london: sage publication, inc. yontef, g. m. (1993). awareness, dialogue & process: essays on gestalt therapy. gouldsboro: the gestalt journal press. database connection failed! international journal of education vol. 11 no. 1, august 2018, pp. 50-58 ©2018 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v11i1.10902 50 building ecological intelligence through indonesian language learning based on kethek ogleng dance agoes hendriyanto, arif mustofa, bakti sutopo stkip pgri pacitan, jawa timur, indonesia rafid.musyffa@gmail.com first draft received: 03 may 2018 accepted: 31 june 2018 final proof received: 20 aug 2018 abstract kethek ogleng is a unique factor that shapes the aesthetics of language learning. unfortunately, the relation between kethek ogleng and language learning draws only a little attention. to reveal the phenomenon, the present qualitative descriptive study was performed by investigating indonesian language learning based on kethek ogleng dance. the study was conducted in smpn (state junior high school) 3 nawangan, to the second semester ninth grade students of the 2017/2018 academic year. the research findings reveal that the approach can build the level of ecological intelligence of the students. based on the responses to the questionnaire distributed, the average level of ecological intelligence and environmental skills of the students shows signs of progress. the data indicate that the mean score was 3.2 and the percentage of ecological intelligence was 65%, indicating the attainment of knowledge and skills of school and home environment preservation. the indicators of the success of this approach can be seen in the changes of attitude and behavior of students in environmental management, covering clean and healthy classrooms and toilets, the use of recyclable materials, water and electricity conservation in the classroom, protection of trees and plants around the classrooms, proper treatment of trash, and organic and inorganic waste utilization. keywords: kethek ogleng; ecological intelligence, indonesian language learning to cite this paper (in apa style): hendriyanto, a., mustofa, a., & sutopo, b. (2018). building ecological intelligence through indonesian language learning based on kethek ogleng dance. international journal of education, 11(1), 50-58. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v11i1.10902 introduction indonesia is a country wealthy in cultural diversity. culture is considered human beings’ activity that uses language, either spoken or written. thus, human life is strongly connected to language. one of the the cultural activities of indonesian people is the art of kethek ogleng dance. sutiman created the dance in 1962. the dance is a part of the expressive beauty of the human soul. it is expressed in the form of gestures and is refined through aesthetics. kethek ogleng dance depicts the authenticity of an attractive monkey’s body-movement. dance, basically, is as a branch of art with the body as a visible intermediary because of human’s creativity and initiative. it is born from the tradition developing in a specific place in the form of pure or incorporeal movement series (saimin, 1993). nature has inspired human beings, such as reflected in how kethek ogleng dance is inspired by an animal. nature also plays a very important role in human life. however, it is often the case that humans exploit nature without any regard to its sustainability, hence destroying the environment. in fact, if the environment experiences damages due to human activities, an imbalanced and unsystematic life pattern of the environmental components will take place. humans are a key factor in environmental sustainability, so they have to position properly as those who explore rather than exploit. in the context of exploration, humans are required to participate in conserving and not only utilizing the natural resources provided by the environment. muhaimin (2015) defined human being as the subject, the center of the universe order, and the authoritative entity who should be wisely active in manifesting their existence. on the other hand, the human environment is very influential on the shaping of human traits and growth (sumaatmadja, 2003). floods and landslides occurred in pacitan on november 28, 2017, in addition to being caused by cyclone storm, was also caused by human selfishness in the utilization of resources by ignoring its sustainability. the disasters in pacitan show how the implementation of science and technology supported by capitalism has made people become greedy. they exploit large-scale natural resources for benefits, especially for consumption and economy (muhaimin, 2015). the development of science and technology are like two faces: helping humans to meet their needs and raising ecological crisis instead when it is under a bad management. muhaimin (2015) further hendriyanto, a., mustofa, a., & sutopo, b. building ecological intelligence through indonesian language learning based on kethek ogleng 51 stated that the development of science and technology will change human nature. nasution & manurung (2016) pointed out that as a part of the living community, every living being has a right to live and to be appreciated by others. all living species have a relationship. they are interconnected with each other to form a biotic community. a biotic community is a collection of various living organisms in a region, including humans. they interact with elements of the physical environment to form an ecological system, the ecosystem. however, greed and selfishness will negatively impact the relationship between human and nature, which may cause natural destruction. humans have desires to be respected, lauded, and adored. highstandards of living also trigger them to earn unlimited incomes and to fulfill needs. the competition among communities results in the inevitable and increasing exploitation of natural resources. the exploitation of land, water, air, and biotic elements leads to ecological crises, such as landslides, global warming, and floods. soemarwoto (2007) drew attention to the damaging carelessness in the long run. human beings may be badly impacted because they are highly dependent on the environment. human beings, as an intelligent creature, should be aware that their life depends on the environment. there should be a real effort to raise awareness of the public about the importance of maintaining the environment continuity from the irresponsible exploitation. gardner (2013) proposed the idea of ecological intelligence, alternatively called “naturalist intelligence”, which is the ability of humans in understanding natural phenomena, exhibiting ecological awareness, and showing sensitivity to the forms of nature. ecological intelligence is necessary to reduce the impact of global warming by planting trees, cultivating land based on soil contours, reducing plastic waste, and saving electricity and water. schools as official institutions where the young people get knowledge must also play a role in internalizing the awareness of environmental sustainability and conservation in students. the adiwiyata school program, for instance, is a solutive program to foster a sense of environmental awareness in students. the adiwiyata-environmental education program aims at making the schools a better learning place and raising awareness of school community (teachers, students, and other workers), so that the school community can be responsible and take part in the efforts to save the environment and create sustainable development. the activities of this program include planting various crops on vacant land owned by schools or society around it and teaching and learning that contains systematic and environmentally friendly waste management of both organic and non-organic waste. the awareness of environmental sustainability can be cultivated with various media, especially art-based media. one of the alternative media that can be used to build ecological intelligence is dance. yulianti (2016) had used creative dance to cultivate ecological awareness of children. through creative environment-themed dance, she argued that students can get constructive and creative. further, the students can also have some space for imagination and expression to increase their ecological awareness. the present study would also like to use dance in building students’ ecological intelligence. kethek ogleng-dance based learning, integrated into the indonesian language subject, is expected as a solution to the sustainability of living environment. in addition, teaching and learning in the junior high school level is usually carried out using the problembased learning method based on contextual learning strategies. hence, applying kethek ogleng dance will connect learning materials with the daily life (muhaimin, 2015), as is the nature of problem-based learning. the ninth grade students of junior high school are classified into adolescents. adolescents need contextual learning whose materials are derived from local cultures. this kethek ogleng approach is expected to build students’ ecological intelligence and aimed at preserving the environment. in addition, teachers of indonesian language are not only responsible in teaching language, but also in building students’ intelligence to be environmentally sensitive. ecological intelligence is based on knowledge, awareness, skill, and empathy in preserving the earth as a living place for all living things. building ecological intelligence through in school, in this case through the teaching and learning of indonesian language integrated with kethek ogleng, is essential for students to have empathy for the school environment. students’ ecological awareness may be indicated by toilet sanitation, water conservation, organic and inorganic waste management, and the like. furthermore, ninth grade students who are between 13 and 15 years of age are at the formal operational stage. they are at the stage of developing abstract and logical reasoning for various problems as well as taking conclusion (muhaimin, 2015). hence, applying the kethek ogleng-based indonesian teaching and learning will connect the lesson to the context of students’ daily lives related to ecological intelligence. the ecological intelligence shapes students to have a concern and do real social actions in preserving school and home environment. the preservation of school and home environments will have an impact on soil, groundwater, air, forest conditions, school environment, living environment, and environmental hygiene. studies have been conducted in relation to kethek ogleng dance. suseno’s research (2013) reveals that ogleng kethek dance was created, grew, and developed in tokawi village, nawangan subdistrict, pacitan district. it tells the love story between dewi sekartaji from the kingdom of jenggala and panji asmara bangun from the kingdom of kediri. the presentation of kethek ogleng dance contains the elements of motion, accompaniment, makeup, clothing, and staging. kethek ogleng dance contains social values that are very inherent in the life of the people of tokawi village, such as togetherness, communication, spirituality, entertainment, loyalty, economy, and education. the community hopes that the kethek ogleng dance in tokawi village can be maintained because it is the only dance originating international journal of education vol. 11 no. 1, august 2018, pp. 50-58 ©2018 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v11i1.10902 52 from this village in pacitan regency. suseno (2013) further revealed that kethek ogleng dance can be made a learning medium to foster students’ environmental awareness in the following ways: (1) discussing discourses that contain current environmental issues originating from several mass media; (2) inviting students to watch ogleng kethek dance and observe the concept of environmental conservation contained in the dance; (3) and writing based on the concept of preservation in kethek ogleng dance. ciptanti (2015) also examined kethek ogleng in terms of the history of the creation of kethek ogleng dance in tokawi village, the dance’s regeneration, and the process of inheritance of a collective system in the form of pengrawit, dance movements, accompaniment, make-up and fashion, and the presentation. in addition, ratnasari (2016) revealed that there are several educational values contained in the dance of kethek ogleng. the value of education is manifested in the preparation of performances, dance movements, and storylines. human behavior as individual and social beings can be seen from every movement of the kethek ogleng dance. the educational values are reflected in personality, character, spirituality, and community life. however, there has been no research on how the dance can be used to build ecological awareness of junior high school students, therefore, the present research will investigate how kethek ogleng dance can be integrated into the teaching and learning of indonesian language to build the ecological intelligence of junior high school students. method the present research is qualitative-descriptive. the data are related to the teaching and learning of indonesian language based on kethek ogleng dance in smpn 3 nawangan. the subjects of this study consisted of the creator of kethek ogleng dance, the dancers, the dance instructor in smpn 3 nawangan, and the indonesian language teacher in the school. the data collection techniques included interviews, participatory observations, and documentation. the data from the research findings are in the form of documents or written data obtained from observations and interviews with some informants. after each interview, the results of the interview were further analyzed by drawing upon spradley’s method (2007). content analysis was also employed based on the procedures that cover (1) data reduction; (2) summarizing the main points in accordance with the research topic, and (3) grouping the results of data reduction into units, categorizing, and finally interpreting the symbolic aspects. for the reliability and validity of the data, the triangulation of sources and data collection techniques were employed in this study. the triangulation was based on research observations, interviews, and documentation. in addition, the data were validated by various informants listed in the research. results and discussions building ecological intelligence through indonesian language learning based on kethek ogleng dance the teaching and learning of indonesian language for the second semester of the ninth grade covers a topic of the arts of indonesia. the topic is integrated with environmental preservation lessons. kethek ogleng dance was the indonesian arts selected for the teaching and learning. the movements of kethek ogleng dance are inspired of the movements of a monkey who lives freely in a beautiful forest environment. efforts to develop ecological intelligence through interactive learning are essential to shape knowledge, attitudes, and actions in the environment preservation. good learning should be able to improve students’ cognitive, affective, and psychomotor abilities. the topic of kethek ogleng was carried out for 6 meetings. each meeting took 2 hours of a lesson (2 x 40 minutes). the first meeting was aimed at improving the competence of language, covering listening, speaking, reading, and writing based on the ability and the concern for environmental preservation. muhaimin (2015) stated that competence is a measurable and observable object that includes all dimensions of student development in the learning progress. therefore, the assessment indicators are based on language skills. the first and second meetings included reading and listening to stories in kethek ogleng dance. the third and fourth meetings contained the competence of speaking that is integrated with the solution of environmental issues related to environmental conditions at the creation of kethek ogleng dance compared to the present condition. the fifth and sixth meetings involved students’ writing competence on environmental themes that were based on students’ knowledge and attitudes toward the preservation of school and home environments. to be clear, the steps of the learning are described as follows. the first meeting the first and second meetings are related to cognitive abilities. nurgiyantoro (2015) found out that cognitive domain is related to the intellectual ability and competence of thinking. students are expected to master the process of thinking such as remembering, understanding, analyzing, connecting, solving environmental problems that are integrated into the kethek ogleng dance movement (p. 57). the first and second meetings were focused on students’ reading and listening skills. the medium used was a short story written by teachers about kethek ogleng. it was aimed at obtaining ecological knowledge from elements of the story in kethek ogleng and was made on a separate sheet. muhaimin (2015) mentioned that aspects of environmental knowledge taught at the first and the second meetings should cover: “(1) environmental issues; (2) the causes of environmental problems; (3) future predictions of environmental problems; (4) solutions or alternatives to the environmental problems; and (5) an understanding of human dependence on the environment” (p. 124). hendriyanto, a., mustofa, a., & sutopo, b. building ecological intelligence through indonesian language learning based on kethek ogleng 53 for the first meeting, the students also watched kethek ogleng dance performed by professionals. students listened to the meaning contained in the dance movements. saimin (1993) argued that dance is one of the traditions of a certain place in the form of a series of pure or incorporeal movements. the incorporeal movements of kethek ogleng dance contain philosophical meanings related to ecological awareness. hence, students can learn about the importance of the environment and build their ecological intelligence. the steps taken include: first is to identify ecosystem components, both abiotic component (land, water, forest, air, and environment) and biotic components (all living organisms). the second is to understand the function of each component in the ecosystem. the third is to understand the natural and the environmental management system. the fourth covers solving problems arising from environmental impacts, either individually or collectively. the fifth deals with managing and conserving natural resources. the knowledge is expected to be stored students’ memory. thus, it can assist students in subsequent learnings to attain the competences of speaking and writing related to the environment and taking concrete steps in the preservation of nature. as mentioned above, the stages are actually integrated into five movements of kethek ogleng dance. every element of the kethek ogleng dance contains meaning and aesthetics. the meaning is an effort of the kethek ogleng creator in building the ecological intelligence of audiences. for more details, the meanings of each movement of the dance are presented in table 1. table 1. kethek ogleng dance movements no dance movement meaning ecological intelligence 1 movement of monkey’s somersaulting and rolling from another world this movement reflects the beginning of life as a test to determine the place in the afterlife identifying ecosystem abiotic and biotic components. the abiotic components are soil, water, forest, air, and environment. the biotic covers all living organisms 2 the movement of an agitated and absent-minded monkey looking at his surroundings with alertness. the movement depicts disappointment, regret, and desire to witness the new conditions of the natural environment that is considered strange and full of challenges. understanding the function of ecosystem’s abiotic and biotic components. 3 the movement of walking around the arena to interact with audiences. this movement portrays curiosity about the characteristics of various living things in nature. understanding natural and environmental management systems. 4 the movement of smearing the audience with dirt this movement describes the struggle of living, working hard, and being creative to meet the life needs solving problems arising from environmental impacts both individually and collectively 5 the movement of carrying and running with an abundance of food. the movement depicts the maximization of opportunities to gain sources. managing/conserving natural resources with terracing, selective logging, drainage, water saving, electricity saving, and so on as shown in table 1, the first movement reflects the beginning of entering the life of the world to undergo exams that will determine the place in the afterlife. the somersault and rolling movements describe human intimacy with nature consisting of living organisms and abiotic environments (soil, water, air, and environment). essentially, the ecological intelligence, from the viewpoint of history and anthropology, has been formed since humans develop a society that lives in the environment they choose (supriatna, 2016: 27). the kethek ogleng dancers are required to role play a monkey that is highly dependent on the forest ecosystem. the students are expected, from the ecological intelligence of the movements, to be able to identify the ecosystem abiotic and biotic components. the abiotic are soil, water, forest, air, and environment. the biotic covers all living organisms. the second movement is a portrayal of disappointment, remorse, and desire to witness a strange and challenging new world. this restless movement builds a wary attitude toward any natural changes associated with the forest ecosystem. tokawi village is a mountainous region that is heavily dependent on forest management. a sense of vigilance with a human that naturally concerns the practical or economic interests then sacrifices nature. the sense of regret is reflected in the movements of kethek ogleng dancers to see the natural conditions to have begun unfriendly due to the unlimited number of logging. the ketek ogleng dance is expected to make the students able to develop and to understand the function and usefulness of each component in the ecosystem, both the biotic and abiotic. the third movement is a portrayal of curiosity towards the character of various animate and inanimate objects. it mentions how human beings, animals, plants, water, and air mutually interact with each other. a mutually beneficial interaction is required in maintaining the balance of nature. human international journal of education vol. 11 no. 1, august 2018, pp. 50-58 ©2018 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v11i1.10902 54 beings as the earth leaders should be wise in the exploitation of land, water, air, forest so as not to cause ecological damage. for instance, people should not make terraces on sloped land, and drainage on the ground for water to flow. the ability of students to understand the meaning of the kethek ogleng dance movement is expected to be a valuable material for students’ experiences related to the environmental preservation. this movement also describes concerns with all forms of human interaction with nature to live with natural conservation. a clean soul that always integrates with nature and the creator can control desire. the control of human desire in the fulfillment of unlimited needs will help human beings to find wisdom in the nature management. kethek ogleng is expected to enable students gaining experience and knowledge related to natural and environmental management systems. the fourth movement portrays the struggles of hard-working and creative life. humans at the age of 12 to 15 years (junior high school students) entering the transition from childhood to adolescence require correct guidance from teachers, parents, and the community to care about the sustainability of surrounding environment consisting of trees, animals, plants, soil, water, and air. the value contained in kethek ogleng should inspire and motivate students to care about nature and its existence. human must use it to meet the needs of life by preserving it. the success of the learning is expected to have the ability to solve problems arising from environmental impacts both individually and collectively in writing and speaking competencies. the last movement describes the attitude of maximizing the opportunity to get food. food will be available if humans do not create forest destruction. it results in deforestation and landslides affecting food availability. therefore, the community, especially in managing the land contours and slope, must treat the land as a food producer fairly. drainage, on the edge of the terraces of rice fields, is made on the sloped land after cultivation. the purpose is that water can flow to a larger water channel. the teaching and learning in building the students’ ecological intelligence is expected to make students take real social action related to biotic and abiotic environmental management. therefore, students will take responsibility in environmental management. the dance movements are expected to foster the attitude of hard working and striving to live without excessively exploiting or damaging nature. the success of human in his life is not judged by the amount of material but should be judged from the biotic and abiotic environment condition. the student’s ecological intelligence can embody a real attitude and action to preserve the environment by living clean, healthy, saving water and electricity, planting trees, and making drainage and terraces in a sloped land. second meeting the second meeting was aimed at improving students’ reading competency. the reading material was panji asmorobangun story of kethek ogleng dance. the story contains intrinsic elements that consist of characters, setting, plot, language style, and message. there are five characters of the story: two characters resembling monkeys, a monkey as panji asmorobangun, roro tompe (which is a disguised form of dewi condro kirono, and the nursemaid of condro kirono. the setting is the beauteous forest. in addition, the story’s message is to develop students’ knowledge related to environmental awareness and conservation efforts. then, the extrinsic element of kethek ogleng’s short story is related to the psychological background of its author, mr. sutiman in 1962. the intrinsic and extrinsic elements are the basis for making student reading materials at the second meeting. these components were included in the classroom teaching material. nevertheless, the elements of the kethek ogleng story must harmoniously match the original one. the story tells of the figure of a kethek (literally means monkey), which is the embodiment of panji asmorobangun from the kingdom of kediri. hearing the news of dewi sekartaji’s disappearance, he decided to look for her by wandering in the forest. a description of the beautiful and preserved forest background must be presented in this story. in addition, the current state of the forest should also be written in the background of the story. the contextual and the environmental knowledge of the wanderings of panji asmorobangun and dewi condrokirono are in harmony with the characteristics of nawangan district. in their journey from the east to the west, panji and dewi sekartaji encountered various ecosystems. the coexistence with nature is presented in the story description of panji asmorobangun and dewi condro kirono. the journey covers different areas so that the environmental characteristics can be maximized in the form of reading material. panji asmorobangun wandered for his true love, dewi condro kirono. panji asmorobangun stopped at the home of a buddhist priest to find out the dewi sekartaji. panji was given a suggestion to go to the west and he had to disguise by being a monkey. shortly, the manifestation of monkey (kethek) is embodied in the form of male dancer resembling a monkey, tried to find dewi sekartaji who disguised as a village woman with the new name endang rara tompe. being up and down the mountain, finally, endang rara tompe, who was actually dewi sekartaji, rested in an area and decided to settle there. the setting atmosphere is being away from polluted air, water, and soil. apparently, kethek, the incarnation of panji amorobangun, also lived not far from endang rara tompe’s house. they befriended. although both were living close and friendly, endang rara tompe did not know that kethek is panji asmorobangun, her lover, and vice versa. kethek did not know that endang rara tompe was the goddess sekartaji he was looking for. after a strong friendship, they both revealed their secrets. endang rara tompe physically changed on being dewi sekartaji, so did kethek, the friend of endang rara tompe. kethek is transforming himself into raden panji asmorobangun. the meeting between dewi sekartaji and raden panji asmorobangun was hendriyanto, a., mustofa, a., & sutopo, b. building ecological intelligence through indonesian language learning based on kethek ogleng 55 filled with emotions and happiness. finally, dewi sekartaji and raden panji asmorobangun agreed to return to the kingdom of jenggala and got married. third and fourth meetings interactive learning through class discussions is expected to improve the competence of speaking in the theme of environment. in conformity with various theories, the speaking skills can be enhanced by games and role plays. it is an evidence to suggest that speaking should be active and in-groups by adding vocabulary and practicing a lot (abbaspour, 2016). students can practice their speaking skills by playing the characters in the kethek ogleng dance story. the role play can be done in art and culture extracurricular outside indonesian language subject. therefore, students who are the speakers should master the knowledge of the environment either through the source of reading kethek ogleng story or from other references such as sciences and social studies. to test students’ speaking ability, the teacher can assess five components consisting of content, mastery, motivation, guidance, intonation, and diction or word choice. in this study, the teachers implement group discussion and students are expected to have changes of attitude or be effective in preserving the environment. oradee (2012) suggested that indonesian language teachers can improve speaking skills by using effective classroom discussion techniques. students can have the opportunity to work together to provide assistance to others while engaging in speaking activities. the atmosphere in group-work can reduce students’ fear of making mistakes while speaking. this is because student group discussions can support others in different groups. students are able to express themselves well when the activities are carried out in groups. group discussions can foster self-confidence in speaking, triggering students to participate in indonesian language learning. clean living in class, school, and home are the major themes of speaking. nurgiyantoro (2015) also pointed out that the affective domain relates to feelings, tone, emotions, motivation, behavioral tendencies, level of acceptance, and rejecting things. the indicators used to improve students’ attitudes toward the environment are the identification of ecosystem components, functions, and environmental management systems. those are conducted in the indonesian language learning within indicators of student attitudes that show their perspectives on tree logging, illegal mining, plastic waste, garbage burning, clean and healthy environments, punishment for illegal loggers, water, landslides, barren land greening, and environmental cooperation. the material that needs to get an answer is in the form of attitude towards selective logging, illegal mining, plastic waste, burning garbage, a clean and healthy environment, punishment for illegal loggers, water source maintaining, landslides, a greening of deforested land, and environmental cooperation. table 3. speaking competence speaking competence no affective group discussion  content  stage control  motivation  guidance  voice intonation  diction or word choice 1 tree logging and selective logging 2 illegal mining 3 plastic waste 4 burning trash 5 a clean and healthy environment 6 the penalty for illegal loggers 7 maintaining water sources 8 landslide 9 greening of deforested soil 10 environmental cooperation essentially, students’ speaking abilities are oriented to caring behaviors towards classroom and school environments with concrete actions embodied in the form of class, school, and toilet cleanliness as well as water conservation, electricity savings, reduced use of plastics, paper, stationery, planting tree, garbage disposing, and organic and inorganic sample utilization. after the activity, through the speaking skill, the students are expected to disseminate the right attitudes in the forms of the effective actions. fifth meeting writing is the realization of the language competence after listening, speaking, and reading. different than speaking that only require the mastery of the symbols of sound, writing requires people to master visual symbol and writing rules. in language learning, writing ability is very important because it is considered as one of the keys to success in showing language mastery (devi & artini, 2014). writing competence is not only for the level of assessment but is intended also to write in relation to problem-solving and concrete action in handling environmental damages. writing is one of the language skills that must be mastered by junior high school students. students can develop the story of kethek ogleng based on their ecological intelligence. students have a sensitivity in listening to the material beyond the subject matter related to environmental management. of the four basic language skills in the process of language learning, writing competence is often accepted as the last language skill obtained either by international journal of education vol. 11 no. 1, august 2018, pp. 50-58 ©2018 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v11i1.10902 56 native speakers of a language or by a learner of foreign language (hamp and heasly, 2006). indicators of writing the kethek ogleng story which show ecological intelligence are listed in table 3. table 4. writing competence writing competence no psychomotor (activity) • ideas • content organization • grammar • language style • spelling and grammar 1 keeping class cleanliness 2 keeping school cleanliness 3 saving electricity 4 managing garbage 5 saving paper 6 saving water 7 planting tree 8 utilizing organic waste 9 utilizing plastic waste 10 reducing the use of plastic wrap the success of the learning process to improve the writing competence and environmental intelligence cannot be separated from the maximum role of teachers, students, principals, school environment, parents, and community leaders. writing competences should include the indicators of ecosystem component, the function of the ecosystem component, the management of the classroom environment, the school management, maintaining the cleanliness of the school toilet, utilizing electricity and water, and the cultivation of the plants. students will be helped in pouring their ideas after observing the kethek ogleng dance performances. writing competence is expected to bring a critical idea of students in solving the problems of the classroom and school environment through real actions in the social context. the concept can be the basis of students in managing a classroom, school, toilet hygiene, saving water and paper, planting protective plants, avoiding the use of plastics, and utilizing organic waste. the real actions related to the surrounding environment of the students become an integrated learning indicator in the indonesian language subject. however, the smallest attitude and action need to be rewarded in order to reduce the impact of global warming and climate change. students’ attitudes towards the school environment awareness can be seen in toilet sanitation, watersaving, electricity-saving, disposing waste in the correct place, eating free-plastic-wrapped foods, and inorganic and organic waste utilization in school. sixth meeting the sixth meeting was used to distribute a questionnaire to the students. for the questionnaire, the detail aspects used for the environmental skill assessment are: (1) the skills to use and to utilize resources wisely, (2) the life skills to be in harmony with the preservation and environmental balance, (3) the skills of environmental problem solving, and (4) social skills related to the environmental issues. the questionnaire test consists of 30 questions with five answers available by using likert scale: (1) tp (never), for one point; (2) j (almost never), two; (3) c (occasional), three; (4) s (almost every time), four; and (5) ss (every time), five. the results conclude that the average level of ecological intelligence aspects of students’ environmental skills. the mean of the score is 3.2 and the percentage of ecological intelligence is 65%. in addition, these indicators are reflected in reallife activities in the school such as maintaining classroom, toilets, class, and school environment cleanliness, saving water and paper, reducing plastic usage, saving electricity, as well as maintaining and growing protective plants. the attitudes and actions to care nature make people live comfortably without any landslide, flood, or disease caused by garbage. the sustainability of nature has an impact on the ease of finding food so that the monkey lives will be sustainable without any humans disturbance. it implies that the safe monkey habitat in the forest is the indicator of successful environmental resources management. otherwise, the environment experienced problems both caused by humans and nature. the indonesian language learning based on kethek ogleng dance to build students’ awareness of classroom and school environments is reflected in the beauty of school and classroom environments, clean and well-maintained toilets, saving water and paper, and minimum plastic garbage. students’ activities in realizing clean environment, caring environmental sustainability, and building ecological intelligence become the successful indicators of the learning. the building stage does not immediately materialize in the near future but through consistent and ongoing stages. in addition, the students increasingly love their own culture, the kethek ogleng dance with the increasing number of students who follow the dance activities both in condro wanoro studio and school’s extracurricular activities. the discussion above shows the findings of the present research are different from previous research on the kethek ogleng dance. this study practically connects the art with one of the elements of society, namely the younger generation studying at smpn 3 nawangan, while the previous studies only focused hendriyanto, a., mustofa, a., & sutopo, b. building ecological intelligence through indonesian language learning based on kethek ogleng 57 on the theoretical concepts of the dance. nevertheless, the present research confirms arguments of previous research on kethek ogleng that the ecological kethek ogleng dance can be a medium and a vehicle of learning for students or the younger generation to build ecological intelligence (ratnasari, 2016). the present research findings are also in correspondence with those of yulianti (2016) that dances can be used to cultivate students’ ecological intelligence. conclusions based on the findings, the teaching and learning of indonesian language based on kethek ogleng dance can build students’ ecological intelligence. within the context of local wisdom in indonesia, this study shares the belief that the success of the approach in the indonesian language teaching and learning is the changed attitudes and behaviors of students in environmental management. these attitudes and behaviors cover the maintenance of clean and healthy classrooms and toilets, the use of recyclable materials, the saving of water and electricity, the planting of protective trees around the classroom, as well as the management of waste disposal, and the use organic and inorganic waste. students can also educate the surrounding communities on the importance of building terraces, selective logging, drainage, saving water and electricity, and environmental cleanliness. future research may integrate kethek ogleng dance into the teaching and learning of other subjects. alternatively, other dances of art performances can be used to build ecological intelligence of students through other relevant subjects. references abbaspour, f. 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(2009). teacher professionalization and ktsp implementation. jakarta: gaung persada press. yulianti, r. (2016). pembelajaran tari kreatif untuk meningkatkan pemahaman cinta lingkungan pada anak usia dini. jurnal pendidikan dan kajian seni, 1, 29-42. database connection failed! attitudes and experiences of classroom science: international journal of education vol. 9 no. 1, august 2016, pp. 10-16 © 2016 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v9i1.3712 10 attitudes and experiences of classroom science: children’s voices gillian ward lauren e donnan kirsten mcnabb new zealand, university of auckland g.ward@auckland.ac.nz first draft received: 30 april 2016 final proof received: 30 august 2016 abstract this article draws on two studies that examined primary children’s attitudes towards science in the classroom and their experiences of science. through the data drawn from semi-structured interviews, it was evident that the children were mostly positive about science, but their experiences of science in the classroom were not always how they would prefer their science learning to proceed. the findings highlight aspects of their experiences that enhanced or detracted from their interest in science. in particular, the students stated the importance of being taught relevant and meaningful science in a collaborative context. children’s out-of-school contexts also became important in their learning of science. these findings are discussed, and suggestions are made for ways in which teachers can make changes to their planning and teaching in order to support positive attitudes to science within the classroom. keywords: attitudes towards science, children’s voice, elementary education, primary education to cite this paper (in apa style): ward, g., donnan, l. e., & mcnabb, k. (2016). attitudes and experiences of classroom science: children’s voices. international journal of education, 9(1), 10-16. doi: dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v9i1.3712 introduction science is relevant to everyone, as it has a profound impact on everyone’s daily lives and therefore, the teaching and learning of science is of substantial importance for all people (oecd, 2007; osborne, 2007). the purpose of science education is two-fold: one is to provide children with knowledge in the science disciplines so they can pursue science at a tertiary level and as a career (oecd, 2008; osborne, 2007). the second purpose is to develop students’ scientific literacy so that they can participate as citizens who have an understanding of the world around them (oecd, 2008). as the world’s issues are increasingly of scientific importance; for example, environmental issues, it becomes essential that all members of society need to be scientifically literate (skamp & preston, 2015). the aims of science education in the new zealand curriculum document (ministry of education [moe], 2007) mirror the goals reported by the oecd (2008). the key aims of science in the new zealand curriculum anticipate that students will: develop an understanding of the world; learn the importance and evolving nature of the development and organisation of knowledge in science; and gain and use scientific knowledge and skills to make informed decisions to benefit their own and others’ lives and cultures (moe, 2007). notwithstanding the well-intentioned purpose of science education internationally, there is a worldwide concern about children’s decreasing interest in science as they progress through primary (elementary) school. students whose attitudes towards science are negative will become less scientifically literate compared to those with positive science attitudes (driver, leach, millar, & scott, 1996). if students do not have positive science experiences in primary school, they will likely endeavour to avoid science in their later education, resulting in an absence of knowledge in and commitment to science (simpson & oliver, 1990). as a consequence, individuals are unlikely to choose science as a career (jelinek, 1998). even if children do not want to study science beyond high school, the future advancement of science itself may be affected if future citizens do not recognise its importance (jenkins & nelson, 2005). furthermore, negative attitudes have unfavourable effects on student achievement (educational assessment research unit and new zealand council for educational research [earu & nzcer], 2013), and science self-efficacy (bandura, 1997). it is not surprising then, that there is interest in student attitudes towards science. attitude studies internationally and in new zealand recent research indicates that attitudes can be considered as part of people’s belief systems (jones & carter, 2013). however, “attitude” is a construct that has been difficult to define (tytler, 2014; van aalderen-smeets, walma van der molen, & asma, 2012). in part, this is because the construct of attitude is multidimensional (van aalderen-smeets et al., 2012). one of the dimensions of the attitude construct, pertinent to the current study, is the affective dimension (jones & carter, 2013; van aalderen-smeets et al., 2012). http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v9i1.3712 http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v9i1.3712 ward, g., donnan, l. e., & mcnabb, k. attitudes and experiences of classroom science: children’s voices. 11 the affective dimension involves feelings related to science, divided into sub-components, both positive and negative. positive feelings are associated with the enjoyment of science and negative feelings are associated with fear and anxiousness about science. these emotions can occur simultaneously (van aalderen-smeets & walma van der molen, 2013). for example, a child can enjoy learning science, yet at the same time experience anxiety about learning science. despite the debate around the definition of attitudes, there have been numerous studies regarding children’s attitudes towards science. however, much of the past research has focused on students in high school (silver & rushton, 2008). the relevance of science education (rose) project is one such study, which surveyed students’ attitudes to school science in their final year of compulsory science across more than forty countries. this study found that school science was more associated with negative attitudes and hence less popular than many other school subjects in all developed countries (sjøberg & schreiner, 2010). however, students develop their views of science when they are young, and by age 14 their attitude toward science is confirmed and will have an effect on their future career choice (denessen, vos, hasselman, & louws, 2015). as a consequence, more recent research has focused on primary science with research on attitudes extending to the primary school (silver & rushton, 2008). some research reports positive attitudes to science (e.g., lal, 2013; telford & caygill, 2007; tymms, bolden, & merrell, 2008). others note how student attitudes become less positive over time. denessen et al. (2015) posited that students develop less positive attitudes toward science during their primary schooling. a similar trend has been noted in new zealand. the national education monitoring project (nemp) conducted annual assessments of student achievement, values, and attitudes at years 4 and 8 (crooks, smith, & flockton, 2008). while the nemp results indicate year 4 and 8 (ages 8 and 12) students are generally very positive about doing science at school, of concern is the drop in the number of year 8 students who enjoyed science over the various cycles of the nemp. additionally, although year 4 students show more positive attitudes toward science than year 8 students, all children would like to take part in more science at school (crooks et al., 2008). more recently, the national monitoring study of student achievement (nmssa) report science 2012 (earu & nzcer, 2013) reported similar findings, with students at year 4 reporting more positive attitudes to science than at year 8. quantitative and qualitative attitude studies quantitative approaches are commonly used to assess attitudes to science (koballa & glynn, 2013). such approaches are evident in many of the research studies regarding primary school children’s attitudes (e.g., denessen et al., 2015; dȕndar, guvendir, kocabiyik, & papatga, 2014; silver & rushton, 2008). attitudinal studies in new zealand have also used quantitative approaches (e.g., crooks et al., 2008; earu & nzcer, 2013). such an approach can “limit students’ responses to pre-defined categories” (lyons, 2006, p. 593) in order to produce data that can undergo statistical analysis. as lyons (2006) indicated, “very few studies have taken an interpretive approach to exploring students’ reflections on their school science experiences” (p. 592) and as such do not provide the rich descriptions and explanations that qualitative studies can provide (tytler, 2014). given the lack of qualitative studies in new zealand focused on children’s attitudes to science and their experiences of science in the primary classroom, further investigation is warranted. in addition, while research into children’s attitudes has been conducted in a number of countries, what is less evident within these studies is evidence of the children’s voice. there is a need to find out students’ perceptions of science as a subject and to hear their views about their experiences in the classroom. consequently, in this paper we examine the attitudes of young children towards science as a subject, from their perspective, thereby gaining an in-depth understanding of why a group of children in new zealand think the way they do. method this article draws on two small-scale studies (described as study 1 and study 2 for the purposes of this article). study 1 examined year 4 children’s attitudes to science in their classroom, while study 2 examined those of year 7 children. the intent is not to compare the year 4 and year 7 groups, but to use them as illustrative cases or vignettes to highlight the attitudes and experiences of these particular groups. while both studies were conducted separately, they employed a similar methodology and research design. the studies were underpinned by an interpretivist paradigm (neuman, 2011) that focuses “on the meanings people bring to situations and behaviour, which they use to understand their world” (o’donoghue, 2007, p.18). the authors recognise that the sample is small and the situational context is limited to two schools in new zealand. however, what is significant is that the research provides an opportunity for the children’s voices to be heard; thus, allowing the reader to better understand the children’s everyday lived experience of the primary school science classroom and the meanings that children make of science within this space (denzin & lincoln, 2000). school context and participants each study drew its participating children from schools in a large new zealand city. the school chosen for study 1 was a primary school and study 2 involved an intermediate school (upper elementary). a determining factor in choosing the schools was the accessibility of the school to the interviewer and, as such, was a sample of convenience (punch, 2009). the data was gathered half-way through the school year, so the year groups chosen reflected similar age groups to the previous new zealand research (crooks et al., 2008; earu & nzcer, 2013). permission to carry out the research in each school was given and a pool of possibly participating children was chosen systematically and randomly by a third party from class lists. the parents of the selected students gave their consent and the children assented to take part in an individual, semi-structured interview. ward, g., donnan, l. e., & mcnabb, k. attitudes and experiences of classroom science: children’s voices. 12 data collection and analysis in study 1, six year 4 children were individually interviewed and in study 2, five year 7 children. a semi-structured interview approach was used. the purpose of the individual interviews was to gain information on the children’s attitudes towards science and to find out about their experiences in the classroom. this qualitative approach enabled the authors to gather “soft data” on children’s attitudes, beliefs, views, emotions, and opinions (punch, 2009) and to gain an understanding of the individual children’s lived experiences of science in the classroom (creswell, 2013). within the semi-structured interview approach, open-ended questions were asked. this approach allowed flexibility, where probing and elaboration on individual answers could occur (creswell, 2013). the interview questions focused on asking the participants about: their favourite subjects; their experiences with science in the classroom; whether they liked or disliked their science experiences; and, why they felt the way they did about science. the year 4 students were also asked to comment on various images of scientists. each individual interview was audio-recorded and field notes were taken to capture non-verbal signs from the children that might enhance the meaning of each child’s response. the audio-tapes were subsequently transcribed and pseudonyms are used to provide anonymity. data were processed using thematic analysis in which themes were drawn from the data collected. this involved searching for common topics and ideas and through the use of coding and organising data into categories present within the data (braun & clarke, 2006). findings and discussion in general, all the children interviewed were positive about the science they were taught. the year 4 students were very enthusiastic about it, and two of the year 4 students, karen and karl, stated that science was their favourite subject. in the year 7 group, all of the students rated science highly, except jai who was not impressed with theory work or what he described as “boring” topics. the other students were also able to offer reasons for their enjoyment or aspects of their science learning that dampened their interest. it appears that the students were more engaged when they had a key part to play in the lesson. the students wanted to be taught science that was relevant, to engage in hands-on activities and experience their science learning with others. it also became apparent that the classroom was not the only site for their science learning. these aspects are discussed in turn. relevant and meaningful science some of the year 7 students made real-life connections when discussing their science experiences. koby described his chosen inquiry project and its application to a real-life context: “if it was actually made then [it] can actually be used … for hovering cars, ships, and planes.” he seemed interested in the effect his scientific ideas could have on life and society. jai also claimed to “like doing things that are real”, because “i like learning about the world.” alanna stated that the main reason she liked science was because “we get to learn about the planet.” so, for these students, application to real-life contexts in science made the content more appealing. the majority of students mentioned that content choice played a part in defining their attitude towards the science experience at hand. lila, a year 7 student, spoke enthusiastically about the inquiry project her group did because “we got to choose our own subjects to do a project on….it was really fun.” however, in contrast she revealed a time in science when they were learning about “something to do with a tree”, complaining “it just wasn’t something [children would] think of… at all”, and this impacted upon her attitude towards science. cooper, a year 7 student, said, “i think it would be better if we get to choose what type of science we could learn.” these statements from the children appear to indicate that student-chosen content improved student attitudes towards science. year 4 students talked about doing science in groups: the most common activities involved reading and writing. karl recalled, “we did an explanation on the lifecycle of the butterfly” and “a test on frogs.” these children perceived that a strong emphasis was placed on printed media rather than hands-on work. these students did not dislike this work indicating that they, especially the boys, enjoyed reading and writing about science. however, the students wanted to experience hands-on practical activities as well. the majority of year 4 students were very clear that they liked doing practical work and this made science enjoyable and memorable. tina stated that doing practical activities “makes me feel really happy” as “you get to guess stuff and then you find out if your answer is correct.” experiments were mentioned by all year 7 students, and seemed to play a huge part in whether or not each student enjoyed the science experience. jai said, “i like experiments… you get to try out new ways to… make it work”, and alanna stated that “i like doing experiments… you have never done them before and it’s really, really fun.” cooper thought that if the teacher “let us actually try the experiments more,” then his positive attitude towards science would improve. in addition to practical work, the year 7 students also talked of learning science through textbook tasks such as, reading, researching, and writing out information. however, this was not their preferred way of learning. koby concluded that “if you’re not doing something to do with practical work then it’s not going to be fun.” to explain he said, “if you’re using a textbook… it’s more boring so you won’t learn as much.” alanna expressed that she doesn’t enjoy “writing about science”, as she “sometimes gets bored”. lila saw a need for the theory parts of science because “it leads onto stuff that is quite enjoyable” and that, “you have to do something that is a little bit boring to get into the fun stuff.” working together group work involved students working together at the same task, and all students from both studies, except jai, a year 7 student, cited times when science incorporated group work which they enjoyed. both year 4 and year 7 groups enjoyed group work for both the social aspect and assisting one another in their learning. the year 4 students were asked to ward, g., donnan, l. e., & mcnabb, k. attitudes and experiences of classroom science: children’s voices. 13 comment on various images of scientists. in the picture of scientists working as a team, tom commented, they “really look like… scientists because they work together and that like me.” tom elaborated that group work was important in order to simulate working like a “real” scientist. for the year 7 students, group work with an inquiry approach was valued because the students could learn from each other and they found the content enjoyable. insufficient science in school interviews with the year 4 students revealed that they felt the amount of science done at school was unsatisfactory. sue remarked, “we don’t really do that much science and i want to do more;” likewise, karen wanted to do more science because “we just learn maths, spelling, reading, and stuff like that.” for the participants in study 1 there is a mismatch between the amount of science they would like to do and the amount of science in the classroom. some of the year 4 children perceived that the lack of science they were being taught would impact on their future study and careers. two participants believed they would be unable to pursue science in the future. tina communicated her apprehension as she stated: to be a scientist [requires] learning a lot of science in school, but we don’t learn a lot but i’d like to. i think [learning] at school would help you to be a scientist and i would be a good scientist but [better] if i learnt some more at school. dave also voiced concern as he explained the need to do more science, “so that when i’m older i’m pretty good at science.” science at home while the year 4 students experienced less science in the classroom than they would like, children reported they engaged in science activities at home. the year 4 children, particularly the boys, reported that they enjoyed reading non-fiction books about science at home. karl attributed his perceived ability to having the opportunity to read at home, “i’m pretty good at science because i’ve got lots of books at home.” conversely, all the year 4 girls interviewed indicated that their favourite home science activity was experimenting, which aligned with their preference for practical work at school. karen made a “volcano explosion” and “slime that glows in the dark” which made her feel “proud”—it was the best activity she had ever done. all the girls described feelings of happiness while conducting science experiments at home. the year 7 students also indicated they learnt science outside the classroom. koby’s love for science outside school supported his positive attitude to it at school. he revealed, “i…like geology a lot … i just do it in my own time.” his love for geology grew through family holidays travelling to the “franz josef glaciers… experiencing how blue ice could be made.” in part, students enjoyed doing science at home because they could pursue their interests. cooper said, “[science] outside of school is fun because i get to do what i want,” and was “excited” about an experiment he had tried. lila found her school and home experiences supported each other and professed to “make a lot of stuff at home that i learnt how to do in science.” meanwhile, jai found it difficult to complete any science at home and stated he liked science within school more because, “the teacher gets to tell you and you get taught…outside i don’t [understand].” discussion and implications for practice by conducting two qualitative studies, the authors uncovered year 4 and year 7 children’s attitudes towards, and experiences of, science in the classroom. through study 1 and study 2 some of the reasons behind the participants’ attitudes to science were uncovered. the children in the current two studies generally had positive attitudes towards science as a subject. however, some of their experiences were less than ideal. the following section discusses the findings and highlights implications for practice. addressing students’ desire for science despite the concern expressed by researchers, educators, and policy makers of the decreasing interest of young people in science (meylan, 2010; van aalderen-smeets et al., 2012), science is viewed as a low priority subject in primary schools. research, studies, or reports claim primary school-aged children have minimal exposure to science at school (e.g., chamberlain & caygill, 2012; mortimer & scott, 2000). mortimer and scott’s (2000) study of 10 primary school classrooms uncovered that only 5% of total classroom time concerned science. a similar finding has been revealed in new zealand with an average 52 hours per year of classroom time spent on science (chamberlain & caygill, 2012). the present research reflects these studies, in which it emerged that the year 4 students, in particular, felt the amount of science done at school was unsatisfactory. participants in the current study emphasised incongruity between the amount of science that they would like to do at school and the amount actually done. one of the issues for new zealand teachers is the expectation they teach across the eight learning areas within the new zealand curriculum: the arts, english, health and physical education, learning languages, mathematics and statistics, science, social sciences, and technology (moe, 2007). this may necessitate integrating science with other learning areas such as english which includes learning about reading and writing. this may explain why the year 4 students discussed the predominance of reading in their science classroom. one cautionary note, however, is that the participants may have been unaware of science teaching that was occurring outside of specific science lessons. science might, in fact, be more prevalent in the classroom than these students suggest. however, what is clear is that teachers need to be more explicit with students about when science teaching is taking place, particularly when it is integrated with other curriculum areas. given the crowded curriculum, teachers could take advantage of opportunities to link science learning within the classroom setting to that outside of school and in particular the home environment, particularly since parents can influence student attitudes (fraser & kahle, 2007). according to braund and reiss (2006), incongruity between school science and students’ out-of-school science experiences is a common ward, g., donnan, l. e., & mcnabb, k. attitudes and experiences of classroom science: children’s voices. 14 educational experience. they described a trend among science educators to de-emphasise the critical influence of out-of-school science experiences on pupils’ attitudes towards it. the resultant conundrum faced by teachers is students becoming disinterested in, and forming negative attitudes towards, science at school, while remaining engaged in, and maintaining, positive attitudes at home (braund & reiss, 2006). considering the significant time pupils spend outside of formal schooling, it seems prudent that outof-school science contexts and experiences are integrated into the classroom. according to braund and reiss (2006), this may result in enhanced student attitudes towards science at school and alleviate the school–home dichotomy. relevant content to develop children’s attitudes towards science while science is not always prioritised, when it is taught, it is often taught from a teacher-centred perspective or taught in ways that are not engaging to children (blank, 2012). similar findings have been documented in new zealand. the nmssa report (earu & nzcer, 2013) stated that both year 4 and year 8 students experienced science through listening to their teacher with few opportunities for practical science. these findings indicate that little has changed over time (crooks et al., 2008; earu & nzcer, 2013). while the children who participated in study 1 and study 2 mostly held positive attitudes towards science, it emerged that the context of school science may be neglected to address students’ science interests. this could result in deterioration in attitudes towards science, as science at school excludes students’ particular interest areas. in study 1, though karen and karl retained positive attitudes towards science at school, they revealed that the best science activity they had ever done was self-directed and out of school. in study 2, jai was the least positive about science, noting that excessive information, boring topics and extreme amounts of reading impacted on his views. on the other hand, one of the activities that the year 7 students spoke highly of was an inquiry project. the ability to choose a topic related to their own interests was the key to their enjoyment. as a consequence of the student-driven focus, the children were more engaged and positive about what they were doing. in addition to inquiry work, the children in both studies talked about being more engaged when the work involved practical, hands-on activities. students’ attitudes can be improved when more student-centred approaches are used (hong, lin, wang, chen & yang, 2013) and children deem the content personally relevant (cowie, glynn, & otrelcass, 2009; jelinek, 1998). moreover, it is not surprising that students enjoyed their science at home because they had the opportunity to follow their own interests and engage practically. while the children in this study are young, their views should not be underestimated when it comes to teachers planning their science lessons. children’s views about topics of interest should be elicited as part of the planning process, both prior to teaching the topic and also once teaching the topic has begun. in addition, teachers could explore students’ out-ofschool science endeavours as part of the planning process. in doing so, units of work can be created that incorporate and reflect students’ particular science interests and preferred activities. by reframing school science around children’s out-ofschool science experiences, teachers are exploiting the substantial influence that students’ outside practices have on their attitudes towards science (braund & reiss, 2006). a sociocultural pedagogy to develop students’ positive attitudes towards science the findings provide insights into the way in which the children in study 1 and study 2 would like to be taught. while the year 4 students’ preferred to work in groups when learning science in school, independent activities such as reading appeared a more common way of learning about science. individual conceptual acquisition occurs in social and cultural contexts through participation with others (leach & scott, 2008). sociocultural views of learning highlight the significance of social interactional processes (lave & wenger, 1991). more interactive learning environments have been found to promote learning and engagement (areepattamannil, 2012; sharpe, 2008). from the findings in this study, small changes could be made in the classroom. a sociocultural approach could accommodate students’ preferences for group work (anderson, 2014; lave & wenger, 1991; lazarowitz & hertz-lazarowitz, 1998) and teachers could respond by developing science units and activities that utilise cooperative learning methods (lazarowitz & hertz-lazarowitz, 1998). this could accommodate the children’s expressed social preference for science work. conclusion the purpose of this article is to examine the attitudes of young children toward science from their perspective, and as such provides an in-depth understanding of why a group of children in new zealand think the way they do. findings showed that the children in study 1 and study 2 were mostly positive towards science; however, the children wanted to learn more science and study in a learning environment in which they could work together on meaningful topics. teachers need to make science a priority in the classroom and change the teaching programme to increase children’s exposure to science. while the authors support the call for professional development for teachers (johnson, kahle, & fargo, 2007), there are also changes that a teacher can make in their classroom on an individual basis. the authors recognize that primary teachers work within a crowded curriculum. however, it appears there are opportunities to integrate science across a range of learning areas. in addition, teachers can bring out-of-school science learning into the classroom, thereby exposing children to more science as well as creating a collaborative learning environment with the child’s family. in both cases however, it 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(2012). primary teachers’ attitudes toward science: a new theoretical framework. science education, 96(1), 158–182. doi: 10.1002/sce.20467 international journal of education, vol. 7 no. 1 desember 2013 20 experiencing poetry: unlearning and relearning literature to develop reading interests in literary works bachrudin musthafa indonesia university of education abstract building on results of a classroom-based survey on students’ literacy habits, this article reports on how an exploratory study on experiencing poetry can change efl students’ “ways with literature.” first problems from past experiences with literature are discussed and theoretical insights proposed which will bring to fore the need for a change in pedagogical orientations. next the idea of “experiencing poetry” is flashed out by addressing the knotty problems literature teaching has been faced with. step-by-step instructional procedures are discussed together with their corresponding pedagogical considerations. some guiding pedagogical principles are then proposed and discussed to complete the workshop. from this exploratory study, it is evident that students learned from one another in the context of sharing of literary experiences and from observing how the literature instructor as a more knowledgeable member of the culture demonstrated the way he experienced the poem he was reading. more specifically, from experiencing poetry and sharing about what they like from what they experience and enjoy, students learn to reflect critically on what they get from reading. keywords: experiencing poetry; efl literature-learning; literature for empowerment introduction in the professional literature many concerns have been voiced related to reading interest of both adolescent and adult readers in literary texts in general and poetry in particular. for example, a survey by u.s. census bureau in 2002 involving 17,000 adult readers from various ses and ethnic backgrounds in the united states of america has noted that fewer than half (46%) of those who responded to the 2002 survey reported reading literature of any kind, compared to 59% who reported reading literature in 1982. further, the researchers found that the rate of decline is accelerating (wright, coryell, martinez, harmon, henkin, and keehn, 2010). in their repeated informal polling across different semesters, wright et al. (2010) found that a great number of their students expressed disinterest in poetry— some of the students have even developed an active dislike of the genre. in the context of the teaching of literature in foreign-language courses in european countries, parkinson & thomas (2000) observed that many students find difficulties learning literature subjects, especially poetry. reported reasons include students’ feeling helpless (because they lack experience studying literature), feeling less confident in talking and writing about literature because they feel they know nothing about literature. similarly, mahayana (2012) of the university of indonesia has recently lamented that many teachers of the indonesian language in senior high schools would avoid teaching indonesian literature and focus their teaching activities exclusively on the linguistic aspect of the subject because they do not feel comfortable teaching literature. many of these teachers consider “poetry as a frightening alien creature” (p.12). why does not interest in literature develop as expected? why is it that what both students and teachers have learned in literature courses does not promote a sense of capability in “handling” literature—especially poetry? bachrudin musthafa, experiencing poetry 21 the purpose of this article is to discuss why the commonly used techniques to teach literature have failed to develop learners’ love for literature (or poetry in particular), and argue for an alternative way of approaching literature—and how this unique genre of poetry can be packaged to allure learners’ engagement-so that literature can invite learners’ participation in the virtual world of experiences this genre can offer. to this end, first, theoretical perspectives will be discussed which relate to what literature teaching means and what it means when we talk about literature as experience. second, what we did in our elt and literarure class and how we framed our “ways with literature” are presented to highlight literature review in the professional literature it is commonplace to characterize teaching as a theoretical act, and theories—whether they are explicitly proclaimed or only implicitly held—powerfully impact on what teachers do, how they do it, and how they determine if the teaching-learning activities are successful. beach, appleman, hynds, and wilhelm (2006) for example have identified three distinctive learning theories: transmission model, learnercentered learning theory, and socio-cultural perspectives. as the term “transmission” suggests, transmission model treats literature as information, and teaching literature means “transmitting” the information or knowledge (e.g., about literary facts, literary history, literary elements, etc) to the learners—whose position is always at the receiving end. commentators of literature and its teaching have voiced some serious reservations over the use of this learning theory for at least two interrelated reasons: one is that this theory— which relies on the assumption of singular interpretation of text-is no longer defensible because in reality literary texts, especially poetry, invite multiple interpretations (i.e., polyvalent text) (rosenblatt, 1978). the second reason is empirical: students who are regularly taught using this transmission model find serious difficulties in interpreting literary texts independently (wright et. al [2010]). unlike transmission model which leaves no room for students’ personal significance and feelings, learner-centered learning theory argues that students should be able to make their own choices for what they would learn and how they would learn it. if students have choices in what they would learn and the way they learn it, the students would become more motivated to want to learn. while this learning theory has a great intuitive appeal, some critics have voiced some concerns because of two reasons: one is that this theory leaves the responsibility of learning almost exclusively on the students-so if the students are not successful in their learning it is then their own fault. the second cause of concern is that the theory fails to recognize that learning is inherently social--that is, students learn through participation in social contexts (beach et al. [2006]). in addition to the approach to literature teaching, another important thing impactful of literature learning is the relationship between reader and text. according to rosenblatt as cited in lehman (2007), literature as lived-through experience between reader and literary text involves several considerations about that literary transaction, including aesthetic and efferent reading. this has to do with reading stance. a reading act is called aesthetic reading when the reader’s primary concern is what happens during the actual reading event. during aesthetic reading the reader’s focus of attention might be on her/his thoughts, feelings, and sensations that s/he experiences in that very moment. in contrast, when one’s attention during the reading act is on what can be carried away from the text—e.g., what can be learned from this reading event—then the activity is called efferent reading. rosenbatt argues that it is this aesthetic evocation of literary texts that is called literary experience (lehman, 2007). it is this kind of aesthetic experience that should international journal of education, vol. 7 no. 1 desember 2013 22 be emphasized when teaching literature (or poetry for that matter) if we want our students to develop love for reading literary texts undergirded by vygotskian (1978) perspective which posits that learning is primarily social, sociocultural learning theory emphasizes the importance of creating social community that supports learning literature. based on this sociocultural perspective, the primary job of literature teachers is to socialize students into what is called a literary community of practice whereby, as a more knowledgeable member of the culture, teachers of literature provide models for students to observe and learn from. as already suggested in the preceding paragraphs, the students (n=20) participating in this study brought to class less than positive attitudes to literature. this less-than-positive starting point posed to the teacher a great deal of problems to overcome before the literature instruction can be expected to positively impact on students’ perspective towards literature. data for this study were collected informally across several weeks in 2012 in three phases: first using oral, informal survey in the first session to assess students’ likes and dislikes about literature; second, using quick jottings during the sharing sessions-the times when students are experiencing poems and commenting on their experiences; and third, using a simple written survey to enquire about what students have learned from the past few weeks of enjoying poems and sharing of literary experiences in the class. method using these three theoretical lenses as a basis to examine results of my informal survey on graduate students’ previous literacy practices they brought to our english education program of the school of postgraduate studies (sps) at upi bandung, clear patterns emerged within the first few sessions of the literature and english language teaching (elt) course where an exploratory study was being initiated.  the majority of my students were “afraid of literature”, especially poetry, because they do not know what to do with it and they feel uncertain about what to say about what they “gain” from the reading.  majority of the students tended to restlessly wait for my interpretation of the work we read because they think that instructor’s opinion is the correct understanding of the literary text.  majority of the students had the tendency to see their own feelings as having no legitimate place in their talk about literature. to them literature discussion meant thinking only, and only thinking (without feeling). trying to build on where students have been in their literature-learning experiences in order to establish a point of departure for a better pedagogical orientation, i became very much aware of the challenges lying ahead. i should “demystify” literature for them (sloan, 2003)—to free them to enjoy literary works. the students should be given ample opportunities to unlearn what has been wrongly learned by engaging with literary experiences in ways that preserve delight and destroy drudgery. this joyful literary experiences should be powerful enough to challenge what the students have wrongly considered as a truth about learning literature. one possible route to take is using the kind of phenomenon that every member of the class has presumably experienced: love. we used love poems as a starting point. this choice was made following the ideas proposed by perrine (1987): poetry takes all life as its province. it’s primary concern is …with experience. … [p]oetry as a whole is concerned with all kinds of experience—beautiful or ugly, strange or common, noble or ignoble, actual or imaginary. one of the paradoxes of human existence is that all experience— even the painful experience—is, for the good reader, enjoyable when transmitted through the medium of art (p.9). bachrudin musthafa, experiencing poetry 23 so, a first big decision was made: both students and myself as an instructor would each bring in to the class a piece of love poem of our own respective choice to read and share. we use this collection of studentsselected poems as learning materials to try to understand “poetry as a way of saying”. given the fact that my students came into my literature & elt course with lengthy exposure to transmission model of learning, the first thing to do was to change the theoretical guide and its instructional practice. that is, i changed the way we learn literature (in this case: poetry): that is, progressing from experience to personal theorizing (rather than from theory to practice as commonly practiced in the transmission model). this was done first by experiencing the poetry and then we share our personal responses. from this sharing of feelings and personal “ways with literature” we as a collective then tried to formulate a theory or theories based on our literary experiences. this decision was made for two reasons: firstly, adults come to our program with a larger fund of experience and enjoy greater independence of thought and action than adolescents and children (burns, 2002:219); secondly, poetic and imaginative thinking is critical not only for the appreciation and understanding of art but also of the realities we are confronted with; poetry can help facilitate intellectual as well as emotional growth of our students (beach & marshall, 1991). the reorientation of theory and practice was made at various levels, including learning theories (that is, from transmission model to socio-cultural perspective), reading stances (from efferent to aesthetic reading [rosenblatt, 1978]), and ways of experiencing and talking about the poems (that is from textbased singular perspective to readerresponsebased multiple interpretations) one very useful concept proposed by socio-cultural perspective is the notion of zpd (zone of proximal development) which refers to the difference between the individual’s current level and the potential level that can be reached with assistance from a more knowledgeable member of the community of practice (vygotsky, 1978). as already known from the first few sessions in the semester that the majority of students are not familiar with ways of reading and talking about literature (in this case, poetry), my first job as an instructor of literature is to provide students with an example—direct modeling. this modeling can take many different forms including behavioral (or actional) model, process (or procedural) model and also attitudinal model. to this end, i usually demonstrated how i read a poem, and i did “walk the talk”—demonstrating how i “experience” the poem by thinking aloud along the process of transactions with the literary piece. to make this pedagogical practice clear to the readers of this journal, in what follows a three-part procedural demonstration has been described to serve as an example: (1) collecting authentic texts by asking students to bring to class poetry of their choice; (2) developing task designs to initiate students into poetry-based literary experiences and discussions; and (3) encouraging students to formulate theoretical propositions as a way to develop insights into “ways with literature”— especially understanding poetry as a way of saying. collecting authentic texts by asking students to bring to class poems of their choice rather than using standard anthologies which were usually developed using values considerations most likely unfamiliar to students, in this class the “anthologies” were developed collectively by members of the class. that is, students and their instructor each brought to class a love poem—a topic the community of literary experiencers have agreed collectively. in this way, it is expected that everybody finds the poem interesting. international journal of education, vol. 7 no. 1 desember 2013 24 developing task designs to initiate students into poetry-based literary experiences and discussions in order to provide a consistent structure to govern our literary talks and discussion, a set of guiding questions (i.e., tasks) were developed, including these simple questions: what did you feel when you found this poem the first time? what did the poem make you feel in the first reading? is there any part of the poem you find most interesting? is there anything changing after you read it several times? what image does the poem give you most clearly? what is the poem about? using relatively constant guiding questions, members of the class as a collective are encouraged to “transact” with poems of their choice in a similar fashion. after about four or five sessions, it was later observed that the students were able to internalize the procedure of experiencing and talking about poems. everybody was later observed to have been able to talk about the poem they have enjoyed in a relaxed and convincing way. encouraging students to formulate theoretical propositions in the professional literature, it is very well recognized that adult learners bring to class a great deal of experiences (burns, 2002). the adult learners’ rich knowledgebase is evidenced when they are talking about poems of their own choice. for example, some students once made a statement of generalization that some poems tell a story. some other learners say that some other poems invite readers to ponder. still some other learners observed that some poems they have read make them smile. with proper encouragement learners can come up with insightful theoretical propositions. insert poem#1 about here insert poem#2 about here insert poem#3 about here insert poem#4 about here insert poem#5 about here insert poem#6 about here results and discussion following the ideas proposed by parkinson & thomas (2000), every student in my literature & elt class was invited to share poems of their personal choice with the whole class. as a guide for this sharing, i provided the class with a set of three questions: (1) why did you choose this particular poem?; (2) is there any particular part of the poem which you find particularly interesting and/or powerful?; and (3) what and how does this poem make you feel? everybody in the class got opportunities to read out the poem of their respective choice. their responses to the guiding questions, however, are widely varied from one person to another. some students described elaborately their literary experiences with specific reference to reasons for choosing the poem. the following are representative key words drawn from students’ reasons for selecting the poems they ended up choosing. the poem is “most representative of own life” (s1) the poem is “representing my life” (s2) the poem talks about “similar experiences to what i have experienced.” (s3) the poem is “representing my own feeling at the moment.” (s4) the poem has a powerful theme—“dignity of human being” (s5) the poem contains powerful ideas—“ it impacts on my feelings; it is inspirational” (s6) the poem is ”very simple yet it is very powerful” (s7) the pattern is interesting:” the repetition has made the poem so beautiful” (s8) the sound is beautiful: “it rhymes” (s9) bachrudin musthafa, experiencing poetry 25 the pattern of discourse is interesting: “do this…otherwise you will…” (s10) from the sample statements presented above, some clear patterns can be identified in students’ responses. for instance, the first four statements use “self” as a reference; they are “ego-centric” responses. the statements made by students number five (s5) to student number seven (s7) clearly use life to connect with poems. these students—in other words—have made life-to-text connections. the other three comments from the student number seven (s7) to the student number ten (s10) focus on the literary work itself. the students have observed the patterns contained in the poems, including repetition, rhymes, and discoursal patterns. from this exploratory study, it is evident that students learned from one another in the context of sharing of literary experiences and from observing how the literature instructor as a more knowledgeable member of the culture demonstrated the way he experienced the poem he was reading. more specifically, from experiencing poetry and sharing about what they like from what they experience and enjoy, students learn to reflect critically on what they get from reading. this will likely enlarge students’ reading repertoire and promote the love for literary reading—especially poetry. building on what i have experienced with (post)graduate students in the english education program of sps-upi bandung, the following principles can be used as a guide for productive practice in line with sociocultural perspectives. (1) as a more knowledgeable member of the literary community of practice in the literature class, the instructor should serve as an example. s/he provides models in various forms including ways of how to read, enjoy, and respond to poetry. (2) aside from her/his role as a model for students to observe and learn from, the instructor should serve as a guide at least for the first few sessions of literary encounters. this is done to illustrate to the students the boundaries commonly observed in literary discussion. (3) selection of materials should be negotiated with students. to the extent possible ask students to bring to class literary works they think are interesting and important to share in the class. to provide a structure to this collective “materials development” activity, decide on a certain topic of general interest such as poems on love. (4) a relatively structured set of activities in reading, enjoying, and responding to poetry should be established to provide opportunities for students to internalize so that they develop useful habits of mind with poetry. building on what has proven effective, the following threepart strategy borrowed from parkinson & thomas (2000) can be used as a structured activity-set in reading, enjoying, and responding to poetry in the classroom: paraphrasable meaning, regularities and patterns, and then personal reactions. ask students to read out the poem they have chosen and comment on what they think the piece is about. invite the students to comment on patterns they might notice in the poem (e.g., repeated words, rhymes, and patterns of discourse), and encourage them to share their personal responses to the poem. (5) efforts should be made to train students to formulate their own theory as a crystallization of their experiences with poetry and their understanding of poetry as a way of saying. for instance, my students at the sps-upi have made statements of generalization such as these: some poems tell a story; some other poems make you smile; still some other poems invite you to wonder… (6) enthusiasm is contagious—bring in to class your favorite poetry to read out and share with the members of the community of literary interpreters. take every session as an opportunity to demonstrate how you as an instructor of literature experience international journal of education, vol. 7 no. 1 desember 2013 26 literary works and invite your students to do the same. (7) your greatest role as a teacher of literature is this set of three services: to serve as a model for your students to observe and learn from; to design activities so that your students experience first-hand what you have been modeling; and to provide continual systematic support to ensure that what students have learned becomes part of their personal (and personality) development. references  beach, r., appleman,d., hynds, s., and wilhelm, j. (2006). teaching literature to adolescents. mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum associates, publishers.  beach, r., & marshall, j. (1991). teaching literature in the secondary school. new york: harcourt brace jovanovich, publishers.  burns, r. (2002). the adult learners at work. crows nest, nsw2065: allen & unwin.  lehman, b.a.(2007).children’s literature and learning. literary study across the curriculum. new york: teachers college press.  mahayana, m.s. (2012). model kritik puisi apresiatif. in soni farid maulana (2012: 5-16). apresiasi & proses kreatif menulis puisi. bandung: nuansa  parkinson, b., & thomas, h.r. (2000). teaching literature in a second language. edinburgh: edinburgh university press, ltd.  perrine, l. (1987). sound and sense. new york: harcourt brace jovanovich, publishers.  rosenblatt, l.m. (1978). the reader, the text, the poem: the transactional theory of the literary work. carbondale, il: southern illinois university press.  sloan, g. (2003). give them poetry! new york: teachers college press.  wright, r.r., coryell, j.e., martinez,m., harmon, j., henkin, r., and keehn, s. (2010). rhyme, response, and reflection: an investigation of the possibilities for critical transformative learning through adult poetry reading. journal of transformative education 8(2).  vygotsky, l.s. (1978). mind in society: the development of higher psychological processes. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. bachrudin musthafa is a professor of english language and early childhood education at school of postgraduate studies, indonesia university of education. peter aubusson, a nationalcurriculum: competition, advances and retreats 1 a nationalcurriculum: competition, advances and retreats peter aubusson abstract this paper is an outcome of a study on national science curriculum (nsc) in australia. this paper centres around the experts’ views on the scenarios of future science curriculum. the data were gathered through interviews with five leaders from different australian states. the data were analysed following the process of qualitative data analysis outlined by mcmillan and schumacher (2006) involving selecting text extracts, identifying patterns, themes and key concepts, coding and categorisation, code testing against interpretation and constant comparison. the analysis is further checked by a research assistant. it will be shown that experts agree on the strengths and weaknesses of the curriculum. the results show that there are two very different scenarios that seem possible. one emphasises state independence, standardisation, compliance and control. the other emphasises trust in teacher professionalism and knowledge exchange. key words: national science curriculum, scenarios of future science curriculum successive science curriculum developments, once led by the usa, were driven by national doubts about scientific superiority, motivated by economic and military concerns (lieberman, 1982). post-sputnik curricula began with the physical sciences study committee project (pssc) in 1957 and a scientific habits movement that emphasised the teaching of process skills, initiated by the american association for the advancement of science (aaas) in 1961 (science a process approach). proposed reforms that emphasised access to science for all included science technology, and society (bybee, 1986) and science for all introduction as a child of the 1950s i’ve learnt and taught science as well as lecturing and researching in science education through a period punctuated by significant perturbations in curriculum. all have been well intentioned. yet, it seems axiomatic that curriculum change in itself cannot cure whatever it is that ails school science. nevertheless, hope springs eternal. this paper considers the extent to which these hopes are well placed, first through a brief and necessarily selective consideration of the historical context of science curriculum development and then through an analysis of the views of experts. peter abusson, university of technology sydney faculty of arts and social sciences centre for research in learning and change. 2 international journal of education, vol. 6, no. 1, november 2011 americans, (aaas, 1989). more recently, scientific literacy (oecd, 2006) has become an entrenched, almost universally accepted goal of science education. these trends were perhaps most prevalent in the usa but their impact was felt throughout the english speaking world (goodrum, hackling & rennie 2001). from the 1970s to the early 1990s there were major shifts in thinking about science learning and teaching. practical teaching approaches were generated to make connections between learning as a construction and classroom learning and teaching practice (bidulph & osborne, 1984). research on children’s science and constructivist views of learning provided the impetus for new curriculum goals that take into account learners’ cognitive frameworks (osborne & freyberg, 1985; white, 1991). consistent with the shift from behaviourism and piagetian stages of development to generative views of learning, curricula responded – somewhat. the construction of personal and science knowledge were evident in australia (curriculum corporation, 1994), in the uk national curriculum (millar & osborne, 1998) and in the usa (aaas, 1989; rutherford & ahlgren, 1990). scientific habits no longer dominated. they were retained however, as sections of curricula, such as ‘working scientifically’ in science a curriculum profile for australian schools (curriculum corporation, 1994) and teaching ‘scientific habits of mind’ in science for all americans (aaas, 1989; rutherford & ahlgren, 1990). interestingly, and despite growing evidence that children learn science through psychological order rather than through a predetermined logical order (driver, 1981), the notion that student learning is best organsied according to immutable stages continued to be reflected by strict logical sequencing of learning in many curricula. the trends briefly identified so far have been played out in a series of curriculum developments both locally and overseas. it is reasonable to ask how the most recent national science curriculum (nsc, national curriculum board, 2009) builds on these and whether dated fashions have been entirely jettisoned. building on this history, there are recent points of emphasis in australian science education that have become prevalent in the lead up to and during the 21st century which are evident in the national curriculum shaping paper: science and the curriculum itself (national curriculum board, 2009) a detailed discussion of these is provided in goodrum et al. (2001); and tytler (2007). a positioning of science as critical to international competiveness, though less strident than that of the 1950s, is evident in literature that has influenced recent (political) thinking about school science (batterham, 2000). in crude terms, australia requires a clever, scientifically capable workforce, and school science must change to serve this purpose (among others) and ensure supply. this is reflected in reports in peter aubusson, a nationalcurriculum: competition, advances and retreats 3 australia (goodrum et al, 2001; that were instrumental to the nsc. demand for internal competitiveness derived from science capa bility, however, has not led to a re-emergence of the scienceprofession-oriented curricula of past. rather, an emphasis on science interest and engagement has arisen from evidence of a lack of student interest and lower participation rates (baterham, 2000; goodrum et al, 2001;). in the past, it was as if the science was regarded as intrinsically useful, good and interesting. now it is clear that school and university science have been allowed to become out of kilter with the interests of the modern student population and perhaps of society as a whole (tytler, 2007). reengaging our community with science has become the new mantra. engagement as a primary outcome of schools’ science experience has resulted in a case for a new and different curriculum (goodrum et al. 2001). the aim has been to create an attractive curriculum emphasising science inquiry (student investigations, contextualised and relevant science experiences, generating and testing ideas), as well as a raft of changes to pedagogy, school science environments, teacher preparation and professional learning that are not readily addressed by a curriculum. tytler (2007) too provided a set of challenging recommendations for change. re-imagining science education is too extensive a work to summarise here but he extended the arguments of goodrum et al. (2001). among other things, tytler employed socio-cultural theory to understand the status and nature of school science and critiqued recent emphases that had arisen from conceptual change theory. he supported general positions taken by goodrum et al. (2001), stressing the need to exploit and create dispositions towards science and scientific dispositions; to feature creativity and exhilaration in science learning; and to avoid rigid prescription. generating and sustaining interest in science was seen as critical to longterm engagement. this is consistent with a socio-cultural view of interest. in a social-cultural model (hidi & renninger, 2006), interest progresses though phases, which may wax, wane and reverse. it is therefore interesting that the organization of nsc content seems more consistent with piagetian stages and logical order of learning than socio-culturally inspired phases of interest or reflect a psychological, socially constructed order of science learning this introduction can only provide a brief and incomplete analysis of relevant changes in the context of science curriculum development. more comprehensive reviews relevant to the nsc are available elsewhere (e.g., goodrum et al., 2001; tyler, 2007). method in this broad context, this paper explores science education research experts’ perceptions of the nsc agenda. in developing the argument for this paper, views of leaders in the field of science education in australia were 4 international journal of education, vol. 6, no. 1, november 2011 sought. five leaders from different australian states were interviewed to ascertain their perspectives. the interviews were conversational and participants were advised of the interview protocol in advance. interviews were recorded and transcribed. analysis of the transcripts followed the qualitative process outlined by mcmillan and schumacher (2006): selecting text extracts, identifying patterns, themes and key concepts, coding and categorisation, code testing against interpretation and constant comparison. the analysis was checked by a research assistant. variations in interpretation were resolved in discussion. a draft of the leaders views regarding the nsc was provided to the leaders for checking. in reporting, some small modifications to transcripts were made and references that were mentioned in interviews were inserted. as there was much agreement in the views expressed, the views have often been combined in this paper as an amalgamated character (geelan, 2003). this editing and amalgamation of data was completed before the results were provided to participants for comment. some minor editing for clarity has occurred in response to suggestions from reviewers and the editor. result and discussion population and workforce mobility one of the principal arguments for a nsc identified by all experts, was political leaders’ desire to address perceived educational disadvantage arising for students who move across state borders. perceptions of educational disadvantage, creates a disincentive for families to exploit opportunities for employment and exacerbates skill shortages. mobility of workforce is a social and political, in first instance, for various reasons. hence, the curriculum is built around kids who cross state borders and have to repeat topics. it’s awkward for them if the curriculum is not lined up. the experts doubted the validity of the argument as applied to science learning, which may not be linear. the assertion was viewed as broad political positioning rather than sound educational argument. making the most of limited resources good science curriculum design requires extensive resources and expertise. the universal view was that a national curriculum provides an opportunity to create a curriculum of higher quality than that which could be developed by each state or territory simply because the resources available for curriculum development are greater. the argument is that writing curriculum requires significant resources and we cannot spend those resources six or seven times. and the science curriculum in different states and territories is not that different anyway (dawson & venville, 2006). so, why not go to a national one? the perceived problem for curriculum production was strongest for smaller states and territories. the national curriculum development process provides greater resource, access to greater collective expertise peter aubusson, a nationalcurriculum: competition, advances and retreats 5 and wisdom. as well, the opportunity to build on varied experiences with science curriculum across many states and territories could generate a fundamentally better curriculum. there has been better consultation and more resources put into developing the curriculum, getting different people’s opinions on it. working through all those processes and being a national document has a lot more strength, i think, than just a state document. the view was also put that the critical advance, made possible through a nsc, was not primarily in the construction of a ‘better’ curriculum per se, but rather in its implementation. having a national approach can be unifying and can help the country to put a lot more resources into developing appropriate professional development and resources that will support the teaching and learning of science. the argument is that if a science curriculum is developed nationally, the resources of states and territories need not be devoted to curriculum design but can be used to support implementation, to enhance science teaching and learning. furthermore, if the states and territories share the same curriculum, resources, workshops, professional development programs and research findings that are generated should be broadly applicable across australia. quality control the development of a nsc is viewed as quality control: if the education of australians is to be improved then educational outcomes need to be monitored. the quality of teaching may be difficult to determine. a naïve view, however, is that the quality of teaching can be assessed indirectly by examining students’ test results. a common nsc for all students would make such testing and comparison more feasible. thus, a nsc enables monitoring and control of science teaching and learning: the national agenda is to standardise. there is a whole compliance culture that develops around government generally, and certainly the current federal government. international testing has caused a lot of concern and science is part of that package. a lot of it is driven by compliance. that everyone should do this at this year level. then we know what is happening and then we’ve got control over teachers and schools. although the experts outline the argument succinctly as an influence on the design and development of the national curriculum, none see this as beneficial. rather, the counter argument is presented that standardisation, testing and monitoring may detrimental to science education. there will be a tendency to have everyone doing the same content at the same time across the nation. now if that somehow is privileged in some form of formal testing it will make science the worst it has been for fifty years. … despite what the planning documents might have indicated, it will remove the opportunity for local schools to 6 international journal of education, vol. 6, no. 1, november 2011 develop something of relevance to them, because they will have to comply. so context will play a very small part in the implementation, even though context is deliberately mentioned as an important starting point. with regard to the general influences on the national science curriculum, the experts supported the arguments that a national curriculum had potential 1. to ensure effective uses of resource supporting science education; and 2. to improve dissemination of good science education ideas and practices. in contrast, the experts questioned the soundness of the arguments that 1. a nsc was required to or would be able to address perceived science learning challenges arising from workforce mobility; or 2. standardisation and control of the science curriculum would improve science teaching and learning. science specific influences: experts identified specific scienceeducation influences on the nsc. these included: 1. student engagement with science and school science 2. national capability in science and supply of australian scientists 3. creation of an informed citizenry participating in democratic decision making 4. comparative performance in international science tests , including variations in performance between states and territories. student engagement the intent of the nsc ,to promote student engagement with science, is explicit in the nsc documents as well as literature cited by the experts as influencing its design. a number of the experts mentioned the ‘framing paper’ and ‘shaping paper,’ some citing these verbatim. they commented on the explicit link of student engagement with science as inquiry, and science as a human endeavour strands. a lot of it was driven by concerns about student engagement with science so a lot of it was influenced by the goodrum study (goodrum et al, 2001) on the status of science. it was a fairly big factor in people’s thinking. there was a big push to have more representation of inquiry approaches and quite a bit of contemporary thinking about investigative skills and notions of inquiry. this comes through. there’s been a lot of critique like (tytler, 2007) over emphasis on just declarative knowledge. that comes out too. so does science for all (fensham, 1985) and the science literacy notion of preparing citizens. the need to understand how science is used in society – a number of people pushed that. while the intent was considered praiseworthy, they were skeptical as to whether a national curriculum could or would make a significant contribution to student engagement with science.: at the end of the day i don’t think that the curriculum will make a difference to students understanding and ability, even peter aubusson, a nationalcurriculum: competition, advances and retreats 7 their motivation and enjoyment of science. ‘it’s important to have a curriculum, but i don’t want to ever overestimate what it can do. informed citizenry the need for citizens to understand science pertinent to significant national and international policy, as well as local decision-making, was considered important. science issues of concern such as health, human-induced climate change and water management were among the examples mentioned. this was linked to notions of scientific literacy consistent with the oecd definition (oecd, 2009) with an expectation that science needs to contribute to a population capable of understanding current science ideas as discussed in the media, issues being addressed by government and a disposition towards rational thought based on evidence. yet, four of the five commented on the absence of the term scientific literacy. they argued that this seemed at odds with the purpose of the curriculum; the literature considered influential in its development; and international trends in science education. there has been a strong international trend in the last 20 years. a usbased trend looking at inquiry. also, scientific literacyi only noticed it once in document. it was in the draft (but) they took it out. interestingly, the strands most frequently described in positive terms as contributing to a scientifically literate australia were the science as a human endeavour and science inquiry rather than the science understanding strand. there was support for this emphasis in these strands, but dissatisfaction that it had not been taken further. in science as a human endeavour there was an opportunity missed to include dispositions like students’ commitment to processes of using science, being committed to curiosity and finding scientific explanations that could be demonstrated in all kinds of different ways. there is a political problem with perceptions of touchy feely things, but if we could include something like that then it would force us to think clearly about what we want our kids to come out with. as it is, science as a human endeavour is predictably about passive understanding about science. concerns were also raised about the emphasis on science disciplines at the expense of current interdisciplinary issues and problems. some of the big problems that the human species faces are interdisciplinary problems, but the curriculum is structured basically under sub strands as biology, chemistry, space science and physics. there are things like global warming, an inter-disciplinary ideas. so, where do we teach that and how do we deal with that? national capability building national science capability was linked closely to student engagement. engagement with science was considered as important for all citizens whereas capability emphasises 8 international journal of education, vol. 6, no. 1, november 2011 participation rates in university science courses and the provision of scienceable graduates to feed australia’s economic growth. in the context of providing a science curriculum that catered to the needs of a general public, as well as a science profession, some referred to the challenges of science for all (fensham, 1985). student engagement with science through the primary and mid secondary years was considered important, but not sufficient to address diminishing interest in university science and science-based careers. collectively there has been this up-well saying that we need more students entering university to do science and engineering and mathematics. but, the solution needs to be much more complex than a political solution. this curriculum is a political solution to a number of interest groups pushing their barrows. i understand the political reasons and when you get physicists from a number of universities worried that they are not getting enough students and they put pressure on governments to do something about it. then it comes back to, let’s increase the emphasis on content or do something to the school curriculum. significantly the senior science years were considered critical in building on early engagement with science as a lead into university study. this paper is avoiding analysis of feedback on the senior curricula. nevertheless, most experts expressed severe reservations about the senior curricula, suggesting that the current drafts were likely to discourage future participation in science. criticism, however, was tempered by the acknowledgement that the senior curricula were a work in progress. international test results it has become difficult to have any discussion about science education without consideration of international test data. views of the influence of timss and pisa on the curriculum were mixed. some experts reported a difficult–to-understand dissatisfaction with the achievement of australian students, despite evidence that australian students perform well. some indicated that it was not primarily a concern about current performance but a determination to prevent any fall on the international comparison tables. i don’t see the test results as a huge driver in the national curriculum. if we had done appallingly in those international tests, then that would be a driver, but the reality is we have done quite well internationally. for example pisa, we are in the second band, and only one nation was in the band above us. if anything we are further advanced than most other nations. logically it could not have been the driver. but politicians, being who they are, would not like us to drop. they think we’re slipping down the scale. we want to be as good as finland. on an international scale, that’s what it’s about. we do very well, but we have a very long tail of students that do badly, that we peter aubusson, a nationalcurriculum: competition, advances and retreats 9 need to do something about. but, i don’t think that the curriculum can do very much for those students. others suggested that the nsc could be considered a means by which achievements of less well-performing states and territories could be brought up to match better-performing states. while considered a possible influence on the national curriculum, the argument was not considered strong because differences between state and territory performance were far better explained in terms of factors other than curriculum, including variables such as age, socio economic status and educational opportunity matters a curriculum is unlikely to address. different levels of achievement in states based on pisa tests or timss tests, without an understanding of different entry levels and age level of students, might have encouraged a national curriculum. it seems easy for politicians to reduce differences by creating a national curriculum. international tests such as timms and pisa were regarded as a significant influence on current political thinking about schools science, but according to some not critical influences of the nsc. on the other hand, others expressed the view that while the performance on international tests was not a major driver, the testing was influential in the curriculum. they noted that items in the science inquiry strand and science as a human endeavour strand were consistent with pisa assessment it was unclear, however, whether the curriculum was influenced by pisa or whether both the curriculum and pisa were influenced by the same trends in science education. perhaps both are connected factors, as two experts referred to presentations by fensham in which he had discussed some implications of pisa for australian science curriculum development (fensham, 2002). the general view was that setting out to use a national curriculum to improve rankings determined by international tests would be bad for kids and for australian science. they contended that, fortunately, the nsc had not been excessively influenced by such a goal. is it a good curriculum? views on the quality of the nsc varied. all experts identified good features of the curriculum including the emphasis on science as a human endeavour and science inquiry strands. some experts described it as ‘bland’, ‘uninspiring’ and ‘conservative’. others described it as ‘bold’, ‘good’ and ‘great’. the national curriculum doesn’t look too bad. at least it flows. it sort of makes sense. the document is very good. i know there are problems. i do believe that the direction it is taking science education is good and that is a very real emphasis on pedagogy; getting kids engaged; and having the perceptions of what science is in the community, or the school changed. that’s what comes through in the document or it tries 10 international journal of education, vol. 6, no. 1, november 2011 to come through. it gets a little lost in the detail. overall, it is a great curriculum document for science. the national curriculum is about giving guidelines and direction. it is not a syllabus so i think in a sense they have been very bold … in not writing a whole bunch of stuff in there that has to be learnt. that’s taken guts, to be quite strong in resisting that temptation. when asked whether the national curriculum was better or worse than their current state or territory curriculum (except for senior curricula) only one answered directly, indicating that it was better on the grounds it was less specific than the current state curriculum. others responded by indicating ways in which their state or territory system was better and ways in which the national curriculum was better. the only consistent view being expressed was that the emphasis on science as a human endeavour was an improvement on most current curricula. compared with traditional approaches, which focused very strongly on science understanding and maybe enquiry or process skills then science as a human endeavour has a much stronger influence. that is an aspect of science that has been underrepresented in curriculum documents previously. all but one agreed that the national curriculum had not been able to translate the admirable goals and intentions of the ‘framing paper’ into the strands and lists of content. they also recognised that this is not unusual and was a significant challenge in a negotiated curriculum. there are always fine words at the start and talk about creativity, reasoning and high level thinking, cultural usefulness and what have you. then what you often got was very dry content coming out of it. i think there is a bit of that here. maybe it is inevitable because, in part, content has to be specified. often the high hopes that are expressed earlier, have to be expressed between the lines so to speak. it comes from a lack of imagination and the multiple influences that occur on people writing these things. you have all these jurisdictions clamoring for representation for the way they’ve always done things. i guess i’m being too critical. the three strands are an attempt to build on the framing paper. the critical thing will be what is done with it. it could be made consistent with the framing paper if teachers know how to do it. it is a pity the document didn’t make it easier. none of the experts were concerned with the detail of the content lists. three raised concerns about the way in which assumptions had been made about what students were capable of learning according to age, and the consequences for school science learning. some considered the curriculum to be too restrictive in organising the science understanding strand by school age levels. these peter aubusson, a nationalcurriculum: competition, advances and retreats 11 experts argued that the level of specificity would act against the treatment of science in context. they viewed this as lamentable because the context and local connections were considered critical in generating and maintaining student engagement. all spoke with some passion, when citing instances where restricting the specific understandings to be learnt by year level was fundamentally flawed. the way it goes from topic to topic at specific years we have always grappled with this and tried to make it non-mandatory to do things at particular levels, … there are all sorts of reasons why you might want to find and follow what is actually growing in students’ understandings. … renewable energy, for example, which focuses on energy issues has a lot of focus on electricity because as soon as you start to have hands on experiments with wind turbines or solar cells, you need to know about electricity. it really causes a bit of a problem if you are looking at contextual units. it’s hard to bring in that contextual stuff. if you look at matter, well particles don’t appear until year 8 in the national curriculum. you are running around describing properties up till then. it is a very piagetian view that drives it. things like particle ideas are too abstract. and, if you can’t get it absolutely right until adolescence, beyond concrete thinking that is nonsense. there has been a lot of research in that area and kids are capable of far more than that. there is a kind of hang over in the document that at particular ages we can only challenge them to this level. if you talk about evaporative processes kids will talk about particles, they’ll introduce it so if you want to teach kids about evaporation with one hand tied behind your back and blindfolded then that’s fine. the argument is that if you introduce particles too early then they misunderstand it because they think they expand along with the stuff. they think there is matter in between instead of a vacuum, but who cares. nevertheless, leaving aside the restriction of content to age levels, some experts argued that descriptions of content were broad enough to allow for local context and school based development. this curriculum does give the teachers a lot of flexibility and that’s a good thing. so generally, it’s not just a list of dot points of things to be taught in each year. it gives teachers professional license to develop appropriate programs for their specific students. it is written in a way that allows for change. it lets the teacher make decisions about what is the latest cutting edge science to include. others took the opposite view the kind of specificity that we’ve seen in this document is going to cut across that and also there was some concern about the possibility of local variation, particularly schools making partnerships or 12 international journal of education, vol. 6, no. 1, november 2011 having projects based in local communities. if there is too much specificity then you lose the chance to go down that path. notably, the various positions regarding specificity seemed inherently related to current state or territory curriculum documents. in those states where the national curriculum document was more restrictive than their current curriculum, the experts viewed this unfavourably. in states or territories with more restrictive current curriculum documents, the experts regarded this feature of the nsc as a step forward. the experts were universally unconvinced that there was some universally right, logical order in which to present and build understanding of science ideas. experts were emphatic that teachers and schools need flexibility to create a science curriculum that caters for the needs and interests of students in their distinctive contexts. the main concern was not so much that the curriculum would prevent this, but that its implementation would. some noted that they were aware of arguments occurring in some states regarding whether ‘topics’ were presented in the correct order. while there was significant criticism of the curriculum content lists, there was also acceptance that a relatively conservative curriculum is an inevitable product of extensive consultation with many influential stakeholders. the rhetoric about the curriculum is that it is anything but conservative, but when you look at it is pretty conservative. i appreciate the political dilemmas and the reality is the product from any large curriculum project is not going to be ideal. despite the spin of being classed as worldclass the reality is that is it pretty uninspiring and it is just a list of things that could be done. for some experts the national curriculum was viewed as a first iteration. just getting a nsc in place may be a worthwhile and essential first step. it’s the first one we have ever had. something that could be agreed to. it will evolve and change over time because i think there are too many players involved in this act to expect to have it right to begin with. we will have to mould it, shape it, and develop it as people interact with it. innovative or conservative experts were concerned about the curriculum implementation process and potential consequences of a national curriculum. terms such as ‘worried’ about, ‘concerned’, ‘fearful’, and ‘afraid’ were used when the experts spoke of implementation effects. the concerns related to testing, the possibility of additional curriculum layers added by states and the loss of locally contextualised science. the impact of anticipated national science testing was a concern. the view was that a nsc would make regular high-stakes national testing of science likely. inappropriate use of national assessment program – peter aubusson, a nationalcurriculum: competition, advances and retreats 13 literacy and numeracy (naplan) data and the myschool website were cited as examples of the harmful outcomes that could be prompted by the nsc. it depends on what or how naplan pans out over the next few years and how it articulates with the nsc. if naplan follows a certain pattern, it will become a pseudo curriculum. that concerns me … . it is one thing to just list three strands but if the emphasis in the checking is going to be heavily on science for understanding, then the other two strands will be just ignored. some teachers have been doing innovative work within broad guidelines and have largely been responsible for assessment rather than having some external assessor. i get a sense that the national curriculum will see a regression to much more conservative teaching. it is anticipated that national testing will prioritise the science understandings strand. this would diminish emphasis on science skills and science as a human endeavour; the strands in which the nsc provided an advance on current offerings. all experts expect at least some states to impose another layer of curriculum development between the national curriculum and schools, although some do not expect this in their own state. all but one regard this as unhelpful, considering the curriculum sufficient. it would pull the carpet completely out from underneath national curriculum. what is the point of having a new curriculum with all these new things in it if nobody does it? the whole point of spending money on developing a national curriculum is wasted. and people will continue doing what they are doing. a layer of state curriculum or syllabus would recreate differences at a state level, something the nsc sought to eliminate. funds available to support a nsc should, in the opinion of the experts, be invested in the development of resources and teacher professional learning, not in a syllabus. in this context, two fears were expressed. in states with a strong history of prescriptive curriculum, the view was that resources would be wasted on a syllabus, and little would remain for effective implementation in schools. in states with curricula described as broad frameworks, the fear was that the national curriculum would cut state investment in science education. they may see this as a costcutting opportunity, cutting back on our curriculum developers and curriculum people in the department of education as a support. a generally held view was that different state-based curricula would make the sharing of resources across state and territory boundaries difficult and less likely. two experts were resigned to one state, at least, producing its own syllabus. they are going to develop this syllabus. there isn’t any other alternative. simply they see that they are going to make the syllabus. 14 international journal of education, vol. 6, no. 1, november 2011 professional learning and development the nsc, will require significant professional learning and development for teachers. in some instances this will be required to support schoolbased curriculum development. one challenge will be to deliver on the intent of the framing paper. the national curriculum is silent on how to do this. the framing paper says there will be less emphasis on a transition model of pedagogy but more on the model of student engagement and enquiry. it might have good intentions, you get hints but it doesn’t really inform teachers on how they might do it. according to the experts the impact of the national curriculum on student learning and engagement in science depends relatively little on the curriculum per se. rather it hinges on its implementation and the professional learning support for teachers. on the one hand, they perceive a risk of standardisation and testing producing a narrow, dull taught curriculum. on the other hand, there is hope that a rich science pedagogy maybe enacted to engage future generations. conclusion the research was implicitly motivated by a desire to consider our science education future, because a curriculum cannot be judged by the words on the page but by its enactment. hence, in responding to these questions the experts’ views have been used to create two science curriculum future scenarios. there is a complex interplay among stake holders that has produced a compromise curriculum. experts largely agree on its strengths and weaknesses. interestingly, despite this agreement, there is considerable variation in their perceptions of the goodness of the curriculum. most of the experts saw the nsc itself as benign, but they were concerned about how it may be implemented and illused. hence the quality and state of australia’s future science education with the nsc, is difficult to predict. two very different scenarios seem possible. one emphasises state independence, standardisation, compliance and control. the other emphasises trust in teacher professionalism and knowledge exchange. compliance scenario in this scenario, the nsc improves school science through standardisation, surveillance and control. support for professional development and school science within states is reduced because the work of curriculum development has been done centrally. prescriptive resources are produced with activity sequences which classes follow. there is a national curriculum but some states introduce a syllabus. this restricts variations in schools within these states and prevents efficient sharing of resources across state boundaries. high-stakes national tests, based primarily on the easy-to-assess science understanding strand, are used as indicators of state, territory and national science achievement. results are published peter aubusson, a nationalcurriculum: competition, advances and retreats 15 and ranking tables appear in the media. the science curriculum becomes narrowly focussed on the acquisition of readily testable science information. student engagement decreases and disenchantment with science increases but a small population of devoted science students thrive. senior science becomes entrenched as a field for the elite but fewer students study senior science. national capability needs are met by a few, very able graduates from science degrees who pursue careers in science. trusting scenario the national curriculum provides a framework for consistency in science education across all states and territories. students learn about the same key concepts and big science ideas within relevant contexts. there is an equal emphasis on science as inquiry, science as a human endeavour and science understanding, which are integrated. science proves attractive and engaging for many students. the shared curriculum across states promotes the sharing of science pedagogy. there is no net increase in support for science curriculum implementation but it is targeted at professional learning and provision of nationally applicable resources. national testing reflects the aims of the national curriculum, providing data on achievement as well as science dispositions. this data is used for diagnostic purposes to enhance science teaching and learning. a renewed interest in science in years k-10 leads to high participation in science in the senior years. in turn, university science degrees attract more students with a vast range of interest and abilities. some of these students pursue a variety of career paths as researchers, in industry and education. the future probably lies somewhere in between. references aaa science. (1989). science for all americans. washington: author. batterham , r. (2000) the chance to change: final report by the chief scientist. canberra: department of industry, science and resources. bruner, j. s. (1960). the process of education. cambridge: harvard university press. biddulph, f., & osborne, r. (1984) making sense of our world : an interactive teaching approach. hamilton: science education research unit, university of waikato. bybee, r. (1986). science technology, and society. washington, dc: nsta. cohn, m. (1992). how teachers perceive teaching: changes over two decades, 1964 -1984. in a. lieberman (ed.), the changing contexts of teaching, part 1 (pp. 110-137). chicago: university of chicago press. curriculum corporation. (1994). science a curriculum profile for australian schools. carlton: author dawson, v. and venville, g. (2006). an overview and comparison of australian state and territory k 10 science curriculum documents. teaching science, 52(2), 17-24 16 international journal of education, vol. 6, no. 1, november 2011 driver, r. (1981). pupils’ alternative frameworks in science. international journal of science education, 3(1), 93-101. fensham, p. j. (1985). science for all: a reflective essay. journal of curriculum studies, 17(4), 415435. fensham, p. (2002). pisa science: pointing the way forward for school science. paper presented at the australian council for educational research (acer) research conference. providing world -class school education: what does the research tell us?, sydney, australia. geelan, d. (2003) weaving narrative nets to capture classrooms: multimethod qualitative approaches for educational research. dordrech: springer. goodrum, d., rennie, l. j. & hackling, m. w. ( 2001) the status and quality of teaching and learning of science in australian schools. canberra: department of education, training and youth affairs. hidi, s., & renninger, k. a. (2006). the four-phase model of interest development. educational psychologist, 41(2), 111-127 lieberman, a, (1982). practice makes policy: the tensions of school improvement. in a. lieberman and m. w. mclaughlin. (eds.). policy making in education: 81st yearbook of the national society for the study of education, part 1 (pp. 249-269). chicago: university of chicago press. mc.millan, j. h. & schumacher, s. (2006) research in education: evidence-based inquiry. boston: pearson. national curriculum board (2009a). shape of the australian curriculum: science. carlton, vic: national curriculum board. national curriculum board (2009b). nsc framing paper (draft). carlton, vic: national curriculum board. oecd. (2006). assessing scientific, reading and mathematical literacy: a framework for pisa 2006. retrieved may 26, 2011 from http://www.oecd.org/ dataoecd/63/35/37464175.pdf osborne, r., & freyberg, p. (1985). learning in science: the implications of children’s science. auckland: heinemann. rutherford, f. j. & ahlgren, a. (1990). science for all americans. new york: oxford university press, 1990. tytler, r. (2007). re-imagining science education: engaging students in science for australia’s future. australian education review no. 51. melbourne: australian council for education research press. white, r. t. (1991) an overview of the australasian perspective. in j. northfield & d. symington (eds.), learning in science viewed as a personal construction: an australasian perspective (pp. 3446). perth: centre for teaching and learning in school science and mathematics, curtin university of technology. a. chaedar alwasilah, policy on foreign language education in indonesia 1 policy on foreign language education in indonesia a. chaedar alwasilah indonesia university of education abstract to understand the state of the art of tefl at elementary and junior secondary schools, a survey was administered to two groups of efl teacher respondents, namely 88 elementary teachers in jakarta and 200 junior secondary teachers who live in jakarta and west java, and banten provinces. they teach at either private schools (50.8%) or public schools (49.2%), and 89.0 % of them have worked for more than fi ve years. they are either public (47.4%) or private teachers (52.6%), and most of them are female teachers (69.8%). the junior secondary teachers were participants of the nine-day teacher certifi cation program in september 2011, a mandatory professional development scheme to qualify them as a professional teacher. the primary school teachers are graduates of or are attending pgsd, i.e., four year elementary school teacher education. the survey fi ndings are not generalizable to the whole country, but they present a relatively comprehensive picture of efl teaching in the basic education units, i.e., elementary and secondary schools. keywords: teaching english as foreign language (tefl), teacher certifi cation program, professional development, teacher education curriculum). ktsp should be developed by individual schools based on standard competence and basic competence set by the national ministry of education and culture (see ministerial regulation no 23 year 2006). english is formally an optional school subject in primary schools and a compulsory subject starting from junior secondary schools. to talk about efl teaching in indonesia is to address the issue of language planning in a multilingual setting, where 742 local languages exist (etnologue, 2005). most children acquire their mother tongue in childhood, and then learn indonesian as the second language in schools. gradually in big cities grade 3 students now learn three languages: local language, indonesian, and english. in such a situation, we cannot expect grade 9 students to have english proficiency similar to that of their counterparts, say, in singapore and the philippines, where english is a second language. a theory says that the linguistic system of the previously acquired languages will confuse learners in acquiring a new language. their proficiency will “freeze” introduction in indonesia the status of english as a foreign language was declared formally in 1955 in a teacher trainer conference (lauder, 2008). the status remains the same until now that english is the first foreign language taught at school (komaria, 1998 in lauder 2008). law 1989 chapter ix section 39 mentions english as a compulsory subject to be taught from grade 7 at lower secondary level. government regulation no. 060/u/1993 dated 25 february 1993 mentions that on primary level english might be taught as a local content subject starting from grade 4. in addition, the 1989 law on education, chapter xi, section 42, and paragraph 2 also allows for the possibility of using english as a medium of instruction, with the proviso that this is needed for developing knowledge of a particular subject or vocational skill. the national curriculum has experienced eight time changes. they are the 1945, 1952, 1964, 1968, 1975, 1984, 1994, 2004, and 2006 curriculum (ekagurunesama, 2012). the latest one is called ktsp (school based international journal of education, vol. 7 no. 1 desember 2013 2 or become stuck at some more or less deviant stage (mitchel and myles: 2004). in general english is only taught 70 minutes per week in primary school, 160 minutes in junior secondary school. in this regard, lightbown, (2000) has suggested that, in instructional settings, the age at which instruction begins is less important than the intensity of the instruction and the continuation of the exposure over a sufficient period of time. as pointed out later in this report, many variables would explain the incomplete success of students in learning english. since independence in 1945 english rather than dutch has been a school subject in secondary school (beginning grade 7). it is a compulsory foreign language taught in all types of schools. formal national guidelines are provided at the national level, but the curriculum is expected to be developed at school level. since the 1990’s many elementary schools started introducing english to higher grade (4-6). positive responses from the society are very high and many schools now introduce it even to grade 1, without necessarily having qualified teachers. national guidelines are available for teaching grade 4-6 and if schools decide to start teaching it from grade 1, they have to develop their own curriculum, which is a challenging task. since 1990’s indonesian government has allowed schools to teach english from primary schools, which means that students have longer time to learn english. however, this is not equivalent with improvement of proficiency. dardjowidjojo (1998) once observed that, despite the number of years allocated, the result has not been encouraging. the majority of indonesians, including many highly educated language scholars, do not master english well enough to absorb scientific materials written in english. their oral ability is worse. english is now optional in primary schools and compulsory in junior and secondary schools over 60 thousands schools and with over 18 million student’s altogether. nationally there are 2,783,321 teachers including 122,588 (4.4%) english teachers. there is on the average only two teachers of english in one school, suggesting one teacher has to handle on the average 150 students (hamied, 2011). with the law requiring teachers to have at least a four-year degree and to have a teaching certificate, the government is now in the process of mass-certifying teachers. the certification is mandated to few and selected lptk, namely colleges or universities of education. at present there are 128 elt training throughout the country (hamied, 2011). our survey (2011) indicated that for 73.9% of the respondents, english at elementary school is a mandatory subject. it is taught from grade 1 to grade 6 (92.0%) with the policy coming from dinas pendidikan (regional office of education) according to 21.3% of the respondents, while the rest reported it as the school policy. it suggests that efl teaching at elementary schools is a bottom-up policy, namely a policy initiated by the school. in fact many elementary schools were just jumping into the bandwagon. while most of the elementary teacher respondents (58.0%) have neither english background nor english for young learner training, the qualifications of secondary efl teachers are better as they have the following qualifications: master’s degree (4.2%), ba degree (90.7%), and diploma 3 (5.1%). as hamied (2011) observes, only 35% of english teachers are academically qualified to teaching. situational analysis policy and strategy on foreign language education in basic education the current practice of education is regulated by the 2003 national education law and more elaborated by the ministerial regulation no 22 year 2006 on the content standards of elementary and secondary education. according to the government regulation no. 19 year 2005, badan standar nasional pendidikan (bsnp) or the board of a. chaedar alwasilah, policy on foreign language education in indonesia 3 national standard of education is tasked with developing the content of the national standard of education, which includes the following: 1. the blue print and structure of the curriculum as a guideline for developing a curriculum in units of education. 2. the learning load of students in a unit of elementary and secondary education. 3. the curriculum at levels of education to be more developed by each unit of education based on the guidelines. 4. the calendar of education in each unit and level of elementary and secondary education. the curriculum of general education, vocational education, and special education on elementary and secondary levels consist of five clusters, namely: a. religion and noble character the subjects are aimed at developing students who believe in god and have a noble character, which includes ethics and morality as manifestation of religious education. b. citizenship and personality the subjects are aimed at developing citizens’ awareness of rights and obligations as members of community and nation and of improving their quality as human beings. c. science and technology at elementary levels, the subjects are aimed at enabling students to understand, appreciate science and technology and developing critical, creative, and independent thinking. at junior secondary levels, the subjects are aimed at developing student competencies in science and ethnology and to enable them to think critically, creatively and independently. d. esthetics the subjects are aimed at developing student sensitivity and appreciation towards beauty and harmony. e. physical education and health the subjects are aimed at improving student physical potentials and developing sportsmanship and awareness toward health. the curriculum according to the regulation is developed by the school and the school committee with reference to the guidelines published by bsnp. the curriculum is to be based on the following principles. a. it should be based on the potential, development, needs, and interest of the students and their environment. b. it should be based diversity and cohesion. c. it should be sensitive toward development of science, technology, and arts. d. it should be relevant with contemporary life. e. it should be comprehensive and sustainable. f. it should be based on life-long education. g. it should be developed with the balance between national and regional interest. the implementation of the curriculum in each unit of education should be based on the following principles. a. students should get a quality education, and get an opportunity to express themselves freely and in a dynamic and fun way. b. the curriculum is implemented on the basis of the five pillars of learning, namely to learn: (1) to have faith in god, (2) to know and to appreciate, (3) to do something effectively, (4) to live together and to be useful for others, and (5) to develop own the character through effective, creative, effective, and fun learning. c. the curriculum enables students to get services of improvement, enrichment, and acceleration relevant with their potential. d. the curriculum is implemented on the basis of teacher-students relations with mutual respect, intimacy, openness, and warmth. e. the curriculum is implemented using a multi-strategy and multimedia approach, international journal of education, vol. 7 no. 1 desember 2013 4 as well as the use of the environment as a source of learning. f. the curriculum is implemented by utilizing the local nature and culture to support education. g. within the curriculum all school subjects, local content, and self actualization are implemented on the basis of equilibrium, interconnectedness, and sustainability. the following table illustrates the curriculum of elementary schools in indonesia. the elementary curriculum consists of eight mandatory subjects, local content, and self development. in the table above english is not listed because it is an optional subject, called a local content subject. depending on geographical conditions, some cities or districts might not see english as an important subject at primary school level. the local content consists of activities to develop competencies relevant with the specific identities or potentials of the regions, including strengths of the regions that are otherwise included in the eight subjects. it is up to the school authority to decide the substance of the local content. however, most elementary schools have chosen efl as the local content subject. the policy is either made by a district or city education office or by the school level. due to positive response from the society, english courses are mushrooming even at sub-district levels. despite the government-recommended gba, this approach is not recommended for primary schools. instead, for teaching grade 1-3, the curriculum is based on theme, topic, function, and situation or ctl (contextual learning); while for teaching grade 4-6, the curriculum is a communicative one. self development is not a school subject to be directly taught by teachers. instead, they are designed to provide students with opportunities to develop and express themselves, in line with their needs, talent, interest and school conditions. the programs are supervised by counselors, teachers, or educational personnel as extracurricular activities such as sports, first aids treatments, scouting, etc. all of these, along with the school subjects, are reported in the student report book. all subjects are allocated time as listed in the table, where one hour session is 35 minutes in primary school and 40 minutes in junior secondary school. in general in a year, which consists of two semesters and begins in july and ends in june, there are 34-38 effective weeks. however, each school may add four extra hours per week. in the present system, a certified teacher has to teach 24 hours per week. table 1 elementary curriculum component grades and allocated times i ii iii iv, v and vi a. subject 1. religion 3 2. civics education 2 3. indonesian language 5 4. math 5 5. science 4 6. social studies 3 7. arts and skills 4 8. physical education 4 b. local content 2 c. self development 2 total 26 27 28 32 a. chaedar alwasilah, policy on foreign language education in indonesia 5 as elementary efl teacher respondents perceived, most of the policies are concerned with curriculum (23.2%), learning materials (21.9%), and methods of teaching (20%). they believed that the most important policy expected from the government is on learning materials. regarding the textbook, they use the ones recommended by the government (46.4%), ones chosen by the school, foundation or teachers (38.2%), and ones developed by themselves (15.5%). this suggests the following.  for elementary efl teachers choosing and developing learning materials are not an easy task, and therefore they need more practical knowledge rather than theoretical knowledge as envisioned by the curriculum. consequently, most elementary efl teachers faithfully follow the textbook or student work sheets. their teaching is simply bookish.  despite the availability of governmentrecommended textbooks, some teachers develop the materials themselves, either because the government-recommended books are difficult to get or because they are not relevant with the school and students. the government has launched bse (buku sekolah elektronik), which is e-book for high secondary schools. most elementary teachers still have difficulty in the following areas: instructional technology (29.5%), curriculum implementation (24.2%), methods of teaching (21.1%), and teaching materials (21.1%). this suggests that instructional technology is considered the weakest area to improve, and it should be included in the efl pre service and in-service trainings. the efl elementary teachers have the following qualifications: having english education background (18.8%), having efl training (9.1%), and neither (53.0%). they are either permanent teachers (80.2%) or parttime teachers (19.8%), who are class teachers (51.4%) while the rest are efl teachers. they are either public teachers (70.1%) or nonpublic teachers (29.9%) who have worked for more than 5 years (76.7%). this suggests the following.  the majority of efl elementary teachers are not qualified to teach efl. as stated earlier most elementary schools are just jumping into the bandwagon without necessarily having qualified teachers.  the issuance of content standard of efl at elementary schools by the government has been interpreted that english is a mandatory subject. in fact it is a local content that could be used for teaching a local or minor language.  compared with their secondary efl teacher counterparts, elementary teachers hardly get opportunity to join professional development programs (sundayana 2012, personal communication). the junior secondary curriculum consists of 10 mandatory subjects including english, local content, and self development. all the subjects are allocated time as listed in the table, where one hour session is 40 minutes. in general in a year of two semesters, there are 34-38 effective weeks. however, each school may add four extra hours per week. as can be seen from the table above, english is listed as a mandatory school subject. it is a government policy, while at primary levels it is a school policy, namely an optional subject for local content area. laws, plans, policy, strategy, and regulation the secondary teachers stated that most policies on english education are basically the product of the following: (1) center for curriculum and textbook evaluation (41.7%), (2) quality assurance body (22.5%), (3) center for educational personnel development (16.3%), and (4) p4tk or pusat pengembangan profesi pendidik dan tenaga kependidikan namely center for teacher professional development (8.3%). this suggests center for curriculum and textbook evaluation and quality assurance body are the units that have issued regulations international journal of education, vol. 7 no. 1 desember 2013 6 considerably affecting the professionalism of teachers. the functions of the four units are elaborated as follows.  center for curriculum and textbook evaluation (puskur) this center has many functions among others are as follows. 1. to develop policies on development of curriculum, learning methods, textbooks, and other learning resources. 2. to develop guidelines of developing curriculum, learning methods, textbooks, and other learning resources. 3. to develop models of curriculum, learning methods, textbooks, and other learning resources. 4. to develop textbooks, teachers’ guides, references, etc. 5. to review and translate books. 6. to improve competencies of textbook writers. 7. to develop guidelines of evaluating textbooks. 8. to monitor and evaluate the implementation of curriculum, learning methods, textbooks, and other learning resources.  quality assurance body (lpmp) as stipulated in ministerial regulation no 07, year 2007, and this body has the major following functions. 1. to outline the quality of basic education including kindergarten and other educational units on similar levels. 2. to develop and manage information system of quality of basic education including kindergarten and other educational units on similar levels. 3. to supervise basic education unit including kindergarten and other educational units on similar levels to ensure the fulfillment of the national standards. 4. to provide educational resources for basic education including kindergarten and other educational units on similar levels. table 2 junior secondary curriculum component grades and allocated times vii viii ix a. subject 2 2 2 1. religion 2 2 2 2. civics education 4 4 4 3. indonesian language 4 4 4 4. english 4 4 4 5. math 4 4 4 6. science 4 4 4 7. social studies 4 4 4 8. art and culture 4 4 4 9. physical education 2 2 2 10. vocational skill and it 2 2 2 b. local content 2 2 2 c. self development 2 2 2 total 32 32 32 a. chaedar alwasilah, policy on foreign language education in indonesia 7  center for educational research (puspendik) this center has the following functions. 1. to develop policies on developing methods of educational assessment. 2. to develop and carry out a system of academic assessment. 3. to develop and carry out a system of non-academic assessment and selection. 4. to develop a system and management of educational basement information. 5. to analyze results educational assessment. 6. to coordinate and facilitate the implementation of educational assessment. 7. to evaluate the implementation of educational assessment. 8. to report the implementation of educational assessment.  center for teacher and education personnel professional development (p4tk) this center has the following functions. 1. to develop programs for developing and empowering teachers and educational personnel. 2. to manage data and information regarding competencies of teachers and educational personnel. 3. to facilitate and implement the improvement of competencies of teachers and educational personnel. 4. to evaluate programs and facilitate the improvement of competencies of teachers and educational personnel. regarding the existing policies, the secondary efl teachers stated that they are most directly concerned with the following issues: (1) curriculum (26.6%), (2) learning materials (23.6%), (3) methods of teaching (20.3%), (4) learning evaluation (12.4%), and (5) regional autonomy on education (11.8%). they also believed that guidelines regarding the following aspects are not clear: methods of teaching (15.8%), learning evaluation (15.5%), and learning materials (13.8%). these suggest the following.  the secondary efl teachers are most concerned with the existing curriculum, which is genre-based approach. next to the curriculum is learning materials, methods of teaching, and learning evaluation.  they are simply overwhelmed with the curriculum and they prefer to use the previous curriculum, the competencebased curriculum. however, as emilia, et al (2010) point out that after intensive trainings on gba and ktsp (school-based curriculum), the teacher respondents in west java demonstrated a good understanding of the approach and the curriculum. foreign language education curriculum in basic education teaching approaches and methods the history of efl teaching in indonesia seems to follow the same universal pattern of evolution, namely the use grammar translation method, direct method, communicative language teaching, and genre based approach. as it is always the case, new approaches or methods of teaching are always reacted with pros and cons. the secondary efl teachers reported they used following approaches or methods of teaching: contextual teaching and learning or ctl (10.5%), paikem, namely active, innovative, creative, effective, and fun (8.6%), genre-based approach or gba (2.9%), and communicative approach (1.9%). the data above show that the secondary efl teachers claimed that they are—to various degrees--practitioners of ctl, paikem, gba, and communicative approach. these are the approaches mostly mentioned by them. ctl seems to be the most popular approach, followed by paikem, and gba. regarding ktsp (school-based curriculum) teachers recommended that it: (1) it should be reviewed (39.5%), (2) there is no enough guideline to implement it (37.3%), and (3) international journal of education, vol. 7 no. 1 desember 2013 8 teachers are not ready to implement ktsp (19.2%). these suggest the following.  communicative approach as a terminology seems to have lost its prestige. teachers are now forgetting it and using more recent approaches, such as ctl, paikem, and gba. the ministry seems to have succeeded in socializing the governmentinitiated approaches namely paikem and gba for implementing ktsp.  teachers are more comfortable with ctl approach. it allows them to be flexible in managing the class, depending on the context of teaching and learning.  paikem is also familiar to the teachers, as it challenges them to create active, innovative, creative, effective, and fun learning. each of these five modes of learning, however, carries with itself relative difficulty in implementation. paikem is a generic approach that can be used for teaching any school subject.  genre-based approach (gba) is relatively a new thing for teachers. many teachers are still confused with it. no wonder it is the least understood approach. this approach is familiar to junior secondary efl teachers, but it is less known by senior secondary teachers and vocational school teachers.  ktsp or school-based curriculum is the most demanding for teachers. on one hand, it empowers teachers to develop their own approaches and methods of teaching as long as the standard objectives are achieved. on the other hand, it requires teachers to be creative and resourceful in developing their own instructional objectives. this also requires teachers to be creative in managing the class. therefore many teachers recommended it be reviewed or a guideline be made available for them. learning materials (textbooks, online courses, vdo, tv, it, and etc.) the secondary teachers reported using the textbooks that are: (1) recommended by the government (44.3%), (2) recommended by the foundation or school and teachers (26.1%), and (3) developed by teachers (25.7%). this suggests the following.  the majority of english textbooks used by secondary schools are those developed by the center for curriculum and textbook evaluation. thus the center has fulfilled its function to control the quality of the books.  the organization and the management have authority to choose the books for the schools. the quality of the books is not necessarily better than that of the government-recommended textbooks. the situation indicates that teachers are demanded to adapt the materials provided in the textbook and even develop extra material if they expect the students to be able to use english fluently. the consequence is english teachers should perform a certain level of fluency that enables them to conduct classroom activities that encourage students fluency.  wallace (1993) has raised a fundamental and critical aspect of training teachers in efl context. there are not many teacher training books written specifically for efl context where two main issues, language and professional knowledge and skills should be strongly highlighted. teachers in efl context should achieve a certain level of english proficiency that enables them to at least deal with social language and classroom language.  some teachers for various reasons develop the textbooks for their own teaching purposes. due to lack of quality control, the teacher-produced textbooks may have negatively affected the quality of students’ learning. textbook writing requires an expertise, and the majority of teachers do not have any training on textbook writing during their pre-service training.  access to effective instructional materials that encourage fluency is limited in indonesia. most textbooks focus on a. chaedar alwasilah, policy on foreign language education in indonesia 9 language works. these textbooks put bigger emphasis on discussing text and rules of language. palmer and chodidjah observed, “there was, however, quite a range of teacher language proficiency and classroom practice. additionally in some rural schools, only the teacher had access to a textbook, with the learners using booklets for reading and grammar exercises. rote learning is the norm with very little emphasis on fluency, listening, or speaking skills. while some of these schools did have access to media resources, there is a wide gap in knowledge of how to effectively use these in the classroom.” (2012: 37) assessment/evaluation within the current curriculum, schools have the authority to develop their own assessment system and therefore they have developed rules and regulations. in a semester a teacher should at least have five collections of score, three of student’s daily assessment, one from formative test and one summative test. the tests are usually developed by junior secondary english teachers in the mgmp (subject matter teacher association) meetings. mgmp is a subject teacher’s organization on province level to sub district level. they often produce formative and summative test through this meetings. test development is a time-consuming activity and perceived as the least mastered aspect by secondary teachers. on the primary school level, teachers usually produce tests in their teacher’s regular meeting. primary schools have no subject matter teacher association. in general, assessment is still done in pencil paper testing format. at the final year of lower secondary, students sit for a national examination. english is one of the three subject matters taught in lower and upper secondary. this often becomes the biggest challenge for teachers because they have to put extra efforts for students to pass the national exam. failure in achieving the minimum standard score causes failure for the students to pass the school level exam. national exam problems are 50 items multiple choice test. no room for national oral examination. activities, special courses, after-school courses, tutoring, etc. after school english courses are very popular in indonesia. they usually provide english tutoring for different levels of students. depending on their service, the tuition fee for the courses is different from one language centre to another. there are at least two types of tutoring system. first, a course that practically improves quality of english proficiency. this type of language centers usually have their own syllabus which focus more on making their course participants able to communicate in english. second, the type of the course that focuses on supporting students in passing the school or national exam. students are exposed to different types of the national exam to get the students familiar with the test types. the number of students who can afford to take this kind of extra english tuition is limited. to develop english proficiency the majority of students rely on the school lesson. teachers at present there are around 2.7 million teachers in the country, making it the largest corps of civil servants in indonesia. to become an english teacher in junior and senior secondary, one should have an undergraduate diploma from teaching and education faculty by law. those who intend to become a civil servant under the central or local government system should undergo an entry test. if they pass the recruitment test they are placed in different regions in indonesia. many teachers who are either not interested in joining civil servant or are not eligible for it apply to private schools in their regions. starting in 2009 national ministry of education and culture, under regulation number 10 year 2009 about certification for the practicing international journal of education, vol. 7 no. 1 desember 2013 10 teachers, requires all practicing teachers to hold teaching certificate from the government. the main reason is because in the previous law teachers did not necessarily hold a ba degree. around 1,000,000 teachers of 2.7 million have taken or are currently taking a plpg program, namely a mandatory professional improvement programs as mandated by the laws. selected teacherstraining universities are mandated to carry out the plpg program. annually around 300,000 teachers are certified, and it would take another four years to certify all teachers in the country. the plpg program consists of 90 hour training on the following subjects: (1) teacher professional development, (2) review of subject matter, (3) teaching methodology, (4) workshops on action research, classroom action research, academic writing, learning material development, and (5) peer teaching. mastery regarding their qualifications, the secondary teachers reported they have mastered the following as part of their professionalism: (1) learning materials (51.3%), (2) methods of teaching (16.7%), (3) curriculum implementation (11.9%), (4) instructional technology (10%), and (5) learning evaluation (9.7%). this suggests the following.  for the secondary teachers mastering learning materials, namely english knowledge, seems to be easier than mastering methods of teaching, implementing the curriculum, using instructional technology, and conducting learning evaluation.  to develop professionalism in efl teaching, proficiency in english is essential, but mastering the subject matter pedagogy is also essential. in other words, it is much easier to learn english than to learn how to teach it.  however, recent observations of the plpg teacher participants at upi, bandung confirmed that both junior and senior secondary efl teacher’s mastery of materials as elaborated in the standard of content is still weak, and therefore many teachers failed in the final tests. their average toefl scores are 400, which is below the intermediate level (sundayana 2012, personal communication). sundayana’s observation is consistent with hamied’s finding (2011) that the level of proficiency of teachers of english as measured by toeic in 2007 and 2008, is only 518, with those in java scoring on the average 563, still at the intermediate level. the secondary efl teachers also reported the following aspects as the least mastered by them: (1) instructional technology (33.9%), (2) curriculum implementation (28.2%), (3) methods of teaching (20.8%), (4) efl teaching materials (8.7%), and (5) learning evaluation (8.4%). this suggests the following.  instructional technology is the weakest component of efl teaching followed by curriculum implementation and methods of teaching. however the weaknesses do not necessarily lead to failure, as good teachers may teach well without using sophisticated technology.  improving teachers’ mastery of instructional technology will necessarily improve their teaching performance. how to improve professionalism on how to improve professionalism in elt, they believe that it could be done through the following: (1) in-service training (38.1%), (2) improving proficiency in english (37.1%), and (3) obtaining s-2 degree (16.2%). this suggests the following.  secondary efl teachers believe that inservice training is the most appropriate way of upgrading their professionalism, followed by improving english proficiency.  in-service trainings are still a routine program for teachers hosted by center a. chaedar alwasilah, policy on foreign language education in indonesia 11 for teacher professional development (p4tk), quality assurance body, and center for educational personnel development (pusat pengembangan profes pendidik).  secondary efl teachers are less interested in obtaining a graduate degree than obtaining a teaching certificate as mandated by the law. certification program  the secondary teachers are—when the survey was administered—attending a 9 day certification program. in their perception the certification program has (1) improved teachers’ welfare (34.4%), (2) not improved quality of learning (27.8%), (3) improved teachers’ professionalism (23.4%), and (4) improved quality of learning (13.2%). this suggests the following.they believed that the certification program has improved their welfare but failed to improve the quality of teaching, which is the bedrock of professionalism  the current certification system should be redesigned by involving the local universities, the regional office of education, and the professional associations. teacher recruitment, teacher training, training organizations teacher recruitment is done by the provincial government in coordination with the central government, while teacher insservice training is the responsibility of p4tk, namely the center for teacher professional development, the regional body for quality assurance, and regional offices of education. regarding the association of teachers (mgmp), they perceive that it: (1) has improved their professionalism (32.7%), (2) is more as social organization than professional (31.8%), (3) does not work for professional rights (20.2%), and (4) is less independent (12.6%). this suggests the following.  subject-based teachers association is perceived as positive by the teachers as it holds regular professional meetings for improving their professionalism.  the association is not a political organization, but it is more concerned with professional development. native/ foreign english teachers, local english teachers, etc. public schools do not hire native or foreign english teachers. a few private schools do. generally speaking, private english courses in big cities hire native speakers as consultants or instructors. native speakers are perceived as insignificant for innovation as it was only 12.8% of the respondents who believe they could create innovation or improvement. this suggests the following.  contrary to the common belief of many people, native speakers of english are not as important asinstructional technology. in other words, it is more constructive to invest money on instructional technology rather than on hiring native speakers.  the secondary teachers are confident enough to teach english as a foreign language. the provision of native speaker in schools is not a standard of learning service. school management elementary schools and junior secondary schools are led by a headmaster, usually assisted by assistants for curriculum affairs and student affairs. depending on the size, a school may appoint more assistants. the schools usually have the following to provide standard service for students: library, first aids unit, guidance and counseling unit, and praying room, language laboratories, canteen, learning resources center, etc. supportive projects the 2004 curriculum includes student self development, for which schools may take the initiatives to undertake extracurricular programs. in regards to english teaching and international journal of education, vol. 7 no. 1 desember 2013 12 learning, secondary efl teachers recognize the following as the challenges: (1) students’ motivation to learn the language (33%), (2) mismatch of teachers’ background (28.8%), (3) teachers’ under qualification (20.8%), and (4) non-conducive policy from the government (15.6%). only 13.4% of the respondents who thought that extracurricular programs could be used as mean to do innovation in efl teaching. they believed that innovation in efl teaching was best carried out through paikem, or active, innovative, creative, effective, and fun learning (42.7%) and use of instructional technology (29.4%). this suggests the following. a. students’ motivation to learn english plays a vital role in their education. teachers then should have competences to boost students’ motivation b. some efl teachers do not have the relevant educational background or are under-qualified, and therefore in-service training is a must. in elementary and secondary schools under the ministry of religious affairs, the situation is even worse c. the use of instructional technology is essential to help teachers to create conducive environment for learning. exchange programs and english camps a few public schools and private schools in big cities have established exchange programs with their sister schools overseas. selected schools such as rsbi--pilot school of international standard--are encouraged by the regional office of education to establish such programs. innovative programs such as english camps are not popular in the country. wealthy parents prefer to send their children to private english courses, and some to overseas, especially singapore and australia. scholarships and fund some ministries provide scholarships and fund for teachers in schools under their management. many teachers are attending a graduate program for a degree under the scholarships from the central government, not from the regional offices. the ministries of religious affairs, of agriculture, of minerals and energy, for example, manage their own schools. while the curriculum is basically the same, the school management is within the authority of the ministries. foreign language institutions (public & private organizations) the biggest efl association in indonesia is teflin (teachers of english as a foreign language in indonesia). established on 25 september 1970 in jogyakarta, indonesia, it was a meant to be a professional organization to accommodate efl teachers in the country, that are almost 150,000 efl teachers in indonesia. teflin holds an annual international seminar hosted mostly by a university in coordination with the national teflin board. at the regional or provincial level, teflin coordinators are in charge of coordinating seminars and workshops related to teaching english. however, in general their perceptions toward teflin are not positive. they believe that teflin is a professional forum for those who teach english at tertiary institutions, and prefer to form an alternative association (sundayana, 2012, personal communication). problems international-standard pilot-project schools (rsbi) by law, every province and every district, close to 500 districts altogether, throughout indonesia is required to establish at least one school in each level with international standards, a requirement of which is the use of english as a medium of instruction. being taught in many primary schools, and compulsory in junior and secondary schools with over 60 thousand schools and with over 18 million student’s altogether, there is on the average only two teachers of english in one school, therefore one english teacher has to a. chaedar alwasilah, policy on foreign language education in indonesia 13 handle on the average of 150 students (hamied, 2010). the establishment of rsbi not only widens the gap between the affluent and the poor, but opens new corruption opportunities. the national education ministry plans to conduct an evaluation of internationalstandard pilot-project schools (rsbi)-currently 1,305 rsbi schools comprising 239 primary schools, 356 junior high schools, 359 high schools and 351 vocational high schools-not only based on academic indicators such as student performance but also non-academic indicators such as the students’ morals. the call comes after students of an high school in jakarta attacked a group of journalists after brawling with students from a neighboring school (the jakarta post, 09/23/2011). gba (genre-based approach) this approach is being promoted and socialized throughout indonesia. gba was perceived by secondary efl teacher respondents as follows: (1) teachers’ understanding of gba is not sufficient (47.2%), (2) communicative approach is more appropriate to foreign language teaching (39.1%), and (3) gba is not appropriate for foreign language (7.2%). this statistics suggest the following.  almost half of the surveyed teachers believe that their understanding of gba is not sufficient to implement gba, and still hold that communicative approach is more appropriate for efl teaching in indonesia.  an alternative approach is necessary to help teachers apply the curriculum, for example, by compromising theories and practices originated from gba and communicative approach.  gba has been successful in the australian context, where english is the first language. to apply it in the indonesian context, we have to make modifications based on continuous research. innovative approaches to foreign language education the government has taken several initiatives to improve the quality of efl education, among others through the following: paikem paikem is acronym of a (active), i (innovative), k (communicative), e (efficient), and m (menyenangkan or fun), an approach to teaching all school subjects including english. as an acronym paikem is easy to recall and say, and has been popular among school teachers. the majority of elementary teachers (62.2%) and secondary teachers (42.7%) believe that innovation in efl learning is best carried out by paikem. however, the five principles of paikem are put the following order from most difficult: (1) creative (36.2%), (2) innovative (23.6%), (3) effective (17.9%), (4) active (12.2%), and fun (10.2%). this suggests the following.  being active, innovative, communicative, efficient, and or fun is valued by students learning any subject. to achieve this teaching should observe the following characteristics: student-centered, joyful learning; competency-based learning; mastery learning; continuous learning; and contextual learning (syah and kariadinata, 2009).  paikem is a humanistic approach to teaching and has been more popular among elementary teachers, who work with young students. on higher levels such as junior and senior secondary levels the approach is less popular. teachers may use other approaches to teaching without necessarily ignoring the paikem characteristics.  compared with innovativeness, effectiveness, activity, and fun, creativity is the most difficult to apply to teaching efl. international journal of education, vol. 7 no. 1 desember 2013 14 use of instructional technology next to paikem is the use of instructional technology, which was believed by elementary teachers (24.3%) and secondary teachers (29.4%) as ways of innovative language teaching. this suggests the following.  for both elementary teachers and secondary efl teachers instructional technology is important for innovative teaching. however, paikem approach is more important, that is active, innovative, communicative, efficient, and or fun learning.  innovation in teaching does not necessarily mean modern technology. the most essential of innovation is a reasoned change in teachers’ mindset. use of native speakers next to instructional technology is native speakers as a means of innovative language teaching. some elementary teachers (7.2%) and secondary teachers (12.8%) believe that native speakers could help them develop innovative language teaching. as evident from the percentage of responses, native speakers will not significantly improve efl teaching and learning. use of extracurricular programs in addition to all mentioned above only 6.3% of elementary teachers and only (13.4%) of secondary teachers who believed that extracurricular programs can be used for developing innovative language teaching. this suggests that innovation is taking place in the classroom originating from teachers’ creativity. however, innovation in efl teaching as perceived by elementary teachers is constrained by the following factors: (1) difficulty in obtaining instructional technology (30.8%), (2) school culture (25.2%), (3) big size of the class (21.5%), and (3) student’s low motivation (20.6%). likewise, constraints of innovation as perceived by secondary teachers include: (1) things related to instructional technology (30.7%), (2) big size of classes (26.1%), (3) school culture (19.5%), and (4) student’s low motivation (8.5%). this suggests the following. a. the similar constraints of innovation are faced by both groups of teachers. provision of instructional technology to schools all over the country will be prohibitively expensive. therefore, priority should be given to the most inexpensive thing but promises a great impact. b. some schools may have developed their own culture that is not necessarily supportive to the innovation. efl teachers cannot work alone without involving the school management as a system. educational standards and quality assurance national standard bsnp or the board of national education standard oversees the standards of education all over the country. the eight national standard of education (content, competencies, process, assessment, teachers and educational personnel, infrastructure, budgeting, and management) are already set up, and all schools use it for benchmarking. the standards are perceived differently by both groups of teachers. on the national standard of education secondary teachers believe that the standards are: (1) not met yet (64.2%), (2) are appropriate (17.4%), (3) are too high to achieve (15.0%), and (4) are already achieved (3.2%). this suggests the following. a. the present standard of teaching and learning is not achieved yet due to the magnitude of the aforementioned problems. some schools with high quality standard may have met or even exceeded the national standard. the national standard of education in eight aspects of education needs to be maintained for the national benchmark. b. some standards are relatively too high for certain schools especially in remote a. chaedar alwasilah, policy on foreign language education in indonesia 15 areas outside java. therefore, a review of the standards and its implementation is necessary for estimating the cost of educational programs. based on her observation of teacher education institutions in java, bali and lampung, luciana (2003) has found that not only were the discrepancies wide in terms of the teachers’ english knowledge base, but also the teaching skills were not adequately imparted and developed. c. efforts should be made to empower the provincial governments to implement the standards in coordination with the regional office of quality assurance. quality assurance lpmp is a newly established body that oversees quality of education at provincial levels. currently there are 13 lpmps all over the country. secondary teachers believe that: (1) quality assurance should be done internally at school (33.3%), (2) lpmp is not able to do the job (28 %), (3) teacher association could be involved in the program (21.4%), and (4) teachers are not aware of lpmp (16.0%). this suggests the following. a. quality assurance should be perceived as an internal commitment of the school to improving education. in line with the current policy on school-based management, the school should develop its own quality assurance unit. b. almost all teachers are aware of the establishment of quality assurance offices but they believe that they are not staffed with professionals and experts to do the job. c. professional associations of efl teachers such as teflin could play an important role in controlling the quality of efl education in the country. 3. major issues and challenges stakeholders would generally have different perceptions on what constitutes burning issues and challenges in efl education in indonesia. elementary teachers, for example, identify the following as the major issues and challenges: a. inconsistency of regulations have created confusion among teachers (33.6%) b. it is difficult to enforce the same standard of education to all districts and cities in indonesia (32.1%) c. conversation should prioritized at elementary school (26.1%) d. good mastery of indonesian will help mastery of foreign language (7.5%) meanwhile secondary efl teachers identified the following as the major issues and challenges: a. inconsistency in policies have created confusion among teachers (25.7%) b. it is difficult to enforce the same standards to all schools across the regencies and cities (30.1%) c. less appreciation from the government to achievement in the humanities (15.5%) d. students’ mastery of indonesian to improve their mastery of foreign language (8.7%) e. foreign language at school be focused on reading (7.1%) most teachers do not like literature (6.8%). from the statistics above the following observations can be set forth. a. both groups of efl teachers recognize five major issues and challenges in efl education in indonesia, namely (1) inconsistency in regulations, which have created confusion among teachers, (2) difficulty in enforcing the same standard of education to all districts and cities in indonesia, (3) conversation should be prioritized at elementary school, and (4) less appreciation from the government to the teaching of the humanities. b. both groups of teachers seem to take it easy the function of indonesian as the first language. the mastery of the first language will affect the mastery of the second or foreign language (watson 2012, in press). as he puts it, and i fully agree international journal of education, vol. 7 no. 1 desember 2013 16 that “... the prerequisite for learning a foreign language well is first to have an excellent command of your language.” c. it is irony that—despite the poor quality of english teaching—english seems to be easier than indonesian. more than 50% of senior high school students had to repeat their indonesian language tests as they had failed in the 2010 national examination (hamied, 2012). there is indication that people in the sample big cities tend to be proud of english than indonesian (sugiono & sasangka: 2011) conclusions indonesia has experienced the abrupt change of the mandated curriculum, the competency-based curriculum (kbk) enacted in 2004, to the ktsp or school-based curriculum, implemented in the 2009/2010 academic year. earlier in the late 1990s, we used the 1994 curriculum, which was then replaced by the 2004 curriculum, which did not differ that much. in practice, these two last curriculums (kbk and ktsp) are not significantly different to each other. for teachers and students directly involved, it has not really made much difference and has not produced a marked improvement in the nation’s education. the last two curriculums asked students to be the center of the learning process, but the fact is that in classrooms, teachers are still at the center. the curriculums are good but they are hard to apply in indonesia for a variety of reasons. here are the major ones. first, basic to curriculum development is research; try out, socialization, and decision. the current curriculum as well as the previous ones was developed without carefully following those steps, therefore many problems persist. school-based curriculum (ktsp) empowers junior high schools and teachers to implement it by accommodating and utilizing their local potentials. however, due to limited expertise and experiences, they are not ready to do it. they still rely on the guidelines from the central government. second, the current policies have produced inconsistencies and these have created confusion among teachers. the spirit of school-based curriculum is school autonomy to manage the school including school exams. however, in the current system all students have to take the national exams, which are developed by the central government. in terms of class size, the standard is 30 students per class. however to materialize the compulsory education policy, oftentimes the school has to admit more students (up to 48-50 students per class) than it can take. third, in general teachers’ english proficiency is not sufficient to be a professional english teacher, despite their claimed mastery of the subject (teaching materials). at the primary level, the situation is even worse. unqualified teachers are recruited by primary schools especially in rural areas. thus the school has developed the wrong foundation for learning english at the upper levels. no commitment is shown by the regional government to financing professional development programs. english teaching at primary schools is a school policy, not a government policy, so the regional government has no responsibility for undertaking such programs. ostensibly, secondary school teachers recommended that professional development programs be carried out by the central government, as the regional governments are not ready to share the responsibility. fourth, teacher recruitment is neither selective nor competitive, especially at elementary levels. unfortunately the government is not directly concerned, because english teaching is a school policy. in general teachers are aware that instructional technology, which was the weakest factor in their professionalism, is important for promoting quality learning. however, instructional technology is not everything. the most important aspect of language learning is teachers’ mastery of english and its a. chaedar alwasilah, policy on foreign language education in indonesia 17 pedagogy. a humanistic approach to learning, such as creative, innovative, effective, active, and fun learning, is instrumental in promoting quality learning. and all of these are very much appreciated by elementary students. to achieve this, teaching should observe the following characteristics: student-centered, joyful learning; competency-based learning; mastery learning; continuous learning; and contextual learning. only well-prepared preservice training will produce such quality teachers. fifth, due to disparity in terms of quality and quantity of teachers, school and infrastructure throughout the country, the present problems will persist. good teachers, good schools, and modern infrastructure exist in the urban areas. in the meantime, the majority (around 60%) of the population live in the rural areas. the policy on regional autonomy in education essentially fits in the country. however, the policy does not work as the regional governments do not have quality human resources to exercise it. sixth, our first language education has not built a strong foundation for developing proficiency and literacy in the foreign language. the introduction of efl to primary school students to a certain extent has created a phenomenon of uprooting the indigenous culture. besides, given the present problems, it fails to pave a smooth way for teaching english at the secondary levels. ideally the local content in the elementary curriculum should be used for exposing the local culture to the students. elementary students as well as their parents are proud of learning english instead of, say, sundanese language, a local language spoken by more than 30 million in west java. currently the government is calling for revitalizing character education. character is first developed thorough the ethnic language and catered by first culture. efl teachers have an opportunity to positively influence our students on the potentials and local wisdom embedded in the ethnic languages. efl teachers should integrate local wisdom into language teaching especially at elementary and secondary levels. seventh, professional development of efl teachers should be put in the comprehensive framework of language planning. as a multicultural and multilingual country, indonesia is facing a magnitude of problems, efl education is just one them. as a matter of fact, we are still dragging our feet in improving our first language education, which is much more urgent to fix. character building and critical thinking are first and foremost developed through the first language. efl teachers should be reminded that success in efl learning to a great extent depends on the success in the first language learning. in terms of professional development, the current system has not empowered the regional government to take the initiatives. besides they do not have human resources to exercise the autonomy implied the current curriculum. list of acronyms bse buku sekolah elektronik (e-school textbook) bsnp badan standarisasi nasional pendidikan (board of national standard of education) gba genre-based approach kbk kurikulum berbasis kompetensi (competence-based curriculum) ktsp kurikulum tingkat satuan pendidikan (school-based curriculum) lpmp lembaga penjaminan mutu pendidikan (board for quality assurance of education) lptk lembaga pendidikan tenaga kependidikan (teacher training college/university) mgmp musyawarah guru mata pelajaran (deliberation of school subject teachers) paikem pembelajaran aktif, inovatif, kreatif, efektif dan menyenangkan (active, innovative, creative, effective, and fun) international journal of education, vol. 7 no. 1 desember 2013 18 pgsd pendidikan guru sekolah dasar (elementary teacher education) p4tk pusat pelatihan pengembangan profesi tenaga kependidikan (center for educational personnel training and development) plpg pendidikan latihan profesi guru (teacher professional development program) rsbi rintisan sekolah bertarap international (project school of international standard) teflin teachers of english as a foreign language in indonesia references alwasilah, a. chaedar. 2004. language, culture, and education: a portrait of contemporary indonesia. bandung: andira. ----------, 2011. integrating local wisdom into language teaching. a paper presented at conaplin, language center, upi, bandung, indonesia. 19-20 september 2011. cross david, 2003. language teacher preparation in developing countries: structuring preservice teacher training programs. english teaching forum, october 2003 dardjowidjojo, s. 1998. strategies for a successful national language policy: the indonesian case. 0165-2516/98/01300035 international journal of sociology of language 130 (1998), pp. 35-47. emilia, emi. 2010. lesson study dan pemahaman guru terhadap implementasi pendekatan genre-based dalam pengajaran bahasa inggris (studi kasus di salah satu sekolah mitra pengembangan lesson study di bandung. laporan penelitian, fpbs upi emilia, emi, et al. 2010. laporan penelitian pendekatan gba dalam pengajaran bahasa inggris di indonesia. upi. ethnologue. 2005. ethnologue: languages of the world. fifteenth edition. dallas, tex.: sil international. http://www.ethnologue. com/ hamied, f.a. 2010. english in indonesian education. a paper presented at the 2010 macao international forum: english as an international language in asia, 4-6 december 2010. hamied, f.a. 2011. the teaching of english in indonesian: a brief review and some implications. paper presented to upi & um discussion forum, 19 july 2011. lauder allan, 2008 makara, sosial humaniora, vol. 12, no. 1, juli 2008: pp 9-20 lightbown, p. (2000). classroom sla research and second language teaching. applied linguistics 21, 4: 431-62. luciana, 2003. developing standards for language teacher education programs in indonesia: professionalizing or losing in complexity? teflin journal: a publication on the teaching and learning of english, volume 15, no 1 (2004) marcelino, m. 2008. english language teaching in indonesia: a continuous challenge in education and cultural diversities. teflin. journal, volume19, number 1, february 2008. mitchel, rosammond and florence myles. 2004. second language learning theories. 2nd edition. london: hoddler arnold. palmer, g and chodidjah, i. 2012. training the pesantren intercultural materials for islamic boarding schools in indonesia. innovating efl teaching in asia. macmillan. syah, muhibin and rahayu kariadinata, 2009. bahan pelatihan pembelajaran aktif, inovatif, kreatif, efektif dan menyenangkan. bandung: uin sunan gunung jati. sugiyono and srytjatur wisnu sasangka. 2011. sikap masyarakat indonesia terhadap bahasanya. yogyakarta: elmatera publishing. a. chaedar alwasilah, policy on foreign language education in indonesia 19 the jakarta post, 09/23/2011. http://ekagurunesama.blogspot.com/2012/01/ sejarah-kurikulum-indonesia.html wallace j. michael. 1993. training foreign language teachers: a reflective approach. cambridge university press. watson, c.w. 2012. learning and teaching process: more about readers and writers. the jakarta post, feb 11. government publications peraturan menteri pendidikan nasional no 22 tahun 2006 tentang standar isi untuk satuan pendidikan dasar dan menengah. (ministerial regulations no 22, year 2006 on standards of content for elementary and secondary school). peraturan menteri pendidikan nasional no 07 tahun 2007 tentang lembaga penjaminan mutu pendidikan (ministerial regulation no 07 year 2007 on board of quality assurance of education). peraturan pemerintah no 19 tahun 2005 tentang standar nasional pendidikan (government regulation no 19 year 2005 on the standards of national education). undang-undang sistem pendidikan nasional no 20 tahun 2003 tentang sistem pendidikan nasional (law no 20 year 2003 on the system of national education). a. chaedar alwasilah is a professor of english language, literacy and culture education at school of postgraduate studies, indonesia university of education. his latest work is islam, culture and education. ranbir singh malik, strengthening education to generate educational graduates 43 strengthening education to generate educational graduates (teacher preparation and certification in australia) ranbir singh malik edith cowan university abstract considering that education has become the engine room for modern economies and the backbone for prosperity of any nation, there is a massive drive on a global scale to upgrade the quality of education a nation provides to its citizens. the top performing education systems have demonstrated that the quality of teacher training and raising the social status of teachers is a pre-requisite to improve the quality of education the citizens of a nation receive. this paper focuses on (a) the attributes of quality teacher training and quality teachers, (b) discussion of australian and singaporean approach to teacher training, and (c) need for indonesian teacher training institutes to upgrade their strategies to provide quality training. since teachers are the most valuable to schools investment in teacher professionalism is vital to ensure that they are equipped with an evidence-based repertoire of pedagogical skills that are demonstrably effective in meeting the developmental and learning needs of all students. keywords: teacher professionalism, education system, teacher training of higher education in many countries have made it their top priority to produce quality graduates. institutions of teacher training in many countries have started to modernize their teacher training practices in an effort to provide quality education at the foundation level: primary and secondary schools. the assumption of high spending on education is that it would lead to an increase in the skilled workforce to improve national productivity and make the workforce better able to perform and compete in global markets (e.gs, japan and south korea). in many developing countries, the expansion of educational opportunities is one of the most powerful tools governments have got to improve the living conditions of people. in order to develop a nation as a consumer market of global standards, it is imperative that all of its children reap the full benefits of high quality education. although the quality of education in some developing countries (e.g., china, malaysia) has improved, world bank (1980) found that the mean score of students from the developing countries was introduction modern society is in the middle of a number of significant social, cultural, and economic changes. education is becoming the engine room for modern economies and a key factor for progress. in the 21st century, quality education will be the backbone of any nation and quality of human resources will determine its strength. in recent years, there has been an increasing recognition of human capital and its contribution to workforce participation and to foster technological changes. people with better education and training tend to participate in the workforce for longer and are more able to adapt to the changing nature of demands from the workforce. a high quality and responsive education is vital to increasing skills, which in turn, boosts labour force participation and productivity. the asian development bank (1989) found a strong positive relationship between the average number of years of schooling and the average annual change in gnp per capita over the period of 10 ears in 13 asian developing countries. keeping this in view, institutions international journal of education, vol. 7 no. 1 desember 2013 44 equal only to the score of the bottom 5% to 10% of students from the developed countries because the quality of education is much higher in the developed countries. in fact, in many developed countries quality education has become a major industry. for instance, the usa earns $46 billions per annum from the fee paying overseas students (most of them are from the southeast asian countries. the comparative earnings of the uk, canada and australia are $ 27billions, $17billions, and $16billions, respectively. in the asean region, all the countries consider human resource development as a key element in developing the whole nation and they have realized that education plays a pivotal role in improving the quality of human resources. sediman (2004) aptly puts: we are facing unprecedented challenge, brought by the convergent impacts of globalization, the increasing importance of knowledge as a principal driver of growth and the ict revolution..... the right to (quality and equity) education imposes an obligation upon countries to ensure that all children and citizens have opportunities to meet their basic learning needs. promoting quality and equity education is a common policy for countries of southeast asia, regardless of their different levels of development (p.1). profi le of high performing education systems the countries which have demonstrated excellence (e.gs, finland, south korea, singapore, japan, hong kong) in teaching and learning have ensured to raise the status of teaching as a career and concerted efforts are made to attract quality graduates for teaching training. in finland for example, teachers are held in high esteem and graduates are selected for teacher training from among the very high achievers. most of the teachers have a master degree. barber and mourshead (2007) studied some of the top performing school systems of different countries. they found that (i) increase in salary, (ii) rigorous process to select entrants to teacher education, and (iii) control over the numbers of students undertaking teacher education courses can make huge impact on improving the teachinglearning process at primary and secondary level. in singapore, the ministry of education selects and employs prospective teachers before they commence teaching (masters, 2012). in top performing countries students who are enrolled for teacher training have five main attributes: strong academic achievement, high levels of literacy and numeracy, strong interpersonal and communication skills, openness to ongoing learning, and passion for teaching (masters, ibid). these countries control entry to teacher education to match the balance between demand and supply of teachers. high performing education systems place high priority on ensuring that all teachers receive excellent preparation to teach. teachers for passion to teach develop high level knowledge of their subjects they teach and use high level pedagogical teaching learning practices. teacher training the pre-formal phase of learning to teach is the student life for 12000 hours spent in primary and secondary school. during this apprenticeship phase students closely observe their teacher’s teaching styles. they learn to be critical and appreciative of different teachers’ approach to teaching. therefore, this pre-existing knowledge acts like a filtering device and it can limit the appreciation of new ideas which they are exposed to during their teacher training. it can block their professional development. teachers who are influenced too much by pre-existing knowledge tend to stick to outdated teaching methods. during teacher training courses they make adjustments to preexisting knowledge which is essential to learn to be a teacher. if their initial understanding is not engaged, they may fail to grasp the new concepts and information or they may learn for the purpose of a test but revert to preconceptions outside the classroom. to ranbir singh malik, strengthening education to generate educational graduates 45 develop competence in an area of inquiry that allows them to ‘enact’ what they know, teachers must have a deep foundation of factual and theoretical knowledge, understand facts and ideas in the context of conceptual framework, and organize knowledge in ways that facilitate retrieval and action. thus, to successfully prepare effective teachers, teacher training should lay the foundation for life-long learning. given short period for preparing teachers and the fact that not everything can be taught , decisions must be made about the content and strategies are most likely to prepare new entrants to be able to learn from their own practice, as well as the insights of other teachers and researchers. carter (1990) notes that how one frames the learning-to-teach question depends a great deal on how that learning might take place. this is consistent with wiggin’s and mctigh’s (1998) argument that the domain of effective learning opportunities needs to begin with a clear idea of what we want people to know and be able to do. expertise along with efficiency dimension involves greater abilities to perform particular tasks without having to develop too many attentional resources to achieve them. expert teachers are able to perform a variety of activities without having to stop and think about how to do them. effective teaching needs to be highly interactive and should vary depending on the needs of each learner. despite the growing consensus that teachers do make difference in student academic performance the role of teacher education in teachers’ effectiveness is a matter of debate. american research indicates that over the 20th century there have been many excellent examples of well-proven teaching practices but even the best of them was rarely adopted by more than 20% of teachers. highlighting the importance of teacher training evertson, hawly and zlotnik (1985) from a review of research on teacher training concluded: the available research suggests that among students who become teachers, those enrolled in formal pre-service preparation programs are more likely to be effective than those who do not have such training. moreover, almost all well planned and executed efforts within teacher preparation programs to teach students specifi c knowledge or skills seem to succeed at least in the short run (p.8). teacher training in australia although australian education system is rated as one of the well performing systems in the world, currently, sweeping changes have taken place to improve it further. concerns relating to quality and public accountability in education have given rise to a range of national reports that identify key competencies as guidelines for ensuring the standardization of quality and efficiency. in 1989, the hobart declaration on schooling (australia education council, 1989) heralded agreement on education matters across australia. since then, there has been the development through national curriculum statements and profiles, of standard approach to the teaching and reporting relationships between schools, teachers and parents. national curricula-a topic of considerable debate within the educational communityunderpins much of what is taught in schools today. consistent with the pressure for the professional needs of teachers have been subject to investigation through national programs. in july 2001, teacher quality and educational leadership taskforce was established to report on: (i) teacher preparation and ongoing development aimed at improving the quality and standard of teaching and learning; (ii) professional standards for teachers and principals, both for entry to the profession and to meet the ongoing needs of students over time. the national goals for schooling in the 21st century (the adelaide declaration, 2002) identified the following goals to be followed at national scale: international journal of education, vol. 7 no. 1 desember 2013 46 a. strengthening schools as learning communities where teachers, students, and their families work in partnership with business, industry and the wider community. b. enhancing the status and quality of the teaching profession. c. continuing to develop curriculum and related systems of assessment, accreditation, and credentialing that promote quality and are nationally recognized and valued. d. increasing public confidence in school education through explicit and defensible standards that guide improvement in students’ levels of educational achievement and through which the effectiveness, efficacy and equity of schooling can be measured and evaluated. in australia, teacher education has undergone big changes in recent years. current paradigm based on competency ideology is moving towards the subordination of the social to the economic, the cultural to the vocational and broad-based education to the narrow confines of competency-based vocational education. there is a strong move in australia (as in the uk and the usa) to develop a national set of competencies for teacher education through national project for quality teaching and learning. “the current reforms lead to a mode of policy-making attempts to comply with existing world and national economic trends” (bartlett, 1992, p. 61). these reforms in teacher education are themselves part of a meta-reform agenda driven by a framework of economic rationalism in globalized context. teacher education in australia is currently shaped by a number of contentious educational issues such as competencies and national standards, government allocation of funds and resources, the decentralization of schooling, and significant changes in the nature of teachers’ work that result from shifts in educational policies and provision. a big change in the education system of australia was initiated in 2008. in an election rally prime minister kevin rudd announced: “more than anything else, it is strong productivity growth and high levels of workforce participation that will make australia competitive in the first decades of the 21st century. but no policy is more important than australia’s involvement in human capital-education, skills and training of the workforce. with new education policies, australia’s future workers will be able to work smarter, not just harder. that will allow us to build business that can compete in global markets and win.....australia needs nothing less than a revolution in education in a substantial and sustained increase in the quantity of our investment and quality of education...more educated economies are wealthier economies. a healthy, skilled, an motivated population is critical to workforce participation and productivity and hence australia’s future living standard” (kevin rudd, prime minister of australia, 2008). many universities have a school of education where teacher training is undertaken along with providing opportunities for post graduate studies. currently, more rigorous standards for teacher training courses to improve the quality of teachers graduating from universities have been undertaken. aspiring teachers will be required to pass a literacy and numeracy test so that they have the skills to be effective teachers and positive role models. the aim is to raise the quality of teaching at every stage of a teacher’s career and to ensure that the best and bright teachers enter into the classrooms to provide best education to students. teachers with high literacy and numeracy and dedication for teaching, presumably, will help raise teaching and learning to a new high level. with such a dedicated teaching force principals have confidence in the abilities of their staff and parents have confidence that every teacher has gone through a rigorous selection and training process. mr. bowen the minister of education ranbir singh malik, strengthening education to generate educational graduates 47 of australia (june, 2013) outlined the four major elements to strengthen teacher training programs. 1. more rigorous and targeted admissions into university courses for graduates enrolling in teaching courses. potential candidates would be interviewed, required to demonstrate values and aptitude for teaching, and give a written statement. 2. students will have to pass a new literacy and numeracy test, building on national plan for school improvement, before they graduate. 3. a national approach to teacher practicum to ensure new teachers have the skills, personal capacity and practical experience they need to do well. 4. a review of all teaching courses by the tertiary education quality and standards agency. the government is committed to ensure that teaching quality and qualifications are clear and uniform across australia. $550 million have been allocated to teacher quality national partnership to attract the best graduates into teaching and to provide ongoing training and development. a new science of learning research centre has been established to bring together educational professionals and researchers in areas ranging from neuroscience and cognitive development to pedagogy and educational technology to explore how advance techniques in learning research can be used to support more effective teaching practices. other initiatives undertaken to support more effective teaching practices are the introduction of master of teaching program at the university of melbourne, graduate level research-based courses in teaching of reading, the teaching of mathematic and assessment of student learning at the australian council for educational research. a number of schemes have been introduced to keep high quality teachers in classrooms. advanced skills teachers, lead teachers, classroom first strategy, stage one and stage two teachers (promotion based on performance) have been introduced. incentives are offered for expert teachers to stay at classroom teaching instead of moving to administrative jobs with more experience in teaching. increasing number of the schools are given the status of an independent public school where principal is given more autonomy to make decisions on the running of school. national standards for teachers school effectiveness research (rutter et al., 1979) has demonstrated that effective schools are characterized by an ethos or cultureorientation towards learning, expressed in terms of high achievement standards, and expectations of students, an emphasis on basic skills, high level of involvement in decisionmaking, professionalism among teachers, cohesiveness in clear policies on matters such as homework, and student behaviour. effective schools are charactewrized by outstanding educational leadership, particularly as implemented by the principal and directed towards establishing agreed goals, increasing competence and involvement of staff, and clarifying roles and expectations. teachers are essential players in promoting quality education. well-trained, highly motivated, dedicated, and professionally competent teachers are essential for the development of human resources. the united states department of education (2002, p. 19) has identified five dimensions of excellent teachers. first, they can identify essential representations of their subjects and have deep understanding of their subject and process of teaching and learning. they combine new subject matter of content knowledge with prior knowledge and relate current lesson content to the other subjects in the curriculum. second, they adopt problem-solving stance to their work. they are opportunistic and flexible in their teaching and take advantage of new information to integrate in international journal of education, vol. 7 no. 1 desember 2013 48 the current lesson. third, they anticipate, plan and improve as required by the situation. they are more likely to monitor their ongoing solution attempts checking for accuracy and upgrading representations as new constraints emerge. they seek feedback as providing information about children, their home background. fourth, they are good decisionmakers and skilful in keeping the lesson on track, keeping the students interested and accomplish their objectives while allowing students’ questions and comments as springboards for discussions. they keep balance between student-centred and teachercentred instruction. fifth, they monitor student learning, give positive feedback and improve student outcomes. in 2008, a team of academics in collaboration with australian council of education and research (acer) completed report for business council of australia entitled: teacher talent-the best teachers for australian classrooms. the federal government of australia has announced a national certification of teachers. this initiative goes to the heart of improving the quality of teaching in australian schools. a new integrated national approach involving national teaching standards and levels of voluntary certification, above the common and mandatory registration level with commensurate financial rewards has been introduced. all teachers (300, 000) in australia are going through the process of assessment and certification monitored by the registration board of teachers. national standards for teachers are underlined in the national framework for professional standards for teaching: a strong and effective school education system is integral to individual success, social cohesion, progress, and national prosperity. it is clear that teachers have to be more and more successful with a wide range of learners to prepare future citizens with the sophisticated skills needed to participate in a knowledge-based society. the sort of pedagogy needed to help students develop the ability to think critically, create, solve complex problems and master complex subject matter, is much more demanding than that needed to impact and develop routine skills. thus, teachers have to be both knowledgeable in their content areas and extremely skilful in a wide range of teaching approaches to cater for the diverse learning needs of every student (2003, p.3). the types of graduates who enter for teacher training have been a major concern in australia. masters argues: if australia aspires to be among the world’s highest –performing nations in school education, it will need to learn from world’s highest-performing nations in school education. it will need to learn from world’s best practice in the selection of its teachers. this will mean developing clarity about the attributes sought in future teachers and testing for those as part of initial teacher education selection processes (2012, p. 2). now the state governments are making whole-hearted effort to lure top 30% of school leavers in teacher training programs. the federal government of australia has announced a national certification of teachers. this initiative goes to the heart of improving the quality of teaching in australian schools. a new integrated national approach involving national teaching standards and levels of voluntary certification, above the common and mandatory registration level with commensurate financial rewards has been introduced. a standard based career structure the main features of this career structure are: a. common national standards for graduates of teacher education courses with courses accredited against these standards. b. required national certification of provisionally registered teachers in the first year of teaching. c. the ability of registered teachers to ranbir singh malik, strengthening education to generate educational graduates 49 practice anywhere in australia and earn salary approximately 1.25 times that of a beginning teacher rising to 2. d. registered teachers would retain registration for a period of say 5 years during which time they would need to demonstrate professional learning against the national standards and meet employers’ requirements for appraisal and salary progression. e. optional certification of both the accomplished leading teacher levels, with candidates meeting national standards for each designation. an accomplished teacher could earn up to 2.5 that of a beginner teacher while leading teachers earning beyond that. currently, an accomplished teacher receives a salary bonus of a$80,000 per annum. promotion towards head of department or assistant principal would be granted on the basis of high level of teaching experience and strong involvement in working with other teachers through professional learning, monitoring and curriculum development. this report also recommended: f. graduates for teacher training program must be drawn from the top quartile of secondary school graduates. g. beginning teachers to receive high quality support and guidance to prepare them for national certification/registration. h. nationally accredited professional development for teachers and school leaders to support a national curriculum and testing regime. i. salary and career structures to be structured along the lines above through individual employing authority industrial awards agreed between employers and teacher unions to drive and reward higher levels of teacher accomplishment against national awards. a new national body, the australian institute for teaching and school leadership (aitsl) is given the responsibility for establishing ‘rigorous’ national professional standards fostering high quality professional development for teachers and school leaders and working collaboratively with key professional bodies. the biggest issue in australian primary and secondary education is not the lack of computers, new buildings or equipment. it is the need for each student to have quality teachers and quality teaching in schools supported by effective leadership and professional learning in mutually respectful community centres. aitsl is responsible for (a)rigorous professional standards, (b) fostering and driving high quality professional development for teachers and school leaders, and (c) working collaboratively across jurisdictions and engaging with key professional bodies. it provides national leadership for commonwealth, state governments in promoting excellence in professional teaching and school leadership. aitsl 360 degree tool is a type of quality assurance in teaching and to enhance professional practice of teachers and principals. it is a device to gauge reflection of leadership quality, monitor progress in innovative strategies in teaching and plan professional learning and development opportunities. graduation standards provisionally registered teacher x salary registration standards registration standards 1.25x salary at certification standards accomplished teacher 2x salary lt certification standards leading teacher 2.5x salary school leadership standards knowledge skills/school leader 3 salary international journal of education, vol. 7 no. 1 desember 2013 50 better school plan while australia has good schools its performance has declined by international standards and the gap between the highest and the lowest performing students has widened. in recent years australia has fallen from the 2nd place to 7th in reading, and 5th to 13th in maths. also, there is a larger achievement gap than other similar nations with low ses and indigenous students clustered towards the bottom (australian education is characterized by high quality, low equity and high social segregation). educational leaders have taken the task of improving educational standards as a matter of urgency. “there is nothing more important to the future of our nation than what is happening in our schools today....the education our children receive will defi ne our future economy, it will determine our strength as a nation....” (minister of education, june 2013). better school plan which starts in 2014 is a plan to improve results of all schools and students by introducing educational reforms that evidence shows improve results. the plan is based on reforms in five core areas: (a) quality teaching, (b) quality learning, (c) empowered school leadership, (d) meeting student needs, and (e) greater transparency and accountability. the better school plan aims to take australian schools into the top 5 in the world by 2025. in the national plan for school improvement $15 billion have been allocated ($10 billion by commonwealth and $5 billion by states) over the next six years (2013-19). this money will be used on the things like: a. better ways of teaching like working with literacy/numeracy specialists, tracking students’ needs. b. specialist programs such as reading or maths extension activities. c. more teachers, teacher aides, specialist support staff. d. better resources and equipment, smart boards, computers, i-pads, tablets. e. new strategies to tackle bullying and help teachers for behaviour management. more involvement of parents and school boards. new national curriculum curriculum refers to the knowledge that a society selects from the total available reservoir of knowledge deemed valued and essential for students to learn in schools. schools continue to be key institutions for determining who acquires what types of knowledge. a relevant curriculum which addresses the need of students and community should be provided. mismatching between what students learn at school and what the community or world of work demands is the issue the new curriculum addresses. irrelevant curriculum and outdated teaching strategies contribute to the widening gap between education institutions and world of work which, in turn, leads to increasing unemployment. the concept of national curriculum in australia has been afloat since the 1970s. in 2006, howard government was put under pressure to prescribe a core curriculum for australian schools. it was argued that there was a need about the valued or essential knowledge that all australian students needed to learn for full participation in society. lack of curriculum consistency across states was also confusing for parents and students in a highly mobile society like australia where each year about 2.5% people move between states. after kevin rudd became the prime minister in 2007 he announced the formation of a board to develop national curriculum for australian schools. this board, headed by a distinguished professor barry mcgaw, was established in 2009. national curriculum, part of australian education revolution, was implemented in 2011. the purpose of national curriculum is to provide curriculum essentials (the content and achievement standards) that all young australians should have access to. the national curriculum provides parents and ranbir singh malik, strengthening education to generate educational graduates 51 teachers with a clear understanding of what needs to be covered in each subject at each year level. it aims to equip young australians with the skills, knowledge and capabilities to enable them to effectively engage with and prosper in society, compete in a globalised world and thrive in the information-rich work places of the future. new national curriculum has been developed by the australian curriculum assessment and reporting authority (acara) in collaboration with a wide range of stakeholders, including teachers, principals, government state and territory education authorities, professional education associations, business/industry, community groups and the public. the development of australia’s national curriculum spans k-12, starting with the learning areas of english, maths, science and history which were implemented in 2011. as a second phase of work, national curriculum has been implemented in all areas of school curriculum. acara is a 13-member board, made up of experts nominated by each of the state and territory governments as well as the catholic and independent schools and the commonwealth. it reports to federal, state and territory education ministers through the ministerial council on all matters related to k-12 education in australia. acara is responsible for 1. a national curriculum for k-12 in specified learning areas and to provide information, resources, support and guidance to the teaching profession; 2. a national assessment program aligned to the national curriculum that measures students’ progress and comparative school performance; 3. a national data collection and reporting program that supports analysis, evaluation, research, and resource allocation, and accountability and reporting on schools and broader national achievement. 4. publish information relating to school education, including information relating to comparative school performance. 5. facilitating information sharing arrangements between australian government bodies in relation to the collection, management and analysis of school data. to improve the quality of teaching following steps have been taken: a. a national quality project has been undertaken to disseminate information about best practice in teacher professional development. b. teacher accountability and the public reporting of educational outcomes is embraced nationwide. c. curriculum and assessment practices have been revised and ict has been incorporated to meet skills shortage and vocational and home economics training sector has been expanded. d. effective programs to support beginning teachers have been identified and disseminated. e. effective teaching practices for indigenous students are being given special attention. f. to enhance professional standards in areas such as science, english, maths the role of teacher association has been recognized. g. australian college of education is supported in its efforts to stimulate discussion about professional standards for school teachers. h. principal and aspiring leaders are encouraged to implement innovative approaches to whole school management through the australian principals association professional development council. i. government lends full support to activities of peak principals association to develop national framework which defines the common elements necessary for excellence in school leadership. j. principals are supported to improve education outcomes of indigenous students.. international journal of education, vol. 7 no. 1 desember 2013 52 my school website on 28 january 2010 my school website (www.myschool.edu.au) was launched. my school website has been developed in close consultation with schools and school jurisdictions right across australia. its role is to provide high quality and nationally comparable data on australia’s 10,000 schools. data published in my school website will benefit parents, schools, governments and the wider community to better understand school performance. on this site information can be searched by name, location and sector. this information enables to (a) access consistent information about all schools; (b) compare the average performance of students in a school on national literacy and numeracy tests (naplan)in years 3, 5, 7, 9 with the average performance of students in statistically similar schools across australia; (c) search for schools within a particular area. my school website represents the state, territory and national governments’ vision for greater transparency and accountability in students’ performance within schools. this step was considered necessary to ensure that every child in australia received the highest quality education and the best opportunity to achieve through participation in employment and society. the information includes national testing results and school attainment rates, indicators relevant to the needs of the students and the school’s capacity. for the first time, the community will be able to view profiles and data on students’ performance within all australian schools in one location. in 2008), the national assessment program in literacy and numeracy (naplan) commenced in australian schools. every year, all students in years 3,5,7,9 are assessed on reading, writing, language conventions (spelling, grammar) and numeracy. this program allows to compare student achievements against national standards and teachers are becoming more adept at using achievement data diagnostically. league of tables gives the performance of all students australia wide and parents can see how their child is performing against other children. each school’s performance can be seen on the league of tables. fair and meaningful comparisons have been made possible by making use of the index of community socio-educational advantage (icsea) to group schools together that are statistically similar in terms of their student intakes. the website displays each school’s (icsea) value. an index of 1000 is the average. nearly 70% of schools have values between 900 and 1000. the lowest icsea values are 500 and the highest above 1300. a low number indicates that the students at the school generally have a less educationally advantaged background than students at schools with a higher icsea value for each school the spread in student background is indicated. the website also displays performance on each of the naplan tests. professor mcgaw explains, “overall, there are about 45% of schools with literacy and numeracy test results that are close to those of other statistically similar schools, and there are 9% that are either substantially above or substantially below their other statistically similar schools. the spread of performance on literacy and numeracy tests increases progressively from year 3 to year 9 and there are fewer differences between schools that are substantial” (2011). singapore-another example of a high performing education system high performing education systems understand the importance of keeping excellent teachers in the classroom, continually building teachers’ pedagogical knowledge and skills, and recognizing and rewarding expert practice. poor in natural resources but rich in human resources the city state of singapore has recorded phenomenal prosperity through the ladder of its quality education and training its manpower to face the challenges of modern era. with a focus on knowledge-based economy an efficient ranbir singh malik, strengthening education to generate educational graduates 53 education system has been developed to create world class man power to feed its service industrial sector which is the backbone to maintain the high living standards. thinking schools and learning society (1989) meant a sea change in the education system from top to bottom. founding prime minister lee kuan yew attributes singapore’s prosperity to confucian ethic which is doing to singapore as protestant ethic did for the development of early western civilization. with basic cultural values, tightly-knit asian family system has “given singaporean roots to hold him steady as his life travels the path of english language, american technology, swiss expertise and japanese business acumen” strait times, december 10, 2005). press release (september 17, 2009) termed teachers as the heart of quality education. at the ministry of education work plan seminar minister for education of singapore dr. ng eng hen argued that the aim of primary education is to prepare each child to become confident person, a self-directed learner, an active contributor and concerned citizen. accepting english as the lingua franca of singapore there is a heavy commitment to lay a good foundation to improve the communication skills at the primary school level. a new teacher development centre has been established as a focal point for teacher professional development. ministry of education is nurturing a teacher-driven culture of professional excellence with the aim to support the development of schools as professional learning communities. teaching track is being established where educational officers have a choice of three tracksleadership, senior specialist and teaching. to groom a core group of experts new positions for teachers are created: principal master teacher with responsibility to ba a facilitator for teachers in curriculum innovation and driving new pedagogies to uplift teaching practices in schools. principal master teachers and master teachers teach master classes in schools, lead the professional development for their colleagues, drive curricula innovation in schools and engage in pedagogical research and innovation. principal master teachers are assisted in post-graduate studies, innovative teaching programs and overseas attachment programs. a new teaching framework (2011) to enhance the quality of teaching has been prepared. it aims at (a) strengthening teacher professionalism, (b) developing engagement with teachers, (c) fulfilling teachers’ aspirations, (d) enhancing teacher career opportunities, and (e) achieving harmony in work and life. the academy of singapore teachers has been set up to support and foster a teacher-driven culture of professional excellence, innovation and collaboration. at the school level, a new lead teacher position to champion a culture of teaching excellence and collaborated professionalism has been created. steeped in subject knowledge and pedagogical skills, the lead teacher leads senior teachers and partner school leaders to build professional capacity within the school in areas of subject content, pedagogy and assessment. principals are assisted by dedicated human resource partner to provide consultancy service on strategic human resource issue. monetary awards are given to teachers after completing their master degree. in southeast asia, singapore has redefined its mission and vision of education. its mission is to mould the future of the nation by moulding the people who will determine the future of the nation. its vision of thinking schools and learning nation as an overall descriptor of education system is geared to meet the needs of the 21st century. singapore model in short is: a quality teaching force with a strong expertise in curriculum and pedagogy and a culture of continual professional development hold the key tp preparing students with the knowledge, skills and attributes required for the 21st century workforce. ministry of education is endeavouring to build a quality teaching force and grow a world-class education service for students. international journal of education, vol. 7 no. 1 desember 2013 54 is our teaching training effective to prepare effective teachers? in recent years, few educational issues have received more attention than the problem of ensuring that elementary and secondary classrooms are all staffed with quality teachers. good the issue of teacher quality is currently is one of the most pressing concerns identified by educational policy makers and perceived by media, the public at large and by educators themselves. good teachers have great power to inspire students to strive for success, to make ideas come alive in the classrooms and respond to a wide range of student needs. the relationship between teachers’ knowledge and skills and skills prior to or upon certification, and teachers’ performance post certification is critical to understanding what separates a quality teacher from those unqualified or uncertified. many countries around the world are pouring billions of dollars to improve the quality of teachers. in australia, quality teachers are given extra incentives for teaching in more disadvantaged and remote areas to address the issue of inequity. by contrast, in many developing countries not only the target of universal primary schooling has not been achieved but the quality of education remains abysmally poor. according to the unesco report (2006), 113 million primary school children are not enrolled in school; 90% of them are in the developing countries. in terms of primary school education for all indonesia has done well with over 95% school age children attending school. however, dropout rate continues to be a source of concern. bbc report (feb. 1, 2012) on indonesia gave the figure on drop-out rate in indonesian high schools where every eight minute a student is dropping-out and joining hundreds of thousands of street children. provision of quality and equity of education is a major problem in indonesia. the current status of education in indonesia is that students are not performing well on globally competitive tests such as conducted by timss and pisa. pearson and the economist intelligence unit (2012) noted that indonesia’s education system was in dismal shape. the report entitled index of cognitive skills and education attainment which provides a snapshot of the relative performance of countries, based on their education outputs, placed indonesia dead last in all index categories. many graduates prepared by indonesian educational institutions lack skills to be absorbed in the workforce. to improve the quality of workforce in indonesia, foreign companies have to pay compulsory training levy to equip indonesian employees with necessary skills. in modern era teachers are expected to prepare virtually all students for high order thinking and performance skills once reserved only for a few. to meet the growing challenges, teachers need a new kind of preparation-one that enables them to go beyond covering the curriculum and teaching to instill passion for student learning. ensuring that all students have access to highly qualified teachers is of paramount importance. in order to take all students on board, regardless of their socioeconomic status, race and geographical location, schools need to be staffed with the best teachers a nation can supply. teachers must prepare their young pupils to have the strongest chances of success in the knowledge economy. hargreaves puts it this way: our future prosperity depends on our ingenuity, our capacity to harness and develop our collective intelligence in terms of the central knowledge economy attributes of inventiveness, creativity, problem-solving, cooperation, fl exibility, the capacity to develop networks, the ability to cope with change, and commitment to life-long learning..... we live in a time when great vision is called for, when our prosperity and security depend on our capacity to develop pupils and teachers who can understand and be able to engage with the dramatic social changes today’s knowledge society represents, along with the human consequences (1998, p. 161). ranbir singh malik, strengthening education to generate educational graduates 55 although it is widely accepted that teacher quality is a critical component of a successful education, there is little agreement about how to fill nation’s classrooms with teachers who can succeed at the more challenging mission of today’s schools. teachers should not only be deliverers but also developers of learning. those who focus on teaching techniques and curriculum standards and who do not also engage students in the greater social and moral questions of their time, promote a diminishing view of teaching and teacher professionalism that has no place in a sophisticated knowledge society (hargreaves, ibid). in reality though, professional communities are hard to create. they presume and demand quality leadership and levels of teacher capacity that are not always available, especially in schools in poor communities with legacies of failure and hopelessness. the knowledge society belongs to everyone. all children should have an opportunity to reach the highest and most creative levels of it. we cannot afford to risk a future in which teachers have prepared pupils neither for the knowledge economy nor for social and moral challenges. learning to teach is an ongoing process involving pre-service teacher preparation, induction, and beginning teaching, and an ongoing professional learning (coolahan, 2002; darling-hammond and skyes, 1999). “the knowledge-base on which a teaching career is based has deepened and calls for teachers to engage with it on an ongoing basis as life-long learners” (coolahan, 2002, p.13). a number of quality teaching performing countries have developed new paradigms of teacher education. current research has demonstrated that teacher quality is the key determinant of student success, more important than class size, spending on instructional material. in their teacher training program, prospective teachers need to be equipped with command of critical ideas, skills, and capacity to reflect on, evaluate and learn from their teaching so that it continually improves. to improve the quality of education well-trained, highly motivated and dedicated teachers are a pre-requisite to provide quality education to our children. here is a soulsearching question: are our teacher training institutions producing teachers with these attributes? if not, we must look for solution and find an answer. challenges for teacher training institutes and teachers in indonesia are immense. with its massive size, the indonesian archipelago represents the third largest education system in asia (behind china and india). measured on global competitiveness indonesian education system is not performing as well as it should do. some of the stumbling blocks are embedded in the poor quality of teacher training, outdated pedagogy of teaching and learning, lack of teaching resources, large of portion of uncertified teachers, lack of quality control on graduates who enter teacher training courses, lack of rigor in teacher training program and lack of adequate professional development (especially in remote areas). at the top of this, demand for teaching the new curriculum based on thematic integrated approach is an overwhelming task. conclusions primary and secondary education is clearly the bedrock on which any subsequent learning is based. curricula offered to preservice teachers need to consider the demands of today’s society in concert with the growing knowledge base about teaching and learning. teachers are being asked that all students should be able to acquire skills to handle challenges posed by modern technology. as education becomes more important to life, teachers, and schools must expand the range of students they educate and address their individual needs. shortage of quality teachers and equity, status quo of traditional teaching styles are some of the major issues for educational policy makers. traditional schooling is experiencing a credibility crisis as students are dropping out in record numbers and juvenile delinquency is on the international journal of education, vol. 7 no. 1 desember 2013 56 rise. to bring fundamental changes in current practice of education and in the thinking of the practitioners, action is needed at all levels of education. students who are taught by welltrained, energetic and enthusiastic teachers are fortunate indeed. teachers who teach in very difficult physical and social situations need impetus and encouragement from principals and supervisors. professional development and on-job training in the best practices of teaching at primary and secondary levels has to be a coordinated effort by teachers, principals and supervisors. role of our institutions of higher education should be to continually review the pedagogical practices, and train the pre-service teachers who would ignite the passion and zeal for teaching in order to create intrinsic as well as extrinsic interest in learning. there is quite a lot to be done at tertiary level to produce quality educational administrators, educational leaders and quality teachers. success of new curriculum in indonesia depends on the supply of dedicated, well-trained and passionate teachers. those teachers who are already in the workforce need intensive professional development sessions to familiarise with the thematic integrated approach to teach the new curriculum. teacher training institutes must adopt a dynamic view of providing necessary tools to incoming graduates. opportunity is already knocking at the door and time is ticking away. cost of ignoring will be colossal. surely, an indonesian teacher is under enormous pressure and working physical conditions which are not so conducive for implementing innovative strategies for teaching learning. low salaries for teachers are one reason for many of them to look for a second job, high rate teacher absenteeism. this paper has highlighted the problems indonesian education system faces and examples of well performing education systems have been discussed. if we say that cost to improve teaching training program is huge, imagine the cost of ignoring it and benefits to the nation if we address the problem. action has to be taken at multi-level fronts if we want to improve the quality of student outcomes. there are some lessons to be learnt from the experiences of high performing education systems. schools are critical life-line for student success and quality teachers can make a difference. references ashton p. 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(1985). the complementary character development and academic excellence. educational leadership, 43 (4), 15-18. ranbir singh malik was a professor of educational policy at edith cowan university, perth australia, and is currently a visiting professor at school of postgraduate studies, indonesia university of education. database connection failed! jacob daan engel & syamsu yusuf, the effectiveness of the logotherapy 27 the effectiveness of the logotherapy counseling model development to improve low self-esteem of women victims of trafficking jacob daan engel and syamsu yusuf satya wacana christian university indonesia university of education abstract the research aimed to produce an effective developmental model of logotherapy counseling to improve the low self-esteem of women victims of traffi cking. the research employed descriptiveanalytical method, using quasi-experiment because it aimed to describe, analyze, and test the effectiveness of logotherapy counseling model. the activities of the research consisted of a series of model validity test, namely model rationality test, model practicability test, limited test and fi eld test; hence, the research used research and development, participatory approach, and a mix of qualitative and quantitative research. the techniques of data collection used were interview, questionnaire, and observation. the results of the research demonstrated that the use of logotherapy counseling as an intervention program for the experimental group was more effective and had given better results in the dynamics of behavior changes among women victims of traffi cking. the effectiveness was also proven by the results of observation and interview, showing positive values in the dynamics of victims’ behavior changes. logotherapy counseling model has its strengths in self-exploration, self-acceptance, dissociation, self-transcendence, attitudinal values, and self-awareness, which are integrated with self-potential, self-activity and self-evaluation, so that the model can trigger positive changes among the women victims of traffi cking. therefore, there should be a training manual of logotherapy counseling model for social workers in order to improve both conceptual and empirical aspects of treatment, where the former focuses on material comprehension, problem and skill development; and the latter on technique, counseling strategy and approach. keywords: effectiveness, model development, logotherapy counseling, low selfesteem, women victims of trafficking in an attempt of prevention, development, and improvement. departing from kartadinata’s understanding, guidance is needed by women who have healthy self-esteem in an effort of preventing conditions that can hinder development from happening, so that the women can develop themselves and become agent of change. in the context of this research, women victims of trafficking require counseling to improve their low self-esteem into healthy self-esteem; furthermore, they will continuously need guidance as a lifelong education process. conceptually, healthy self-esteem in the perspective of branden (1990: 6-7, 15) is the aspects of thinking and self-value, introduction women victims of trafficking with low self-esteem became the focus of this research because the issue of low self-esteem experienced by women victims of trafficking is a gap that should be improved or abridged, so that the humanistic values of women, such as justice and equality can be realized and the women will have a healthy self-esteem, succeed, and survive. education is thus needed to improve or bridge the gap. in this research, education is oriented to a process of guidance and counseling. according to kartadinata (2009: 5-6), the main focus of counseling and guidance is not the problem, but the personal-individual, international journal of education, vol. 7 no. 1 desember 2013 28 describing one’s ability to improve his or her spiritual development, namely selfawareness, self-acceptance, self-assertiveness, purposefulness, self-responsibility, and self-integrity. the indicator of the spiritual development of healthy self-esteem is the ability of one to improve his or her spiritual dimensions, namely self-potential, selfactivity, and self-evaluation, which according to frankl (2000: 123-4), originate from three kinds of humanistic values, which are creative values, experiential values, and attitudinal values. the results of field study showed that the issues of women victims of trafficking at the social shelter for women in need of protection, women’s social welfare institution ”mulya jaya” jakarta, lie on the inability to improve the spiritual dimension and development to solve physical, psychological, and sexual conditions. on the other hand, the actual counseling treatment for the issues of spiritual dimension and development of the low self-esteem of female victims of trafficking at ”mulya jaya” jakarta was only for a short term of three months, oriented not on the process and exploration, but tended to be on the symptoms observable among the victims referred to ”mulya jaya” jakarta. therefore, there is a gap in the treatment for the developmental issue and spiritual dimension of the low self-esteem of women victims of trafficking. based on the understanding of healthy self-esteem and the results of the aforementioned field study, it can be inferred that the low self-esteem experienced by women victims of trafficking illustrates their inability to improve their spiritual development, namely self-awareness, self-acceptance, self-assertiveness, purposefulness, selfresponsibility and self-integrity, and spiritual dimensions, so that there were seven problems requiring seven techniques and approaches to solve them. meanwhile, logotherapy model in the perspective of frankl, which is seen as an appropriate approach to improve the developmental issue and spiritual dimension of the low self-esteem of women victims of trafficking and which holds onto the spiritual values, only has three techniques and approaches (frankl, 1985a: 129-179). thus, a model development of logotherapy counseling should be conducted. on the other hand, the average educational background of these female victims of trafficking that was in the low category, namely 70% were graduates of and did not finish primary school, became the consideration of the need of model development in implementing logotherapy counseling service. proceeding from the issues under research explained above, the research question is formulated into “how does the result of model development of logotherapy counseling effectively improve the low selfesteem of women victims of trafficking at the social shelter for women in need of special protection, women’s social welfare institution ‘mulya jaya’ jakarta?” this main issue is elaborated into the following questions: 1. what are the problems of the low selfesteem of women victims of trafficking at the social shelter for women in need of special protection, women’s social welfare institution “mulya jaya” jakarta? 2. how actual is the counseling to the issues of spiritual dimension and development of the low self-esteem of women victims of trafficking at “mulya jaya” jakarta? 3. how is the logotherapy counseling model resulted from the development appropriate for the improvement of the spiritual dimension and development of the low self-esteem of women victims of trafficking at “mulya jaya” jakarta? 4. is the logotherapy counseling model produced effective in improving the spiritual dimension and development of women victims of trafficking with low self-esteem at “mulya jaya” jakarta? jacob daan engel & syamsu yusuf, the effectiveness of the logotherapy 29 research purpose the purpose of this research is to “produce an effective logotherapy counseling developmental model to improve the spiritual dimension and development of women victims of trafficking with low self-esteem at the social shelter for women in need of special protection, women’s social welfare institution ‘mulya jaya’ jakarta.” this main aim is elaborated as follows: 1. to find the issues of low self-esteem among women victims of trafficking at the social shelter for women in need of special protection, women’s social welfare institution “mulya jaya” jakarta. 2. to find the actual conduct of counseling for the spiritual dimension and development of the low self-esteem of women victims of trafficking at “mulya jaya” jakarta. 3. to formulate a logotherapy counseling developmental model appropriate to improve the spiritual dimension and development of women victims of trafficking with low self-esteem at “mulya jaya” jakarta. 4. to prove the effectiveness of the produced logotherapy counseling model in improving the spiritual dimension and development of women victims of trafficking with low self-esteem at “mulya jaya” jakarta. method the social shelter for women in need of special protection, women’s social welfare institution “mulya jaya” jakarta was chosen to be the research location because it was the only rehabilitation center for women victims of trafficking in indonesia under the ministry of social affairs of the republic of indonesia. the population and sample of this research were women victims of trafficking as many as 30 people, divided equally into experimental and control group, each consisting of 15 women. from the above table, it is found that the majority of women victims of trafficking were at a productive age (70%), single and divorced (70%), with low educational background (70% for primary school graduates and its dropouts). the research method employed was descriptive-analytical method and quasi experiment. descriptive-analytical method was employed to systematically, factually, and accurately explain the facts and traits pertaining to the substance of the research (nazir, 2009: 54-55, 61). what described in this research is the objective condition of the spiritual issues of women victims of trafficking with low self-esteem and the actual implementation of counseling service at the social shelter for women in need of protection, women’s social welfare institution “mulya jaya” jakarta. meanwhile, the analysis focuses on the gap in problem treatment, the need of counseling treatment improvement and the impact of logotherapy counseling intervention program on the dynamics of behavioral changes among women victims of trafficking. the quasi experiment method with nonequivalent pretest-posttest control group design (heppner et al. 2008: 183) was conducted in the field test of the hypothetical model to gain a picture of the effectiveness of logotherapy counseling developmental table 1 profiles of women victims of trafficking no category by age education status 25–15 years old 40–26 years old primary school dropouts primary school junior secondary school senior secondary school married single divorced 1 21 people 9 people 4 people people 17 7 people 2 people 9 people 4 people 7 people international journal of education, vol. 7 no. 1 desember 2013 30 model. the criteria for the effectiveness of the result of model development of logotherapy counseling, its practical significance and statistical significance, are described as follows: practical significance 1) at the stage of model development, the theory and basic principles should fulfill the validity requirements for educational products (borg & gall, 2003: 570) through model assessment by experts, practitioners, and social workers. 2) the instrument of logotherapy counseling developmental model should fulfill the following requirements: a) validity and reliability tests (nazir, 2009: 145; sururi and suharto, 2007: 51, 52) b) pretest and posttest (heppner et al., 2008: 183) c) data normality and homogeneity tests (sundayana, 2010: 87-89) d) mean and n-gain tests, two-mean differential test (hake, 1998: 65; sururi and suharto, 2007: 24-27) 3) the result of logotherapy counseling developmental model should have the strengths and dynamics of behavioral changes, characteristics, impacts, and developmental efforts. statistical significance 1) data of research results should show normality and homogeneity as demonstrated by the value of α = 0.05 < (sig. value) before statistic test to test the mean and the n-gain and two-mean differential test are done. 2) the mean and n-gain of preand posttests of the experimental group should be higher than those of the control group. 3) the improvement recapitulation of the result of differential test should show that the scores of preand posttests of the experimental group are higher than those of the control group, as proven by tcal > ttable or seen from the value of α = 0.05 > sig (0.000). approaches the approaches used were research and development, participatory, and a mixed method of qualitative and quantitative. the researcher selected research and development as developed by borg and gall (1989; 2003: 570) because the research would like to develop and validate educational products, namely a developmental model of logotherapy counseling to improve the low self-esteem of women victims of trafficking. the stages and activities of the research and development involved: (1) a preliminary study that consisted of two activities, literary study and field study to produce a hypothetical model; (2) model development and validation, consisting of a series of model validity tests, namely model rationality test, model practicability test, limited test, and model development and revision; (3) field test, consisting of feasibility test, effectiveness test, revision, and analysis to produce a tested model to be published. jagosh et al. (2012: 3) defined participatory research as collaborative research through partnership between the researcher and the people responsible for the actions and issues under research. participatory research as systematic investigation through collaboration is intended for educational objectives and to make changes (lgreen, 2012: 2). in this research, the participatory approach gives more emphasis on the collaboration between the researcher and the social workers and the victims at the social shelter for women in need of special protection, women’s social welfare institution “mulya jaya” jakarta. the roles of the researcher and the social workers are parallel, namely the social workers also play a role as researcher during research. in this participatory research, the researcher also collaborated through partnership with three experts in the field of counseling and guidance and with two practitioners in the process of jacob daan engel & syamsu yusuf, the effectiveness of the logotherapy 31 model validity test. the qualitative and quantitative research is integrated and mutually supporting (mixed methods design). according to cresswell (2008: 552), mixed methods design is a procedure to collect data, analyze and mix qualitative and quantitative in single research to understand the issues under research. the stages of this kind of research involve: (1) exploratory mixed methods design, where the researcher gathers qualitative data to explore phenomena, and then collects quantitative data to explain the correlation between the findings in qualitative data through validity and reliability tests of the research instrument; (2) explanatory mixed methods design, where the researcher gathers quantitative data through pre-tests of the experimental and control groups and then collects qualitative data through interpretation and analysis of the quantitative data made qualitative; in this case, resulting in a hypothetical model of logotherapy counseling model developed through validation by experts, practitioners, and social workers; (3) embedded mixed methods design, in which the researcher collects qualitative and quantitative data simultaneously; (4) triangulation mixed methods design, in that the researcher gathers the results of post-tests in the form of quantitative data and the results of observation and interview as the qualitative data to be interpreted and analyzed simultaneously. techniques the techniques of data collection used were interview, questionnaire, and observation. free interview with the guidelines that the interview focused on the underlying issues under question (sugiyono, 2012: 140) was conducted. questionnaire distribution employed semantic difference scale to measure the aspects of negative thinking and negative self-value in the low self-esteem of women victims of trafficking. the scale is bipolar in nature (two opposite poles, negative-positive) with a range of 0-10, covering three dimensions, namely potential, activity, and evaluation. in this research, the bipolar trait is formulated into one dimension for each item of the research instrument (nazir, 2009: 344-345). on the other hand, observation is a process of observing the research subjects and is done structurally (sugiyono, 2012: 145,146). literature review human beings are posed with shifts and changes of values in the society (nurihsan, 2006: 2). according to borrong (cited in kritis, 2007: 70), value refers more to an effort of education viewed by one as goodness, believed to be beneficial to be developed. education in this research is more oriented to the process of counseling and guidance. according to kartadinata (2009: 5-6), the main focus of counseling and guidance is not on the problem but the personal-individual as an attempt of preventing, developing, and improving. guidance is needed by every woman who has healthy self-esteem in an effort to prevent conditions hindering development to take place, so that the women can develop themselves. meanwhile, among women victims of trafficking, counseling is needed to improve low self-esteem to be healthy self-esteem, and they will continuously need guidance as a process of lifelong education. facts in the field show that there are so many women victims of trafficking who suffered from physical, psychological, and sexual abuses. the statistic provided by akor (2011: 89) showed that from 500,000 female migrant workers sent from nigeria-afrika to the u.s. and europe, 70% were traded as commercial sex workers, and only 30% were employed as housemaids. according to rafferty (2008: 14-15), women victims of trafficking, especially children, frequently experience cruel situation that causes physical, sexual, and psychological trauma. loss of hopes, no direction in life, and bleak future have caused these women to lose respect for international journal of education, vol. 7 no. 1 desember 2013 32 themselves and to experience low self-esteem. the issue of low self-esteem conceptually departs from an understanding of healthy self-esteem to highlight the facts in the field based on preliminary study. it is these facts that prove whether the problems suffered by women victims of trafficking were their own inabilities to gain healthy selfesteem. conceptually, in the perspective of branden (1990: 6-7, 15), healthy self-esteem is the aspect of thinking and the aspect of self-value, describing the ability of someone to improve his or her spiritual development, namely self-awareness, self-acceptance, self-assertiveness, purposefulness, selfresponsibility, and self-integrity. the indicator of spiritual development of healthy selfesteem is one’s ability to improve his or her spiritual dimension, namely self-potential, self-activity, and self-evaluation, which according to frankl (2000: 123-4) originate from three kinds of humanistic values, namely creative values, experiential values, and attitudinal values. facts in the field showed that the issues of women victims of trafficking at the social shelter for women in need of protection, women’s social welfare institution “mulya jaya” jakarta lie in these women’s inability to improve their spiritual dimension and development in order to cope with their physical, psychological, and sexual conditions. based on the understanding of healthy self-esteem and the facts found in this research, the issue of spiritually low selfesteem experienced by women victims of trafficking ilustrates their inability to improve their spiritual development, namely selfawareness, self-acceptance, self-assertiveness, purposefulness, self-responsibility, and self-integrity. the indicator of the spiritual development of low self-esteem is the inability of these women victims of trafficking to improve their spiritual dimensions, namely self-potential, self-activity, and selfevaluation. in an attempt of treating the issues of spiritual dimension and development of the low self-esteem of women victims of trafficking, logotherapy counseling that is developed from viktor frankl’s logotherapy, is an appropriate approach to improve the spiritual dimension and development of women victims of trafficking with low selfesteem because logotherapy counseling holds onto spiritual values. lantz (1992: 129-131) conducted research on life’s meanings behind the anxieties of 28 families in applachian city. the results showed that frankl’s logotherapy could improve the meanings of life and was proven to help the families to have the ability to cope with anxiety, have a strong motivation to search, find, and own the meanings and aims of life. melton and schulenberg (2008: 31, 33-34; 40-41) also conducted research on the impact and relevance of the measurement of the meanings of life and concluded that logotherapy contributed empirically to the human’s ability to respond to various internal and external problems, in order to have the main motivation that enables human beings to search for the meanings they want, and to highlight human’s ability to find and own meanings in any condition. in line with them, esping (2011: 59, 62-65) did research on autoethnography as logotherapy, and proved that logotherapy was effective to find awareness of the meanings of life as a way for one to achieve mental health through the realization of the three source values and spiritual dimensions. based on the theoretical review and framework explained above, then the formulated research question is “how effective is the result of logotherapy counseling developmental model to improve the low self-esteem of women victims of trafficking at the social shelter for women in need of special protection, women’s social welfare institution ‘mulya jaya’ jakarta?” the development of logotherapy counseling model in this research is more oriented towards the improvement of the jacob daan engel & syamsu yusuf, the effectiveness of the logotherapy 33 spiritually low self-esteem among women victims of trafficking. it is more on the process of realizing the victims’ self-potentials and is oriented to the planning, conduct, and evaluation in an attempt of solving the issue of low self-esteem among women victims of trafficking (leddick, 2001: 1). in its execution, the approach is integrated with the available human resources, by emphasizing collaboration through partnership in work among the researcher and the experts and practitioners and the social workers of “mulya jaya” jakarta and the women victims of trafficking as well, based on the practical application, theory, and relevant research results in the field. the specific orientation of the model is the implementation of a program in the form of a logo counseling model design to facilitate the development of self-potential among the women victims of trafficking, involving personal, social, educational, and spiritual aspects, as beings with biopsychosociospiritual dimension (biological, psychological, social, and spiritual) (department of national education, 2007: 10-11). based on the understanding of the model development of logotherapy counseling, the hypothesis formulated for this research is ”the result of logotherapy counseling model development is effective to improve the low self-esteem of women victims of trafficking at the social shelter for women in need of special protection, women’s social welfare institition, “mulya jaya” jakarta. results and discussion from the questionnaires distributed to the respondents to measure the development and spiritual dimension of women victims of trafficking, consisting of 51 validated statements, the average results of the preand post-tests of both the experimental and control groups were obtained, and in order to test model effectiveness, the normalized n-gain was calculated (hake, 1998: 65) table 2 shows the number of respondents for the two groups, where each consisted of 15 people. the mean for the pretest of the experimental group was 166.07 with a standard deviation of 23.59 and the mean increased to 452.27, where the standard deviation of the posttest decreased instead to 14.89. meanwhile, the ratio of n-gains of the preand posttests of the experimental group and the control group is 0.75 > 0.15. this indicates that logotherapy counseling model is effective as an intervention program to improve the low self-esteem of women victims of trafficking. table 2 the means and n-gain of pretest-posttest results experimental and control groups sources of data n (mean) std. deviation n-gain experimental pretest 15 166,07 23,59 0,75 posttest 452,27 14,89 control pretest 15 205,93 18,60 0,15 posttest 251,80 12,71 table 3 recapitulation of two-mean differential test for pretest and posttest experimental and control groups groups mean df tcal ttable (sig (2-tailed experimental pre-posttests -259,000 14 -43,851 2,144 0,000 control pre-posttests -45,600 14 -8,546 2,144 0,000 international journal of education, vol. 7 no. 1 desember 2013 34 in relation to the differences of the two groups, t-test for paired sample test was used as the statistical tool for two-mean differential test. table 3 shows the tcal (43.851) > ttable (2.144) for the experimental group, and seen from the value of α = 0.05 > sig (0.000), it indicates that the use of logotherapy counseling intervention program among the experimental group is effective compared to the control group. next, the recapitalization of the average differences of pretest-posttest increases and n-gain problem development and low self-esteem spiritual dimension in women trafficking victims in graph 2 and graph 3 as well as table 5 and table 6 are as follows: the causal factors in the problem of low self-esteem depict the inability of women trafficking victims to improve their spiritual development through self-awareness, selfacceptance, self-assertiveness, life goals, selfresponsibility, and self-integrity. the causal factor indicators in the problem of low selfesteem spiritual development are the inability of someone to improve one’s spiritual dimension through self-potential, self-activity, and self-evaluation. through the logotherapy counseling intervention program and statistical test results, achieving improvements in low self-esteem can be seen in attitude values and the dynamic of positive behavior changes in graph 1 average differences of pretest-posttest increases in the spiritual development of experiment group women trafficking victimsp p g graph 2 means differences in pretest-posttest increases of the low self-esteem spiritual dimension in experiment group women trafficking victimsp p g jacob daan engel & syamsu yusuf, the effectiveness of the logotherapy 35 women trafficking victims. this affirms that the logotherapy counseling model is proven effective in fixing low self-esteem in women trafficking victims as described and analyzed below. the problem of self-awareness and selfexploration as strengths of the logotherapy counseling model development graph 1shows that the problem of low self-esteem spiritual development in women trafficking victims at the level of self-awareness is 34.15%. this is due to low education, an imbalance in socialization in society, and different treatment in the family can even become victims in family and social situations. in line with this research, the statistical data explained by joshi and srivastava (2009:33-34) of research results of 200 city teenagers and 200 village teenagers from varansi regency, 12-14 years old, shows that there is a significant difference related with academic achievement of village teenagers, who tend to experience low selfesteem due to the problem of formal and nonformal education in the family. through the self-exploration technique in the logotherapy counseling intervention program, an increase in spiritual development self-awareness from the pretest average of 34.15%, increased to become 83.70% in the posttest, because women trafficking victims are able to do empowerment for attitude and heath behavior changes. related with this research, kyungah et al. (2009:136) conducted research on 29 teenagers suffering from cancer. they were divided into an experiment group with 17 individuals and a control group with 12 individuals. this research showed that logotherapy is effective in reducing existential suffering, improving the quality and life meaning, through self-exploration to empower an attitude change and healthy behavior change. in this research, empowerment is related with the ability to create ideas, create works, make decisions, and have the ability to solve problems, because self-awareness is the primary principle of self-control in women trafficking victims. self-acceptance as problems and strengths of the logotherapy counseling model development graph 1shows that the problem of low self-esteem spiritual development in women trafficking victims at the self-acceptance level is 32.07%. this is related with negative selfcontrol and negative self-identity. in line with this research, hughes (2003:116) proclaims that information technology causes and creates global media to exploit male sexuality and misuse of women and children, so that an identity crisis is formed and the level of self-control becomes low. this destroys their lives and futures, because they cannot accept their existence. through the self-acceptance technique of the logotherapy counseling intervention program, an increase in spiritual development self-acceptance from a pretest average of 32.07% increased to become 84.37% in the posttest, because women trafficking victims were able to control and develop themselves to become individuals with achievements and abilities. in line with this research, tate et al. (2013:79,83) conducted research on 50% of students who felt they were wrong because of negative life experiences in the past. this shows that logotherapy is successful as a method to overcome feelings of guilt by trying to disregard the problem phenomenon, finding work values to reach goals and life meaning, by assuming that looking for meaning is a primary human motivation to understand the abilities owned through self-acceptance. in this research, self-acceptance is related with self-commitment towards the abilities and achievements reached, as well as the initiative to take responsibility for failures, mistakes, or deficiencies possessed by women trafficking victims. international journal of education, vol. 7 no. 1 desember 2013 36 the problem of self-assertiveness and paradoxical intensity as strengths of the logotherapy counseling model development graph 1 reveals that the problem of low self-esteem spiritual development in women trafficking victims at the self-assertiveness level is 30.67%, due to not being valued in the eyes of others, unworthy to receive family support for what they have done, feel valuable because they are praised by others, have to do something that is valuable to appease others, which is related with self-control and selfideal. related with this research, the survey data that was explained by erol and ulrich (2011:607-608) had research results of 7,100 young adults between 14-30 years old, who were black, white, and hispanic. hispanic people had low self-esteem because of antisocial characteristics, difficulty to respect others, and difficulty to respect themselves. through the paradoxical intention technique with a self-detachment approach in the logotherapy counseling intervention program, an increase in self-assertiveness of spiritual development from a pretest average of 30.67% increased to become 85.00% in the posttest, because women trafficking victims were able to have behaviors and actions based on standards, aspirations, goals, or values of others. related with this research, according to kimble and ellor (2000:20,21) ontologically logotherapy handles high level humanity problems to understand meaning and values, freedom and responsibility, conscience and commitment, and decisions and life goals behind the suffering of someone through paradoxical intention. in this research, paradoxical intention is a personal standard that covers attitude standards, speaking standards, regulation standards, and appearance standards related with the desired character of someone, as well as related with the goals, values, and achievements that are desirable to be achieved. women trafficking victims with their own abilities can distance themselves and have self-detachment towards excessive fears and desires. victims are not equivalent with their pasts, obsessions, low self-esteem, unsafe feelings, depression, addiction, physical diseases, or emotional outbursts, but have inner life values that are strengths that can be used to keep their boundaries and attitudes towards their existence. the problem of life goals and selftranscendence as strengths of the logotherapy counseling model development graph 1shows that the problem of low self-esteem spiritual development in women trafficking victims at the life goal level is 32.38%, related with bad expectations and negative self-criticism. related with this research, the statistical data explained by abdulraheem and oladipo (2010:37) about the effects of women trafficking on the psychology and mental health of women trafficking victims is 90.5%, depression is 83.6%, emotional trauma is 72.4%, and lack of sleep is 67.4%, resulting in biased expectations and negative thinking. through the dereflection technique with the selftranscendence approach in the logotherapy counseling intervention program, an increase in spiritual development life goals from pretest averages was 32.38% and increased to become 82.76% in the posttest, because women trafficking victims are able to develop a set of self-commitment values by doing various real activities that are more directed towards achieving meaning and their life goals. analogous with this research, a research done by julom and de guzman (2013:357, 369371) on 32 paralyzed patients (16 experiment group patients and 16 control group patients) who experienced no life meaning proved that effective logotherapy increases life meaning in the 16 experiment group paralyzed patients through self-transcendence to reach their life goals. in this research, life goals reflect the figure of women trafficking victims who have dignity and personal values to reach life jacob daan engel & syamsu yusuf, the effectiveness of the logotherapy 37 meaning and self-respect. attitude values, feelings, and spirituality are relative but these values appear from the awareness of victims to do activities and skills based on their abilities. the talents and interests that have been hidden and can be explored will result in self-confidence in the victims, so that they have the ability to do something that they have previously not done before. the problem of self-responsibility and attitude values as strengths of the logotherapy counseling model development graph 1depicts that the problem of low self-esteem spiritual development in women trafficking victims at the level of self-responsibility is 32.08%, related with the negative family needs and negative self-roles. in accordance with this research, according to khowaja et al. (2012:1-3), women trafficking victims are physically beaten, sexually abused, experience psychological trauma, and have economic loss to create dependence on traffickers, resulting in them having to work hard with all the associated risks to fulfill their family needs. through the attitude modification technique in the logotherapy counseling intervention program, an increase in spiritual development self-responsibility from the pretest average of 32.08% increased to become 82.17% in the posttest, because women trafficking victims are able to understand their tasks and principles from the self-responsibility of women trafficking victims, based on demands from others (family, society, friends, boyfriends, neighbors, or the country). analogous with this research, esping (2010:1,3) conducted research about the experience of lorena, an international student who was pursuing a phd in the united states, who showed that logotherapy as a psychotherapy approach could facilitate lorena to find life meaning to finish her studies through creative values, experience values, and attitude values together, which focused on reorientation towards someone’s attitude values. in this research, attitude values as a strength in the logotherapy counseling model have proven when women trafficking victims are motivated to take responsibility in a situation that is advantageous or disadvantageous, that situation produces attitude values that life values can be found in any situation. this meaning produces faith, hope, and love. with that, attitude values can especially be used to encourage, provide urgency, give comfort, and assist women trafficking victims to return to have balance and inner peace. the problem of self-integrity and self-awareness as strengths in the logotherapy counseling model development graph 1reveals that the problem of low self-esteem spiritual development in women trafficking victims at the self-integrity level is 34.26%, related with low self-respect (negative self-value) and negative self-image. in accordance with this research, beyrer et al. (2003:106) stated that the sexual exploitation of women trafficking victims has an effect on the victims becoming pregnant, infertility as a result of sexually spread chronic infections that are left untreated, and failures or abortions that have destroyed their self-integrity and self-confidence. through the sokrates dialog technique with the self-awareness approach in the logotherapy counseling intervention program, an increase in spiritual development self-integrity from the pretest average is 34.26%, which increases to become 82.33% in the posttest, because women trafficking victims can access their abilities and develop their self-confidence to find meaning and goals in their lives. related with this research, according to hutchinson and chapman (2006:57-59), logotherapy as an existential approach, exploration, and process-oriented, with a primary focus on spirituality and life meaning can empower humans to manage situations that are extraordinary in life and act as unique human experiences like joy, guilt, international journal of education, vol. 7 no. 1 desember 2013 38 and discover meaning that arises from selfconfidence as a strength in the logotherapy counseling model has proven that life meaning comes through the words of women trafficking victims, showing their thinking ability and self-integrity which reveals a respectful attitude honestly, sincerely, and earnestly, having a positive behavior pattern that increases self-confidence, in order that they do not return to being trafficking victims. the spiritual dimension as problems and strengths of the logotherapy counseling model development graph 2 depicts that the problem of the low self-esteem spiritual dimension in women trafficking victims at the self-potential level is 30.69%, related with a fatalistic attitude and over-forcing. self-activity is 35.68%, related with a fanatic attitude and over-avoidance. self-evaluation is 32.24%, related with a collective attitude and being overly attentive. in accordance with this research, the statistical data that was explained by jordan et al. (2013:356) shows that women who become trafficking victims have increased in the united states with approximately 15,000 to 50,000 victims annually, experience actual wounds because they are often abused, are sexually assaulted, experience psychological trauma, and feel their lives and futures are destroyed. according to hughes (2000:625-630), women sexual trafficking is characterized by a forced work situation, physical and sexual abuse, limited movements and isolation, dependence on debt, and more appalling rejection by the family and society. through the meaning realization technique with the meaning discovery approach in the logotherapy counseling intervention program, the pretest means spiritual dimension self-potential increased from 30.69% to become 83.80% in the posttest. the pretest means spiritual dimension self-activity of 35.68% increased to become 82.82% in the posttest. the spiritual dimension self-evaluation experienced an increase from 34.24% to become 83.39% in the posttest. these increases are due to the fact that women trafficking victims have learned how to respect life, respect victims’ abilities as a grace, and release themselves from unfulfilled desires. in accordance with this research, melton and schulenberg (2008:31,33-34; 40-41) did a research on the effects and relevance of measuring life meaning as a logotherapy empirical contribution for humanistic psychology, so that with free will, the will to acquire meaning, and the meaning of life, logotherapy can be integrated with psychotherapy and humanistic psychology forms to accommodate and provide empirical contributions about human abilities in response to various internal and external problems, having a primary motivation to facilitate humans to search for their desired meaning, as well as monitor human abilities to discover and possess meaning in whatever conditions through the spiritual dimensions they possess. in this research, the spiritual dimension empowers women trafficking victims to find truth, beauty, and love, because these values have provided life meaning in encountering victims with the world outside themselves, evoking inner attitude values, so that victims can make adjustments, do introspection, and open themselves to new and innovative things to find meaning and life goals. conclusions the logotherapy counseling method development is effective to fix low selfesteem in women trafficking victims, because the model possesses: 1. strength in self-exploration, selfacceptance, paradoxical intention, selftranscendence, attitude values, selfawareness, self-potential, self-activity, and self-evaluation. 2. special characteristics in selftranscendence. 3. good effects towards: (a) the behavior change dynamic in victims; (b) viewpoints, handling techniques, and counseling strategies for social workers; (c) work environment and commitment jacob daan engel & syamsu yusuf, the effectiveness of the logotherapy 39 to improve resources or service quality of various parties at “mulya jaya” pskw rpsw in jakarta. 4. a level of attainment that is statistically significant and high, from the recapitalization of different test results of two averages, value experiment groups of tcount (43.851) > ttable (2.144). the n-gain experiment group has pretest and posttest averages of (0.75) > the n-gain of the control group (0.15). this indicates that using a logotherapy counseling intervention program that is imposed on the experiment group is more effective and provides better achievement results in the behavior change dynamic of women trafficking victims. that effectiveness is also proven from observation results and interviews, which reveal positive attitude values in the behavior change dynamic of victims. based on conclusion is recommended professionals counselors and training guide of logotherapy counseling model to social workers, needed to improve the handling of this approach in a conceptual manner to understand the material, develop problems and abilities, as well as empirically handle management techniques, approaches, and counseling strategies at the “mulya jaya” women’s social institution (pskw) women’s social protection house (rpsw) in jakarta. references journal abdulraheem, s., oladipo, a.r. 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[online]. available:http://hyperlink “http://www.theselfesteem.institute. com/”www.theselfesteem.institute.com [18 januari 2012]. jacob daan engel is a ph.d student majoring in guidance and counseling at school of postgraduate studies, indonesia university of education. syamsu yusuf is a professor of guidance and counseling at school of postgraduate studies, indonesia university of education. international journal of education, vol. 7 no. 2 may 2014 84 peer counseling model for improving students’ self-direction competence erhamwilda email: erham_wilda@yahoo.co.id bandung islamic university abstract the purpose of this study is to test the effectiveness of the peer counseling model for improving students’ self-direction competence. the research aimed to describe, test and analyze the effectiveness of the peer counseling model and employed the descriptive-analytical method and quasi-experiments to do this. the research activities consisted of a series of model validity tests, namely the model rationality test, the model practicability test, and the limited test. the data collection techniques were interviews, self-direction competence inventories, observation and documentation. the results of the research demonstrate that the peer counseling model as an intervention program for the experimental group as a whole proved to effectively improve students’ self-direction competence. the peer counseling model has its strengths in selfconfidence, self-reliance, and self-control. keywords: effectiveness, peer-counseling model, students’s self-direction. %) were to do with time management. personal problems commonly expressed by students were low self confi dence which was identifi ed with a lack of confi dence in expressing their opinions (48.2 %), feeling ashamed when speaking in public (58.27 %), a supposed lack of appeal (17.26 %), lack of confi dence to mix with others (15.11 %), feeling better when being ‘stand-offi sh’, and being pessimistic about their future (11.51 %). in addition to this, more than half of the students (61.87 %) stated that they had friends who displayed bad behavior (breaking religious and social norms) (erhamwilda, 2011). in order to anticipate and overcome their problems, students need help to build their inner strengths that may lead to them having appropriate attitudes and behavior from which they may benefi t and profi t from in the future. according to cavanagh (1982), one of the most important human strengths is psychological strength. psychological strength covers three dimensions, namely fulfi llment of needs, intrapersonal competence, and interpersonal competence. introduction various studies in indonesia have showed the complexity of behavioral problems faced by adolescents. there are six types of adolescence delinquency, which tend to increase, namely alcohol, free sex, pregnancy, violence, and drug addiction (nurhayati, 1998; yusuf, 2005; pikiran rakyat, december 21st 2008). adolescent delinquencies do not only occur outside but also inside schools, especially at junior high schools and senior high schools. being delinquents, high school students are susceptible to problems because they are experiencing a crisis in trying to fi nd their identities. biologically, adolescents are at the peak of their growth periods, and are also preparing to become adults. adolescents are also vulnerable to problems because they keep facing socio-cultural and environmental changes. in a preliminary study of 139 students of a vocational school in bandung it was found that all had problems, and in terms of quantity, the problems revealed by most students (85.61 erhamwilda, peer counseling model for improving students’ self-direction competence 85 intrapersonal competence is the dimension of psychological strength that occupies a strategic position in the fulfi llment of personal needs and improvement of interpersonal competence (erhamwilda, 2011). self-direction is one of the important intrapersonal competences of an individual when he/she is making a decision to determine his/her attitude or behavior, because most individual problems may stem from inaccuracy when making a decision. adolescence is a very important period for making decisions concerning personal life, social matters, and career choice. an appropriate decision made during adolescence can bear an impact on life satisfaction and success in adulthood. self-direction is the ability of individuals to direct their lives and be fully responsible for the consequences of their behavior. the more capable one is of directing one’s r own behavior, the more onee lives according to nature, and avoids situations that would change one’s nature (michael e. cavanagh, 1982). “your ambition is an expression of who you are, and your self-expression. selfexpression is really self-direction; you think, move, and motivate yourself. ambition is a result of self-direction. positive selfdirection says, ‘i know who i am, and where i want to go’. i’m accumulating knowledge, experiences, feelings, and life philosophies and preparing for future opportunities...” (rohn, 2011:1) problems with self-direction may manifest in one or more of the following aspects: (1) lack of self-confi dence, (2) lack of self-reliance, and/or (3) lack of selfcontrol (cavanagh, 1982). counseling can be conducted for improving self-direction competence. the preliminary results of the survey on the implementation of counseling at fi ve senior high schools (smas) and vocational high schools (smks) in bandung, indonesia, show the minimum amount of counseling services. the results of a random survey of 100 sma students on the type of people chosen for consultation showed that 78% of the students tended to consult with their classmates, friends from outside school or close friends, 19% tended to consult with their parents, and 3% tended to consult with their teachers with whom they had close relationships, while none of them consulted with the school counselors or their homeroom teachers (erhamwilda, 2011). the next survey conducted on 30 vocational school (smk) students showed that 70% of the students claimed that whenever they had problems, they tended to consult with their schoolmates, friends from outside school, or close friends, while 26.7% tended to consult with their parents, and only 3.33% consulted with the school counselors (erhamwilda, 2011). for many adolescents, how they look among their peers is the most important thing in their lives, and one of the most important functions of their peers is becoming their source of information about the world outside their family (santrock, 2007: 311). the activities of helping and supporting each other when facing problems of life and/or when developing their own potentials is referred to as peer counseling (suwarjo, 2008: 8). according to the issues under research above, the research question is formulated into “how does the result of the peer counseling model effectively improve students’ selfdirection competence at one of the vocational high schools (smk) in bandung? this main issue is expanded into the following questions: (1) how is the profi le of students’ self-direction competence at one smk in bandung?; (2) what is the possibility of doing the peer counseling at one of smk in bandung? (3) what is the best model of peer counseling for improving the self-direction of students at one smk in bandung? (4) is the peer-counseling model produced effective in improving students’self-direction competence in one smk in bandung? international journal of education, vol. 7 no. 2 may 2014 86 literature review self-direction is an individual’s competence to direct his/her life and accept full responsibility for the consequences of their behavior. the more people direct their own behavior, the more they live according to their nature, and the better they develop a repertoire of behaviors that will be consistent with self-direction. three important such behaviors are self-confi dence, self-reliance, and self-control. (cavanagh, 1982, cavanagh & levitov, 2002: 207). self-confi dence is extremely important in almost every aspect of our lives, yet so many people struggle to fi nd it. sadly, this can be a vicious cycle: people who lack selfconfi dence can fi nd it diffi cult to become successful. “your level of self-confi dence can show in many ways: your behavior, your body language, how you speak, what you say, and so on” (manktelow & carlson, 2009). in general, self-confi dence may be infl uenced by: (1) internal factors, namely selfconcept (centi, 1995), self-esteem (meadow in kusuma, 2005), physical condition (anthony, 1992), and life experience (lauster, 1997), (2) external factors, including educational experience, work, environment, and life. self-reliance is an important part of self-direction, because the more people can create a situation that would meet their needs, the more able they are to direct their own behavior. in other words, the more one leans on others to achieve things, the more likely someone else will direct one’s life (cavanagh, 1982). the fi rst philosophy of self-reliance was stated by emerson as part of his speech in september 1830. emerson’s essay uttered sincerity to individualism (gallozzi, chuck, 2009). emerson said that there were two factors causing people to disbelieve their own competence, namely social refusal and consistency of foolishness (gallozzi, chuck, 2009). someone who lacks self-reliance may be suffering from one or more problems, such as (a) self-hate because of an inability to meet one’s needs, (b) self-blame or projecting self-hatred on others, (c) fi nd it diffi cult to fulfi ll tasks because one is always positioned as an observer, (d) interpersonal problems (cavanagh & levitov, 2002). improvement of self-direction competence for students may be carried out through individual counseling or group counseling organized by school counselors. people seeking counseling may often have learned not to trust their competence, perception, motives, and judgment (cavanagh, 1982). tindall and gray (1985) developed peer counseling. the peer counseling they proposed explained the purpose of peer counseling, the change of counselor’s roles, trainers’ requirements, the planning of peer counseling, and the peer counselor training procedures. their model provided inspiration for developing peer counseling suitable for the conditions of indonesian students. “proactive adult educators and on-site human resource developers can facilitate improvements in students’ self-direction by implementing peer-mentoring programs and by building counseling coursework into professional adult education …” (vann, 1966). ideally, expert counselors should provide counseling services, however, with certain prerequisites an expert counselor may train students to become “peer counselors”, and conduct “peer counseling”. in the aca code of conduct (2005) it is determined that “support network involvement counselors recognize that support, understanding, and involvement of others (e.g., religious/spiritual/ community leaders, family members, and friends) can be positive resources, when appropriate, with client consent”. carr (1981) stated that without the active help of the students (peers) in solving the crisis of development and psychological problems of their own, service programs and counseling programs would not work effectively. the counselor must engage students (peers) as erhamwilda, peer counseling model for improving students’ self-direction competence 87 allies and conduct cooperative efforts to help them through the various rational and logical actions. bowman and myrick (1980 in tindall & gray, 1985) pointed out that counseling could improve positive self-concept on students of grades 3 and 4 of elementary schools. emmert (1977 in tindall & gray, 1985) found that a group of students who had been trained to become peer counselors statistically showed a higher empathy score relative to those who had not had training. bell (1977 in tindall & gray, 1985) found that trained peer counselors did not show improvement in self-concept, yet they were capable of gaining higher academic achievement relative to peer counselors who did not work with other students. miller (in fritz, 1999: 516) reported that clients who used peer counseling were capable of identifying themselves with their peers, and clients assumed that “peer counselors” possessed willingness to develop communication bridges. according to fritz (1999, 522), the presence of peer counselors was not meant as a substitute for professional counselors, but simply to help improve their services. “peer culture contains the informal social mechanisms through which children create their social order, determine their place and identity, and develop positive and negative feelings about themselves” (p.a adler; p adler, 1998). during the last seven years, peer mentors have reduced the drop out rate of 16and 17-year-olds from 75% to 80% within the fi rst 40 days on the st. louis job corps campus. from august to november 2008 the peer-mentors reached out to 2,212 students. students being sent home from residential halls for fi ghting and confl ict dropped 30% within the fi rst year of utilizing peer mediators in the residence halls. students serving as peer mentors (approx. 560 within the fi rst 7 years have all completed the program except one (tindall, judith a: chatman, herbert; foster, robin, 2010, 18). the purpose of this research is to design an effective peer counseling model for improving students’ self-direction competence at one smk in bandung. the aims of the research are elaborated as follows: (1) to fi nd the profi le of students’ self-direction competence; (2) to fi nd the possibility of conducting peer counseling; (3) to formulate a peer counseling model for improving students’ self-direction competence; (4) to prove the effectiveness of the produced peer counseling model in improving self-direction. method the sample comprised 501 grade xi students from one smk in bandung. they came from four vocational fi eld of study: accountancy (ak), offi ce administration (ap), marketing (ps), and tourism (upw). the sample was selected from the four vocational programs, which comprised of eight classes, four of which were used as experiment groups, and the other four as control groups. the group members of each class were selected based on the results of self-direction assessment (which consisted of high, medium, and low self-direction); as a result, there were 40 students acting as samples (20 students belonged to the experiment group, and another 20 students belonged to the control group). the students to be trained as peer counselors were selected from the experimental group based on the following criteria: (a) being popular among their peers for consultation, (b) being willing to help others, being patient and capable of controlling their emotions, (c) having a high or close to high score for self-direction competence, and (d) willing to be trained as peer counselors. the qualitative research in the preliminary study was carried out to determine the empirical condition of counseling services and system support for developing the peer counseling. then, the qualitative research was conducted to validate the peer counseling program for the experts and practitioners. international journal of education, vol. 7 no. 2 may 2014 88 at the end of the study, further qualitative research was conducted to collect information concerning the students’ experiences after they underwent the peer counseling process. a quantitative study was then conducted to test the validity of the self-direction instruments and the statistical effectiveness of peer counseling to improve students’ self-direction competence. the quasi-experiment method with pretest-posttest design (heppner at al. 2008: 183) was conducted using the fi eld test hypothetical model. the criteria for the effectiveness of the peer counseling model, its practical signifi cance and statistical signifi cance are as follows: model development the peer-counseling model was developed based on relevant literature and empirical studies, which was carried out in a vocational school in bandung. the data collected for the study covered: (1) problems faced by students, (2) students’ need for consultation, (3) students’ inclination towards peer counseling, (4) students preparedness to be trained as peer counselors, (5) social relationships with classmates, (6) characteristics of students’ personality, (7) students’ average academic achievement, (8) profi le of students’ self-direction competence, and (9) support systems for implementing peer counseling. validation of the hypothetical model the rational validation of the model was conducted using detailed response techniques and qualitative assessment. the peer counseling model was validated by four guidance and counseling experts and four school practitioners. revision of the model based on the inputs of the experts and school practitioners, the peer counseling model for improving self-direction competence was revised and amended. in this way, the model and guide were operational. the model of peer counseling for improving students’ self-direction competences consisted of: (1) rationales, (2) objectives, (3) targets, (4) assumptions, (5) targets of intervention, (6) stages of model implementation, (7) competence of expert counselors, (8) competence of peer counselors, (9) evaluation of the counseling success. trial of peer counseling effectiveness the threat of internal validity was anticipated with the presence of a control group. in the trial of model effectiveness, an hypothesis test was conducted. the research hypothesis is: peer counseling is effective for improving the vocational school (smk) students’ selfdirection competence, while the statistical hypothesis is: ho: m experiment = m control & h1 : m experiment > m control ho: m control = m experiment, means that there is no signifi cant difference of the average improvement between the experiment group and the control group. h1: m control > m experiment means that there is signifi cant difference of the average improvement between the experiment group and the control group. instruments the instruments for data collection consisted of: instruments for identifying students’ problems, interviews, questionnaires, sociometry, and a self-direction inventory. the self-direction inventory was especially made for assessing the students’ self-direction competence, refering to selfdirection concepts proposed by cavanagh (1982 & 2002) and was supplemented with other relevant theories. the instruments were in the form of inventories with four options, namely highly agree, agree, disagree, and highly disagree. in order to produce valid instruments, a number of tests were conducted: (1) worthiness test according to guidance and counseling experts, erhamwilda, peer counseling model for improving students’ self-direction competence 89 (2) trial in the fi eld, and (3) validity and reliability test. validity test was carried out by means of the correlation technique of itemtotal product moment. the validity test of each item was carried out using the ms excel 2007. the reliability test of the instruments was carried out by ms excel 2007 software using the statistical formula of cranbach’s alpha (a). statistical signifi cance 1. the research results should show normality and homogeneity with z kolmogrovsmirnov (p>0,05) variants (p>0,05) before statistic test to test the mean and n-gain and two-mean differential test are done. 2. the main n-gain of pretest and posttest of the experimental group should be higher than those of the control group. 3. the improvement of the result of differential test should show that the scores of pretest and posttest of the experimental group are higher than those of the control group, as proven by tcal>ttab or seen from the value of p<0,05. result and discussion the profi le of self-direction competence of students is shown in table 1: table 1 self direction profi le of smk’s student aspect criteria interval freq. precent. selfconfi dence high 31 45 126 25.15 medium 16 30 375 74.85 low 0 15 0 0.00 selfreliance high 31 45 111 22.16 medium 16 30 390 77.84 low 0 15 0 0.00 selfcontrol high 43 63 46 9.18 medium 22 42 453 90.42 low 0 21 2 0.40 source: erhamwilda, 2011 based on the table above most students’ self-direction competence is considered medium level. 18.16% rated high level, 81.84% medium and none rated low level. the possibility of conducting peer counseling at one smk in bandung. based on interviews with one smk’s school counselor coordinator, it is known that the guidance and counseling service has not been conducted well and they do not have comprehensive data about the students’ problems. the services are mostly delivered classically, while individual counseling and group counseling have not been held according to standard. the school counselor coordinator welcomed the peer counseling program offered. according to the coordinator, the students like to be helped by their friends, and there was evidence that before the national exam in 2009/2010 in maths, peer tutoring was successful. for this reason, they showed enthusiasm to try the peer counseling model. to gauge the popularity of peer counseling among students a survey was conducted. it showed 72.8% of students prefer consulting their friends about their problems, while no students preferred consulting counselors. the remainder preferred consulting their family (18.2%). most of the students agreed that if here were trained friends at their school to share their problems, they would consult them. the survey showed that most of the students felt they need help from others to solve their problems. the stages of trialing the effectiveness of peer counseling are as follows: 1. socialization of the implementation plan of the program. this was discussed with the school principal, vice principal for students affairs, while a more comprehensive socialization was carried out with the guidance and counseling coordinator and school counselors. 2. selection of “peer counselor” candidates: based on a number of set of criteria, in this research there were six students international journal of education, vol. 7 no. 2 may 2014 90 representing the experiment group selected and confi rmed as peer counselors. 3. training of peer counselor candidates. the main objective of the peer counselor training was to enable the peer counselor candidates to master the basic skills to effectively communicate in counseling, inform them about self-direction competence and how to improve it through counseling. the counseling may be carried out in the form of individual or group sessions. in order for the trainees to master all the skills associated with peer counseling, a number of training materials were prepared and designed. the training materials consisted of two main parts, part i, which contained peer counseling communication skills, and part ii, which contained the improvement of self-direction competence. in the training, materials dealing with counseling communication skills were not clearly separated from the materials dealing with improvement of self-direction competence as both areas were practiced together. the trainer of the peer counselors in this quasi-experiment was the researcher herself, who also involved a guidance and counseling teacher. after the students were trained, they felt that they could understand themselves better and felt more confi dent. the success of the training was evaluated qualitatively about interviews about the training materials. the students’ level of cognitive mastery of the counseling communication skills were good, however, regarding the practice of conducting counseling communication, their levels of competence varied. throughout the training process, the researcher assisted the trainees to solve every problem they encountered when practicing peer counseling. at the end of the training, four out of six trainees showed good competence in counseling communication and in providing help for their counselees when exploring problems. after going through all the processes, the peer counselor candidates claimed that they were ready for conducting peer counseling, and promised to learn more about peer counseling by practice. they would consult the researcher whenever they had problems. subsequently, the peer counselors were free to choose their own counselees from among their classmates. in this regard, the researcher gave them a list of names of students who should be given priority when they practice peer counseling (this list was produced using the database on the students’ self-direction competence score). 4. the execution of peer counseling the counseling may be carried out individually or in groups depending on the counselors’ own competence, opportunities, and interests. the choice of time and place for peer counseling was based on the agreement made with the counselees. in essence, peer counseling was spontaneous and informal. it was spontaneous because it may happen at any time and anywhere. it was informal because counseling communication occurred among peers and was built upon equality, and the position of the peer counselors was not higher than their counselees. therefore, the procedures should not be rigid. in peer counseling the main objective of the counseling communication was the happiness of the counselees. the counselees were helped to understand themselves and their internal confl icts, enabled to see their problems from various sides, assisted to see the various alternatives for solving problems, assisted in making decisions and to determine their attitude or decide what to do for their own benefi t in the future. the other principle was that peer counselors should appreciate, honor, and respect their counselees as individuals. peer counselors were aware erhamwilda, peer counseling model for improving students’ self-direction competence 91 of the principle in which counselees were individuals who had potential and strength to become self-confi dent, capable of controlling themselves, and capable of fulfi lling their own needs independently. the peer counselors were to practice peer-counseling activities in a month. in the trial process, counselors helped their peers solving their problems, namely: (1) internal family problems, including: (a) feeling stressed by parents who are not harmonious, (b) feeling that their parents do not care for them, (c) economic problems, (d) feeling that their parents are too demanding and restrictive, (e) problems with other members of the family due to trivial things, (f) having problems with parents because they like travelling, (g) having problems with parents who quarrel with other members of the family, (h) having problems with parents because they are active in the fl ag raising squad, (i) being engaged to their boyfriend/girlfriend but their parents insist that the relation is to be ended, (j) fl eeing from the house because of the feeling of being restrained, (k) wanting to buy a cellular phone but reluctant to talk to their parents. (2) social personal problems, include: (a) having diffi culty being open with others, having no close friends, having diffi culty trusting others, (b) feeling unable to share problems with other people, (c) feeling reluctant to interact with school mates other than those belonging to his/ her group, (d) feeling ashamed of talking openly to others, (e) feeling uncomfortable with the situation in the class which lack of a family atmosphere, (f) feeling unable to share stories with other people, (g) having problems with boyfriend/girlfriend, (h) feeling unable to express feelings, (i) remain getting along with bad people, (j) feeling that their boyfriend/girlfriend does not pay them enough attention, (k) having problems with classmates, (m) problems due to lack of confi dence. (3) problems with study, include: (a) inability to concentrate, (b) being lazy to read books, (c) having problems with english language, (d) fi nding it hard to learn and sometimes having the intention to cheat. regarding the peers who have been helped by the peer counselors through individual or group peer counseling, it turned out that the number of the counselees was 29 persons. in this regard, however, there were differences in the number of counselees belonging to different peer counselors. the data of peer counselors and peer counselees is shown in table 2: table 2 number of counselees helped by peer counselors no peer counselor’s initial amount of counselee kind of counseling class freq 1. s r xi ak2 3 individual 2. rhn xi ap3 6 individual 3. t o xi ap3 3 individual 4. ws xi upw2 3 individual 5 ws xi ak2 3 individual 6. pa.a. xi upw2 2 individual 7. pa.a xi upw2 5 group 9 s xi ps1 4 group total 29 the peer counselors felt happy because they could help other people and were able to practice the counseling communication techniques. almost all the counselees talked about their problems to the peer counselors and felt relieved for having shared their stories. both the peer counselors and their counselees became aware of the benefi ts of counseling. changes experienced by the counselees are listed below: (1) having the capability to be open to friends because they feel comfortable and not ashamed. they fi nd it easier to understand themselves and to solve problems (2) feeling comfortable when being in a group because they can feel the problem experienced by other members of the group, they can also feel sad or happy international journal of education, vol. 7 no. 2 may 2014 92 together, they feel it is easier to be introspective, and want to change their bad traits. (3) feeling pleased, comfortable, relieved, unashamed to share stories with peers, and feeling like they now have guidance for thinking as adults, and are able to be introspective (4) feeling pleased for being self confi dent, open to friends, having fewer burdens, wanting to change oneself (although it may not be easy and require time) (5) feeling more comfortable, having fewer burdens because they can be open with friends, and receving good guidance in solving problems (6) feeling more comfortable, more peaceful, more relaxed because they can work together in solving problems and have more confi dence to be open with others so they do not keep their problems to themselves (7) knowing one’s own weaknesses and knowing that the weaknesses need to be overcome, feeling determined to be better and useful individuals for others (8) feeling more peaceful than before when they felt humiliated, and consequently feeling more spirited (9) having more confi dence to face problems (10)feeling calmer because of being capable to learn from the problems they had (11)feeling calmer and capable of seeing the positive side of the problems they had, and feeling capable of controlling their emotions when solving problems (12)feeling relieved, calm, and able to express problems more freely, and feeling capable of solving their problems using their own strengths (13)capable of making the right decisions (14)feeling more confi dent due to the inputs from peers and feeling more relaxed (15)feeling capable of considering the desire to leave home, and as a result they no longer have a strong desire to leave home (16)feeling capable of accepting the conditions of their parents (changing from complaining about a lack of fatherly attention and stress due to the lack of a harmonious relationship between parents, to becoming relieved and capable of accepting the condition of their parents) (17)feeling more autonomous and confi dent to confront parents who do not care for them (18) feeling more aware that in life someone is not always at the bottom, and that someday progress will come (19)trying to learn how to argue and be open with family, and changing from thinking one is not being considered to becoming more enthusiastic about learning to be more considered. results of hypothesis test before the data of intervention counseling model result was processed, normality test was conducted with z kolmogrov-sminov test statistic (p>0.0.5) and variance homogeneity test (p>0.05). normality data test z gain normalize showed z experiment group (0.762) and p (0.608), while control group of z value (1.176) and p (0.126). this means that all the data are distributed normally because the value of p>0.05. the result of the data variance homogeneity test showed that f (0.130). df. 1(1), df2 (70), and p (0.720). this means that the data has a homogeny variance because the value of p > 0.05. the results of the mean for the pre-test and post-test of the experimental group and control group are shown in table 3. table 4 shows independent t test for gain differential of experimental group and control group in self-direction competence. erhamwilda, peer counseling model for improving students’ self-direction competence 93 from this point of view the peercounseling program was effective for improving the self-direction competence and sub comperences of self-direction. discussion the test results of the model using a quasi-experiment showed that overall the peer counseling model was effective for improving the three aspects of self-direction competence, namely self-confi dence, self-reliance, and self-control. the research fi ndings agree with vann (1966) that students’ self-direction can be facilitated by implementing peer-mentoring programs. the research fi ndings also agree with nelson, j.r, smith, d.j, and colvin, g (1995), who discussed: “the effects of a peer-mediated self-evaluation procedure on the recess behavior of students with behavior problems”. they also agree with dolan, b (1994) who explained: “a teen talk line run by peers is shown to be effective and have an impact on the self-esteem of peers.”the research found “self-control and self-management at recess improved when peers were partnered with students with behavior problems”. the clients had at least six new experiences in peer counseling, namely: (1) knowing internal confl icts, (2) facing the reality, (3) developing predictions, (4) starting new relationships, (5) increasing psychological freedom, and (6) correcting wrong concepts (moh. surya, 2009:28-29). qualitatively, the effectiveness test results also showed that the students received positive and valuable experiences by helping their peers solve their problems. counselees’ satisfaction of peer counseling service was refl ected in their written expressions in the evaluation instruments, such as: the counselees’ expressions of relief after receiving peer counseling, the feeling of knowing their own potentials, the feeling of deeper understanding of their own problems, the feeling of having somebody to talk to when they have problems, the feeling of being able to make decisions, and the feeling of being able to solve problems with controlled emotions. the effectiveness of peer-counseling in improving students’ self-direction is table 3 the means of pretest-posttest of control and experimental group aspect & sub aspect pretest control posttest control pretest experiment posttest experiment self-direction 85.35 85.43 85.29 94.11 selfconfi dence 27.81 28.00 28.29 30.83 self-reliance 28.30 27.97 27.91 30.26 self-control 36.22 36.05 35.94 40.80 table 4 recapitulation t test for gain differential of experimental and control group in self-direction competence aspect – sub aspect experimental control differential mean t p explainationmean deviation mean deviation self-direction 0,171 0,140 -0,005 0,175 0,176 4,688 0,000 signifi cant a. self-confi dence 0.159 0.161 0.013 0.277 0.147 2.721 0.008 signifi cant b. self-reliance 0.137 0.172 -0.030 0.255 0.167 3.243 0.002 signifi cant c. self-control 0.190 0.186 -0.020 0.182 0.211 4.861 0.000 signifi cant p<0.05 =signifi cant international journal of education, vol. 7 no. 2 may 2014 94 supported by several factors, such as: (1) the implementation of peer-counseling was fully supported by the school principals, vice school principals for student affairs, school counselors, homeroom teachers, subject matter teachers, and the parents of the peer counselors, (2) the preparation of the model which was based on needs analysis for the improvement of self-direction competence, (3) the selection of peer counselor candidates which was based on the profi les of self-direction competence, personal characteristics of the students, sociometry, average academic performance, the tendency for providing assistance to peers, and the students’ preparedness to undergo peer counseling training, (4) the students who underwent training were those who were serious, highly motivated, and voluntary, (5) the peer counseling was informal in nature and students were not regulated in terms of time, place, and targets, (6) the potentials of mutual assistance among peers were excellent. the limitation of the research and recommendations the research had several limitations, such as: (1) the number of the samples was very limited, the experiment groups came from only four classes in each study program at one of many smks, (2) the needs analysis for preparing the peer counseling model was based on the needs analysis carried out in only one vocational high school, therefore the effectiveness model needs more tests with larger samples, (3) the implementation of peer counseling at the school was very much dependent upon the amount of time peer counselors were able to dedicate to counseling. they are busy with their academic activities and various agendas of the school, and in such cases the peer counselors require more freedom to conduct peer counseling. within one month the number of counselees who were helped through peer counseling was relatively small compared to the number of students who actually had problems. this is not at all surprising and perfectly natural for such peer counseling processes. in this regard, if the research was carried out with a larger sample and more peer counselors, and more time was given to the peer counselors to carry out peer counseling, and guidance counseling teachers were also involved, the effectiveness of the counseling model would be more convincing, (4) the research did not test the extent to which the improvement of one sub competence of selfdirection had an infl uence to compared to that of another sub competence (there were no tests of the interaction among sub variables), (5) the peer counseling program had not been tested for its effectiveness for helping students with severe problems, because the fact showed that the peer counselors tended to help their peers without severe problems. with such limitation of the research, the peer counseling model for improving students’ self-direction competence is only recommended for use as an alternative mediator in counseling services already provided by the counselors at the school where the research was carried out. the counseling program will remain useful if the counselors are prepared for innovations in the existing counseling services. the peer counseling may also become an alternative solution for the disproportional ratio between counselors and students. however, for other counselors at other schools this counseling program may inspire them to try out similar programs with some of their own classes so that it may become a mediator alternative in the counseling services at their own schools. it is also recommended that the use of peer counseling programs does not mean that the school counselors hand over the responsibility to the peer counselors. the counseling services should remain the responsibility of the guidance and counseling coordinator and guidance and counseling teachers. peer counselors merely act as facilitators and assist the school counselors. it is also recommended that other researchers try out the peer counseling method with other erhamwilda, peer counseling model for improving students’ self-direction competence 95 populations for the development of other personal competences. conclusion the research fi ndings show that the peer counseling model holds a strategic position for use as one of the mediators of counseling services, be it empirically or theoretically from the view that student development tends to have some sort of infl uence from their peers. the counseling model proved effective for improving the smk students’ self-direction competence, consisting of self-confi dence, self-reliance, and self-control. refference: adler, patricia a. & peter adler (1998). peer power: preadolescent culture and identity. new brunswick, nj: rutgers university press. anthony, r. 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(18 october 2011) database connection failed! database connection failed! syihabuddin, m-3 instructional model 59 m-3 instructional model: munazharah, mudzakarah, and muhasabah syihabuddin indonesia university of education abstract the article presents the outcome of research on 30 books of quranic interpretations for sura alghasyiah, verses 17-26, which are strongly assumed to contain pedagogic meanings, concepts, and values that can be formulated into an instructional model. the research was conducted by analyzing the keywords of the verses lexically, contextually, and hermeneutically. then, the meanings gained were categorized, compared, contrasted, and abstracted, so that they were eventually synthesized into a main idea as a hypothetical model, termed m-3 model. the model consists of three main instructional activities, represented in the terms munazharah, mudzakarah, and muhasabah. the three activities are a mutually completing and supporting cycle for the achievement of various instructional objectives, ultimately to improve the ability and skills of students to think systematically, logically, creatively, and innovatively through the development of potentials and fi trah (human norm). specifi cally, munazharah activity is expected to result in cognitivistic knowledge (ainal yaqin), mudzarakah to develop knowledge, experience, and values into faith-based knowledge (‘ilm al-yaqin), and muhasabah to encourage the achievement of knowledge and values whose truths have been proven (haqqul yaqin), so that they will be the driving force for various activities based on law, moral, and ethics. because the model taught by god to human beings is still hypothetical and theoretical in nature, it is suggested that the model be empirically tested to be more valid. keywords: instructional model, munazharah, mudzakarah, muhasabah introduction lately, studies on the bases of religiosity, spirituality, and global and local values have gained sympathy from teachers, lecturers, and researchers. even in 2005, the unesco jointly contributed to this issue by publishing a book titled learning to do: values for learning and working together in a globalized world. the book especially presents a moral instructional model consisting of four stages: first, cognitive level (knowing), namely a stage of introducing certain values as facts or concepts; second, conceptual level (understanding), which is the development of knowledge that is a fact or concept, so that the knowledge is ingrained in the self; third, affective level (valuing), namely reflecting and affirming one’s knowledge and understanding of moral values through the processes of value selection, appreciation and application; and fourth, the stage of active level (acting), which is manifesting the values in behaviors (unesco, 2005: 30). in line with the model developed by unesco, ornstein (2009: 230) has developed an instructional model aimed to guide students’ spirituality, belief, and affection. hence, he offered a model covering (1) receiving, namely the awareness and will to accept and pay attention to objects selectively, (2) responding, which is the will to respond to new things accompanied by satisfaction, (3) valuing, namely an attempt to value and accept the new things accompanied by a commitment, (4) organization, which is an attempt to conceptualize values and manage value system to be part of one’s self, and (5) characterization, namely reflecting the values in behaviors and actualizing them as the philosophy of life. international journal of education, vol. 7 no. 1 desember 2013 60 the concerns of the aforementioned experts are well-justified because various sociological phenomena show that there are individuals and social groups who violate the universal human values. the violation is as a result of an imbalance in education, where today’s education puts more emphasis on the material rather than spiritual aspects. hence, the above studies were aimed to formulate solutions for the social problems. the issue is: have the instructional models been able to minimize the social problems? or, are the solutions only symptomatic? it seems that the symptoms can be solved, but the essential issues remain untouched. it is based on those thoughts that i conducted research on an instructional model based on spiritual and religious values, aimed to solve problems in education by developing students’ mindset. the development of mindset should begin from the development of belief and faith system of human beings in the almighty god. if one has a strong belief, his or her behaviors will be based on rules, laws, morals, and s/he will even attempt to decorate his/her behaviors with ethical and aesthetical values. in order for human beings to have faiths, god teaches them by commanding them to observe god’s various concrete creations and the signs of god’s power. the observation is done using the senses, functioning to transfer events, forms, colors, figures, and various kinds of information to the brain, which are then processed and transformed in such a way into logical descriptions as parts of knowledge, experience, or even values. according to al-‘amili (1424: 53-54), the transformation process is intended to direct and guide human norm to be a driving force. the guidance is given to logical thinking and obedience to law, which in turn will come down to the virtues of human norm as a whole. therefore, allah ta’ala does not tell the issue of belief and faith philosophically, but realistically (see al-waqi’ah, 56: 58-73). al-‘amili (142: 55-61) further asserted that knowledge, experience, and values gained need to be processed through the following three steps: first, human beings see, examine, and observe events, shapes, colors, figures of objects, and various kinds of information with their senses to be relayed to the brain and processed into logical descriptions as parts of knowledge and understanding. second, the gained knowledge and experience, even values, are interactively and continuously juxtaposed with various fitrah (human norm) and potentials they own. third, human beings evaluate, reflect, clarify, and internalize knowledge, experience, and values in to their hearts and souls. these three steps result in an opportunity to gain god’s guidance and blessings. in the views of boud and walker (in foley, 2000: 235), the third step is called reflection, namely a re-assessment of the previous experiences, expression of feelings and re-evaluation of the gained experience. the three steps of understanding are in conjunction with david kolb’s four learning models (lang and evans, 2006). the first is concrete experience model that demands students to be completely engaged with an experience; second, reflective observation, demanding students to observe experiences, test, analyze, and reflect them; third, conceptualization, inviting students to build abstractions and make produce logical concepts and generalizations; and fourth, active experimentation, demanding students to utilize new theories manifestly and make decision to solve problems. the steps to gain knowledge and values are assumed to be found in al-quran, sura alghasyiah, verses 17-26. in the verses, allah commands human beings to observe various allah’s creations and the signs of allah’s almighty power. according to al-ashfahani (n.d.), afifi (2013), and maher (2013), the understanding is gained from observing, contemplating, and researching. the processes of observing and contemplating employ albashar (vision), involving two mutually complementary activities, namely nazhara syihabuddin, m-3 instructional model 61 (seeing) done by the eyes, continued with ra’a (sight), using certain nervous centers on the brain’s surface. these nervous centers in the brain (center of vision) are connected to the nerves of vision, enabling the activities of seeing and observing (afifi, 2013). the early observation done by nazhara (seeing) should be continued with ra’a, namely seeing shadow-figures. according to maher (2013), ra’a occurs as a result of nazhara. nazhara is done first, followed by ra’a. nevertheless, not every ra’a is nazhara; for instance, the ra’a that happens incidentally, such as the one in dreams. when dreaming, human beings only “capture” items or events, without seeing and observing. sometimes ra’a occurs deliberately and without nazhara (seeing); for example, when one repeats a shadow or act in his or her mind in order to see it again. occasionally, ra’a is accompanied by capturing and remembering objects, and some other times it is not. ra’a is completed with bashara. hence, ra’a is an activity perfected by bashara process. thus, the term ra’a and its derivations are amply used in al-quran in the process of bashara, ultimately if what is meant by bashara is tadabbur (thinking) and taking lessons. the task of ra’a is in compliance with its ultimate function performed by the conscious brain that controls the whole parts of the body and human’s movements. how to cultivate the knowledge gained from the processes of nazhara, ra’a, and bashara? how are the knowledge and experience validated, so that they can become the drive for the manifestation of religious behaviors? how is an instructional model based on the concepts and theories successfully formulated from sura al-ghasyiah, verses 1726? these are the questions that will be elaborated in this research-based article. research method the research examined pedagogic meanings, concepts, and values strongly assumed to be contained in sura al-ghasyiyah, verses 17-26. the values can be made references, bases, and rationales in composing an instructional model. to reveal the meanings, concepts, and values, the researcher employed a qualitative approach by applying content analysis method (gall, 2003: 282284; fraenkel, 2012: 477). the method was implemented to identify various sources of data relevant to the aim of the research using a format of data collection. the data were then grouped, compared, defined, and interpreted in compliance with pedagogic contexts in an actual environment. from these series of activities, a conclusion was drawn in the form of a hypothetical or theoretical model. the research conducted in the school of postgraduate studies of upi bandung in 2013 took data from al-quran sura al-ghasyiyah, verses 17-26, along with their interpretations found in 30 books of interpretation. some of the books of interpretation are tafsir alqur`an al-aziz, ma’alimut tanzil fi tafsiril qur`an, anwarut tanzil wa asrarut ta`wil, aisarut tafasir likalamil ‘aliyyil kabir, at-tafsir alqur`an lilqur`an, tafsir al-maraghi, tafsir al-maturidi: ta`wilat ahlissunnah, tafsir almawardi: an-nukt wal’uyun, taisirut tafsir, al-jami’ li`ahkamil qur`an, latha`iful isyarat, mafatihul ghaib: at-tafsir al-kabir, tafsir al-quran, bahrul ‘ulum, tafsir aljalalin, shafwatut tafasir, and other books of interpretation listed in the references, taken from the software of al-maktabah asysyamilah. results and discussion this section will explain the research outcomes on al-quran sura al-ghasyiyah, verses 17-26, covering (1) lexical meanings, (2) contextual meanings, (3) interpretations from 30 books, and (4) an instructional model presenting meaning and interpretation analyses from the perspective of model theory as conclusion. international journal of education, vol. 7 no. 1 desember 2013 62 lexical meanings of nazhara, dzakara, and hasiba the presentation of the lexical meanings involve: (1) the word al-munazharah and other words relating to it, namely nazhara, ra`a, and bashara; (2) the word al-mudzakarah; and (3) al-muhasabah. firstly, the word nazhara-munazharah is derived from nazhara, meaning using the eyes or the hearts/conscience to see and understand something. nazhara is defined as contemplating something and checking it. annazhru means thoughts or knowledge gained after examining and researching. the aim of nazhara is to contemplate allah’s creations and feel allah’s greatness, so that human beings will be able to realize that each creation is proof of the existence of the creator. nazhahra means seeing something deliberately or incidentally, resulting in ru’yah, namely a figure or shadow of objects seen, or not resulting in ru’yah, such as experienced by one seeing in darkness or from a distance that is out of the range of one’s vision (alashfahani, n.d.: 518-519). another word with the same meaning as nazhara is ra’a, meaning seeing something visible. the act is varied according to the vision owned by each human being (alashfahani, n.d.: 187-188). still, there is another word with the same meaning as nazhara and ra’a, which is bashara, that means seeing or capturing a figure and object’s shadow deliberately. one of the derivations of bashara is bashirah that means an organ functioning to see sharply, also called the conscience, or the power in the eyes (al-ashfahani, n.d: 46-47). secondly, the word dzakara-mudzakarah is derived from the word dzakara that means mentioning or telling something repeatedly, so that it becomes popular and known by various groups. hence, adz-dzkir means popular. dzakara means reading al-quran orally by uttering the symbols of holy scriptures, or oral dzikir or with heart. dzakara then is defined as protecting and maintaining knowledge gained through the mental process in the mind (alhifzhu) (al-ashfahani, n.d.: 181-182). thirdly, the word hasiba-muhasabah means counting or the act of calculating. one of the words derived from hasiba is hisaab, frequently defined as without limit and uncountable. actually, the word hisab can mean that god provides human beings with an amount of rizki (sustenance) that is much more than they deserve, rizki that is not complicated, rizki that is more than what is expected, rizki whose portion is in accordance with allah’s calculation for the welfare of allah’s slaves, and rizki given to someone and the person is not reckoned for allah’s gift, where the rewards given are not based on the number one deserves to receive, but it is more than that. one who does al-hisab is called al-hasiib or al-muhaasib (al-asfahani, n.d.: 115-116). ‘azhim (n.d.) pointed out that the word al-muhasabah literally means tomorrow, predicting, and managing well. the contextual meanings of nazhara, dzakara, and hasiba the lexical meanings of the three terms above also need to be understood in their contexts as they are used in the verses, suras, and al-quran as a whole. the three contextual meanings can be explained as follows: firstly, the term nazhara-munazharah. contextually, nazhara means seeing by thinking (yunus: 101, al-ghasyiyah: 17, ashshafat: 88, al-a’raf: 185, and ali ‘imran: 77). sometimes, nazhara is done cursorily and some other times for a long time to learn or enjoy the object seen while contemplating it (ash-shoffat: 88, yunus: 101, and al-ghasyiah: 17). as for the word ra’a, it has several contextual meanings, namely: seeing objects using the senses or tools equivalent to them (maryam: 36, fushilat: 29, at-takatsur: 7, and az-zumar: 60), seeing with al-wahmu (illusion) and at-takhayyul (imagination) (al-anfal: 50), seeing with the mind (alanfal: 48), seeing using reason (an-najm: 11-13), and knowing (saba: 6, al-kahfi: 39, syihabuddin, m-3 instructional model 63 al-isra: 62, al-an’am: 40 and 47, al-‘alaq: 9, al-ahqaf: 4, al-qashash: 71, fushshilat: 52, al-ahqaf: 10, and al-kahfi: 63). one of the derivations of ra’a is ra’yu, meaning a strong assumption concerning something (ali imran: 13). if ra’a is coupled with ila, then the prepositional phrase will be in the same meaning as nazhara, namely seeing resulting in a lesson learned (al-furqan: 45, an-nisa`: 105, and al-ghasyiyah: 17-20). meanwhile, the word bashara-bashar means an organ functioning to see, namely the eyes (an-nahl: 77, al-qamar: 50, and alahzab: 10), an organ seeing sharply (an-naml: 13 and al-isra: 12), the power in qalbu (the heart/conscience) that functions to understand (qaaf: 22 and an-najm: 17), and as a metaphor for ‘ain (an-nur: 30). one of its derivations is dzakara, namely dzkir, which contextually means the act of remembering allah done by reading al-quran (al-anbiya: 10, 54, and 24; shad: 8; and az-zukhruf: 44) secondly, the term dzakaramudzakarah, which contextually means the act of remembering something using the heart/conscience and the mouth (al-baqarah: 2000). this term has a number of derivations, among them is adz-dzikr that means a popularly good name (shaad: 8 and azzukhruf: 44), the attributes and terms inherent to the prophet muhammad (ath-thalaq: 10), and remembering something known, learned, and understood, but forgotten (al-kahfi: 63). another derivation is tadzkirah, which means a medium used to remember something in order not to forget, or to remember something forgotten (al-muddatsir: 49 and 54; alashfahani n.d.: 181-182). thirdly, the term hasiba-muhasabah shows a meaning of being sufficient (attaubah: 59), namely sufficient according to oneself, others, and god; questioning and asking for responsibility for a deed (aththalaq: 8 and al-insyiqaq: 8), evaluating what has been done (al-anbiya`: 47, annisa`: 6 and 86), explanation of material’s values quantitatively or qualitatively (albaqarah: 212 and ath-thalaq: 8), calculation (accounting) and arithmetic (al-isra: 12 and yunus: 5), the granting of a mandate (yusuf: 55), documenting and witnessing the results of a record or accounting (an-nisa: 6), and accounting quickly (al-baqarah: 202 and alan’am: 62). one of the derivations from hasibamuhasabah is al-muhasib, namely one who counts and does recording (al-isra’: 35), one who owns the knowledge of and masters arithmetic and recording (yunus: 5), one who is honest and competent (al-qashash: 26, yusuf: 55), one who is precise and just (alanbiya’: 47), impartial (ar-rahman: 8-9), and applying moral noble values (ali ‘imran: 132). interpretations of munazharah, mudzakarah, and muhasabah the explanations of lexical and contextual meanings above are not appropriate to be referenced in understanding the pedagogic concepts and values contained in sura al-ghasyiyah: 17-26. therefore, some of the interpretations expressed by the clergies in 30 books of interpretation specifically related to the terms munazharah, mudzakarah, and muhasabah are revealed below. munazharah the group of verses containing rhetorical questions about camels, the sky, mountains, and earth, consists of 4 verses, namely verses 17, 18, 19, and 20. the keyword that needs to be considered in this group of verses is the word unzhur, which literally means see or observe. the literal meaning is not appropriate to be referred in generating a valid formulation. then, how do the clergies interpret the command in the verses? the clergies have interpreted the phrase afala yanzhuruna... as seeing, observing, and witnessing various creations of allah, some of them are camels, the sky, mountains, and earth. the activity is meant in order to international journal of education, vol. 7 no. 1 desember 2013 64 arrive at a conclusion that all those objects show the existence of allah and allah’s power, including the power to awaken human beings from their tombs and create the amazing heaven (abdullah, 1423: 124; alqaththan, n.d.: 430; al-qurthubi, 1964: 34; muhammad, 1383; al-baidhawi, 1418: 307); az-zuhaili, 1418: 213; al-jaza`iri, 1424: 562; hatim, 1419: 1542). meanwhile, al-maraghi (1365:137), lajnah ‘ulama al-azhar (1416: 903), and quthub (1412: 3899) interpreted the phrase as “thinking of the creation of god’s beings and contemplating it.” some other clergies interpreted yanzhuruna as seeing and observing various miraculous creations of god (‘izzat, 1383: 47; umar, 1420: 387), witnessing and observing allah’s creations visible in daily life (assamarqandi, n.d.: 575; as-suyuthi, n.d.: 805), and directing the gaze to allah’s creations (al-baghawi, 1420: 246; al-khathib, n.d.: 746), among others is observing allah’s big creatures, but bowing to small things, namely camels (az-zujaj, 1988: 318). even though the activities of seeing, examining, and contemplating are contained in an istifham (interrogative) sentence, the meaning remains that allah commands human beings to see and contemplate god’s creations to erase the doubts in their hearts (al-maturidi, 2005: 512; as-sam’ani, 1997: 214). on the other hand, ath-thayyib (1412: 206), lajnah ulama al-azhar (1416: 904), and quthub (1412: 3899) interpreted the sentence as having an insulting tone directed to non-muslims because they do not want to or willingly contemplate various creations of allah. the activity of yanzharu is done by contemplating allah’s creations, from which one learns lessons (‘abbas, n.d.:509; ashshabuni, 1997:526). through the group of verses, allah commands human beings to see what is in allah’s creations as postulations demonstrating allah’s power (al-mawardi, n.d.: 262). the ultimate aims of the activities are to draw a conclusion (istidlal) of the truth of kiamat or the judgment day (ar-razi, 1420: 143), to demonstrate the perfect nature of allah’s creations and blessings (ishaq, 1422:189; isma’il, 2007: 379; ‘izzat, 1383), and to erase the doubts in the hearts of nonmuslims (al-maturidi, 2005; as-sam’ani, 1977:214). the latter aim is in accordance with the context surrounding the revelation of sura al-ghasyiyah verses 17-26, namely the astonishment shown by non-muslims over god’s explanation about heaven. thus, allah asks in return, “will they not regard the camels, how they are created?” even though the statement is interrogative in form, the verse actually commands human beings to think of the creation of camels, which are very familiar to them (az-zuhaili, 30: 214). the question aims to encourage human beings to see allah’s creations while accompanied by contemplation and lesson-learning of them (ash-shabuni, 1977: 526; al-qinwaji, 15: 206). despite the accordance with the reasons behind the revelation of the verse, the command to observe is directed to nonmuslims, and the meaning is universal, namely it equally applies to the muslims. from the above interpretations, it can be concluded then that munazharah is an act of seeing with the eyes (mu’ayanah), paying attention, witnessing (musyahadah), observing (mulahazhah), contemplating (tafakkur), and thinking (tadabbur) about what lies behind allah’s creations. the activity is done using the senses, or tools equivalent to the senses, alwahmu (illusion), at-takhayyul (imagination), reason, and conscience, aiming to make a conclusion (istidlal) that all allah’s creations and verses show the existence of allah, his perfection of power, allah’s wisdoms, and the goodness in his creations. the conclusion will increase the faith, experience, and knowledge of one who does munazharah. mudzakarah the second group of the final verses of sura al-ghasyiyah pertains to the command to give warnings, consisting of 4 verses, syihabuddin, m-3 instructional model 65 namely 21, 22, 23, and 24. the keywords that need to be heeded in this group of verses are fadzakkir and innama anta mudzakkir, which literally mean “remind them and thou are but a reminder”. to understand the phrases more deeply, the substances of the interpretations from 30 scribes are presented: the interpretations of clergies for the phrase fadzakkir innama anta mudzakkir can be grouped into three main meanings, namely to warn/remind, to advise, and to appeal. however, in general the clergies interpreted the phrase as reminding or warning human beings of the blessings given by allah. the warning is given because human beings have forgotten the blessings. the activity of reminding is the main duty of prophet muhammad. even though the task is especially given to the prophet, his followers or anybody who has the ability to remind others are commanded to give warnings as well (abdullah, 1423: 747; al-jaza`iri, 1424: 562; ar-razi, 1420: 146; ath-thayyib, 1412: 207; az-zuhaili, 1418: 216; hatim, 1419: 1543; ishaq, 1422: 190; ‘izzat, 1383; lajnah ulama al-azhar, 1416: 904; muhammad, 1383; and quthub, 1412: 3900). the interpretation of fadzakkir… as advising, frightening, encouraging human beings to do good deeds, and cautioning them not to do any violations has been put forward by ‘abbas, (n.d.: 509), al-baghawi (1420: 246), al-baidhawi (1418: 307), al-maraghi (1365: 137), al-mawardi (n.d.: 262), alqurthubi (1964: 37), as-sam’ani (1977: 215), and ash-shabuni (1977: 526-527). meanwhile, al khathib (n.d.) interpreted the phrase as appealing to the prophet (peace be upon him) to tell allah’s power and the various blessings allah gives to non-muslims and to muslims themselves. if the non-muslims behave badly, the prophet is commanded by allah not to pay back their bad deeds, but return the deeds by advising them (al-maturidi, 2005: 513-514). the information used to give advice, warning, appeal, and encouragement are allah’s teachings, the hereafter, the universe spanning before human beings, various blessings given by allah, the revelations showing allah’s power, and the doom in the hereafter (khathib, n.d.; al-qaththan, n.d.: 430; al-qusyairi, n.d.: 722; as-samarqandi, n.d.: 575; as-suyuthi, n.d.: 805; az-zujaj, 1988: 319; az-zamaksyari, 1407: 745; isma’il, 2007: 380; and umar, 1420: 387). if the aforementioned interpretations are related to the contextual and lexical meanings, the term reminding emerges because human beings forget. the act of remembering things that are forgotten is called al-hifzhu (memorizing), emphasizing the maintenance and guarding of knowledge in the mind. if knowledge, experience, and the internalized values in the mind are recalled, the act is called mudzakarah, namely an effort of strengthening knowledge and experience by remembering (dzakara), memorizing and maintaining (muhafazhah), and delivering or advising oneself and others. muhasabah in the previous group of verses, it has been mentioned that allah commands the prophet muhammad (pbuh) to give warnings to human beings, to frighten them with punishment, to advise, and to remind them. these warnings and advice are significant to be heeded and practiced because human beings will be assumed responsible for what they do in the hereafter. then, how about the interpretations of the group of verses explaining the last stage from the two stages previously explained? verses 25 and 26 explain the end of humans’ lives and the end of all activities. the keyword in this group of verses is al-hisab. to understand the meaning of this word, what follows are interpretations of clergies concerning the term. based on the data gained from 30 books of interpretation, it is found that the interpretations for the word al-hisab can be categorized into two groups. international journal of education, vol. 7 no. 1 desember 2013 66 firstly, al-hisab means to reckon the deeds of human beings for certain wisdom, to reckon what has been done and record everything, both big and small, both little and much, and to reckon the sins human beings have done (al-baghawi,1420: 246; al khathib, n.d.; al-maraghi, 1365: 138; all-maturidi, 2005: 514; al-qaththan, n.d.:430; al-qurthubi, 1964: 37; as-sam’ani, 1977:215; as-samarqandi, n.d.: 578; ashshabuni, 1977: 527; hatim, 1419: 1544; ishaq, 1422: 190; ‘izzat, 1383: 49; lajnah ‘ulama al-azhar, 1416: 904; umar, 1420: 389). according to ar-razi (1420: 147) and quthub (1412: 3900), the acts of accounting and calculating all the deeds of human beings are done in “field of mahsyar”, then allah pays back human beings’ due wholly. the acts of accounting and paying back are the authority of allah the most just. the accounting is done precisely to execute justice, which is probably not obtained by someone while living on earth (az-zamaksyari, 1407: 746; abbas, n.d.: 509). because of its precision, verse 26 is also interpreted as a combination between promises and threats (al-mawardi, n.d.: 263; al-baidhawi, 1418: 308). it means that god threatens human beings in order to behave well because god will account for all their deeds and pay them back without missing anything. secondly, al-hisab is interpreted as paying back what humans beings have done in the world. allah will never let them and their deeds away. allah will pay good or bad deeds human beings have done in the world (abdullah, 1423: 746; al-qusyairi, n.d.: 723; as-suyuthi, n.d.: 806; and muhammad, 1383). this is in conjunction with ath-thayyib who interpreted that human beings will die and return to allah, then allah will account for their deeds so that they will get their just due (ath-thayyib, 1412: 208; ishaq, 1422; al-jaza`iri, 1424: 563). allah will pay the due justly and fully in the hereafter without missing anything, both small and big dues, a little or much. if the interpretations above are connected to the whole contextual meanings of alquran, it becomes clear that al-hisab refers to the act of accounting or assessing oneself meaningfully, accounting activities that are material in nature, evaluating various issues related to certain activities, and conveying the results of the activities to other parties. the true accountant, recorder, and granter of recompense is allah ta’ala. nonetheless, human beings can also be recorders and accountants. however, as an accountant, or al-muhasib, s/he has to be just, mastering accounting, honest and competent, precise, impartial, and applying noble moral values (ali ‘imran: 132). the activity of muhasabah is done by determining and collecting data from an act; recording, classifying, and analyzing the data based on certain concepts or principles in compliance with the desired aims; and conveying the results of muhasabah to interested parties to be used for decision making. according to gharbi (2013), the word hasiba and its derivations are expressed in al-quran for more than 100 times. it is inarguable that the frequency demonstrates the significance of al-hisab in various aspects of human life. m-3 model based on the semantic, lexical, and interpretative analyses of the terms munazharah, mudzakarah, and muhasabah, it can be stressed here that the process of gaining knowledge, experience, and values occurs through the use of the senses that will relay various kinds of information to the brain. then, the information is processed with tafakur and tadabbur (munazharah), so that the process results in realistic knowledge and faith (‘ain al-yaqin). the knowledge and faith are strengthened, maintained, internalized, and interpreted using the power of reasoning and conscience (mudzakarah), syihabuddin, m-3 instructional model 67 so that knowledge whose truth is proven is born (‘ilm al-yaqin). such knowledge needs to be continually evaluated and reflected by validating, considering its strengths and weaknesses, documenting, and presenting or preaching it (muhasabah), so that valid and truth-tested knowledge is born (haq al-yaqin). the above flow of thoughts is termed by the researcher as m-3 model, namely an instructional model consisting of munazharah, mudzkarah, and muhasabah. if the three steps are elaborated into the model by seller and miller (1985: 191), and then connected to the above lexical, contextual, and interpretative analyses, the model would be like the following: orientation the m-3 model aims to develop the potentials, power, and fitrah (human norm) awarded by god to human beings, so that they will be servants who serve god proportionally in their positions as khalifah (allah’s representatives) on earth, in order to achieve happiness in the world and the hereafter. the potential development can be seen through seeing, examining, observing, witnessing, thinking, contemplating, evaluating, and reflecting the universe, and making a conclusion that is internalized into the soul continuously, so that it becomes faith that encourages human beings to behave in accordance with sharia (islamic laws) and noble morality. the assumption that needs to be fulfilled by m-3 model is the existence of loving teachers who are exemplary, creative, critical, and avid in doing research and making all their activities as forms of worshipping god. in practice, m-3 model holds onto the principle that the acts of munazharah, mudzakarah, and muhasabah cannot stand by themselves, but one activity is the basis of other activities as a mutually perfecting cycle. in addition, the instruction should depart from concrete things, containing the daily environment or students’ habits, and later on is directed to conceptual, theoretical, and abstract things. m-3 model is executed through the following three stages: a. munazharah stage the stage consists of three main substages, namely nazhara, ra`a, and bashara. the three sub-stages can be put in order as shown below: a) nazhara (a) seeing with the eyes (mu’ayanah) (b) witnessing (musyahadah) (c) observing (mulahazhah) b) ra`a (a) seeing with the senses or their equivalents (b) seeing with al-wahmu (illusion) (c) seeing with at-takhayyul (imagination) (d) seeing with reason (e) assuming strongly c) bashara (a) seeing with the eyes (b) using the power of the eyes (c) seeing with the power of heart/ conscience (qalbu) (d) using the heart/conscience that sees sharply b. mudzakarah a) remembering allah by reading alquran and calling allah’s names b) uttering something repeatedly c) revealing peculiar attributes of something d) remembering something forgotten (al-muhafazhah), e) doing the act of remembering (mudzakarah) f) remembering the media of remembrance (tadzkirah) g) expressing what is in the heart orally c. muhasabah a) using numbers b) asking for responsibility for the deeds done international journal of education, vol. 7 no. 1 desember 2013 68 c) evaluating self for what has been done d) recording and accounting e) documenting and presenting the results of recording f) reflecting what has been done the relationship between teacher and student in implementing m-3 model, teacher plays the role of mursyid (guide), one who develops the potentials of children (murabbi) and acts as a model for his/her students (uswah hasanah). teacher and students are supposed to work together in conducting the three instructional stages. reaction principle the main reaction principle is that teacher and students should attend, remind, strengthen, evaluate, reflect, and assess each other justly. the principle is reflected in the morphological meanings of the terms munazharah, mudzakarah, and muhasabah. human resource and infrastructure support m-3 model requires support from a reliable, creative, and committed teacher to educate the students; s/he has to like researching, be a good example, and a mursyid for the students. the model does not require specific facilities, except when the actual condition for observation has to be transformed into audio-visuals. the impact of the instruction m-3 model is expected to give birth to students who have true understanding of knowledge, are sensible to their environments, able to cooperate in self-development, and possess logical, critical, and objective thinking skills, for what is nurtured by m-3 model is ways of thinking and solving problems. conclusions the research has successfully formulated a hypothetical or theoretical model called m-3 model. the model consists of three main activities, represented in three main key terms, namely munazharah, mudzakarah, and muhasbah. each of the activities cannot stand apart, but the activities are interconnected and mutually supporting in achieving the objectives of instruction. the three activities are a continuously moving cycle, completing each other. the instructional model can be used to achieve various instructional objectives, ultimately to improve the skill and ability to think systematically, logically, creatively, and innovatively through the development of human beings’ potentials, power, and fitrah (human norm). hierarchically, the activity of munazharah can produce cognitivistic knowledge (‘ainal yaqin), while the activity of mudzakarah can give birth to knowledge, experience and values internalized into the heart/conscience (‘ilm al-yaqin), and the activity of muhasabah can result in knowledge, experience, and values that have been evaluated, reflected, and validated (haqqul yaqin), so that they become the drive, encouragement, and reference one’s behavior. as the model taught by god to human beings is still hypothetical and theoretical in nature, the model needs to be tested empirically and continuously. references ‘abbas, a.i. 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(2005). learning to do: values for learning and working together in a globalized world. germany: unescounevoc. syihabuddin is a professor in the arabic department, faculty of language and arts, indonesian university of education, bandung. he is the author of kemudahan dari yang maha agung; ringkasan tafsir ibnu kathir (iv vol.), jakarta: gema insani press, and terjemah tafsir ruhul bayan (xiii vol.), bandung: diponegoro. 129 riswanda setiadi & araya piyakun, foreign language proficiency and study skills foreign language proficiency and study skills among indonesian and thai graduate students of education studies riswanda setiadi indonesia university of education (upi) riswandasetiadi@gmail.com araya piyakun mahasarakham university sendr_p@hotmail.com abstract the research was aimed at identifying indonesian and thai graduate students’ competence in foreign language, english or other foreign languages, describing their study skills by documenting their foreign language learning strategies, and documenting ways they use their competence in english or other foreign languages to facilitate their learning processes. participants of the study possess different foreign language skills other than english. some indonesia students can speak french and japanese, and thai students are able to chinese and laos. however, their foreign language skills are mostly poor. only a few students claimed that they were good foreign language speakers. it is believed that when individuals do not practice their foreign language skills frequently, they will lose their skills acquisition as they are not able to keep their language knowledge in their memory. in terms of language use, they speak foreign language(s) for academic, professional, economic, and cultural purposes. in sum, both indonesian and thai graduate students are mostly classified into receptive type of learners as they tend to improve receptive language skills rather than productive ones because for their academic purposes, they only need to read and listen. it is recommended that the students improve their academic writing skills. keywords: foreign language proficiency, learner types, language acquisition non-english speakers, speaking and using english requires individuals to learn it at formal or non-formal education settings. therefore, sometimes foreign language acquisition becomes a very hard struggle for some or many people. a particular phenomenon related to foreign language acquisition can be seen at tertiary education level in indonesia in particular. studying international or foreign languages constitutes a choice for students to develop their academic, linguistic and intellectual capacity, and to pursue sociocultural, economic or professional goals. furthermore, they are studied and analyzed in many respects. in other words, people learn those languages, learn about them, and introduction it is common that foreign languages, especially english, are used as a medium of communication for various purposes. in international relations, foreign languages play crucial roles which enable different people to understand each other. in many countries where international languages such as english, french, arabic, spanish or chinese are not spoken, learning those languages have become academic affairs. in academic sphere, english in particular and other foreign language are not only a disciplinary subject at different educational levels, but a lingua franca as well to achieve academic goals since literature and teaching materials are written in this language. for 130 international journal of education, vol. 8 no. 2 may 2015 learn through them. it is indeed believed that graduates with foreign language skills face exciting employment opportunities given increased demand for such skills in the global market. as a developing country, indonesia adopts an education system which encourages people to learn and study foreign languages in order to communicate with other peoples and understand their cultures. many other developing countries develop similar policies in their education system. thailand is one of those countries that apply an education system which includes foreign language learning into its curriculum. indonesian and thai people do not speak international languages used in international communities or bodies such as united nations. exposure to the international languages in both countries only belongs to those who study them or who have chances to communicate with people from different nationalities. english is a dominant international language spoken in various areas in both countries. one of interesting phenomena to which many people pay attention is using english to develop study skills, and this phenomenon can be found in learning processes among graduate students who do not major in english or any other foreign languages. they have to develop their study skills by acquiring english in particular as they read literature and instructional materials in english. frankly speaking, most of textbooks intended for graduate students in indonesia and thailand are written in english. it is the reason why some students, if not all, at graduate education level deal with an extra burden in completing their study. indonesia university of education located in bandung indonesia and mahasarakham university in thailand share a similar circumstance where graduate students who do not major in english or other foreign languages are required to master foreign language skills due to the above mentioned reason. at indonesia university of education for instance, graduate students have to achieve at least 450 toefl score as the evidence of their english language acquisition. they have to present an english language proficiency certificate to graduate school at the end of first semester. when they are able to show this evidence, they are allowed to submit their thesis for final examination. this requirement proves that english is not only a foreign language but also an academic language. however, how they make use of it to facilitate their study is still a question because they in fact speak indonesian as instructional medium. up to now, not much effort has been made to document this dilemmatic situation. it is why this research is worth considering and conducting. the research was aimed at identifying indonesian and thai graduate students’ competence in foreign language, english or other foreign languages, describing their study skills by documenting their foreign language learning strategies, and documenting ways they use their competence in english or other foreign languages to facilitate their learning processes. furthermore, the research has been expected to provide data and information about (1) foreign language proficiency among indonesian and thai graduate students who do not major in english or other foreign languages; (2) how the students develop study skills by making use of english or other foreign languages; (3) how they use english or other foreign languages for academic purposes; and (4) possible strategies or policies which can be developed by indonesia university of education and mahasarakham university or other universities which offer graduate programs both in indonesia and thailand to help the students improve their foreign language competence. in addition, it is expected to encourage other researchers to conduct further joint research at international level on the foreign language skills or other fields of study. 131 riswanda setiadi & araya piyakun, foreign language proficiency and study skills method in line with its purposes, the research adopted a descriptive method to describe current state of indonesian and thai graduate students’ foreign language proficiency and study skills. to collect data on graduate students’ foreign language proficiency and study skills, questionnaire and interview will be conducted. questionnaire will contain questions regarding students’ proficiency in one or more foreign languages, foreign language learning experiences, frequency of foreign language use, the acquisition of foreign language skills (listening, speaking, reading, and writing), and learning strategies in relation to the use of foreign language. meanwhile, interview will focus on study burden in relation to learning materials written in foreign language, attempts made to handle foreign language difficulties (if any), development of foreign language skills, the contributions of foreign language skills to the selection of appropriate study skills, and acceleration of academic task completion. research samples were randomly selected from graduate students of education studies who have completed the third semester of their study period at indonesia university of education (upi) and mahasarakham university (mu) thailand. they are 73 upi and 60 mu graduate students who are not majoring in english or other foreign language studies. a manageable size of samples was set to make this research workable and attain accountable validity. theoretical review foreign language learning theories and models to fully understand how a foreign language is acquired and learned, it is necessary to take into some theoretical perspectives. literature describes a number of foreign language learning theories and models. freeman & freeman (1996), willis & willis (1996), brown (2000), and scovel (2001) proposed those theories and models in different ways. based on their work, there are three general classifications which cover foreign language learning theories and models: innatist, cognitive, and constructivist. however, it is necessary to emphasize that in general a theory results in a model. therefore, theories and models share the same names. a. innatist model stephen krashen is one of experts who has written various articles on foreign language acquisition and proposed five hypotheses: (1) the acquisitionlearning hypothesis, (2) the monitor hypothesis, (3) the natural order hypothesis, (4) the input hypothesis, and (5) the affective filter hypothesis. in his first hypothesis, krashen (1997) states that adult learners of a foreign language adopt two ways of mastering a target language: acquisition and learning. foreign language fluency, according to him, is achieved through an acquisition process, rather than learning process. acquisition is more dominant than learning, and both processes are separate. the second hypothesis suggests that learning involves the process of monitoring (correction), and learners are aware of this process. the third hypothesis states individuals master language rules naturally (unpredicted). the fourth hypothesis contends that foreign language learning processes occur when learners understand language inputs slightly higher than their language competence. the final hypothesis mentions that language acquisition will occur in an environment where learners have low anxiety or affective filter. considering those five hypotheses, we can conclude that language input is a crucial source for foreign language learning. however, learner competence and learner involvement in interactional processes of acquisition and learning are not taken into account. 132 international journal of education, vol. 8 no. 2 may 2015 b. cognitive model among other experts, there are two writers who have made significant contributions to the development of cognitive model: barry mclaughlin and ellen bialystok. mclaughlin (1987, 1990) proposed attentionprocessing model, which puts emphasis on the control and automatic information processing mechanism. control process involves limited and temporary capacity and competence, while automatic mechanism includes wider and more complex processes. meanwhile, bialystok (1990) put forward explicit and implicit model. explicit knowledge is a fact of an individual’s linguistic knowledge and competence to present the fact in certain ways, while implicit knowledge is information automatically and spontaneously used in language communication. in this model, cognitive ability is the key to successful foreign language learning. c. constructivist model figure behind this model is mainly lev vygotsky, a russian psychologist, who presented zone of proximal development (zpd) theory. zpd is a potential distance between learner’s independent learning and more capable adult’ assistance in learning processes (ruddell & ruddell, 1996). in terma of foreign language learning, michael long adalah is a constructivist who has presented ideas of how foreign language is acquired or learned in social context. in long’s perspective (1996), interation and language input are two major factors in foreign language acquisition process. with the emphasis on social interaction, we can conclude that classroom is not only a place to develop language skills, but also a setting for learners to interact with each other and make interaction a language acquisition facilitator. 2. practical implications for foreign language learning considering the above mentioned theories, there are a few practical implications teachers and learners should take into account in their language learning processes. those implications are: (1) teacher and learner should consider various variables which lead to foreign language learning complexity; (2) language instruction should focus on acquisition process or at least balance acquition and learning processes; (3) foreign language learning is also foreign culture learning; (4) learning is a process of dialog and interaction; and (5) personal, cognitive, and social components when combined will be very important sources of successfull foreign language learning processes. study skills in many ways, study skills are similar to learning strategies. a skill or strategy is closely related to metacognitive, cognitive, and socioaffective aspects (nunan, 1999). at higher level of education, study skills cover the following skills: (1) understanding syntax, (2) recognizing and interpreting cohesive devices, (3) interpreting discourse markers, (4) recognizing functional value, (5) recognizing the presuppositions underlying the text, (6) recognizing implications and making inferences, (7) recognizing rhetorical structure, and (8) prediction (nuttall, 1996). based on this conception, it can be concluded that study skills and reading skills are interchangeable. for the purpose of this study, study skills will be connected with reading skills or reading strategies. however, study skills are not only concerned with written language, but spoken language as well. in the context of higher level learning in particular, there is one thing to consider that oral process, speakers or readers should be in interaction. in writing process, writers do not need to directly interact with their readers. it is therefore necessary to reemphasize that “in many ways there is a close relationship between speech and writing because both are a crucial part of language competence and support each other (winch, 133 riswanda setiadi & araya piyakun, foreign language proficiency and study skills et.al. 2001)”. in particular, byrne (1988, 3) presents differences between spoken and written language. in the final analysis, it can be convinced that when students are able to manage and manipulate those skills for their academic purposes, they will result in high quality learning outcomes. as mentioned above, however, study skills are closely related to reading activities. in many respects, the use of foreign language by graduate students involves reading activities since the students are frequently exposed to literature written in foreign languages, especially english. in many ways, there is a close relationship between speech and writing because they are a crucial part of language competence and support each other (winch, et.al. 2001). “written language is organized differently from spoken language, and the world as seen in writing is different from the world as heard in speech” (p. 151). a comparison between speech and writing can help us understand some of the difficulties we experience when we write. like the reading process, writing also involves a variety of factors that influence its smooth flow. according to byrne (1988), there are three factors that cause writing difficult: psychological, linguistic, and cognitive. specifically, winch, et. al. (2001) suggested that feelings and emotions are crucial factors to the writing process because they act as driving forces during the writing process. in general, graduate students deal with academic writing tasks to prove their writing skills in various forms of academic work. they write paper or research paper to meet academic requirements set by their lecturers. therefore, their writing activities are mainly academic in nature. this research slightly focused on academic writing activities carried out by the graduate students of education studies in indonesia and thailand as their academic tasks mainly require them to read and completed in their national language. results and discussion foreign language proficiency data show that graduate students who got involved in the study possess different foreign language skills other than english. some indonesia students can speak french and japanese, and thai students are able to chinese and laos. however, their foreign language skills are mostly poor. only a few students claimed that they were good foreign language speakers. it is believed that when individuals do not practice their foreign language skills frequently, they will lose their speech writing 1. takes place in a context, which often makes references clear (e.g. ‘that thing over there’) 1. creates its own context and therefore has to be fully explicitly. 2. speaker and listener(s) in contact. interact and exchange roles. 2. reader not present and no interaction possible. 3. usually person addressed is specific. 3. reader not necessary known to writer. 4. immediate feedback given and expected: (a) verbal: questions, comments.., murmurs, grunts; and (b) nonverbal: facial expressions 4. no immediate feedback possible. writer may try to anticipate reader’s reactions and incorporate them into text. 5. speech is transitory. intended to be understood immediately. if not, listener expected to react. 5. writing is permanent. can be reread as often as necessary and at own speed. 6. sentences often incomplete and sometimes ungrammatical. hesitations and pauses common and usually some redundancy and repetition. 6. sentences expected to be carefully constructed, and linked and organized to form a text. range of devices (stress, intonation, pitch, speed) to help convey meaning. facial expression, body movements and gestures also used for this purpose. devices to help convey meaning are punctuation, capitals and underlining (for emphasis). sentence boundaries clearly indicated. 134 international journal of education, vol. 8 no. 2 may 2015 skills acquisition as they are not able to keep their language knowledge in their memory. it is a common phenomenon in the language acquisition. furthermore, most of the students are not foreign language learners because they do not study any foreign language for their academic purposes. that is why most of them only acquired foreign language skills at a superficial level. considering this situation, innatist model is appropriate to describe why the students’ foreign language competences are mostly poor. however, most of the students believed that they were fairly good english speakers. in terms of language use, they speak foreign language(s) for academic, professional, economic, and cultural purposes. foreign language use is closely related to the efforts to improve their learning outcomes. in this case, they usually take the following strategies (a) note taking, (b) asking questions, (c) reading more books, (d) discussion with fellow students, and (e) brainstorm with more capable colleagues. when practicing a foreign language, they mostly read, speak and listen so it can be assumed that they are possibly good readers in foreign language. however, they also admitted that vocabulary, grammar, syntax, and semantics are common difficult obstacles in their foreign language learning. at graduate level, foreign language learning for academic purposes much depends on instructional setting and learning tasks given by the lecturers, and understandability is the most important thing to the students. as most students are not exposed to foreign language communities, they tend to show a positive attitude toward the foreign language to keep them familiar with it. although ten to thirty per cent of books are written in foreign languages, mostly in english, it has not enabled them to use any foreign language fluently and accurately. therefore, they make a variety of efforts to improve their foreign language acquisition, such as memorization, translation, and asking questions. foreign language and literacy activities as mentioned above, up to 30% of learning materials are mostly written in english. so using those materials is barely avoidable to the graduate students. in addition to academic activities in mother tongue or national language, sometimes they have an occasion to use a foreign language the academic purposes. they claimed that they had to write from one to ten papers in a foreign language, mostly english, during their study period, but data show that they read only a few foreign books during their study. in fact, indonesian and thai students spend much time reading printed materials written in their national language as it is much easier to understand them, and publication has been improving in both countries. in literacy activities, the subjects have spent much more time reading and writing as they did not have opportunities to communicate with native speakers for academic purposes. in reading activities, they cope with reading difficulties by considering such textual components as vocabulary, sentences, or lexical clues and consulting dictionary. for the sake of better reading comprehension, they adopt the following strategies: (a) using a variety of senses, (b) making connections, (c) analyzing text structure, (d) recognizing words and understanding sentences, and read the text repeatedly. when they have to write a course assignment in foreign language, they tend to write a descriptive genre. like reading activities, they also face a similar problem with grammatical components. foreign language learning styles considering the ways the students learn to improve their foreign language skills, they can be classified into different categories of learner style. both indonesian and thai graduate students share similar characteristics, and belong to visual, auditory, tactile, kinesthetic, field-independent, fielddependent, reflective, and impulsive types of 135 riswanda setiadi & araya piyakun, foreign language proficiency and study skills learners. approximately 65% of the subjects are visual learners because they usually enjoy reading and tend to recognize the words they read. to help them understand more what they read, they like to learn by looking at pictures or illustrations. when they prefer to learn by listening, they are auditory learners and enjoy spoken language and conversations. about fourteen per cent of the students are categorized into this type of learner. the rest of students belong to the field-independent, field-dependent, reflective, and impulsive types. seven per cent of them are fieldindependent as they focus on the language details, such as grammatical rules and pay attention to words and sentences. nine per cent are field-dependent because they do not like care about rules. they think that transmitting messages and conveying ideas is more important than obeying language rules. among the students, only three per cent take into account language rules and ways of presenting messages accurately. in this case, they think very carefully about how to use language and avoid to make mistakes. finally, there are also some students, about two per cent, who are categorized into impulsive learners. they take any chance and even risk to use language, and do not worry about making mistakes. the most important thing for them is to communicate fluently. in sum, both indonesian and thai graduate students are mostly classified into receptive type of learners. it is understandable that they tend to improve receptive language skills rather than productive ones because for their academic purposes, they only need to read and listen. under this circumstance, speaking and writing skills are seemingly secondary to them. hence, study skills they develop during their graduate study would mostly depend on those receptive competences. conclusions in addition to a few differences, the upi and mu graduate students share many similarities in foreign language proficiency and study skills as identified by categories. when considering the linguistic and sociocultural background, it is no wonder why they presented similar characteristics. in most cases, they spend much time performing academic tasks spoken or written in their national language. furthermore, they are apparently in similar types of learners so it can be easily predicted that they have acquired the same categories of study skills. taking into account the foreign language learning theories, the most appropriate theory describing the phenomenon found among the indonesian and thai graduate students is innatist theory (krashen, 1997) as it suggests that adult learners of a foreign language adopt two ways of mastering a target language: acquisition and learning. foreign language fluency, according to him, is achieved through an acquisition process, rather than learning process. acquisition is more dominant than learning, and both processes are separate. the second hypothesis suggests that learning involves the process of monitoring (correction), and learners are aware of this process. the third hypothesis states individuals master language rules naturally (unpredicted). the fourth hypothesis contends that foreign language learning processes occur when learners understand language inputs slightly higher than their language competence. the final hypothesis mentions that language acquisition will occur in an environment where learners have low anxiety or affective filter. this exactly has happened to the participants of this study. as verbal communication for academic purposes is rarely carried out, the students focus more receptive language skills, reading and listening, than productive ones to acquire the foreign language(s). this way enables them to search for textual and contextual clues when they try to communicate their ideas and thoughts and academic settings. it is barely possible to push them to make use of the foreign 136 international journal of education, vol. 8 no. 2 may 2015 language(s) in native speakers’ ways. hence, the acquisition of foreign language skills in the case of indonesia and thailand is not a major determinant to mastering good study skills. however, when the students are able to manage and manipulate those skills for their academic purposes, they will result in high quality learning outcomes. references bernhardt, e.b. 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(1978). the reading process: the teacher and the learner. second edition. iowa: wm. c. brown company publishers. international journal of education vol. 11 no. 1, august 2018, pp. 6-17 ©2018 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: 6 project-based activities in a call classroom: efl students’ experiences yustinus calvin gai mali1 anne indrayanti timotius2 universitas kristen satya wacana, salatiga, indonesia 1 yustinus.calvin@staff.uksw.edu; 2 anne@staff.uksw.edu first draft received: 21 feb 2018 accepted: 31 june 2018 final proof received: 21 aug 2018 abstract this study investigated students’ perspectives of and measured their attitude, confidence, and anxiety when interacting with computer-assisted language learning (call) through project-based instructions. thirty students from a call course participated in this study by responding to a questionnaire and writing a reflective note about their experiences in the course. the qualitative research findings would seem to indicate that the majority of the students possess a positive attitude, confidence and low anxiety levels towards the use of technology in their course. further, the statistical analysis indicated that there were no significant differences of the students’ attitudes, confidence, and anxiety levels before and after taking the call course. considering the findings, the researchers suggest that the technology-based projects discussed in the present study may become viable learning activities to prepare pre-service efl teachers to deal with the effort and initiative by the ministry of education in some countries to encourage local teachers integrating the best and wisest use of technology into lessons. pedagogical implications for teaching and learning call as well as direction for further research were discussed in the study. keywords: project-based learning; call; attitude; anxiety; confidence to cite this paper (in apa style): mali, y. c. g., & timotius, a. i. (2018). project-based activities in a call classroom: efl students’ experiences. international journal of education, 11(1), 6-19. doi: introduction the ministry of education or related entities in some countries have made an effort and led some initiatives to encourage local teachers to maximize the use of technology. for instance, the ministry of education in the czech republic introduces technological skills through its national educational programs for elementary schools, namely narodni škola (national school), obecna škola (general school) and zakladni škola (basic school) (mannova, 2004). u.s. schools (baraya, 2002) and universities across australia (hashemzadeh & wilson, 2007 as cited in sawang, o’connor, & ali, 2017) are encouraged to integrate technology into their teaching and learning practices. other countries like chile, finland, singapore, through their set national policies, have considered the essential role that information and communication technologies (ict) have in the development of their educational systems and the improvement of their curricula (kozma & anderson, 2002). also in morocco, the government introduced ‘web-based learning’ to some public universities by implementing projects like the ‘moroccan virtual campus’ to encourage e-learning in the institutions (ajhoun & bouzidi, 2010, in yeou, 2016). furthermore, as a result of some technology policies, in turkey, a series of activities were designed to promote the provision and development of technology in different areas, including the education system (tekin & polat, 2014). similar policies are also carried out in other countries, such as germany, senegal, uganda, philipines, and vietnam. in germany, telekom ag, in 1995, launched a nationwide initiative that aims to prepare students for the information society and make the schools get connected to the internet (zander, 2004). in some african countries, such as senegal and uganda, the ministries of education have initiated technology-training programs, e.g., uganda school net, and internet connectivity to improve education and skills for securing jobs in the 21st century (aduwa-ogiegbaen & iyamu, 2005). in the republic of palau, an island republic in micronesia located in the southeast of the philippines, sales and emesiochl (2004) report that the country has made an active effort to adopt and integrate educational technology into its public schools since the late 1980s. in vietnam, the national foreign language 2020 project is directing technology standards for language teachers, establishing vietcall, a new organization that plays a primary role in implementing the standards (levy, 2015). mailto:yustinus.calvin@staff.uksw.edu mailto:anne@staff.uksw.edu mali, y. c. g., & timotius, a. i. project-based activities in a call classroom: efl students’ experiences 7 indonesia also follows a similar pattern to those of the countries, precisely when the minister of education and culture of indonesia emphasizes the essence of integrating technology in teaching and learning practices through educational policies of the country. the policies to highlight are the specific working descriptions stipulated in levels 6 to 8 in the indonesian qualification framework 1 (iqf) (kementrian pendidikan nasional republik indonesia, 2012). briefly, iqf is a national framework aimed to equalize and integrate the educational field, work training, and work experience of every indonesian citizen. the descriptions of those levels highlighting the necessity of the technology should be performed by indonesian teachers possessing a bachelor’s or master’s degree and be translated into teaching and learning activities in higher education contexts. the specific working descriptions in level 6: being able to utilize ict in their expertise, and being able to adapt to situations they are facing in solving a particular problem” (translated by the researchers). the specific working descriptions in level 7: being able to plan and manage resources under their responsibility, and conduct a comprehensive evaluation of their work benefiting ict to create organization strategic development steps (translated by the researchers). the specific working descriptions in level 8: being able to develop knowledge, technology, and/or arts in their expertise or professional practices through research until they can produce an innovative and qualified work (translated by the researchers). it seems to be true, therefore, that teachers, in indonesia, are encouraged to improve competencies in line with the development of technology and national policies. however, there have been situations in which technology does not efficiently contribute to students’ learning caused by problems of implementing technology that puts little focus on the learning process and students’ real needs (bork, 1995), by teachers’ doubts (javad & leila, 2015), lack of skills (torat, 2000), creativity and innovations in using the technology (cobo, 2011), as well as technical problems with the technology itself (wichadee, 2014). furthermore, jati (2015) notes an argumentation about e-learning. he mentions that many teachers tend to focus on the aspects of e-learning. they keep looking for the most sophisticated technology. however, they ignore the learning aspect when they do not evaluate whether or 1 other related documents of indonesian qualification framework are available online at: http://kkni-kemenristekdikti.org/ not the technology facilitates the language learning process. these situations call for an exploration about how faculty members should utilize technology to obtain maximum pedagogical benefits (amirault, 2012; deubel, 2007) and what technologies should be used for teaching and learning (u.s. department of education office of educational technology, 2010 as cited in ditzler, hong, & strudler, 2016) to promote language learning in courses so that students meet their learning expectations (wilsey & keengwe, 2012). in essence, some factors ensure the success of technological implementation in teaching and learning. one can be ascribed to individuals’ attitudes because those who possess the positive attitude to technology can determine perceptions regarding technological tools (papanastasiou & angeli, 2008). as kubiatko, usak, yilmaz, and tasar (2010) point out, when teachers possess positive attitudes to technological practices, they promote useful insights to their students dealing with accepting and using technology in a classroom. importantly, “student attitudes and beliefs towards elearning, as well as their satisfaction with technology and are regarded as success determinants of future elearning initiatives” (rhema & miliszewska, 2014, p.169). in the subsequent sections, the authors discuss some foundational theories for the study and the research gap, which the present study addresses. literature review this part of the paper is intended to discuss some foundational theories for the study. two topics are discussed, namely types of technology and previous studies on students’ perspectives on the use of technology. types of technology according to stanley (2013), technology is classified as internet, software, and hardware. table 1 shows the examples of technology under every classification. http://kkni-kemenristekdikti.org/ international journal of education vol. 11 no. 1, august 2018, pp. 6-18 ©2018 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: 1 table 1: types of technology internet software hardware automatic translators apps cd-roms blogs authoring software computer room comic-creator websites concordances data projectors image-creation softwares ebooks digital cameras instant messaging electronic dictionaries dvds news website email interactive whiteboards online games interactive fiction laptops podcasts mind-mapping software mobile phones poster websites music software mp3 players social networks presentation software netbooks survey websites quiz-making software pen or flash drives text and voice chat screen-capture tools tablets text and voice forums social bookmarking video cameras video-sharing websites sound-editing software voice recorders wikis word processors webcams in the call classroom, the use of the internet is related to social networks, online games, blogs, and web-based applications. software mostly applies to microsoft powerpoint to present slides. meanwhile, types of hardware used in the classroom are computers, laptops, and an lcd projector to display the slides of teaching materials and students’ presentations. who we are in the world of technology people of different generations may also be different in the world of technology. there are some terms to explain different generations in the world of technology (chaves, maia filho, & melo, 2016). first, digital immigrants are the subjects who were born before the advent of digital technologies (chaves et al., 2016). they are said to be the ones who have lived in the analog age and immigrated to the digital world (ehiobuche & justus, 2016). people of this generation are typically those who were born before the mid-1970s. they seem to be able to learn to use technology at a slower pace, compared to the next generations. as a result their capability of using technology is usually quite limited. they are not as ‘fluent’ as the future generations regarding technology utilization. the millennial were “fomented since the early 1980s” (chaves et al., 2016, p. 349). the millennial generation “is characterized by the hopeful determination and taste for technological innovations, especially the highly graphic, at the same time that doesn’t appeal for slow stuff and negativity” (chaves et al., p. 349). furthermore, millennial learners are considered fast-paced electronic learners (neumann, 2016). the millennial generations were not exposed to digital technology since they were born. however, they still quickly learn digital technology as ‘fluently’ as the next generation, the digital natives. digital natives are “the subjects whom were born in the current generation and that would have special qualities, especially regarding the learning process” (chaves et al., p. 347). they are the people who were “born into an innate “new culture” (ehiobuche & justus, 2016) and “have grown up with and used technology since the day they were born (jackson, 2015, in neumann, 2016). people of this generation, do not seem to have any problem in using technology. usually, they are confident and ‘fluent’ users of digital technology as a result of being exposed to it from birth. perspectives on the use of technology a plethora of international studies is carried out to explore students’ perspectives on the use of technology in their learning. kubiatko et al. (2010) investigated attitudes of turkish and czech university students towards ict use. the findings indicated an interest in using ict in the sciences. the study also concluded that when used effectively, ict provides additional benefits for such as enhancement of attitudes and computer skill that in turn could improve the effective implementation of ict. unal and unal (2017) also did a study related to the flipped teaching model. it is one of the most well-known and recent technologyinfused teaching models in which students learn a new concept at their home, but practice the concept in the classroom. among others, they investigated students’ perception in participating in a flipped classroom. the study revealed that compared to the traditional approach, students learned more, and there was higher teacher satisfaction. furthermore, humble-thaden (2011) investigated the utilization of cell phones in classrooms in research done in the u.s. from the survey of 166 first-year college students, the study revealed that the participants perceive the use cell phones to be positive. “…there is interest in and potential for educational implementation and use of cell phones as learning tools in schools.” (humble-thaden, p. 10). in nigeria, yusuf and balogun (2011) examined competences and attitudes towards ict use. the participants were undergraduate student teachers who enrolled in the teacher education programs for secondary school subjects. the study revealed that the students possess the positive attitude towards the use international journal of education vol. 11 no. 1, august 2018, pp. 6-18 ©2018 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: 2 of and skills related to word processing, general computer operation, downloading, and utilizing basic internet resources. rhema and miliszewska (2014) surveyed undergraduate engineering students at two libyan universities. empirical data showed positive attitudes and the willingness of students to engage in e-learning courses. interestingly, the study would seem to prove that better access to technology and the internet resulted in stronger positive attitudes. in the following year, balta and duran (2015) looked at the use of an interactive whiteboard, and “an instructional tool that is connected to a computer and a projector and that enables the transfer of images from computer to the board” (p.15) to facilitate teaching activities. quantitative findings indicated students’ and teachers’ positive preferences in utilizing the technology, specifically in math courses. more recently, baz (2016) sought to investigate attitudes of using technology in language learning and teaching. the study involved ninety-eight turkish english as a foreign language (efl) student teachers in a state university in turkey. using a mixed-method design, the study showed that the participants possessed highly positive attitudes towards the use of technology in their language learning because of its convenience, time-efficiency, and capability to enhance students’ engagement. these studies inform the current investigation in response to the need for finding out students’ perspectives from the eyes of indonesian university students to learn efl with the use of technology framed in a particular pedagogical approach. also, the previous studies indicate the need for delving closely into more specific perspectives (e.g., attitudes, confidence and anxiety), both from quantitative and qualitative angles. furthermore, responding creatively to the pessimistic views on technological practices and considering the essence of positive attitude and beliefs about technology, and the educational policy in indonesia, this current study explored the implementation of technology-based projects framed in project based learning (pbl) paradigms in a computer assisted language learning (call) classroom in a university setting. in short, pbl is an approach to instruction in which a project is employed to teach curriculum concepts (bell, 2010). pbl is also social practice into which students are socialized through a series of group activities involving the simultaneous learning of language, content, and skills (slater, beckett, & aufderhaar, 2006). hedge (2000) pointed out that pbl includes principles of learner-centered teaching, collaborative learning, and learning through tasks. in learner-centered instruction, students are encouraged to be responsible for their learning (lingua network online, 2014) and engaged in a classroom discussion and problem-solving activity (felder, 2015). in collaborative learning, students help and handle their own and group members’ learning so that they can perform successfully in their learning (gokhale, 1995). then, in learning through tasks, students do an activity in which they use their available language resources to achieve a particular goal and to result in a real outcome (richards & renandya, 2002; richards & schmidt, 2010). more specifically, this study aimed to find out whether or not there was a significant difference of students’ perspectives (e.g., attitude, anxiety, and confidence) towards technological practices particularly to learn efl after they completed all the projects in the call classroom during a semester period. the hypothesis of this study was: h0: there is no significant difference between students’ perspectives toward technology before and after taking call class h1: there is a significant difference between students’ perspectives toward technology before and after taking call class. the answer to the hypothesis was completed by qualitative responses of the students who reflected the implementation of the projects in the classroom through the use of a reflective note. the discussions in this paper will be an interest of preand in-service efl teachers who are now looking for ideas about educational technologies that can be used for teaching and learning in efl contexts, particularly in the context of higher education in indonesia. the contribution of the study is to provide some details about how educational technology is learned and maximized in an indonesian efl setting. the merit of the research can also provide an answer to the immediate need for more bottom-up initiatives and actions from schools’ local actors to understand potentials, and detriments of using technology in schools, and to provide technological perspectives of what will work, and what will not (mannova, 2004). also, the study can suggest constructive evaluations towards the use of pbl in the call classroom. it also describes types of educational technology that can be potential tools to facilitate students in learning efl. lastly, the present study is to be a positive response to a recent view of mosier, bradley, and perkins (2016) that the exploration of students’ perception of pbl is still little known. research method this study investigated if there was a significant improvement of students’ perceptions toward technological practices particularly with english as a foreign language (efl) after they completed all the projects in the call classroom during a semester. to achieve the research objective, the study employed a mixed-method design that included a survey with a questionnaire administered at the beginning and end of the semester and a reflective note to support the questionnaire data. research setting and participants the site of this study was in single call classroom at english language education program of a private university in central java, indonesia. for additional information, the teaching and learning process of the course was done in a computer laboratory, in which every student was provided with a international journal of education vol. 11 no. 1, august 2018, pp. 6-18 ©2018 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: 3 computer connected to the internet. the study program has an explicit mission statement that encourages lecturers to integrate technology and maximize its potential into their teaching practices. “to have teaching and learning process by optimizing the use information and communication technology (ict) through a service committed to life-long learning.” (translated by the researcher) therefore, it was evident that the selection of the call classroom at the university represented an ideal setting for the study that helped to achieve the research validity and to ensure the availability of relevant and productive data for the study. the study involved thirty students, aged from twenty to twenty-two years old, in the classroom. this study spanned four months from january to april 2017. descriptions of the technology-based projects during the semester period, students in the call classroom completed two main technologicalbased projects that were done in a group of three to four students. with regards to mali’s (2017) elaborations, the first project was [a] technological workshops. in this project, the teacher gave students a general technological topic (e.g., google facilities, social networking sites, and educational games) or a more specific technological application (e.g. wordhippo, screencast-o-matic, and kahoot) to be presented in the classroom. the first presentation is in the form of powerpoint slides that discuss principles of call evaluation by chapelle (2001). for instance, the students had to explain related definitions of the technology and discuss who will be the best users of the particular technology, how interactive the technology is, and how the technology can provide language learning activities for its users. figure 1 illustrates the presentation. figure 1: the classroom presentation this powerpoint-based presentation was then followed up by a mini-workshop. in this workshop, the students had to prepare activities in which their classmates could utilize the technology presented. the teacher gave the students 90 minutes to run the workshop and encouraged every student in the group to perform and be actively involved. during the workshop, the teacher allowed other students in the classroom to clarify things and ask for assistance while using the presented technology. after the group presentation, other students were asked to give constructive oral comments concerning their friends’ performances during the workshop. figure 2 helps to illustrate the workshop activity. figure 2: the workshop activity mali, y. c. g., & timotius, a. i. project-based activities in a call classroom: efl students’ experiences 1 the second project was [b] lesson plans. in this project, the students had to work in the same group to create one lesson plan for the workshop they had presented. in other words, all activities in the workshop had to be based on the lesson plan. with this activity, students could have opportunities to the role play as a teacher who ran language learning activities with the technology. the lesson plan should cover five essential parts, namely [1] course information, [2] technology requirements, [3] activities designed, [4] students’ assessment, and [5] caveats. first, in the course information part, the students detailed learning objectives, skills to learn (e.g., speaking, listening, writing, or reading), and an intended level of their students. second, in the technology requirement part, the students listed any hardware, software, supporting facilities to run the activities. third, in the activities planned part, the students described learning activities to do. then, they provided some details about names and duration for each activity. after that, they explained references, particular websites, or software they used to support the activities. fourth, in the assessment portion of the lesson plan, the students explained a criterion how learners are going to be assessed. if the students adapted any evaluation forms on the internet, they had to state the references. last, in the caveats, the students reported possible considerations for teachers who wish to apply the lesson plan, including requirements, problems, and other essential details. research instrument the data for the survey was collected from a questionnaire adapted from papanastasiou and angeli (2008). more specifically, the questionnaire designed consisted of items asking the students to agree or disagree with four-scale (1-4) options ranging from 1 (strongly disagree); 2 (disagree); 3 (agree); 4 (strongly agree). for the interpretation, the means from the analysis used the following range: 1-1.75 (strongly disagree); 1.75-2.5 (disagree); 2.5-3.25 (agree); 3.25-4 (strongly agree). table 2 displays constructs of the questionnaire. table 2: perspectives of the use of technology in the call classroom (shown for a brevity sake) components no statements attitude 1 i feel comfortable with the idea of the technology as a tool in teaching and learning the target language. 2 the use of the technology as a language learning tool excites me. 3 the technology is a valuable tool for teachers. 4 the technology will change the way i teach the target language. 5 the technology will change the way students learn the target language in my classes. 6 the technology helps students understand concepts of the target language in more effective ways. 7 the technology helps students learn the target language because it allows them to express their thinking. 8 the technology helps teachers (me) to teach the target language in more effective ways. anxiety 9 the use of technology in teaching and learning the target language stresses me out. 10 the use of technology in teaching and learning the target language scares me. 11 the technology is not conducive to student learning the target language because it is not easy to use. 12 the technology is not conducive to good teaching the target language because it creates technical problems. confidence 13 i feel confident that i can design technology-enhanced language learning activities for my students (classmates). 14 i feel confident that i can design technology-enhanced language learning activities to meet certain learning goals. 15 i feel confident that i can use certain technology-enhanced language learning to help my students (classmates) to understand particular concepts of the target language more easily. data collection procedure initially, the researchers distributed the questionnaire in the second meeting (17 th january 2017) and in the fourteenth meeting (14 th march 2017) of the classroom. both questionnaires were analyzed to see whether there were significant differences in scores of each statement. then, the researchers asked the students to write a note that reflected their feelings towards the use of technology for language learning before and after the call classroom. the students submitted the notes in the classroom meeting (21 st march 2017). then, the researchers read the responses mali, y. c. g., & timotius, a. i. project-based activities in a call classroom: efl students’ experiences 2 and circled some ideas that the students needed to explain further. in the following classroom meeting (27 th march 2017), the researchers re-distributed the note to the students and asked them to clarify the circled responses, so that more in-depth information about the issues could be delved. this activity was done twenty minutes before the class ended. data analysis procedure the questionnaire data were analyzed statistically. specifically, paired-samples t-test was used with the help of spss software. meanwhile, the written responses on the note were analyzed using content analysis guidelines that define a process of summarizing, reporting written data, and examining emergent nature of themes from the data (cohen, manion, & morrison, 2007). initially, the researchers read all the written responses. then, they defined the units of analysis by underlining sentences that indicated the students’ attitude, anxiety, and confidence before and after taking the call class. that step was followed by deciding the codes to be used in the analysis. later, the researchers wrote some words to label the underlined sentences indicating the issues. after they had written the codes, they started to develop them into three main themes, namely attitude, anxiety, and confidence of utilizing technology for language learning before and after taking the call class. some excerpts of the students’ reflective notes were recorded to support the discussions of every theme. findings and discussion this part consists of two main sub-sections to provide some details about the results of the questionnaire and the reflective note. the findings in each sub-section were supported by excerpts from the students’ written responses (nte) as they were so that the researchers, according to sawir (2005), can maintain a truth-value of the responses. findings from the questionnaire the indicators’ scores (questionnaire questions) were first tested for reliability, validity, and normality. then, indicators that were not valid were removed from the analysis. the researchers discussed the results of each variable in the subsequent sections. the students’ attitude of using the technology the first variable was related to participants’ attitude towards the use of technology in language teaching. regarding reliability, the cronbach’s alpha was 0.711 for the pre-questionnaire and 0.716 for the post-questionnaire. these indicated that the questions for this variable were reliable (>0.6). at the validity test, at the pre-questionnaire, question number six was removed because it was not considered a valid question (0.141 or above 0.05). at the post-questionnaire, question number one was removed because it was not considered a valid question (0.169 or above 0.05). the other items were valid because they range between 0.000-0.010 (below 0.05). after removing the invalid questions, the normality test was conducted using the kolmogorov-smirnov statistic. the result of the test (0.027) violated the assumption of normality (above 0.05) of the questions in the questionnaire. with this condition, the non-parametric test (wilcoxon signed ranks test) was used. the result is summarized in table 3. from table 3, it is evident that there was no significant difference between students’ attitude at the beginning and toward the end of call class (sig. 0.759 or above 0.05). however, the descriptive statistics depicted that the mean at the beginning of the call class was 3.219 (agree) and 3.252 (strongly agree) towards the end of the course. this means that the students already had the positive attitude about the use of technology in language classrooms from the beginning of the class and this attitude increased slightly by the end of the class. table 3: the students’ attitude of using technology the students’ anxiety of using the technology the second variable was related to participants’ anxiety towards the use of technology in language teaching. the reliability test resulted that the cronbach’s alpha was 0.743 for the pre-questionnaire and 0.752 for the post-questionnaire. therefore, the questions for this variable were reliable (>0.6). at the validity test, all the pre-questionnaire and postquestionnaire questions were considered valid because they ranged between 0.000-0.010 (below 0.05). in the normality test, using the kolmogorov-smirnov statistic, the result of the test (0.025) violated the assumption of normality (above 0.05) of the questions in the questionnaire. as a result, the non-parametric test (wilcoxon signed ranks test) was used. the result of the test is summarized in table 4. table 4 shows that there was no significant difference between students’ anxiety at the beginning and toward the end of call class (sig. 0.595 or above 0.05). nevertheless, the descriptive statistic result indicated that the mean at the beginning of the call class was 2.008 (disagree) and 2.05 (disagree) towards the end of the class. this means that the students had low anxiety about the use of technology in language classrooms from the beginning through the end of the class. mali, y. c. g., & timotius, a. i. project-based activities in a call classroom: efl students’ experiences 3 table 4: the students’ anxiety of using technology the students’ confidence of using the technology the third variable was related to participants’ confidence in using technology in language teaching. from the reliability test, it was depicted that the cronbach’s alpha was 0.840 for the pre-questionnaire and 0.852 for the post-questionnaire. therefore, the questions for this variable were highly reliable (>0.8). for the test of validity, all the pre-questionnaire and post-questionnaire questions were valid because they ranged between 0.000-0.010 (below 0.05). in the normality test, using the kolmogorov-smirnov statistic, the result of the test was 0.000 (below 0.05). therefore, the questions violated the assumption of normality (above 0.05). as the other variables, the non-parametric test (wilcoxon signed ranks test) was used. the result of the test is summarized below. table 5: the students’ confidence of using technology it is evident in table 5 that there was no significant difference between students’ confidence at the beginning and by the end of call class (sig. 0.390 or above 0.05). nevertheless, from the descriptive statistic, it can be seen that the mean at the beginning of the call class was 3.16 (agree) and towards the end of the class, the mean increased to 3.25 (strongly agree). therefore, it can be concluded that students were already confident in using technology in language learning and their confidence increased slightly towards the end of the class. findings from the reflective note the students’ reflective note was used to provide further clarification towards the perspectives (e.g., attitude, anxiety, and confidence) of the use of technology for language learning before and after the students took the call classroom. therefore, this section displayed the research findings based on three main categories, namely attitude, anxiety, and confidence of using the technology. importantly, the results from the reflective note would seem to indicate that all students had a positive attitude to the use of technology for language learning in their classroom after they collaboratively completed all the technological projects in the classroom. the students’ attitude of using the technology regarding attitude, the call classroom could help the students to learn and try new technology that they had not used before. before taking the class, most of the students acknowledged that they often use some technology that they were already familiar with, such as facebook, email, schoology. “previously, i just know few technologies to support my language learning, like schoology. it is used for submitting assignments, downloading materials, and seeing my score” (student 30/nte). student 21 also shared similar feelings. “before taking the call class, i did not feel that it was special in using the technology for language learning. it is common for me to pay attention to my lecturer’s explanation from his power point slides. i did not use many online media/ platforms for language learning. i only used facebook, email, and schoology. i also used a laptop and a mobile phone in the learning process. after taking the class, i can learn about more various technology, such as clarisketch 2 , storybird 3 , abcya 4 and i am happy about that.” (student 21/nte) more specifically, student 22 could learn the new technology from her classmates who delivered their technological presentations and workshops. “i get more information from my friends’ presentation. they explain the descriptions, advantages, disadvantages, and instructions how to use and apply the applications or websites for teaching and learning activities. after doing the presentation, they also lead a workshop how to use them” (student 22/nte). the students’ anxiety of using the technology in her reflective notes, student 6 stated that the call classroom successfully changed his mindset that learning the target language using technology was something complicated and confusing. “after taking the class, i know that many software and sites support language learning. all of them are easy to access and to use by teachers and students. for example, i just know screencast-o-matic 5 , and it can be used to 2 accessible at https://www.clarisketch.com/, clarisketch is an android based application that enables its users to take pictures, draw, record their voice, and share their edited pictures (bharti, 2014). 3 accessible at https://storybird.com/, storybird enables its users to create visual stories with pictures. 4 accessible at http://www.abcya.com/, abcya is a teachercreated website in which its users can access educational games and apps specifically for kids (abcya.com, l.l.c, 2017). 5 accessible at http://screencast-o-matic.com/home, screencast-o-matic is a free web-based program and similar to video lecturers (powell & wimmer, 2014) that enables its https://www.clarisketch.com/ https://storybird.com/ http://www.abcya.com/ http://screencast-o-matic.com/home mali, y. c. g., & timotius, a. i. project-based activities in a call classroom: efl students’ experiences 4 support my teaching” (student 6/ nte). student 2 also shared similar ideas. “before taking the call classroom, i was little worried because i did not like technology. i also think that we will learn about how to use the computer like students in the faculty of information and technology. this course will be hard for me. after taking the classroom, i enjoy the learning activities that give advantages of using technology. for example, i more understand that technology is not always about microsoft word and excel. i can find many games to learn english.” (student 2/nte) in addition, student 11 reflected similar views. “before taking the classroom, i thought that using technology for language learning is difficult to access and take a lot of time in preparing the material. i also thought it needs money to access an application or website. when i tried to find the material on the internet, there are many sources that are not trusted. after taking the classroom, i know some websites that i can use to learn speaking, writing, grammar, vocabulary, and reading for free, such as ed-ted, storybird, wordhippo 6 . (student 11/nte) furthermore, student 14 wrote that “after taking the call class, i feel that technology has now have been more attractive with its web interface that attracts the users. it is designed well to provide fun, practical, and efficient language learning activities” (student 14/nte). the students’ confidence of using the technology the data clarified that the call classroom enhanced students’ confidence of using the technology for language learning in a way that they could obtain more technological knowledge and mastery that they could use in their working places. “if i become a teacher in the future, i will use what i have learned from the call class” (student 28/nte). in addition, “i feel grateful because the technology i learn in this class can be used as a tool to help me when i am a worker. google docs can help me to share files with my workmates. storybird can help me to make a storybook for my children in the future.” (student 9/nte). student 4 had a similar thought to what student 9 wrote in her note. “i feel lucky to take this class since i can get many experiences to use technology to learn english. moreover, we have to practice users to create basic screencasts (donahoe, 2015) that can be delivered using the internet (budden, 2016). 6 accesible at http://www.wordhippo.com/, wordhippo is an online dictionary/thesaurus by which its users can find opposites, rhyming words, translation, and lots more besides of a word (hill, 2013). how to use the applications, such as kahoot 7 and scribblenauts 8 , in the classroom. therefore, i can use high technology in my language classroom now.” (student 4/ nte) furthermore, student 26 wrote, “i feel more confident because of all the things that i have learned in the classroom. i think if someday i become a teacher, all those things will help me in my teaching process” (student 26/ nte). in a similar view, student 17 expressed her feelings. “i can apply what i have learned in this class to teach my private course students and my students in my learning service community (english club in my church and village). for example, i can use storybird in teaching past tense” (student 17/ nte). in addition, from this class, i get some weapons if i become a teacher. i know some applications, such as storybird, clarisketch, wordhippo, and screencast-omatic” (student 25/ nte). similarly, student 14 wrote that one day, if i become a teacher, i will involve those applications to my classroom to make my students like english” (student 14/ nte). the research findings indicated that the students possessed the positive attitude, confidence, and low anxiety before and after they learned call in the course. this finding appears to corroborate the results of the previous studies (e.g., unal & unal, 2017; balta & duran, 2015; baz, 2016) on the positive trends in using technology in classrooms. in the present study, the positive findings were significantly affected by the fact that they learned various, yet easy-to-use technology in the classroom. in nigeria, the student teachers also had the similar positive attitudes when learning the simple and convenient use of technology (yusuf & balogun, 2011; baz, 2016). this finding raises a reflective question if the choice of technology to introduce in a classroom can greatly impact students’ attitudes towards the technology. with these in minds, we believe that efl teachers should introduce potential educational technologies to their students. however, the teachers have to ensure that they select ones that the students can access and operate easily so that they can prevent their students from experiencing: unnecessary doubts (javad & leila, 2015) and fear (torat, 2000) in using technology as well as technical problems with the technology itself (wichadee, 2014), which could reduce opportunities of technology to contribute effectively to students’ learning. the positive attitude, confidence, and anxiety of the students were also influenced by the collaborative activities done in the course. this finding demonstrates the essence of collaborative learning where students 7 accessible at https://getkahoot.com/, kahoot is a social, fun, and game like-learning online-based platform in which its users can create questions for unlimited number of players 8 further information about this computer (educational) game can be accessed at https://www.scribblenauts.com/scribblenauts/unmasked http://www.wordhippo.com/ https://getkahoot.com/ https://www.scribblenauts.com/scribblenauts/unmasked mali, y. c. g., & timotius, a. i. project-based activities in a call classroom: efl students’ experiences 5 can help one another to perform successfully in their learning (gokhale, 1995). nevertheless, the finding addresses another reflective question whether the students can maintain their positive attitudes and feel confident when they work individually without any support from their group mates in the technological exploration and practices in the course. the statistical analysis would seem to indicate that there was no significant difference in the students’ attitudes, confidence, and anxiety levels before and after taking the call course. the reason for this result might be the fact that the participants (who were born after the 1980s) are digital natives (chaves et al., 2016) who have been exposed to digital technology ever since they were born. therefore, most people of this generation, as the participants in this study, may not be as anxious in using technology. they seem to be more confident and have a more positive attitude toward technology compared to, especially, digital immigrants. more specifically, the analysis showed that most of them had already possessed positive attitude and confidence as well as low level of anxiety of using technology before taking the course. these positive feelings continued through the semester so that they did not hinder their technology-based practices in their course. the most obvious reason for this result was most of the students had already been familiar with types of technology, such as the internet, software, and hardware (stanley, 2013) before they entered the course as what student 21 clarified in the reflective note. considering the positive attitude, low anxiety, and confidence levels of the students to technology in the classroom, the researchers might state that the technological based projects can become an alternative learning activity to prepapre pre-service efl teachers to deal with the effort and initiative by the ministry of education in some countries as to encourage local teachers integrating the best and wisest use of technology into lessons (see, for instance, baraya, 2002; kozma & anderson, 2002; tekin & polat, 2014; zander, 2004; aduwa-ogiegbaen & iyamu, 2005; sales & emesiochl, 2004; levy, 2015). also, the projects can be activities to deal with a concern (kubiatko et al., 2010) that prospective teachers need to have technology-based courses and training so that they can plan, practice, and try to integrate technology into their teaching practices confidently. conclusion and recommendations throughout the technology-based projects, (e.g., the technological workshops and the lesson plan) framed in pbl paradigms, the research reveals some success stories. the first success is that students can learn newer and more various technology so that they are now more confident in applying the technology, mainly, when they become an english teacher in the future. secondly, the projects would seem to change the students’ prior views that technology is something complicated and confusing. nevertheless, the researchers are fully aware that the success stories are situated in a setting where the students can have easy access to the computer and internet connection. the stories could possibly be different from those narrated in an environment where the same accesses are challenging to obtain. therefore, as far as similar projects are to be conducted, the researchers believe that school administrators or related entities should ensure the availability of the access. based on the present study, the researchers would also like to discuss some pedagogical considerations for teachers who are interested in teaching call specifically for efl students in a higher education setting. first, the teachers need to have a brief overview of the technology that their students often use in their daily language learning activities before taking the call classroom. the outline can help to ensure that students will not learn the same technology that they are already familiar with in the classroom. therefore, the researchers believe that teachers, some time before the class starts, should initiate an online survey to document types of technology that their students have or have not utilized. second, in learning the technology, the students should have opportunities to practice utilizing it in an authentic situation where they can use the technology to teach the target language to real students. third, asking the students to work in a group to explore potentials of the technology can be a way to learn the technology in a lessthreatening situation. similarly, a teacher needs to ensure that the class setting enables the students to help one another during the technological exploration process. fourth, the teacher needs to ensure that the technological practices in the classroom provide the students with language learning opportunities. therefore, conducting a self-reflection on the teaching and learning process using technology will help to reveal some insights on how to better utilize technology in language teaching and learning practices. finally, the current research calls for future studies. the previous analysis by rhema and miliszewska (2014) showed that better access to technology and the internet resulted in stronger positive technological attitudes. to respond this finding, a comparative study should be conducted in a setting where students have limited experiences and access to technology to assess the extent the call-related projects in this study can enhance students’ attitude and confidence and minimize their anxiety in using technology. moreover, students’ in-depth voices on the use of each technology-based project implemented in the classroom are not sufficiently documented. therefore, the researchers believe that a phenomenology study can help future researchers to document students’ lived-experiences towards the use of the projects in learning call. the researchers also find it interesting when efl students or pre-service english teachers in different settings can have opportunities to apply the technology they have learned in the similar call classroom to teach the target language in a formal school setting or other authentic settings outside the classroom. in that case, future researchers can explore an in-depth investigation mali, y. c. g., & timotius, a. i. project-based activities in a call classroom: efl students’ experiences 6 towards the students’ feelings on their authentic technological practices beyond classroom walls. references abcya.com, l.l.c. 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(eds.). adapting technology for school improvement: a global perspective. paris: international institute for educational planning. http://proc.isecon.org/2014/pdf/3061.pdf http://web.warwick.ac.uk/celte/tr/ovcall/booklet1.htm http://web.warwick.ac.uk/celte/tr/ovcall/booklet1.htm database connection failed! database connection failed! 114 international journal of education, vol. 8 no. 2 may 2015 the effects of implementation of the family of hope program policy on the quality of education and health service for poor family in east jakarta paiman raharjo postgraduate program, prof. dr. moestopo (beragama) university abstract family of hope program is established due to low income of poor families in indonesia that cannot fulfill their needs in regard to health and education. this condition is often seen in health care for poor pregnant women, affecting poor baby’s health and even baby’s mortality rate. furthermore, there are still many poor families who cannot afford to provide their basic education needs due to the lack of budget. problem discussed in this research is how big the influence of family of hope program policy on the quality of education and health service for poor families in east jakarta. the purpose of this research is to gain information about the effect of policy implementation on the quality of education and health service for poor family. this research applies policy implementation model by smith, with its four components: idealized policy, target group, implementing organization and environmental. this research applies quantitative approach using questionnaire, observation and interview. data is analyzed through structural equation modelling (sem) and supported by observation and interview. the subject of analysis in this research is the staffs from department of social affairs of east jakarta by applying rule of thumb to get the sample. the research shows that the policy implementation of family of hope program has significant effect on the quality of education and health service in east jakarta. keywords: policy implementation, family of hope program, service quality. reduction of mortality rate of infants and toddlers, and reduction of maternal mortality. family of hope program is inspired by low income of very poor families in indonesia leading to the families’ inability to meet their needs of health and education. this condition is often seen in the inadequate health maintenance of pregnant women of very poor families, leading to poor health of newborn babies and even high infant mortality. in addition, the condition is also seen from the number of very poor families who cannot meet their basic needs of education due to the lack of money. the data in 2007 to 2012 showed that the number of very poor families in east jakarta is about 633,329 very poor households spread over 10 subdistricts. method the research is descriptive in nature, collecting data on about the effects of policy implementation on the quality of education introduction poverty and social problems in indonesia has grown more complicated within the last 12 years since the passing of reformation in 1999. it is characterized by the increase in the number of poor people in 2013, about 101 million people or 40.4% of indonesian population (± 250 million people). regarding the poverty level, indonesian government has implemented family of hope program in order to reduce poverty as well as to develop policies related to social protection since 2007. family of hope program is designed to help the poor of lowest cluster in the form of conditional aid. this program is an ongoing program, at least until 2020, and is expected to accelerate the achievement of mdgs (millennium development goals). mdgs are supported by family of hope program through reduction of extreme poverty and hunger, achievement of primary education and gender equality, 115 paiman raharjo, the effects of implementation of the family of hope program policy and health service for poor families. a questionnaire, observation, and interview were carried out to gather information regarding research subjects as shown in the table below. table 1.1 the number of very poor households in east jakarta in 2007 to 2012 no subdistrict the number of very poor households 1 pasar rebo 55.425 2 ciracas 61.302 3 cipayung 50.150 4 makasar 62.101 5 kramat jati 50.315 6 jatinegara 80.125 7 duren sawit 62.332 8 cakung 90.230 9 pulo gadung 82.199 10 matraman 52.150 total 633.329 source: department of social affairs of east jakarta, 2014 the aforementioned conditions indicate that the fulfillment of basic needs, especially education and health care for the very poor communities needs to be improved by the government through development of education and health facilities and infrastructure, i.e. family of hope program. family of hope program is the forerunner of the development of the social protection system, especially for poor families. family of hope program requires very poor families to check the health of their pregnant women and send their children to school. the implementation of family of hope program is the duty and responsibility of the government under the coordination of the ministry of social affairs. the implementation of family of hope program is associated with a variety of technical and non-technical aspects, under the responsibility of the ministry of social affairs and the coordinating ministry for people’s welfare. the ministry of social affairs, in this case directorate of social welfare security and directorate-general of social assistance security, shoulder the duty and responsibility to always continuously perform planned improvements of system and management of family of hope program in coordination with local governments throughout indonesia, in this case social agency and department of social affairs. the implementation of family of hope program is meant to reduce poverty, improve the quality of human resources, as well as to change the behavior of very poor families that are relatively less supportive in supporting the improvement of the welfare for the poor. however, the implementation of family of hope program in the field often receives disappointment from society, ranging from the lack of socialization of the program to the society, less accurate data collection of poor families, less rapid health and education service, to frequent delay in funding given to poor families. in addition, there are many complaints as a form of public dissatisfaction with the services provided by the government, particularly for the implementation of family of hope program, because many poor people are not registered to receive the program, such as in east jakarta. this is because the number of recipients of family of hope program in east jakarta, about 5,894 very poor households spread in 10 subdistricts, is not proportional to the number of poor people in east jakarta, about ± 625,115 very poor households, as shown in the following table: the number of recipients of family of hope program shown in the table above is considered not to meet the society’s expectation. it is very closely related to the budget policy that has not been adequate as expected, where the national budget for family of hope program in 2011/2012 was about idr 1.3 trillion throughout indonesia and ± idr 12,966,800,000 for east jakarta. 116 international journal of education, vol. 8 no. 2 may 2015 table 1.2 the number of very poor households receiving family of hope program in 2011/2012 in east jakarta no subdistrict very poor households receiving family of hope program 1 pasar rebo 264 2 ciracas 270 3 cipayung 225 4 makasar 440 5 kramat jati 225 6 jatinegara 860 7 duren sawit 750 8 cakung 1.710 9 pulo gadung 900 10 matraman 250 source: department of social affairs of east jakarta, 2013 in addition to the limited budget, inadequate facilities and infrastructure, family factors, and diverse social values, there are other problems found in the field, namely implemented family of hope programs have not been socialized properly, so that many people do not know about the form of the assistance from the intended family of hope program. from information obtained, the socialization of education and health assistance through the family of hope program is found lacking. considering the aforementioned issues and observing the fact related to family of hope program in particular, generally family of hope program still does not have a significant effect on improving very poor households’ lives. it can be seen from the development of the implementation of family of hope program in east jakarta, since 2010 until 2012 it only contributed to improve the welfare of very poor households for %. the data from 2007 to 2012 showed that the number of very poor families in east jakarta was about 633,329 households, and decreased to 633,201 households in 2012. thus, for 3 years since family of hope program had been implemented in east jakarta, it was only able to improve the status of 128 households into poor households, as shown in table 1.3 below. table 1.3 the number of very poor households in east jakarta in 2012 after the implementation of family of hope program no subdistricts the number of very poor households 1 pasar rebo 55.415 2 ciracas 61.282 3 cipayung 50.138 4 makasar 62.090 5 kramat jati 50.305 6 jatinegara 80.123 7 duren sawit 62.327 8 cakung 90.205 9 pulo gadung 82.181 10 matraman 52.135 total 633.201 source: department of social affairs of east jakarta, april 2013 results and discussion the findings in the field show that policy implementation of family of hope program has not ran as expected, so that the quality of education and health service has not met the expectations of society. it is caused by several factors, including: limited human resources in charge of family of hope program, minimal socialization of family of hope programs, limited availability of adequate funds, facilities and infrastructure, family factors, diverse social values, environmental factors, as well as the absence of mapping of priority for people classified as very poor and poor families. 117 paiman raharjo, the effects of implementation of the family of hope program policy policy implementation related to the word of implementation, pressman and aaron (1984: xxi) define the word by stating that “implementation as to carry out, accomplish, fulfill, produce, complete. but what is it that is being implemented? a policy, naturally”. thus, implementation can be interpreted as an activity related to the effort of completion of a job by utilizing the facilities and infrastructure to achieve maximal results. meanwhile, mazmanian and sabatier (1983: 4) state that, to understand what actually happens after program is enacted or formulated is the subject of policy implementation: those events and activities that occur after the issuing of authoritative public policy directives, which include both the effort to administer and the substantive impact on people and events. based on the views expressed by mazmanian and sabatier, it can be explained that the meaning of policy implementation is an attempt to understand what in reality happens after a program is declared valid or are formulated so that it becomes the focus of policy implementation, including the events and activities that arise after the ratification of national policy guidelines, with an effort to administrate them or actualize the consequences or real effects on society or existing events. policy implementation is a part of the process of public policy. in this case, policy implementation is a crucial part of the achievement of policy objectives in addressing the existing problems, or for the successful implementation of a particular activity. the success of policy implementation will not be easily achieved without an effort to consider the various factors affecting policy implementation. as revealed by adiwisastra (in tachjan, 2006: xii) that: public policy implementation is essential. public policy that has been made will only be ‘paper tiger’ if it is not implemented successfully. therefore, public policy implementation should be done by considering various factors, so that the public policy in question can actually serve as a means to actualize the desired expectations. in other words, public policy implementation is an attempt to actualize a decision or agreement that has been set previously. in a public policy, at the stage of formulation, the policy can be prepared as good as possible. however, without a targeted policy implementation, the policy that has been established can cause pessimistic appraisal from the society to the policy makers, namely the ability to establish a policy without having the ability in the policy implementation. tachjan (2006: 25) states that, public policy implementation is a process of administrative activity conducted after the policy is defined/ approved. this activity is located between policy formulation and policy evaluation. policy implementation contains top down logic, meaning lowering/ interpreting abstract or macro alternatives into concrete or micro alternatives. to understand the policy implementation can be seen from several aspects, as told by anderson (1979: 92-93) that, “who is involved in policy implementation, the nature of the administration process, compliance with policy and effect of implementation or policy content and impact”. grindle (1980: 7) provides an understanding of public policy implementation by revealing that, “implementation to be a general process of administrative action that can be investigated at the specific program level”. in this case he provides an understanding of implementation as an overall process of the administrative action and can examine in the specific program. in this case, to implement a policy implementation, obviously in any 118 international journal of education, vol. 8 no. 2 may 2015 activities until the very important details, policy implementation is important to note so that it will not experience too much deviation from the desired objectives. soenarko (1998: 204) expresses the sense of policy implementation by stating that, “policy implementation is basically an activity to achieve the objectives set out in government policy”. meanwhile, braun, et al. (2000: 7) give their opinion about policy implementation by arguing that, “policy implementation think tank could contribute to improving the quality of pursued and the effectiveness with which they are implemented, especially at the provincial and municipal level”. van master and van horn (1975: 447) provide an understanding of policy implementation by revealing that, “policy implementation encompasses those actions by public and private individual (or group) that are directed at the achievement of objectives set forth in prior policy decision”. meanwhile, in highlighting policy implementation, tangkilisan (2005: 7) reveals that, “policy implementation is a series of translation process of policy responded in the form of action from the actors of development in consistent manner in order to achieve the objectives and purposes that have been outlined by the policy itself”. the opinions of some experts above confirm that policy implementation is an action performed based on the policy defined, in this case policy implementation is an attempt to actualize the provisions outlined in the policy, and it is performed so that the desired objectives in policy will be achieved as expected. in addition, policy implementation will provide a contribution for future policy. therefore, policy implementation requires the unity of action from the actors of the implementation. meanwhile, wahab (2004: 64) defines policy implementation by revealing that, “policy implementation can be seen as a process to implement policy decisions (usually in the form of laws, government regulations, judicial decisions, executive orders or presidential decree)”. in this case, he confirms that policy implementation, as a part of a public policy, has steps of action to be taken that has been determined and has been clearly stated in a written policy. it is also in accordance with the opinion expressed by edwards iii (1980: 1), stating that, policy implementation, as we have seen, is the stage of policy making between the establishments of a policy – such as the passage of a legislative act, the issuing of an executive order, the handing down of a judicial decision or the promulgation of a regulatory rule and the consequences of the policy for the people whom it affects. the opinion expressed by edward iii has explained that policy implementation is a stage of policy-making between the formulation of policy like decisions formed in a law made by the legislature (parliament), or the regulations issued by the executive, or the regulations passed by judicial (court or tribunal); such public policy can provide a consequence to society in some aspects of life order. smith (1973: 202) argues about policy implementation by stating that, governmental policies have been defined as deliberate action by a government to establish new transaction patterns or institutions or to change established patterns within old institutions. policy formulated by a government, then, serves as a tension generating force in society. while policies are implemented, tensions, strains, and conflicts are experienced by those who are implementing the policy and by those affected by the policy. the tensions generated by the implementation of policies may cause transaction patterns and, in some instances, the establishment of institutions required for the realization 119 paiman raharjo, the effects of implementation of the family of hope program policy of policy goals. also, the process of policy implementation may generate tensions that trigger changes in other related institutions. from the opinions expressed by smith, it can be concluded that government policy has been defined as a deliberate action by the government to establish patterns of formation of an agency or alter the patterns that have formed long in the agency. policies that have been formulated by the government then function as strength and also generate tensions or implications for society that in this case there will be pros and cons. policy implementation results in tension and conflict experienced by those who implement the policy as well as those who become the targets of the policy. the implication derived from policy implementation may lead to the establishment of the necessary institutions to achieve policy objectives. besides, the process of policy implementation can have implications that trigger changes in other relevant institutions. the model of policy implementation according to smith emphasizes the idealized policy, the target groups, implementing organizations, and environmental factors. meanwhile, the model of policy implementation according to donald van meter and carl van horn emphasizes on standards aspects and policy objectives, resources, the characteristics of the implementing organization, communication between related organization and implementation activities, the attitude of the executors, social, economic, and political environment. the model of policy implementation by brian w. hoogwood and lewis a. gunn consists of external conditions faced by agencies/executing agencies will not cause interference/serious problem, time and adequate resources are available for the implementation of the program, the fusion of sources required is actually available, the policy that will be implemented is based on a reliable causality, the causality relationship is direct and has only few connecting links, the relationship of interdependence should be minimal, deep understanding and agreement on objectives, tasks are detailed and placed in the proper time sequence, communication and coordination are perfect, and the parties with authority may demand and get a perfect obedience. the model of policy implementation proposed by other experts such as mazmanian and sabatier emphasize the aspects of ease and difficulty of the issues to be worked out, the ability to structure the process of policy implementation appropriately and variables outside the laws affecting the implementation. the model of policy implementation, according to grindle consists of policy content in which there are interests affected by the policy, the type of benefits that will be generated, the degree of the desired changes, the position of policy makers, who implement the program and deploy the resources, while the context of implementation consists of power, interests and strategies of the actors involved, the characteristics of institutions and authorities, and the obedience and responsiveness. the model of policy implementation according to george edward iii consists of communication, resources, disposition, and bureaucratic structure. the model of policy implementation according to richard elmore, michael lipsky, benny hjern and david o’porter consists of identifying the network of actors involved in the service process and inquiring about the objectives, strategies, activities, and contacts they have. the model of policy implementation according to warwick consists of the ability of the organization, information, support, and sharing potential. the model of policy implementation according to charles o. jones consists of the organization, interpretation, and application. the components of the model of policy implementation are highly functioning as 120 international journal of education, vol. 8 no. 2 may 2015 a guide as well as a system that should be considered in policy implementation. from various models of policy implementation proposed by the experts, the model applied in this study is the one proposed by smith. in the model proposed by smith, there are four components that should be considered in the process of policy implementation. the components do not stand alone, but a unity that affects each other and interacts reciprocally. smith (1973: 203) argues that, as policy is implemented, interaction within and between the components of the policy implementation system result in discrepancies and tensions. the tensions result in transaction patternsnon-permanent patterns related to the aims and goals of the policy. the transaction patterns may or may not result in institutionalization. feedback in the form of relieved tensions or increased tension is introduced back into the tension generation matrix from transaction patterns and institution. from the aforementioned descriptions, it can be understood that when a policy is implemented, there is an interaction within and between the components of policy implementation as the result of discrepancies and tensions. the tensions result in the formation of institutions or institutions that are not permanently related to the goals and objectives of the policy. feedback in the form of relieved tensions or increased tension can be introduced back into the policy implementation process from institutional formation. therefore, the social tensions of the policies can lead to the appearance of protests, and even physical action, to which it requires the enforcement of new institutions to achieve the policy objectives. these tensions can also lead to the changes in these institutions. thus the interaction pattern of the four components in the model of policy implementation proposed by smith can result in discrepancy, tension and pressure. the interaction pattern may result in the establishment of certain institutions, as well as serve as a feedback to reduce the tension and introduce it back to the component of policy implementation from the patterns of institutional formation. the four components in the model of policy implementation according to smith (1973: 202-205): the context of the implementation of policies – the policy relevant components which form the tension generating matrix. i wish to identify four such components which are important in the policy implementation process: 1. the idealized policy, that is the idealized patterns of interaction that those who have defined the policy are attempting to induce. 2. the target groups, defined as those who are required to adopt new patterns of interaction by the policy. they are the people most directly affected by the policy and who must change to meet its demands. 3. the implementing organization, usually a unit of the government bureaucracy, responsible for implementation of the policy. 4. the environmental factor, those elements in the environment that influence or are influenced by the policy implementation. the general public and the various special interest groups are here. according to the model of policy implementation proposed by smith, there are components of policy implementation, including: 1) the policy is implemented as aspired (idealized policy), where the policy is implemented in the form of programs; 2) policy targets (target groups) are those the most directly affected by the policy and should adopt patterns of interaction as expected by policy makers; 3). implementing organization is the implementing agencies or units of government bureaucracy responsible for the policy implementation; 4). environmental factors, namely the elements in the environment that affect or are affected by the policy implementation, such 121 paiman raharjo, the effects of implementation of the family of hope program policy as cultural, social, economic, and political aspects. from the opinion expressed by smith, it can be concluded that the model of public policy is implemented in the form of programs performed by agencies or units of government bureaucracy as the parties responsible for policy implementation. therefore, it requires public service system in order to actualize good government bureaucracy. family of hope program according to thomas (2009: 21), a program is a planning that involves quantification of to-be-implemented activities. according to wibowo (2011: 7), a program is a design of principle as well as effort to be achieved. binarto (2009: 11) states that a program is a set of written instructions made to facilitate the goals to be achieved. furthermore, yulikuspartono (2009: 29) states that a program is a series of instructions to help facilitating the achievement of the objectives to be achieved. meanwhile, according to budisantoso, family of hope program is a program that provides cash assistance to very poor households, if they meet the requirements associated with the efforts to improve the quality of human resources, namely education and health. the main purpose of family of hope program is to reduce poverty and improve the quality of human resources, especially in poor communities. these objectives are also the efforts to accelerate the achievement of the mdgs. a. to improve socio-economic condition of very poor households. b. to improve the education of children of very poor households. c. to improve health and nutritional status of pregnant women, postpartum women, and children under 6 years of age of very poor households. d. to improve the access and quality of education and health services, especially for very poor households. the main purpose of family of hope program is to reduce poverty by improving the quality of human resources, especially in very poor communities. in the short term, this assistance is expected to help reducing the expense of very poor households, while the long term is expected to break the cycle of intergenerational poverty by requiring beneficiary families to send their children to school, do immunization for their infants, consult their pregnant women, and nutritional improvement. family of hope program was started in indonesia in 2007 and is expected to be implemented on an ongoing basis, at least until 2015. the year of 2007 was an early stage of program development or the test phase. the purpose of the test is to test a variety of instruments needed in the implementation of the program, such as targeting methods, requirement verification, payment mechanism, and public complaint. in 2007 it would be tested in seven provinces with the target number was about 500,000 very poor households. those seven provinces were west sumatra, jakarta, west java, east java, north sulawesi, gorontalo, and east nusa tenggara. if the test phase is successful, then family of hope program will be held at least until 2015. this is in accordance with the commitment to achieve the millennium development goals (mdgs), given that most indicators are also pursued through family of hope program. during that period, the target recipient will gradually be increased to involve the entire very poor households with children of school age and pregnant/postpartum women. family of hope program is a part of other programs aiming to reduce poverty. family of hope program is under the coordination of the poverty alleviation coordinating teams (tkpk), both at central and regional levels. therefore, a control team of family of hope program will soon be established in tkpk to enable good coordination and synergy. family of hope 122 international journal of education, vol. 8 no. 2 may 2015 program is a cross-ministerial program and agency, since its main actor is from national development planning agency, department of social affairs, department of health, department of national education, department of religious affairs, department of communication and information, and the central bureau of statistics. to make the program successful, the program will be assisted by qualified expert team for family of hope program and consultants of world bank. targets or beneficiaries of family of hope program are very poor households that have family members consisting of children from 0-15 years of age and/or pregnant/ postpartum women and live in selected locations. beneficiary is mothers or adult women who take care of children in the households (if no mothers then grandmothers, aunts, or sisters can be the beneficiaries). thus, the membership card of family of hope program will include the name of mothers/ women who take care of the children, not the head of the households and people who need and are entitled to take payment is the people whose names are listed in the card. the selected candidates must sign an agreement that as long as they receive assistance, they will: 1) send their children to school, especially children from 7-15 and 16-18 years of age who have not completed the nine years of compulsory education; (2) bring children from 0-6 years of age to health facilities in accordance with the family of hope program’s health procedure for children; and (3) pregnant women should consult their own health and the health of the fetus to health facilities in accordance with the family of hope program’s health procedure for pregnant women. in terms of family of hope program, it is clearly stated that the component that has been the primary focus is health and education field. the main purpose of family of hope program in terms of health is to improve the health status of mothers and children in indonesia, especially for very poor communities, through the provision of incentives to do preventive health visits (prevention, not treatment). all participants of family of hope program is the recipient of free health services provided by the health insurance for poor people and other programs intended for poor people so that the card can be used as an identity card to obtain the services. educational component in family of hope program is developed to improve the participation rate of 9 years of compulsory basic education and as the efforts to reduce the rate of child labor in a very poor family. family of hope program’s children from 7-18 years of age who have not completed the 9-year basic education program must enroll in formal or non-formal school and attend for at least 85% of the time face to face. each child is entitled to receive assistance other than family of hope program, both national and local programs. family of hope program is not a replacement for other programs; therefore it does not sufficiently help other expenses such as uniforms, books etc. family of hope program is an aid for parents to send their children to school. the amount of cash given to participants of family of hope program varies depending on the number of family members taken into account for receiving the assistance, both health and education components. the amount of this assistance in the future can be changed in accordance with the conditions of the family at that time or if the participants cannot meet the specified requirements. relation between policy implementation and service quality policy implementation is an attempt to understand what in reality happens after a program is declared valid or are formulated so that it becomes the focus of policy implementation, including the events and activities that arise after the ratification of national policy guidelines, with an 123 paiman raharjo, the effects of implementation of the family of hope program policy effort to administrate them or actualize the consequences or real effects on society or existing events. policy implementation is a crucial part of the achievement of policy objectives in addressing the existing problems, or for the successful implementation of a particular activity. the success of policy implementation will not be easily achieved without an effort to consider the various factors affecting the policy implementation. service quality is a model that describes the condition of society by comparing the service they expect with what they receive in evaluating quality. good service quality is one important factor in the effort to create a community’s satisfaction. regarding relation between policy implementation and service quality, wibowo (2008: 36) states that if the policy is implemented properly, it will have a positive effect on increasing the service quality. thus, according to wibowo, it is obvious that policy implementation has a relation with the service quality. according to tjiptono (1994: 42), policy implementation based on people’s aspirations will affect the service quality. thus, according to tjiptono, policy implementation has a very close relation with the service quality. gunawan (2010: 213), in the research entitled analysis of policy implementation of family of hope program towards quality improvement of family’s health and education, states that policy implementation can improve the quality of family’s health and education. the results of the research and discussion show that the policy substance of family of hope program is still the authority of the central government based on the principle of de-concentration, while regions implement family of hope program as a coadministration from the central government. from the conclusion, it is obvious that policy implementation has a close relation with the quality of education and health. another theory stating that policy implementation has a relation with the service quality is one by muhammad fauzi (2009: 198) in the research entitled “effect of policy implementation of family of hope program on service quality of education for poor families in north jakarta”, stating that policy implementation of family of hope program has significant effect on the quality of educational services, so that the more effective the policy implementation is, the more the quality of basic education service in north jakarta will improve. based on the results obtained, it is obvious that policy implementation has a significant relation with the service quality. furthermore, according to nur kholizah (2011: 207) in the research entitled “the effect of policy implementation of family of hope program on service quality of education and health of poor families in bantul, yogyakarta”, policy implementation of family of hope program has a significant effect on the quality of education and health service. according to mahfudiin (2011: 201) in the research entitled “effect of policy implementation of family of hope program on the effectiveness of education and health service for poor families in tangerang, banten”, policy implementation of family of hope program has positive and significant effect on the effectiveness of education and health service. from aforementioned opinions, it can be concluded that policy implementation has a significant relation with service quality. the analysis result shows that policy implementation of family of hope program has a positive and significant effect on the quality of education and health service for poor families. through the test of effect, policy implementation of family of hope program provides a positive contribution on service quality on each dimension. for idealized policy dimension, (r2) gives effect of 0.62 or 62%; while the value 124 international journal of education, vol. 8 no. 2 may 2015 of t-count is 8.520 greater than the value of t-table = 1.978. for target groups dimension, (r2) gives effect of 0.61 or 61%; while the value of t-count is 6.13 greater than the value of t-table = 1.978. for implementing organization dimension, (r2) gives effect of 0.69 or 69%; while the value of t-count is 7.80 greater than the value of t-table = 1.978. for environmental dimension, (r2) gives effect of 0.74 or 74%; while the value of t-count is 8.67 greater than the value of t-table = 1.978. the result of collective calculation shows that policy implementation of family of hope program has a positive and significant effect on the quality of education and health services by 0.78, or 78%, whereas factors outside the variables studied are about 22% and aren’t discussed in this research. furthermore, when observed from the weight held by each dimension of policy implementation, environmental dimension has the most dominant weight / strongest effect on the service quality equal to 0.74, or 74%, while the dimension giving the lowest contribution is the target groups dimension, equal to 0.61, or 61%. conclusion based on the analysis and discussion, it can be concluded that policy implementation of family of hope program has significant effect on the quality of education and health service for poor families in east jakarta. the biggest effect of policy implementation of family of hope program is shown by environmental dimension, emphasizing that there must be harmony between policy implementation and the environment for the policy implementation to be implemented properly. then it is followed by implementing organization dimension and policy idealized dimension, while the smallest dimension is target groups dimension. it can be studied in policy implementation of family of hope program policies that can lead to improved quality of education and health service for poor families in east jakarta. from these results, new concept obtained is that in policy implementation in education and health field, environmental factor has a dominant effect compared to other factors. thus, environmental factor can serve as one of the main determinants of the success of policy implementation. references abidin, s. z. 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(1990). service marketing. translated by tjiptono. mc grow hill international editions. database connection failed! introduction international journal of education vol. 9 no. 1, august 2016, pp. 24-31 © 2016 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v9i1.3714 24 cooperative principle of conversations in vikram seth’s a suitable boy: a socio-pragmatic assessment of inferential chains of interpretation vijay singh thakur languages and translation department college of arts and applied sciences, dhofar university, sultanate of oman vijay_thakur@du.edu.om first draft received: 27 february 2016 final proof received: 14 august 2016 abstract grice (1975) provides an interpretative model that explains how we draw inferences from conversation. this theory of cooperative principle (cp), based on the philosophical ideas of grice, relates the text to its contexts, including social context. as schiffrin (1994) remarks, the application of cp to dialogic conversations leads to a particular view of discourse and its analysis, i.e. discourse as a text whose contexts (including cognitive, social and linguistic contexts) allow the interpretation of real speaker meaning in utterances (p. 227). the approach that gricean pragmatics offers to discourse analysis is based on a set of general principles about rationally-oriented communicative conduct that tells speakers and hearers how to organize and use information offered in a text, along with background knowledge of the world (including knowledge of the immediate social context), to convey (and understand) more than what is said– put simply, to communicate. in this paper, i am going to focus on and explore how we understand fictional discourse using pragmatic interpretative strategies to reconstruct inferential chains which lead us to a particular interpretation of conversation. i will discuss various issues of inferences, generated via grice’s model, in the interpersonal pragmatics involved in the character utterances in vikram seth’s a suitable boy. the paper attempts to demonstrate how pragmatic interpretative strategies can make an added contribution to the study of literature as well as to the development of pragmatic competence, critical thinking, and better understanding of the use of naturally occurring language, both in literature and language classrooms. keywords: interpersonal pragmatics, cooperative principle, conversational implicature, social norms to cite this paper (in apa style): thakur, v. s. (2016). cooperative principle of conversations and vikram seth’s a suitable boy: a sociopragmatic assessment of inferential chains of interpretation. indonesian journal of education, 9(1), 24-31. doi: dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v9i1.3714 introduction it is common knowledge that the use of language for communication is basically a social phenomenon. being so, most of its sanction tends to be conventional. the most common convention of communication is that speakers and listeners try to cooperate with one another in order to communicate accurately and efficiently. they cooperate, for example, on the simple mechanics of speech. speakers talk in audible voices, use languages they believe their listeners know, and adhere to the phonology, syntax, and semantics of those languages. just as important, however, are the conventions speakers and listeners observe in what is said and how it is expressed. put concisely, speakers try to be informative, truthful, relevant, and clear; and listeners interpret what they say on the assumption that they are trying to live up to these ideals. as grice (1975) put it, speakers and listeners adhere to the cooperative principle. the cp implies decisions in four major areas of relation, quality, quantity, and manner, and their significance is conveyed through the maxims as precepts to speakers in the form of how they should contribute to a conversation. it is easy to see how communication can break down when speakers do not adhere to these maxims. that is why people normally observe the general principle of conversation: “make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged” (grice, 1975, p. 46). this principle (cp) consists of four more specific maxims of quantity, quality, relation, and manner. i shall talk about each maxim in a separate section a little later. but, as garfinkel (1967 in coulthard, 1985, p. 30) observes, it is never possible to say what one means in so many words– speakers require hearers to work to a greater or lesser extent to derive their message from the words uttered. so, by implication, it is also true that this principle (cp) is often not obeyed and violated. there are occasions when a speaker decides to quietly and unostentatiously violate a maxim– he may lie, he may not give as much of the relevant information as he could, or he may offer utterances which are only later seen to be ambiguous. there may also be occasions when a speaker is seen to break a maxim, either because he has been faced with a clash between two maxims making it impossible, for instance, for him to be as specific as he ought to be and still to say nothing for which he lacks adequate evidence, or because he has chosen to flout a maxim, that is to say he may blatantly fail to fulfill it. in such instances, the conversational maxims provide a basis for the listener to infer by way of what is being conversationally http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v9i1.3714 mailto:vijay_thakur@du.edu.om http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v9i1.3714 thakur, v. s. cooperative principle of conversations and vikram seth’s a suitable boy: a socio-pragmatic assessment ... 25 implicated. grice (1975) terms these pragmatic implications as conversational implicature (p. 47). thus, a maxim can be followed in a straightforward way, a maxim can be violated because of a clash with another maxim, or a maxim can be breached or flouted. incidentally, the violation of a maxim involves a two-stage process (coulthard, 1985, p. 32) – first recognition of the apparent irrelevance, inadequacy, or inappropriateness of the utterance, which secondly triggers the subsequent inferencing. as said in the beginning, our aim here is to examine the pragmatic considerations of the interpersonal communications in asb within the matrix of the theory of grice’s cooperative principle. our analysis will uncover how these principles of conversational cooperation provide an interpretative basis for the various referential possibilities that can be inferred and for the referring sequences that they create in the novel. the process of inferring via the grecian pragmatics would help us to explain how textual understanding can vary. the participant assumptions about what comprises a cooperative context for communication that contributes to meaning would also help us to explicate in the novel what critics refer to as meanings between or behind the lines. the gricean principles or maxims apply variably to different contexts of language use and in variable degrees rather than in an all-or-nothing way. incidentally, a similar view reflects in the two quotations of voltaire that vikram seth has purposefully included (particularly in the context of the very bulky volume of the novel) just before the beginning of the story. the two quotations, “the superfluous, that very necessary thing….”, and “the secret of being a bore is to say everything” clearly refer to necessarily saying more and less (respectively) than is required. seth, via these two quotations of voltaire, refers to the possibilities and scope of deliberate violations of grecian maxims of cooperation in his novel under study. our analytic focus in this paper will be not only on the observance and violation of the maxims but also on the reason(s) why the characters in the novel followed or flouted them. as the principles of conversational cooperation introduce communicative values into the study of language– the values that are operative in society (krishnaswamy et al, 1992, p. 107), it is needless to say that the issues of social considerations along with personal motives and interpersonal relationship will be considered as factors affecting conversational behaviour of the participants in the story. let us begin now our analysis of cp in asb by examining the conversational considerations of quantity in it. maxim of quantity the maxim of quantity refers to the suggestion of making conversational contribution as informative as is required for the current purposes of the exchange. thus, it restricts from saying too much or too little. consequently, the quantity maxim leads hearers to search for the amount of information in a text or description. many a times the quantity in discourse is influenced by the considerations of quality maxim in being true or untrue. let us examine the organization of the amount of information in some pieces of discourse from the novel. example one mrs. rupa mehra: who is he? (demanded mrs. rupa mehra.) come here. come here at once. lata: lata looked at savita. (savita nodded.) just a friend (said lata, approaching her mother). (p. 181) analysis the important point about the conversational maxims, as leech and short (1981) commented, is that unlike rules (e.g. grammatical rules), they are often violated (p. 295). the breach of the maxim of quantity can be seen in this example. mrs. rupa mehra, in the context of her recent knowledge about her daughter (lata) having an affair with some boy, questions her: ‘who is he?’ lata answers, ‘just a friend’. let us examine her answer in terms of the quantity maxim. the maxim of quantity favours the provision of full information. the effect of this maxim, as levinson (1983) remarked, is to add to most utterances a pragmatic inference to the effect that the statement presented is the strongest, or more informative, that can be made in the situation (p. 106). lata’s answer failed in this respect to lead her mother to believe so. it can be seen from the context of the ongoing conversation between the mother and daughter that mrs. rupa mehra is worried and angry about lata’s relationship with the boy in question. her concern is motivated by the social reason of pre-marital affairs of romance being looked down upon in society. such an image of girls proves to be highly disadvantageous in the matters of their prospective matrimonial alliance, as the marriages in indian socio-cultural set-up are generally arranged marriages. naturally, she would like to know everything about the boy in question in response to her question; for example, his name, his family, his caste and religion, etc. which are important factors that influence the marriage alliances. but lata’s answer– “just a friend”– proves to be, to use schiffrin’s (1994) phrase, referentially opaque (p. 200), as it neither refers to any specific person nor provides any definite information about him. consequently, it entails further questioning like “what’s his name?”, “what is he– kabir lal, kabir mehra– or what?”, etc which is evident in the text of the whole discourse unit (p. 181) in the novel. thus, lata’s answer provides less information and violates the maxim of quantity. since the answer was quantitatively weak, it could not satisfy mrs. rupa mehra’s illocutionary goal. it could not lead her to find its relevance to the text and context of her question. in this way, the strongest and more informative statement involves the statement that can be relevantly made. such implicit appeals to the maxim of relevance have prompted wilson and sperber (1981) to claim that the maxim of relevance in fact subsumes the other maxims. there is another aspect to the violation of quantity in this example. lata’s relationship with kabir was beyond normal limits of friendship, as has been indicated time and again in the novel. in such a situation, her answer– “just a friend”– self-evidently becomes untrue and also sounds qualitatively spurious. thus, it is the weak quantity of the answer that is leading it to thakur, v. s. cooperative principle of conversations and vikram seth’s a suitable boy: a socio-pragmatic assessment ... 26 disturb the features of the other maxims of quality and relevance in the conversation. the motivation for lata’s flouting of almost the whole range of cp, by way of her oblique answer, lies in interpersonal factors which are at odds here with the principle of cooperation. the factors of sociofamilial attitude towards a pre-marital relationship of romance and that too between a hindu girl and a muslim boy of the 1950s and the resultant personal tension and conflict compel her to be tactful in avoiding the actual facts. it is also influenced, on the other hand, by the socially and psychologically oriented application of a pragmatic principle of being polite and avoiding confrontation with her mother, who, by indian social norms, holds the parental authority to question and influence the personal affairs of marriage of her children and command their obedience. example two haresh: shall we sit down? (asked haresh.) lata: yes. why not? haresh: well, it’s been such a long time since we met (said haresh). lata: don’t you count the prahapore club? (said lata.) haresh: oh, that was for your family. you and i were hardly present. lata: we were all very impressed (said lata with a smile). (certainly, haresh had been very much present, even if she hadn’t.) haresh: i hoped you would be (said haresh). but i am not sure what your elder brother thinks of all this. is he avoiding me? this morning he spent half the time looking around for a friend of his, and now he’s going out. lata: oh, he’s just being arun. i’m sorry about the scene just now; that too is typical of him. but he’s quite affectionate sometimes. it’s just that one never knows when. you’ll get used to it. (the last sentence had slipped out of its own accord. lata was both puzzled at and displeased with herself. she did like haresh, but she didn’t want to give him any false hopes. quickly she added :) like all his– his colleagues. haresh: (but this made things worse; it sounded cruelly distancing and a bit illogical.) i hope i’m not going to become his colleague! (said haresh smiling.) (p. 1145) analysis in this dialogic discourse, lata– in her response to haresh’s question, “is he avoiding me?”– is violating the maxim of quantity, providing more than was required to answer the question. her verbose answer, simultaneously, also breaks the manner maxim because if she had the information asked for, yes or no would have been the apt reply. actually, her explanatory account of arun’s behaviour, which haresh felt to be a bit odd, can be tied to leech’s (1983) theory of minimizing the expression of impolite belief (p. 81). in the background of the solidarityoriented texture of indian culture, especially in the traditional host-guest situation, where haresh was a special guest (potential bridegroom) who felt and complained that he was being ignored by arun (from the host’s family) which was a face-threatening situation, in which lata’s direct and focused answer without any ameliorating redressal attempts would sound blunt and impolite. her verbose explanatory response is a mitigating step in this direction. due to socio-cultural considerations, lata gives politeness a higher rating than conversational cooperation, and the application of cp thus becomes weak in her conversation. this suggests that the breach of cp, at a deeper level of interpretation, involves politeness principle (pp). lata’s indirect and polite explanation of her brother’s odd behaviour of neglecting his guest requires haresh to account for the communicative significance it comes to have. with the basic assumption that lata (the hearer) is actually cooperating (as there is no evidence contrary to it), some appropriate inferences must be made. the opening remark “oh, he’s just being arun” generates the implication that he was not deliberately trying to neglect him. and, “you’ll get used to it… like all his– his colleagues” suggests that by temperament arun was like that and like all his colleagues haresh would also feel normal with him. lata’s addition of “like all his– his colleagues” comes as a result of an afterthought motivated by a repairing strategy. she feared that her preceding utterance might imply to haresh that somehow she has already made up her mind in favour of him in connection with her marriage. she wanted to undo it as their marriage was not yet fixed and finalized. her conversational behaviour at this juncture is influenced by the maxim of quality (try to make your contribution that is true). so, she expressed her official distance in “like all his–his colleagues.” haresh, as a clever conversationalist, was able to read this implicature and attempted to generate a counter implication with the intention of strengthening his situation and gaining some advantage by breaking the quantity norms in his remark “i hope i am not going to become his colleague.” he intended to lead lata to read from it that he has almost accepted lata as his life partner; that he hopes to be accepted as a suitable match for lata by the mehra family; and also that lata herself would reciprocate in the same manner, etc. thus, we can see how both haresh and lata, through the manipulation of cp, progress towards their conversational goals while simultaneously maintaining their host-guest relationship. the maxim of quantity and quality frequently work in competition with one another, i.e. the amount of information a speaker gives is limited by the speaker’s wish to avoid telling an untruth. so, we should see, in our next section, as to how the participants in asb manage their conversational behaviour in terms of the maxim of quality. maxim of quality this maxim is related with the attempts of making one’s contribution that is true. quality maxim prescribes that conversational partners should not say anything they believe to be false and also for which they lack adequate evidence. this maxim, as leech (1983) remarked, outweighs other cooperative maxims (p. 82). another feature of this maxim is that it works in competition with the maxim of quantity. put concisely, the amount of information a speaker gives is, in a way, limited by the speaker’s wish to avoid telling an untruth. for this reason, harnish (1976) has even proposed a combined maxim of quantitythakur, v. s. cooperative principle of conversations and vikram seth’s a suitable boy: a socio-pragmatic assessment ... 27 quality, i.e. make the strongest relevant claim justifiable by your evidence (p. 362). we shall now study the truth/falsity considerations of this maxim in some dialogic excerpts from asb. example three saeeda bai: tanseem is not my sister (she had said as factually as possible). she is yours. firoz: (firoz had stared at her in horror.) saeeda bai: yes (saeeda bai had continued). she is my daughter, god forgive me. firoz: (firoz had shaken his head.) saeeda bai: and god forgive your father (she had continued). now go in peace. i must say my prayers. firoz: (firoz, speechless with disgust and torn between belief and disbelief, had left the room…) (p. 1192) analysis this example is designed to be a case of deliberate, on-record adherence of cp and intended to convey very crucial factual information to the listener. as for the context of the text, saeeda bai, a courtesan, is the speaker and firoz, the son of a big landlord nawab of baitar, is the recipient. saeeda bai has a young girl called tanseem with her whom people know to be her sister. saeeda bai notices that firoz is developing some soft feelings towards tanseem. she fears that his soft feelings may lead to becoming their infatuation, passion, and love. with this troubling apprehension in mind she, one day, calls firoz to her house. it is at this juncture that the clarificatory text under examination is exchanged with firoz. the truth of the fact conveyed in saeeda bai’s utterances can be seen in the conversation of saeeda bai’s attendant bibbo with firoz later (p. 1193) and also can be guessed from the envelope of regular monthly endowment that nawab of baitar used to send her (p. 1229). though the example being discussed displays the adherence to all the four maxims of quantity, quality, relations and manner, the need to follow the quality maxim is at the core of saeeda bai’s intended goal of communication, and actually it is the binding force for the other maxims as conveying the truth, in a serious manner, is the crucial need of the hour. her main concern is to convey the truth to firoz that tanseem is, in fact, his sister and her daughter, so that she can stop firoz from unknowingly developing a relationship of romance with tanseem. needless to say that the communicative situation here is defined by a global culture as no society in the world approves of such a relationship to happen. in order to avoid breaking the maxim of quality, saeeda bai uses more definite and assertive locutions in “tanseem is not my sister,” “she is yours,” “she is my daughter,” “god forgive me,” and “god forgive your father.” it was not difficult for firoz to calculate the straightforward implicature (from “god forgive me” and “god forgive your father”) that tanseem was his sister by way of his father’s sexual mistake with saeeda bai. the resultant perlocution of firoz in becoming dumbfounded at the shocking news and staring at saeeda bai in horror is based on the standard quality implicature (levinson, 1983, p. 105) that one believes what one asserts. this, in a way, suggests that there should be a mutual relevance between the maxim of quality and assertions, as assertions help in being factual in conversations. this phenomenon reflects grice’s (1975) observation that the maxims of cp derive not from the nature of conversation per se, but from the fact that talking is “a special case of variety of purposive, indeed rational behaviour” (p. 47). example four maan: (…maan grabbed hold of the munshi’s fat, rough stubbled neck and started shaking him wordlessly and violently, hardly mindful of the terror in the man’s eyes. his own teeth were bared, and he looked terrifying.) the munshi: (the munshi gasped and choked–his hands flew up to his neck…) sahib! sahib! (croaked the munshi, finding his voice at last.) huzoor knows it was only a joke–a way of– these people– i never intended–a good woman– nothing will happen–her son, his field back– huzoor must not think–(tears were rolling down his cheek.) maan: i am going (said maan, half to himself, half to waris). get me a rickshaw. (he was sure he had come within an inch of killing the man.) the munshi: (the resilient munshi suddenly leapt forward and almost lunged at maan’s feet, touching them with his hands and his head and lying, gasping and prostrate before him.) no, no, huzoor–please–please–do not ruin me (he wept, unmindful of his audience of underlings). it was a joke–a joke–a way of making a point–no one means such things, i swear by my father and mother. maan: ruining you? (said maan, dazed.) (pp. 641-42) analysis in order to account for the real communicative significance and value of the conversational behaviour of the participants in the discourse under investigation, it is necessary—as a preliminary contextual scaffolding—to describe the power pattern that exists between them. their utterances are highly influenced by the power principle. maan is the son of the revenue minister mahesh kapoor, who is the chief architect of the zamindari abolition bill and also close friend of firoz, the son of nawab of baitar. mahesh kapoor and nawab sahib share a familial friendship. and the munshi is a traditional clerical head in the baitar estate. thus, there is a huge gap of social status between maan and the munshi. the speech event begins when maan witnesses (unobserved) the munshi’s bad, cruel, and inhuman treatment with a poor and helpless village woman who was called there to be warned and threatened against her son’s offence of trying to get his tenancy on the village records. this makes maan very angry and violent and he manhandles the munshi in the presence of his underlings. the munshi became terrified of the whole situation. he visualized that the news of threatening a woman against their tenancy right would not increase mahesh kapoor’s tenderness towards the baitar estate of nawab and that what might happen if the nawab sahib himself, who liked to imagine that an estate could be run painlessly and benevolently, came to hear of his threats to the old woman. he also knew that maan was firoz’s close thakur, v. s. cooperative principle of conversations and vikram seth’s a suitable boy: a socio-pragmatic assessment ... 28 friend who was volatile, and his father was fond of him and sometimes listened to him. thus, the situation was critical and against him. so, the munshi–through his utterances of total surrender and pleadings– tries to control and undo the threat of the situation. munshi’s pleading speech is self-evidently a case of an overt violation of the truth considerations of the quality maxim. the quality maxim, as we know, suggests the speakers not to say things that they believe to be false and also that which they lack adequate evidence for. there is no evidence, either in character utterances or authorial commentary, to suggest that the munshi could justify his speech in terms of the quality maxim. thus, both from the text and its context, it is not difficult to understand that the munshi’s utterances are blatantly false and become a speech of an ostentatious flouting of the quality maxim. that being so, the munshi cannot be trying to deceive maan, particularly in the present context of the power paradigm between him and maan. munshi’s socially obligatory addressee—elevating address terms sahib and huzoor and his total surrender in touching maan’s feet and prostrating before him—can sufficiently exhibit this. the only way in which the assumption that the munshi is cooperating can be maintained is if we take the munshi to mean something rather different from what he is actually saying. searching around for a related but cooperative proposition, that munshi might be intending to convey, we arrive at his utterances to imply that it would be a great personal catastrophe for him if the matter is reported to mahesh kapoor, or nawab sahib or firoz and that maan should forget and forgive him of his offence. munshi’s implicature in violating the quality maxim here does not require particular contextual conditions to unfold this message. maan’s conducive reply in a declarative question “ruining you?” suggests that, by way of standard or generalized implicature (levinson, 1983, p. 104), he has read the munshi’s message and his expectation and leads him to infer his response against his plea. quirk, et al. (1985) remarked that declarative questions are conducive and resemble tag questions with a rising tone in that they invite hearer’s verification (p. 814). munshi’s verification of maan’s conducive question may easily lead him to read the message as–“do you think i shall do that–ruining a weak and helpless person?’ thus, it is a cooperative and socially motivated conversation where the munshi, in his surrendering and submissive perlocutionary response to maan’s behaviour, has adopted the assumed goal of socially powerful maan who wanted to punish and teach him a lesson for his socially unjust behaviour of humiliating a poor and helpless woman. the discussion of the maxim of quantity and quality in the preceding sections leads us to the examination of the relevance maxim. in the following section we shall investigate the operation of this maxim in some talk exchanges from asb. maxim of relation maxim of relation is concerned with making the contribution relevant to the aims of the ongoing conversation. relevance maxim refers to a special kind of informativeness which is related to the relevance of an utterance to its speech situation. the utterance will be relevant, as leech (1983, p. 94) remarked, to the speech situation if it can be interpreted as contributing to the conversational goal(s) which may include both social goals (e.g. observing politeness) and personal goals (such as finding one’s book). maxim of relation leads hearers to use information in a certain way, i.e. to find its relevance to the rest of the text and to the context in which it is situated. sperber and wilson (1986), who built on grice’s work, claimed that the maxim involving relevance subsumes all the other maxims and the relevance is more important than the other maxims in that whatever maxim is originally broken, the relevance maxim is always used in inferring the consequent conversational implicature. in the following couple of pages, we shall see the functioning of this super maxim of relevance in certain dialogues from the novel. example five sandeep lahiri: whose wife are you? (sandeep lahiri was presiding officer at one of the many polling stations in salimpur.) a woman voter: how can i take his name? (asked the burqa-clad woman in a shocked whisper.) it is written on that slip of paper which i gave you before you left the room just now. (p. 1244) analysis the woman voter, on the surface, has put another question as a response to sandeep lahiri’s question. he, as a presiding officer, wanted to check her husband’s name before allowing her to cast her vote. though her question is a rhetorical question for which she has no intention of eliciting answer, it does not complete the incomplete proposition of sandeep lahiri’s question. the woman, as a cooperative listener, should have supplied her husband’s name as an answer. thus, her rhetorical question appears to be unconnected, insincere, and irrelevant. in a way, it violates the maxim of quality. on the surface level, her rhetorical question violates the maxim of relation, as it differs from the required answer that the presiding officer has asked for. but, her violation of relevance is not clandestine. by implication, she wants to convey something more. she expects the presiding officer to realize that she has adhered to the principle of conversational cooperation and so her contribution is relevant to what he has just asked. in addition, if he takes it to be relevant, which he actually does, he will see that there is some restrictive hesitation on her part for uttering her husband’s name. and what follows after her question is an indirect answer to sandeep lahiri’s question, i.e. he can find out her husband’s name from the voter’s slip that she gave him some time ago. the intentions of the woman are in no way face-threatening, as her decision to flout the maxim of relevance ostentatiously is motivated by the social norm which restricts the village women from uttering their husband’s name as a mark of deference. this practice still prevails in villages. instead, the village women, in their routine social interactions, address their husbands as the father of their child/children. they use, for example, phrases like munnu ke papa, i.e. the father of munnu where munnu is the pet name of the child. her rhetorical question draws sandeep thakur, v. s. cooperative principle of conversations and vikram seth’s a suitable boy: a socio-pragmatic assessment ... 29 lahiri’s attention toward this social norm. thus, it reflects upon leech’s (1983) observation that listener’s conversational goal also includes a social goal of observing the cultural norms (p. 94). the operation of the relevance maxim in the talk exchange that we have discussed now cannot be satisfactorily explained without the due consideration of the cultural norm that regulates the woman’s answer, as it accounts for the gap between the overt sense and the pragmatic force of her response. on the surface, her rhetorical question counts as anomalous since it does not advance a well-formed answer to the presiding officer’s question, but it does become relevant if it is understood as an explanation of why she cannot answer his question. example six mr. sahgal: shall i buy you a sari? lata: no–no– mr. sahgal: georgette drapes better than chiffon, don’t you think? lataa: (lata gave no answer.) mr. sahgal: recently ajanta pallus have become the craze. the motifs are so–so– imaginative–i saw one with a paisley design, another with a lotus– (mr. sahgal smiled.) and now with these short cholis the women show their bare waists at the back as well. do you think you are a bad girl? lata: a bad girl? (repeated lata.) mr. sahgal: at dinner you said you were a bad girl(explained her uncle in a kindly measured way). i don’t think you are. i think you are a lipstick girl. are you a lipstick girl? lata: (with sick horror lata remembered that he had asked her the same question when they were sitting together in his car five years ago…) a lipstick girl? (lata had asked puzzled. at that time, she had believed that women who wore lipstick, like those who smoked, were bold and modern and probably beyond the pale.) i don’t think so (she had said). mr. sahgal: do you know what a lipstick girl is? (mr. sahgal had asked with a slow smirk on his face.) lata: someone who uses lipstick? (lata had said.) mr. sahgal: on her lips? (asked her uncle slowly.) lata: yes, on her lips. mr. sahgal: no, not on her lips, not on her lips–that is what is known as a lipstick girl. (mr. sahgal shook his head gently from side to side and smiled, as if enjoying a joke, while looking straight into her bewildered eyes.) lata: (… lata had felt almost ill. later, she had blamed herself for misunderstanding what her uncle had said. she had never mentioned the incident to her mother or to anyone, and had forgotten it. now it came back to her and she stared at him.) mr. sahgal: i know you are a lipstick girl. do you want some lipstick? (said mr. sahgal, moving forward along the bed.) lata: no–(cried lata.) i don’t–mausaji–please stop this– mr. sahgal: it is so hot–i must take off this dressinggown. lata: no! (lata wanted to shout, but found she couldn’t.) don’t, please, mausaji. i–i’ll shout–my mother is a light sleeper–go away–ma–ma– mr. sahgal: (mr. sahgal’s mouth opened. he said nothing for a moment. then he sighed. he looked very tired again.) i thought you were an intelligent girl (he said in a disappointed voice… he got up… in a forgiving voice, he said :) i know that deep down you are a good girl. sleep well. god bless you. lata: no! (lata almost shouted.) (pp. 591-92) analysis the conversation of this excerpt from the novel begins with mr. sahgal’s offer of buying a sari for lata. lata declines his offer. then, her maternal uncle, mr. sahgal, tries to persuade her in “georgette drapes better than chiffon, don’t you think?” lata breaks the maxim of manner and gives no answer. up to this, the exchanges are relevant in the form of questions and relevant yes or no answers. but, the onward direction of the conversation suddenly shifts from its theme, and a disruption in the continuity of the topic comes in which makes mr. sahgal’s contributions inappropriate and more difficult for the hearer (lata) to follow. the sudden deviation from his “shall i buy you a sari?” to the strange utterances like “do you think you are a bad girl?”, “i think you are a lipstick girl?”, and “do you want some lipstick?” makes mr. sahgal’s contribution irrelevant, as it does not seem to expand on the initial topic of offer and sounds quite unconnected to its theme. mr. sahgal’s violation of the relevance maxim is highly oblique but calculable. taking into account his behaviour in the past as a background, the seductive connotation of his indirect images, and his non-verbal behaviour during the conversation, it is not difficult for both the hearer and the readers to decipher his illocutionary intentions. his whole speech reflects his act of verbal seduction aimed at leading lata to sexual activities. mr. sahgal’s implicature, resulting from the violation of the relevance maxim, is to give hints to lata that refer to his sexual motives. the indian socio-cultural norms restrict free use of overt expressions related to sex, especially when interlocutors belong to different sexes, and it is regarded as immoral and improper. motivated by this, mr. sahgal’s conversational contribution entails repeated use of sexual hints in the expressions like “bare waists of women at the back as well,” ”a lipstick girl using lipstick not on her lips,” “it’s so hot– i must take off this dressing gown,” etc. as a result, his contribution breaks the relevance criterion of conversational cooperativeness. this piece of conversation between mr. sahgal and lata is a good example which suggests and displays as to how the interpretation of indirect illocutions heavily depends on the maxim of relation. this dependence manifests itself in what leech (1980) called a hinting strategy (pp. 112-14). it is now time to discuss the last maxim of conversational cooperativeness--the maxim of manner. our next section deals with the examination of this maxim in certain pieces of dialogue from the novel under study. maxim of manner grice’s maxim of manner is rooted in being perspicuous and clear. it is concerned with avoiding thakur, v. s. cooperative principle of conversations and vikram seth’s a suitable boy: a socio-pragmatic assessment ... 30 obscurity, ambiguity, wordiness, and disorderliness in one’s use of language. the maxim of manner, like the maxim of relation, favours the most direct communication of one’s illocutionary point, and both, for that reason, mitigates against the obliquity of the hinting strategy. in this way, the maxim of manner supports the maxim of relation. as leech (1983) observed, the maxim of manner rarely figures in explanations of conversational implicature (pp. 99-100). grice (1975) himself saw this maxim as, in some sense, less important than (e.g.) the maxim of quality and also as differing from the others in “relating not… to what is said but, rather, to how what is said is to be said” (p. 46). what follows next is the examination of manner in some inter-personal discourses from the novel under study. example seven raja of marh: it is not right (he said). the chief justice: (the chief justice leaned forwards.) raja of marh: it is not right. we too love our country. who are they? who are they? the land– (he expostulated.) (the courtroom reacted with shock and amazement. the rajkumar stood up and took a tentative step towards his father. his father shoved him aside.) the chief justice: (the chief justice said, rather slowly :) your highness, i cannot hear you. raja of marh: (the raja of marh did not believe this for one instant.) i will speak louder, sir (he announced). the chief justice: (the chief justice repeated :) i cannot hear you, your highness... (p. 702) analysis any reasonably informed participant will know that the maxims of conversational cooperativeness are normally observed in highly academic and business talks and legal language which are mostly informative, content-oriented, and factual. departing from this view, the extract under examination can be seen as a good example of the exploitation of the maxim of manner. by using an ambiguous remark to raja of marh (your highness, i cannot hear you), the chief justice is violating the maxim of manner (be perspicuous: avoid ambiguity). there are two possible interpretations to this remark--one that refers to raja of marh’s low voice which is not hearable with the implication to speak louder and the other that he should not speak directly to the court (observing procedural norms), implying that his counsel should refer his arguments to the court. by deviating from the norms of the manner maxim, the chief justice intends to lead his hearer, the raja of marh, to the interpretation of his communicative intent that goes beyond the logical meaning of the utterance (not being able to hear his voice). in weiser’s (1975) terms, the addressee is called upon to infer the relation between the utterance and the purpose (p. 649). but, the dominant feature of the legal conversation being factual and content-oriented is actually blocking raja of marh’s interpretation of this purpose, which eventually leads to an oddity of the situation in the novel where conversational cooperation seems to break down, resulting in an unpleasant scene in the court room when the chief justice had to eventually order the removal of raja of marh from the court. the motivation for the judge’s deviation from the norms of the manner maxim in using an indirect and divided illocution lies in the social reasons of being polite to raja of marh in consideration of his social status as a former king. the preference for his whimperative (your highness, i cannot hear you) over the imperative (… say it through your counsel) or the non-offending form over the offending form, to use steever’s (1977) argument, is an outcome of the desire to be or appear to be polite (p. 595). and, in being polite one is often faced with a clash between the cooperative principle and politeness principle, so that one has to choose how far to trade off one against the other (leech, 1983, p. 83). thus, judging the odd and adverse conversational result of raja of marh’s response in ”i will speak louder, sir” the chief justice had to, at a later stage of conversation, revert to the factual interpretation of his intended implication in ”if you have something to say, kindly say it through your counsel.” the conversational implicature in this exchange seems to be more relevant at authoraudience level of discourse than at the charactercharacter level, thereby creating the effect of dramatic irony. this example can, thus be used to illustrate how the adherence to the norms of the manner maxim can be an important pragmatic constraint on the use of language in legal settings. example eight prof. mishra: i am sure you have looked through the candidates’ applications and so on (said prof. mishra jovially). prof. jaikumar: (professor jaikumar looked very slightly surprised.) yes, indeed (he said). prof. mishra: well, if i may just indicate a couple of lines of thought that might smoothen the process tomorrow and make everyone’s task easier– (began professor mishra). a sort of foretaste, as it were, of the proceedings. merely to save time and bother. i know you have to catch the seven o’clock train tomorrow night. prof. jaikumar: (professor jaikumar said nothing. courtesy and propriety struggled in his breast.) prof. mishra: (professor mishra took his silence for acquiescence, and continued.) prof. jaikumar: (professor jaikumar nodded from time to time but continued to say nothing.) prof. mishra: so– (said professor mishra finally.) prof. jaikumar: thank you, thank you, most helpful (said professor jaikumar) now i am fore-warned and fore-armed for the interviews … (p. 1269) analysis the breaking of the maxim of manner can be seen in this example where prof. mishra and prof. jaikumar are discussing about the following day’s interviews for the selection of a reader in the department of english of brahmpur university. professor mishra’s utterances in being laboured, prolix, and indirect, break the considerations of manner (be brief and avoid ambiguity and obscurity). at the surface level, prof. mishra is seen expressing his intention of making everyone’s task easier in order to save time and bother, but at the underlying level his hidden intentions are different. by seeing beyond the thakur, v. s. cooperative principle of conversations and vikram seth’s a suitable boy: a socio-pragmatic assessment ... 31 utterances in professor mishra’s undue hospitality, his desperation to discuss candidatures before the actual interviews, and his indirect and polite rhetoric, it was not difficult for professor jaikumar to read the intended implications of his efforts. prof. mishra’s illocutionary intention of influencing professor jaikumar to support the candidate of his choice the next day actually echoes indirectly in prof. jaikumar’s perlocutionary response in “thank you, thank you, most helpful. now i am fore-warned and fore-armed for the interviews.” socially obligatory indirectness and obscurity in professor mishra’s polite mode of rhetoric is due to his deliberate attempt to camouflage his manipulative efforts of influencing the selection process in trying to gain an expedient favour from the subject expert for the interview to the advantage of a candidate of his choice. as directly asking someone for a difficult, undue, and expedient favour amounts to impolite commanding, his indirect and vague approach is strategic which reflects patil’s (1994, p. 153) view that considerations of politeness force people to beat about the bush rather than saying what is on their mind as a communicative device. thus, this example may be a good instance of justifying leech’s (1983) claim that cp is needed, but it is not sufficient as an explanation of why people are often so indirect in conveying what they mean (p. 80). conclusion in this paper, i analyzed several passages of dialogue from asb using the theory of gricean pragmatics. gricean pragmatics is a functional approach to language, the main constructs of which are located outside of language per se in speaker meaning (speaker intention) and rational principles of human communication (i.e. the cooperative principle). i discussed as to how the participants in the novel manage their conversational behaviour in order to achieve their illocutionary or discoursal goals in hand at the time of talk. we saw that sometimes the characters adhere to the specifications of grice’s four maxims of quantity, quality, relation, and manner, but often they violate them. we found that the value and richness of the conversational maxims lies not in observing, but in flouting them as a result of which a literary artist is able to generate various aesthetically satisfying devices. i tried to trace out the reasons for the violation of these maxims in the novel and saw that the major motivation for it lies in characters’ interpersonal factors such as various cross-purposes, attitude, tension, conflict, etc. and more importantly socio-cultural factors like politeness, tact, social power, and taboos, etc. when they find them at odds with the principles of cooperation. this dichotomy tends to become the basis for the inference of extra meanings in fictional and dramatic dialogues. needless to say that much of what we learn in literary discourse comes from such inferences. the extra meanings that we thus extract account for the gap between overt sense and pragmatic force (i.e. implicatures) of the utterances. these meanings may help us understand the real value of character utterances and enable us to better describe various aspects in the novel or a drama in a broader perspective of personal and socio-cultural considerations of the participants in conversational actions. the discourse analysis of the novel under examination via the pragmatic model of grice has shown us, at many occasions, that the maxims of cooperative principle are not sufficient to account for the conversational complexities of the participants in all the communicative situations. quite often, the politeness strategies are important in the management of one’s conversational behaviour– sometimes as a complementary strategy and sometimes as a supplementary device. references coulthard, m. (1985). an introduction to discourse analysis. uk: longman. grice, h. p. (1975). utterer’s meaning, sentence meaning and word meaning. in searle, j. r. (ed.) the philosophy of language. oxford: oxford university press, 39-48. grice, h. c. (1975). logic and conversation. in p. cole and j. l. morgan (eds.) syntax and semantics 3 (pp. 41-58). new york: academic press. harnish, r. m. (1976). logical form and implicature. in bever, katz, and langendoen, op. cit., 31392. krishnaswamy, n., verma, s. k., & nagarjan, m. (1992). modern applied linguistics. madras: macmillan. leech, g. n. (1980). language and tact. in leech (1980), 79-117. (originally linguistic agency, university of trier, series a, paper 46, 1977.) leech, g. n. & short m. h. (1981). style in fiction. london: longman, 288-317. leech, g. n. (1983). principles of pragmatics. london and new york: longman. levinson, s. c. (1983). pragmatics. cambridge: cambridge university press. patil, z. n. (1994). style in indian english fiction: a study in politenes strategies. new delhi: prestige publishers. quirk, r., greenbaum, s., leech, g. and svartvik, j. (1985). a comprehensive grammar of the english language. london and new york: longman. seth, v. (1993, rep. 2001). a suitable boy. new delhi: penguin books. schiffrin, d. (1994). approaches to discourse. oxford, cambridge: blackwell. sperber, d. & wilson, d. (1986). relevance. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. steever, s. b. (1977). raising, meaning and conversational implicature. in papers from the thirteenth regional meeting of the chicago linguistic society, 590-602. weiser, a. (1975). how not to answer a question: purposive devices in conversational strategy. in papers from the eleventh regional meeting of the chicago linguistic society. chicago, 649-60. wilson, d. and sperber, d. (1981). on grice’s theory of conversation. in werth (pp. 155-78). 107 new concepts and challenges for teacher education for tvet – work integrated learning through the career change program rod moore school of education, victoria university, australia, email: rodney.moore@vu.edu.au jayne pitard victoria university, australia, email: jayne.pitard@vu.edu.au rosie greenfield victoria university, australia, email: rosie.greenfield@vu.edu.au abstract this paper examines the effectiveness and outcomes of an innovative teacher education for „beginning‟ teachers with full careers in other professions and industries. data were gathered over 3 years to study the experience of these teachers who undertake their initial teacher education and enter the profession simultaneously. this work is a benchmark practice of victoria university (vu) commitment to enhancing educational access, participation and success for young people in the region. vu has formed a partnership with secondary schools delivering vet and the department of education and early childhood development to address teacher shortages in secondary schools. the career change program (ccp) has been developed to address this shortage by attracting qualified professionals with industry experience to teach in teacher-short-supplied subject areas. praxis inquiry (pi) model of teacher education is developed and applied by focusing on teacher learning in school settings. the program aims to set in place practices and procedures in partnership with key stakeholders that provide a framework for sustainable recruitment, selection and education of career change teachers in vocational education. this framework will develop an international best practice of teacher education constructed as a partnership between schools, communities and university. keywords: work integrated learning, personalized support, career change introduction ‘the transition from musician to teacher has been slow and gradual. it has also been influenced by the fact that i have been spending more time and energy teaching. there has necessarily been less time for me to be a musician. however, there has also been a skill growth as a teacher that now matches my skills as a musician…. there has been a gradual realization that i am now a teacher and not a musician.’ (career change teacher). the career change program (ccp) at victoria university is an innovative teacher education program delivered in partnership between the school of education, teaching and learning support services, and supported by the department of education and early childhood development (deecd) and the victorian institute of teaching (vit). the program retrains experienced professionals and qualified trades people as teachers. whilst working mainly in rural schools where shortages exist in subjects such as technology studies, information technology, mathematics, science and languages, the teachers concurrently undertake a two-year education program. the structure of this teacher education program maintains the integrity of either the traditional one year full-time graduate diploma of secondary education or the bachelor of education (vocational education/secondary). the features of the career change program include the provision of one day a week time release to enable study to occur away from the workplace, close mentoring and support from school based mentors and a high degree of personalized support from the university teacher educators . the subjects studied do not change but the method of delivery is more intensive: a mailto:rodney.moore@vu.edu.au mailto:jayne.pitard@vu.edu.au mailto:rosie.greenfield@vu.edu.au 108 combination of residential workshops, seminars, visits to each teacher in their school and on-line communication. the program is delivered jointly by the school of education and the staff college (based in teaching and learning support services) at victoria university. throughout the life of the program continuous review and reflection has occurred through a variety of evaluation methods. whilst the program is seen as successful by the school principals and the program participants, this research examines and reports the learning and teaching practices and outcomes from the program so far and provides a framework for on-going practitioner research for improvement. program outline the university has structured this two-year program to deliver either graduate diploma of secondary education or an integrated bachelor of education (vocational education and training/secondary). imbedded within the bachelor of education (vocational education and training /secondary) is the certificate iv in training and assessment (cert iv taa) and the graduate certificate in vocational education and training (grad cert in vet). the cert iv taa is a requirement of the australian quality training framework (aqtf) and allows teachers to deliver and assess within the vocational sector within australia. towards the end of the preceding school year the deecd advertises designated vacancies in statewide media. the schools make the actual selection and the vit then advise on the required qualifications to be completed by the candidate. there are two pathways for these candidates; either they will present with a bachelor degree and so complete a post graduate qualification in teacher education, or will have a vocational qualification and a minimum of eight years of industry experience and will need to undertake the equivalent of two years full time study in order to complete a bachelor qualification (vet pathways) to meet the vit registration requirements. vu receives copies of the applications in order to make a preliminary judgment of their likely academic learning needs. the candidates are offered places and all participants commence the program in the december. during this first week „burst mode‟ of the program the focus is on building relationships and developing a collaborative learning group that continues for the life of the course and beyond. on returning in january the ccp teachers work intensively on program planning and delivery as well as engaging with the theories of learning and pedagogy needed to respond effectively to the learning needs of school students. in the remainder of the first year the ccp teachers will return for further intensive blocks of study; the vet pathway group on four more occasions and the postgraduate group on two more occasions. this enables the vet pathways group to complete their additional requirements for the grad cert in vet studies that together with the cert iv taa form the additional study requirements. in the second year all ccp teachers are required to attend the university on two further occasions for intensive study. each time the ccp teachers return to an intensive block of study the first session is always a “success protocol” where they share their successful and not so successful experiences and what they have learned in the process. the ccp teachers report this session invaluable in terms of their individual learning. the last time they come together is to present their final portfolios and a detailed evaluation of the whole two years of career change program. personalised support an emerging factor in this type of program is the high degree of personalized support offered by university staff (bolhuis, 2002. moore, martino & cherednichenko 2005). in the initial stages of the course the three facilitators work closely as a team mostly co-delivering but always available for support. so much so that one of the challenges for the students is to differentiate who is responsible for which parts of the program! this relationship continues throughout the life of the program. these facilitators are the first point of call for nearly all enquiries and provide much counselling through ongoing listening and provision of advice in relation to a wide range of situations. the university lecturers and in-school mentors provide additional support through school visits. the university offers mentor training for the in-school mentors in the initial week of the program. a vital aspect of the support is a full day free of the requirement to attend school, regardless of the time fraction the ccp teacher is employed and when they are at school the ccp teachers are not required to undertake additional duties within the school for instance, extra classes when other teachers are 109 away or yard duty. further support is provided through a dedicated web page, registration with a learning management system, allocation of laptops managed by the schools through the deecd at minimal fortnightly rates, provisions in programs for the time to have one on one-progress interviews with course facilitators and ongoing email contact and access to literacy support. these support structures are entirely focused on the ccp teachers within this program in addition to the support systems that are available to all students of victoria university. the challenge the approach used in the career change program is not without its concerns or its critics. dill, (1996) raises the question: „will alternatively certified teachers demonstrate a competency level equal to the traditionally certified teachers?‟ how is this to be answered? in examining site based teacher education practice in a number of countries, what becomes evident is that the quality of the teacher education program is not judged by the amount of time spent in either the university or the school, but rather the engagement in a critical discourse about the practices of teaching that enhance student learning. this engagement is ideally situated in the context of authentic experience and practice, but within the safe confines of professional debate and focused on analysis of evidence of teaching outcomes. such a discursive environment (kruger et al 2001) enables the teachers; student teacher, teacher educator and mentor teacher, to examine the learning artifacts of students so that teaching practice may be analysed and understood. tools such as the australian national schools network protocols frame such enquiry, as does sustained inquiry about practice, normally driven by the authentic assessment practices of university courses. the achievement of the discursive environment is beyond reflection and professional dialogue and the starting point for development of ontological teachers and reflexive practitioners. the evidence of the engagement in a critical discourse about the practices of teaching that enhance student learning is provided as part of the teaching portfolio which contains artifacts reflecting the praxis inquiry, teaching practice and research informing practice and developing substantive subject and professional knowledge. it also demonstrates reflective capacity in the form of case writing and commentary and annotated student work samples. a philosophy of education is also included which acts as a „reflective entry‟ to the portfolio indicating the theory that has informed the pedagogy employed by the student teacher and in the case of this program, the career change teacher. in this way there is considerable integration. in designing their portfolio students are encouraged to organise their material so that they can clearly demonstrate how they are meeting the eight standards for provisional registration as determined by the victorian institute of teaching (vit). the eight professional standards are: professional knowledge: 1. teachers know how students learn and how to teach them effectively 2. teachers know the content they teach 3. teachers know their students professional practice: 4. teachers plan and assess for effective learning 5. teachers create and maintain safe and challenging learning environments 6. teachers use a range of practices and resources to engage students in effective learning professional engagement: 7. teachers reflect on, evaluate and improve their professional knowledge and practice 8. teachers are effective members of their profession i critical theory becomes central to teachers becoming aware of the social, cultural, and religious backgrounds of the students they teach‟ and „the factors that influence their learning‟. teachers should also „draw on the body of knowledge about learning and contemporary research into teaching and learning to support their practice‟. item 7 of professional engagement lays to rest concerns that competence-based models are reductionist and run counter to reflective practice (williams 1994 p8). 110 evaluation the purpose in conducting ongoing evaluations of the program are to:  describe the curriculum, teaching and learning experiences of career change teachers and staff in the program,  identify the professional learning processes and practices of career change teachers in the program as they develop as teachers,  examine, analyse and interpret the relationship between career change teachers‟ experience of teaching, learning and curriculum of the career change program and their development towards the professional standards for teaching. the resources that contributed to the evaluation included :  regular student evaluations of units of study, teaching and course experience through university and national standardized measures;  lecturer‟s journal of experiences and observations of significant moments, insights and experiences described by students;  survey which identified perceptions of the course and the readiness to teach;  semi structured interviews with small groups of career change teachers and mentor teachers are held twice in each year of the course. in addition in 2005 a deecd (then the department of education and training) evaluation was conducted independently of the school of education, and included the career change teachers, their mentor teachers and principals in their schools. ‘by reflecting back at university on what i had seen at the school i was better able to understand the observation and the learning at the university.‟ qualitative data is analysed using the victorian institute of teaching standards for teacher professional registration as the framework. the data were validated through collaborative practitioner meetings with students and teacher educators in semi-structured interviews. the semi-structured individual interviews capture career change teachers‟ views about the relationship between the course experience and their own development as a professional teacher as well as a critical commentary on other data about their experience. the interviews also provide an opportunity to discuss the career change teachers‟ interpretation of their classroom teaching and the relationship of the course to their own classroom capability. data analysis the first 2 years i am really happy with my career change and can see myself staying in this area for the rest of my life. i’ve already applied for an acting leading teacher position next semester.‟ the data gathered and analyzed from the first 2 years of this project suggest that the career change program has produced positive outcomes with a number of issues. learning outcomes for career change teachers career change teachers demonstrate an ability to manage the academic content of the course. work is of a high standard. career change teachers also indicate a high degree of satisfaction with course delivery. most (60%) believe that the single school practicum experience they had due to their paid capacity provides them with less opportunity to learn than if they could work in a number of schools. they also note that their mentor teachers are very busy and that this makes it more difficult to receive adequate support from them (45%). standards reached and teacher competence 111 „we have done our vit full registration interviews. we sat before a panel of four and presented our evidence. it took a lot of work but it was very fulfilling. it was amazing to look at what we have learned over a year. so whatever you two are doing (lecturers) we are learning heaps and thankful for that.‟ there is strong conviction that these teachers are well prepared to meet the professional standards with 90% indicating that they are capable in planning, sensitive to their school student needs, can identify student difficulties and are able to teach thinking skills in the context of their subjects. there is mixed feeling about the balance of theory and practice in their program with 50% confirming that they perceive their course is less theoretical than traditional programs. they do not consider this a negative factor, but a reality nevertheless. however, they indicate overwhelmingly that they consider themselves to have a good knowledge of critical approaches to pedagogy and a sound capacity for reflection (85%). principals view of career change teachers the surveys, directed at principals who are employing a ccp graduate and those in the second year of the program, held a question that sought evidence for judgements about the teachers' effectiveness in terms of student learning outcomes/student attitudes: 2. please comment, if you were able to do so, on: 2.1 the teacher's impact on student learning. for instance have student satisfaction surveys been completed by their students and are they above average, average, or below average? 2.2 has the teacher in any way contributed to the growth of programs in the school e.g. curriculum development, increase in student participation, special projects? what was somewhat disappointing was the lack of 'hard' evidence relating to teachers performance in this regard. only one school supplied statistical evidence. in that example the cct was rated well above average for the college being in the top 11% of a staff of 90. another cct in the same school, 'r______ is always sought after as the maths teacher of choice and his survey results are well above the average.' similar surveys conducted at another college were not specific in terms of individual ranking other than to report that on a whole staff level results had improved after the arrival of the cct (small country p-12 school). other evidence is anecdotal e.g. 'no hard data but student and parent comments both formally and informally indicate that j____ has made a difference'. 'm____ has developed into a most competent teacher'. 'good. has encouraged students to continue lote" it is not clear whether or not this comment is based on survey data: 'student satisfaction is high. the students have positive relationships and opinions of the two teachers'. some responses (3) simply indicated that surveys either were not done or about to be done. others used increases in student subject enrolments to indicate a positive response to the teacher (3). a principles of learning and teaching survey was used in one instance to indicate that the cc teacher was 'above average.' only one negative response was received where student satisfaction levels are below the average and the 'teacher's expectations of students and classroom management (have) not developed.' overall we can conclude that of the 17 schools surveyed covering 21 ccp teachers, only one was below average with the majority, where reported, being above average/viewed positively (76.4%). ii contribution to the school beyond teaching. all candidates demonstrate both a desire and ability to contribute to their schools in a variety of ways. outlines of plans for their applied curriculum projects (a course requirement) indicate the significance of their contribution. projects range from the introduction of vels into the science curriculum; investigation into maths teaching with a view to creating greater engagement; a personal development program focusing on the needs of young adolescent boys; development of courses, modules and units in hospitality, automotive, systems, textiles, etc; the development of a music 112 facility. career change teachers are also undertaking administrative roles: timetable; school camps; student welfare. selection and disposition 82% of principals indicated that they would fill vacancies with ccts if the opportunity arose in the future. 91% rated the potential of the teacher as either high (59%) or good. of those who indicated it was either 'unlikely' or a definite 'no' we can identify the factors that guided their decision. strengths of the career change program at victoria university  early introduction of skills training: classroom management, teaching strategies in methods to be taught.  early introduction to learning theory. practice/theory links clearly articulated.  integrated programs with built in tafe components.  high level of personalization and support through designated coordinator; school visits and contact with mentors and supervisors.  a demonstrated ability to work flexibly with both de&t and vit in integrating various elements of the program e.g. full registration.  full registration is available on successful completion of the course.  high retention rate.  targeted mentor training.  integrated learning and assessment tasks e.g. applied curriculum project.  ability to respond flexibly to needs of individual learners in the school context e.g. due dates for assignments; introduction of interpersonal skills modules; additional classroom management sessions. conclusion in the final analysis, according to feiman-nemser, the quality of teacher preparation revolves around two other dynamics: one, conceptual orientations in teacher education i.e. what should be in a teacher training course; and, two, the quality of program delivery. whilst structures will provide some enabling features they alone will not account for variance (feiman-nemser, p 220). so in the final analysis, given the multitude of alternative programs and the great variance in „traditional‟ models, it comes down to an issue of „quality control‟. concerns raised about standards in the preparation of teachers, relating to „(1) selection, (2) faculty, (3) content, (4) method, and (5) evaluation‟ (haberman, 1991b, in dill, 1996) are not felt to be an issue with the ccp where constant communication and negotiation exists between doe ie the employing authority, vu and vit. the focus of this communication is accreditation of courses; issuing of authority to teach; vetting of initial graduate qualifications; establishment of guidelines for post-graduate teacher education study; and design of procedures for provisional registration. the latter related to the „standards of professional practice or full registration‟ iii which articulates in detail the competencies practicing teachers must demonstrate. these data report that the ccp teachers highly valued their induction to teaching both at the school and university; that they bring strong knowledge and experience to the classroom and the culture of the school; and that they are confident in stimulating innovation and reform in their classrooms and schools within the first 2 years of teaching. when the first groups graduated from their teacher education program, all were confidently approved as fully registered teachers on the basis of an extensive exposition of practice developed and examined at the school with peers and principals. this process normally follows two years probation as a classroom teacher for all other graduate teachers. the university will continue to both modify and improve the program based on feedback from career change teachers, school personnel, deecd and vit. 113 references bolhuis, s. (2002) alternative routes to teaching in secondary education in the netherlands european journal of teacher education, vol. 25, nos. 2 & 3, 2002. dill, v. s. (1996) alternative teacher certification handbook of research on teacher education, second edition, houston feiman-nemser, s. (1990) teacher preparation: structural and conceptual alternatives handbook of research on teacher education, houston kruger, t. et al (1999) innovative approaches to site based education. repot to the commonwealth department of education, training and youth affairs, victoria university moore, r., martino. & cherednichenko, b.( 2005) changing lanes: learning about teaching as the next career. paper presented to the rite mini-conference, victoria university. the career change program, school of education, victoria university, evaluation 2007, draft document vit (2003) victorian institute for teaching (2003) standards of professional practice for full registration, http://www.vit.vic.edu.au/files/documents/787_standards.pdf accessed 12 nov 2006 the career change program, school of education, victoria university, evaluation 2007, draft document. victorian institute for teaching (2003) standards of professional practice for full registration, sed 12 nov 2006 williams, a ed. (1994) perspectives on partnerships – secondary initial teacher training the falmer press, london international journal of education vol. 9 no. 2, februari 2017, pp. 157-164 ©2017 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v9i2.5481 157 the correlation between student’s mathematization and mathematical disposition in implementing generative learning saifurrahman iman pratomo universitas pendidikan indonesia ekafirman9@gmail.com first draft received: 11 november 2016 final proof received: 23 february 2017 abstract this paper reports the result of an experiment with a pretest-posttest control group design, which aims to find out the role of generative learning model and student’s basic mathematical knowledge (bmk) in the improvements of students’ mathematization and the correlation between students’ mathematization and mathematical disposition. the subjects of the study included 73 eight grade students of a junior high school. the instrument of this study was a set of mathematical tests adopted from the indonesian national examination (un). the data were analyzed using t-test and non-parametric mann-whitney u test. this study finds that the generative learning model had effects on students’ mathematization and basic mathematical knowledge (bmk). keywords: generative learning model; basic mathematical knowledge; mathematization; mathematical disposition to cite this paper (in apa style): pratomo, s. i. (2017). the correlation between student’s mathematization and mathematical disposition in implementing generative learning. international journal of education, 9(2), 157-164 doi: dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v9i2.5481 introduction the result of international assessments of student achievements is one of the indicators that show how the quality of indonesian education is still low. the survey of trends in international mathematics and science study (timss) in 2003, ranked indonesia the 34 th out of the 45 countries. the achievement was even lower for the program for international student assessment (pisa), which measures the literacy ability of 15 year-old children in math and science. the assessment is held in every three years, and in 2003 it put indonesia on the second lowest rank, or the 39 th out of the 40 countries as the sample (ministry of education and culture, 2011). indonesia has participated in pisa study (program for international student assessment) in mathematics for five times during 2000-2012. however, since the first time joining this program, the achievements of indonesian students had been dissatisfactory. furthermore, on the pisa mathematics in 2009, almost all of indonesian students only reached the third level, and only 0.1% indonesian students reached level 5 and 6 (ministry of education and culture, 2013). the declining achievements are more visible on the latest survey of pisa in 2012, in which most of indonesian students did not reach level 2 (75%) and 42% of the students did not even reach the lowest level (level 1). the achievements of indonesian students can also be seen from their success in taking the question levels. in pisa, the leveling of questions shows students’ proficiency in solving the daily problem which needs mathematics to solve. the skills are commonly called mathematical literacy by pisa, which refers to the ability of students in formulating a certain problem mathematically based on the concepts and relations that are embedded to it, and then applying a mathematical procedure to get mathematical results and interpret the results into the first formal problems. several scientific studies exposed some reasons why indonesian students are not qualified in mathematical literacy. some studies show that the students are not familiar with the modeling materials, which are the ability to transform daily problems into the formal mathematical forms needed to solve them. in fact, mathematical modeling has been launched in indonesia, either in high school or college. however, until now, mathematical modeling in the school is not positioned as a subject, but only a subtopic in mathematical subject or basic competence in the standard competency. some educational researchers have begun to focus their research on mathematical modeling at various levels of the school under college level. it can be seen by some research publications groups of researchers in australia (galbraith, et al., 2013), belgium (verschaffel, et al., 2002), denmark (niss, et al., 2007), germany (blum, et al., 1989), and united states (lesh, et al., 2003). the questions addressed in the studies can be concluded into the following question: how is the readiness of students right now to resolve the problems they will face outside the school to meet their goals in employment, whether to become good citizens as well as to further the learning process? (mousoulides, 2007). in lesh and doer’s statement (2003, p. 220), mathematical modeling is concerned with "how students can work with the problems which less obvious mathematical school-related and which that they are not yet familiar by thinking flexibly and creatively.” http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v9i2.5481 pratomo, the correlation between student’s mathematization and mathematical disposition in implementing generative learning 158 crouch and haines (2004) in their study concluded that the interphase among real problems and mathematical models present students with the difficulty of translating the problems in daily life into formal mathematical forms and changing the formal mathematical forms to the forms of everyday problems. similarly, mass (2006) stated that the form of students’ errors in forming problem into a model are to create a correlation between mathematics and reality, and to simplify and arrange reality, as well as issues related to mathematical solutions. the problems that occur in the high school, especially in the location of this research, is that the students still have difficulties in solving the mathematical questions in the forms of stories related to daily life problems. this is because they encounter difficulties to connect between reality and mathematics, do not understand how to transform real world problems into mathematics, and are not able to build up a concept for the solution. literature on research on the implementation of generative learning is quite limited. in the field of physical and health education, farouk and elfateh (2016) recently conducted research assessing the effectiveness of generative learning on increasing students’ strategic thinking skills and learning level of basics of offensive. their study found that generative learning significantly improved strategic thinking skills and learning of fencing basics. in the field of physics, maknun (2015) conducted a study on the implementation of generative learning model to increase vocational school students’ conceptual mastery and general science skills. similarly, his study found that the model could significantly improve students’ conceptual mastery and general science skills. meanwhile, in the field of mathematics itself, research on the implementation of generative learning is very scarce. hence, the present study aims to find how the effects of generative learning model on students’ mathematization and mathematical dispositions based on different levels of basic mathematical knowledge (bmk), namely low, medium, and high levels. literature review mathematization and generative learning the ability to translate the daily problems into a formal mathematical form is called mathematization. the simple meaning of mathematization is a process to make a phenomenon mathematically or build a mathematical concept from a phenomenon. mathematization is a process of changing a phenomenon into a mathematical form. traffers (in darhim, 2004) distinguished two kinds of mathematization, namely, horizontal and vertical mathematization. horizontal mathematization is the activity of changing the contextual issues into mathematical problems, while the vertical mathematization formulates a problem into various mathematical resolutions by using a number of mathematical rules. the horizontal mathematization is related to the process of generalization; it begins from the identification of mathematical concepts of regularities and relations that are found through visualization and schematic problems. so, in this horizontal mathematization, students try to solve problems of the real world by using their own language and symbols. different from vertical mathematization, a process of formalizing, the result of horizontal mathematization becomes the formal development of mathematical concepts through a process of vertical mathematization. therefore, both types of mathematization may not be separated; both of them occur alternately and gradually. after the students understand the process of horizontal mathematization, then the students perform the process of vertical mathematization. this process is done to achieve aspects of formal mathematics. according to de lange (1987), formal mathematics is equal to the vertical mathematization. generally, mathematical competence is often related to the ability of manipulating the numbers, for example to calculate quickly. it is true that one form of mathematical literacy competency is counting; however, counting is only a small part of mathematics. the calculators and computers have been widely used, and the speed of counting is a goal in mathematical skill. how fast the people can count something can be replaced by calculators and computers. the counting competence is important, but it is not enough. to improve the students’ mathematization, we should be able to choose the model of learning that direct students to learn more actively. there are many learning models which refer to active learning, and the most popular is a learning model with constructivist approach because students are expected to develop their own understanding so that the students can raise their own knowledge and be active in the teaching and learning process. construction means to build. in the context of philosophy of education, constructivism is an effort to build a modern life style. constructivism is the foundation of thinking (philosophy). meanwhile, contextual learning is slow constructed knowledge, whose results are extended through the unlimited context and a long process. constructivism sees knowledge not as a set of facts, concepts, or rules ready to be picked and remembered. students should construct that knowledge and give meanings through the real experiences. a famous theory related to constructivist learning theory is piaget’s (1950) mental development theory. this theory is also called the theory of intellectual development or the cognitive development theory. the learning theory is related to the readiness of children for learning. it is packed in the stage of intellectual development from the birth until adult. each stage of intellectual development is equipped with specific signs in science construction. for example, in the remote motor domain, the children think through movements or action. from the description above, it can be concluded that this theory make humans more active in learning how to find their own competence, knowledge or technology, and anything else that is needed in order to develop themselves. in addition, it is understood that learning is an activity which takes place interactively between internal factors and external or environmental factors to change the students’ behavior. one of the learning models that resemble the constructivist model of learning is generative pratomo, the correlation between student’s mathematization and mathematical disposition in implementing generative learning 159 learning. generative learning model is regarded to be better than the constructivist approach by some experts. according to some experts, the generative learning model is more focused on the syntax of the lesson because this learning model is not combined with any learning approach. essentially, a learning model that is combined with a learning approach is usually more advanced, so that the models and approaches could fit, and it allows the original syntax from the models or approaches that are not used. in line with that, bonn and grabowski (2001) argued that the model of generative learning resembles the constructivist approach, but more fully in providing perspectives. generative learning model is based on the view of constructivism, assuming that the knowledge base is built in the minds of students. according to wittrock (1992), the essence of generative learning is the brain which does not receive the information passively but constructs an interpretation of that information actively. from the opinion above, generative learning is a learning model that is done so that students can actively construct an interpretation of the information and make a conclusion. the students ' ability in constructing an interpretation from an information and making a conclusion in the generative learning model allows for the students’ mathematical ability to be more improved than by using conventional learning. methods this research employed the quasi-experimental method to apply generative learning model in the mathematics subject; in addition, the subjects or participants were not grouped randomly (ruseffendi, 1998). the use of quasi experiments was based on the consideration that the existing classes had been formed and because learning takes place naturally and students would not feel as a subject of experiment, so that such situations are expected to contribute to the level of research validity. the research used the pretest-posttest control group design, involving two groups of students. the first group is called the experimental group, treated with generative learning. the second group was treated by using conventional learning, called the control group. the two groups were given different treatments in order to find the improvements of mathematization in terms of different levels of basic mathematical knowledge (bmk). the diagram of research design (quantitative and qualitative research) is described as follow: experimental group o x o control group o o o = pre-test dan post-test x = generative learning model according to nasution (1996), the subjects of a study that become the research sample are the only sources that can provide information. the sample can be humans, events, things, or situations that are observed. the sample is selected "purposively" related to a particular purpose. therefore, the subjects examined would be determined directly by the researchers or related parties (headmaster and math teacher) in relation to the problem and research objectives. however, there are also subjects determined specifically for the purpose of obtaining information needed for the sample of the study. this study uses a purposive sample, so the sample was determined by considerations of information needed. from the explanation above, the researcher decided that the subjects of this research would be the eighth grade students of junior high school, taken from two classes (73 students in total). the first class as the experimental class was taught with generative learning model and the second class as the control group treated with conventional learning. the researcher considered the appropriate mathematics topics to find about the students’ mathematization ability were systems of linear equation in two variables (sletv) and the pythagorean theorem. results and discussion the results of the tests on students’ mathematization the mathematization test was given to students before (pre-test) and after learning activity (post-test) to find about the students’ improvements in the ability to mathematize (mathematization). the results of students’ mathematization tests are described based on the indicators of mathematization. thus, the achievements and improvements of the capabilities of the students’ to mathematize can be more clearly reflected on every indicator. the results of the students’ tests can be seen in table 1. based on table 1, it can be seen that the generative learning had no effects on improving the students’ mathematization. in this study there are six indicators measuring mathematization. two of the six indicators are measured. the improvements of the students who were taught with generative learning were greater than those of the students who got the conventional learning. indicators one and two show that the improvements in the mathematization of the students taught with generative learning were classified as low, but the first indicator of achievements belonged to the medium increase/improvement, and the second indicator of achievements belonged to low increase. in addition, the percentage of students’ mathematization taught with generative learning achievement was lower than that of the students’ taught with the conventional learning despite the much greater increase. the third to the sixth indicators demonstrate the improvements in the mathematization of the students who were taught with generative learning were much lower than the improvements of those who got the conventional learning. but there is one among those indicators that had a greater percentage for generative learning compared to the conventional learning. for the third, fourth, and sixth indicators, it can be seen that the generative learning had no effects on the improvements in students’ mathematization. even generally, generative learning did not have effects on the improvements of students’ mathematization, while the conventional learning pratomo, the correlation between student’s mathematization and mathematical disposition in implementing generative learning 160 showed low improvements. it means that the mathematization of the students taught with conventional learning was better than that of the students taught with generative learning. table 1. the average of students’ mathematization based on the indicators no. achievement indicators generative learning conventional learning x x <g> x x <g> 1. identifying the mathematical concepts relevant to real problem (smi = 5) 1.57 (31.40%) 1.89 (37.80%) 0.09 1.92 (38.40%) 1.94 (38.80%) 0.01 2. interpreting problems in the mathematical forms (smi = 5) 1.16 (23.20%) 1.68 (33.60%) 0.14 1.19 (23.80%) 1.28 (25.60) 0.02 3. using symbol, language, and formal mathematical process (smi = 5) 2.27 (45.40%) 1.57 (31.4%) *** 0.86 (17.20%) 1.47 (29.4%) 0.15 4. adapting and developing mathematical model, combining some models (smi = 5) 1.68 (33.60%) 1.19 (23.80%) *** 1.08 (21.60%) 1.39 (27.80%) 0.08 5. looking for the regularity of the correlation and the pattern related to the problem (smi = 5) 1.68 (33.60%) 1.81 (36.20%) 0.04 0.33 (6.60%) 2.75 (55.00%) 0.52 6. using some different mathematical representations (smi = 5) 1.97 (39.4%) 1.81 (36.20%) *** 0.25 (5,00%) 1.89 (37.80%) 0.35 10.33 (34.43%) 9.95 (33.17%) *** 5.63 (18.70%) 10.72 (35.73%) 0,21 table 2. the statistic descriptive data of students mathematization ability bmk statistic generative conventional total pretest posttest <g> n pretest posttest <g> n posttest <g> n high x 40.20 37.70 0.160 5 26.50 34.17 0.128 6 36.73 0.122 11 s 11.73 18.25 0.200 11.50 13.66 0.227 16.78 0.164 medium x 34.80 33.00 0.043 20 17.64 36.64 0.235 21 35.05 0.105 41 s 4.29 6.16 0.050 6.83 10.09 0.104 8.07 0.130 low x 32.00 29.17 0.058 12 18.5 37.89 0.217 9 32.48 0.127 21 s 4.11 7.93 0.071 7.94 8.94 0.123 9.08 0.125 total x 35.24 32.80 0.075 37 20.08 36.50 1.212 36 34.56 0.120 73 s 6.69 10.59 0.078 9.01 10.97 0.206 10.23 1.135 table 2 indicates that the overall students who were taught with conventional study learning showed greater improvements in their mathematization than the students who were treated with generative learning. these results are supported by the average of students’ post-test results. the table also shows that students who were taught with generative learning obtained smaller results than those taught with conventional learning in the post-test. the average grade/result of students learning conventionally was 36.50, whereas those who learned using generative learning got an average score of 32.80. based on the descriptive statistical data of the mathematization ability, it can be inferred that in general the average scores of achievements and improvements of the mathematization of the students who were taught with generative learning were lower than the average scores of the students who got the conventional learning. the average scores for achievement and improvements of the mathematization ability of students with higher bmk and taught with generative learning were greater than the average scores of the students with high bmk and who learned using conventional learning. the average scores of achievements and improvements of the mathematization of the students with medium bmk who were taught with generative learning were smaller than the scores of the medium bmk students who got conventional learning. finally, the average scores of achievements and improvements of the ability to mathematize of the students with low bmk taught with generative learning were smaller than those of the students with low bmk taught with conventional learning. the percentages of achievements and improvements based on students’ mathematization group learning (generative and conventional) and bmk (high, medium, low) can be seen in figures 3 and 4. overall, the percentages of achievements and improvements in the mathematization of the students who got generative learning were smaller than those of the students who got the conventional learning. the improvements of the mathematization ability of the students who were taught with conventional learning belonged to the low category, while their achievements belonged to the medium category. then, the improvements of the mathematization ability of the students taught with generative learning pratomo, the correlation between student’s mathematization and mathematical disposition in implementing generative learning 161 belonged to the low category, and the achievements belonged to the medium category. the percentages of the improvements and achievements of the mathematization of the high bmk students who learned using generative learning were higher than those of the students who got the conventional learning. the improvement and achievements of the mathematization of the students who were treated with generative learning were both included under the category of medium. meanwhile, the improvements and achievements of the mathematization of the students taught with conventional learning were both categorized into the low and medium, respectively. figure 3 figure 4 the percentages of the improvements and achievements of the mathematization of the students with low and medium bmks who were taught with generative learning were smaller than those of the students who were taught with conventional learning. nevertheless, the improvement and achievements of the mathematization abilities of the students with low bmk who were taught with conventional learning and generative learning were included under the categories of low and medium, respectively. finally, the improvements and achievements of the mathematization ability of the students with low bmk and taught with conventional learning belonged to low and medium categories, respectively. meanwhile, the increase and achievements in the mathematization ability of the students taught with were both categorized as low improvements. the improvement of overall students’ mathematization the data of the improvements of students’ mathematization for all of students in the experimental (generative learning) and control (conventional learning) groups were not normally distributed and did not have homogeneity of variance. therefore, to find about the presence or absence of mathematization improvement, the overall difference between students who were taught with generative learning and those taught with conventional learning was obtained using non-parametric statistical test mann-whitney u. the results of the test average differences of these groups are presented in table 5. the results of nonparametric statistical test (mann-whitney u) indicate the value of -0.68, lying between the values of , so that the zero hypothesis was accepted. it means there was no significant difference between the mean of the data on the improvements of mathematization of the students who got generative learning and students who got conventional learning. based on the results of the analysis of the test of mean differences, the improved mathematization of the students who were taught with generative learning was not better than that of the students taught with conventional learning. 0.16 0.043 0.058 0.075 0.128 0.235 0.217 0.212 0 0.05 0.1 0.15 0.2 0.25 high pam medium pam low pam overall a v e ra g e n -g a in k m the improvements in mathematization generative learning conventional learning 37.70% 33.00% 29.17% 32.80% 34.17% 36.64% 37.89% 36.50% 0.00% 5.00% 10.00% 15.00% 20.00% 25.00% 30.00% 35.00% 40.00% high pam medium pam low pam overall a v e ra g e p o s te s k m the percentage of achievements in mathematization generative learning conventional learning pratomo, the correlation between student’s mathematization and mathematical disposition in implementing generative learning 162 table 5. significant difference of average test scores improvement of overall students’ mathematization learning average mannwhitney u ( ) generative 0.075 -0.68 ±1.96 accepted conventional 0.212 the improvement of students’ mathematization based on basic mathematical knowledge (bmk) next, to know whether there is a difference in the averages of both group of students’ mathematization based on bmk, the researcher employed the nonparametric statistical test of mann-whitney u to test the mean differences. the results are presented in table 6. table 6. significant difference of average test scores improvement of students’ mathematization based on basic mathematical knowledge bmk learning average mannwhitney u ( ) sig. high generative 0.160 25 18 – 42 accepted conventional 0.128 medium generative 0.043 4.89 ±1.96 rejected conventional 0.235 low generative 0.058 143.5 71 127 rejected conventional 0.217 : : there is no significant in the difference of the averages sig.: dan from the data above, we know the values of for students with high bmk were at the intervals of , so the zero hypothesis was accepted. this means that there was no significant difference between the average of improvements in the mathematization of the experimental group students (generative learning) and that of the control group (conventional learning) in terms with high bmk. meanwhile, the value of for medium bmk was located above the limit of , so the null hypothesis was rejected and the alternative hypothesis was accepted, where x > y (x = generative learning, and y = conventional learning). this means that there was a significant difference between the means of the improvement in the mathematization of the experimental group students (generative learning) and the control group (conventional learning) based on medium bmk. it can be concluded that the average mathematization ability of the experimental group (generative learning) was better than the average of the control group (conventional learning) with medium bmk. similarly, the value of for students with low bmk lay outside the interval of , so the zero hypothesis was rejected and the alternative hypothesis was accepted, where x > y (x = conventional learning, and y = generative learning). this means that there was a significant difference between the averages of the mathematization of the experimental group students (generative learning) and control group (conventional learning) reviewed based on low bmk. it can be inferred then that the average improvements in mathematization ability of the control group (conventional learning) were better than those of the experimental group (generative learning) in terms of low bmk. the interaction between learning types and basic mathematical knowledge (bmk) and improvements in mathematization to measure the hypothesis, a two-way anova was employed. before doing the two-way anova, homogeneity and normality tests of variance in mathematization improvements were carried out. in the previous discussion, it is known that statistical tests used to measure data on mathematical ability were nonparametric, because there was a nongaussian data distribution and the data did not have homogeneity in variance. therefore, the prerequisite assumptions for the two-way anova test were not fulfilled, which means the significance value of the influences of interaction between variables cannot be calculated. however, it can be seen graphically whether there is an interaction or not between learning and (high, medium, low) bmk and the mathematization ability of the students, as shown in figure 7. from figure 7, it can be seen that for the students with high bmk and taught with generative learning, their mathematization was better than the students who got the conventional learning. this is not the case for the students with low and medium bmk who learned using generative learning, whose improvement in mathematization was lower. figure 7 also shows an interaction between types of learning (generative and conventional) and bmk (high, medium, low) with the improvements in students’ mathematization. the interaction can be seen from the intersection of the two lines, where students of higher bmk taught with generative learning experienced a greater improvement in their mathematization than the students of higher bmk taught with conventional learning. in addition, the interaction can be seen from the difference in the average improvements of the students’ mathematization for each group. the difference in the average improvements of the mathematization of students who were taught with generative learning and those taught with conventional learning with medium and low bmk was very small (the average improvements are almost the same). however, the average improvement in the mathematization of the students who were taught with generative learning and those with conventional learning with high bmk was much smaller than the average improvement for the same students with medium and low bmk. international journal of education vol. 9 no. 2, februari 2017, pp. 157-164 ©2017 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v9i2.5481 163 figure 7 the analysis of the correlation between improved mathematization and mathematical disposition table 8 shows that the value of of the correlation between improvement in students’ mathematization and mathematical disposition was greater than (0.325), so the zero hypothesis was rejected. this means that there was a significant correlation between improved mathematization and mathematical disposition. in addition, the coefficient of the correlation between improved mathematization and mathematical disposition was 0.404, which can be classified as medium correlation. table 8. the correlation coefficient variable pkm*dm 0.404 0.325 rejected : there is no correlation between the two variables the results of this study do not confirm the findings of the previous studies by farouk and elfateh (2016) and maknun (2015) who found that the implementation of generative learning had significant effects in improving their students’ conceptual mastery and general science understandings, respectively. however, there is indeed a correlation between mathematization and mathematical disposition in generative learning. conclusions based on the results of data analysis, findings, and discussion that have been outlined in the previous section, some conclusions can be drawn. first, the overall improvements in the mathematization of students who were taught with generative learning were not greater than those of the students who got the conventional learning. secondly, the improvements in the mathematization of the students taught with generative learning were not greater than those of the students who were taught with conventional learning in terms of high bmk. the improvements can be categorized as low. thirdly, the improvements in the mathematization of students who were taught with generative learning were not better than those of the students who got conventional learning reviewed from medium bmk, in which the improvements of both groups can be included in the low category. fourthly, in terms of low bmk, the improvements in the mathematization ability of the students taught with generative learning were not better than those of the students taught with conventional learning, where the improvements of both groups were categorized as low. fifthly, there was an interaction between learning types (generative and conventional) and mathematical knowledge/bmk (high, medium, low) and students’ mathematization finally, there was a correlation between the improved mathematization and mathematical disposition of the students who were taught with generative learning model. hence, although generative learning model did not have significant effects on improving students’ mathematization, the learning model can still be made an alternative in teaching mathematics, especially because there was interaction between mathematization and mathematical disposition in the implementation of generative learning. references bonn, k. l., & grabowski, b. l. 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(2013). modul matematika smp program bermutu. kependidikan jakarta: center for development and empowerment of teachers and education personnel of mathematics. lesh, r., doerr, h. m., carmona, g., & hjalmarson, m. (2003). beyond constructivism. mathematical thinking and learning, 5(2), 211-234. doi: https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327833mtl0502&3_05. mass, k. (2006). what are competencies. university of education freiburg: zdm 38(2), 113-141. maknun, j. (2015). the implementation of generative learning model on physics lesson to increase mastery concepts and generic science skills of vocational students. american journal of educational research, 3(6), 742-748. doi: 102.12691/education-3-6-12. matlin, m.w. (1994). cognition (third edition). u.s.: harcourt brace publishers. mousoulides, n. (2007). a modeling perspective in the teaching and learning of mathematical problem solving (unpublished doctoral dissertation). university of cyprus. nasution, s. (1996). metode penelitian naturalistik kualitatif. bandung: tarsito. niss, m., blum, w. & galbraith, p. (2007). introduction. in w. blum, p. galbraith, h.-w. henn, & m. niss (eds.), modelling and applications in mathematics education: the 14th icmistudy (pp. 3–32). new york: springerverlag. doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-38729822-1_1. piaget, j. (1950). the psychology of the child. london, england: routledge & kegan. ruseffendi, e.t. (1998). statistika dasar untuk penelitian pendidikan. bandung: tarsito. verschaffel, l., greer, b. & de corte, e. (2002). everyday knowledge and mathematical modeling of school word problems. in gravemeijer, k., lehrer, r., oers, b., van and verschaffel, l. (eds.), symbolizing, modeling and tool use in mathematics education (pp. 171-195). netherlands: kluwer academic publishers. doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94017-3194-2_16. wittrock, m. c. (1992). generative learning processes of the brain. journal of educational psychologist, 27(4): 531-541. doi: https://doi.org/10.1207/s15326985ep2704_8. database connection failed! international journal of education vol. 9 no. 2, februari 2017, pp. 89-96 ©2017 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v9i2.5462 89 constructing teacher’s self-assessment of rapport building in efl classroom muhamad nova english education department, universitas pendidikan indonesia mohnova@student.upi.edu first draft received: 4 november 2016 final proof received: 18 february 2017 abstract a good education is not only about academics, but also the positive social interaction in classroom. therefore, there is a need to build rapport in classroom interaction. in building rapport, efl teachers need to conduct several activities, and through self-assessment, teachers can monitor and evaluate their own teaching for professional development. however, self-assessment instrument for building rapport has not been developed yet by any researchers. to fill the needs, this study is established to construct a self-assessment for teacher in building rapport in efl classroom. by applying design research from a curriculum perspective, the results revealed a self-assessment instrument of maintaining rapport for efl teacher. the cronbach’s alpha coefficient (α = .928) of this instrument indicated high reliability and the instrument can be considered a reliable instrument to be used for the study sample. efl teachers can do self-monitoring and self-evaluation on their rapport building in classroom interaction. additionally, further research in investigating the effect of using this instrument in assessing teacher’s quality is required. keywords: rapport; rapport in efl classroom; teacher’s self-assessment; teacher development to cite this paper (in apa style): nova, m. (2017). constructing teacher’s self-assessment of rapport building in efl classroom. international journal of education, 9(2), 89-96. doi: dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v9i2.5462 a good education is not only about academics, but also the positive development in social interaction (bruney, 2012) since teaching is essentially a process of interaction between teacher and students in a social setting (çakir, 2010). establishing a good communication between teacher and students is a step of successful teaching and learning (barmaki, 2014), and therefore maintaining the teacher-student relationship is a concern in classroom to foster positive development on students learning in classroom (bruney, 2012; nguyen, 2007; pianta, hamre, & allen, 2012). this teacher and students’ relationship is defined as a rapport in which there is a positive, enjoyable, and respectful relationship (harmer, 2007a; 2007b) and includes harmonious interaction and communication between teacher and students (bernieri, 1998) in building trust and respects that leads the students to feel capable, competent, and creative in learning (brown, 2001). the language learning process in the classroom can be facilitated through teacher and students’ interaction. in nguyen’s study (2007), it is revealed that efl teacher can use target language in giving instruction and guidance to the students and the students learn the target language and use the target language to communicate with the teacher. as the goal of language learning is to use language (burns, & richards, 2012; johnson, 2001) and to create and maintain social interaction (nguyen, 2007), building rapport can be an effective way in communicating with students in target language to encourage them in learning (swenson, 2010; webb & barett, 2014). therefore, the relationship between teacher and students can be categorized as a crucial factor in the process of the acquisition of a second language for the students (sánchez et al., 2013) since the target language is seldom used outside the classroom, and the only input and language use is in classroom interaction especially in teacher-student interaction (suryati, 2015). as a result, a positive relationship between teacher and students is needed to build a good language learning environment in the classroom. one way to maintain the teacher-students relationship is through having positive interaction between teacher and students. interaction between the teacher and the students determines the success of teaching and learning activity (bruney, 2012). good classroom interaction is categorized as an important factor in student learning and enhancing effective teaching and learning activity (özer, atik, şad, & kiş, 2015; swenson, 2010; webb & barett, 2014). it gives positive impact on teacher’s effectiveness and students’ learning (pianta et al., 2012; sánchez, gonzález, & martínez, 2013; swenson, 2010). bruney’s study (2012) reveals the presence of the classroom interaction in the classroom affects the students’ view of teacher’s performance in arranging activity and establishing any activities in classroom will not be effective if the relationship between the teacher and the students is not established well. positive classroom interaction makes the students gain higher achievement (nguyen, 2007) and create positive attitude from the students toward the learning activity (pianta et al., 2012). another study, conducted by sánchez et al. (2013), reveals a positive teacher-student relationship influences students’ motivation in learning in which http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v9i2.5462 mailto:mohnova@student.upi.edu http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v9i2.5462 nova, m. constructing teacher’s self-assessment of rapport building in efl classroom 90 students feel more confident and comfortable to approach teacher and share personal and academic issues. if the students feel they have a good relationship with the teacher, they will feel comfortable and motivated to pay attention to the teacher (pianta et al., 2012; sánchez et al., 2013). it has been shown by studies that positive rapport between teacher and students brings positive impact to teaching and learning activity. related research of strategies in maintaining the teacher-students’ rapport has also been conducted by bruney (2012) who investigated the process of the teacher-student relationship influencing the development of trust and emotional intelligence in the elementary classroom. through conducting interview with two experienced teachers in the greater toronto area, this study revealed that the presence of the teacher in the classroom affects the students’ view of teacher’s performance. this study also suggested 3 effective strategies in maintaining the teacherstudents relationship, by (1) sharing personal feelings; (2) seeking help for the students; and (3) storytelling. similar research was also conducted by pianta et al. (2012). they conducted a study on investigating the concept of interactions and engagement and how to improve teacher-student interactions. their study revealed four concepts in maintaining teacher-student relationships and interactions: (1) evaluating background knowledge and cognitions of interactions; (2) establishing ongoing relational supports; (3) giving regular individual feedback; and (4) being focus in changing interactions. another study was also conducted by sánchez et al. (2013). their study investigated the impact of teacher-students relationship on efl learning. this study revealed information about the issues involved in building a positive teacher-student relationship, and its influence on students’ motivation. this study advises that the teacher needs to build trust to make students feel more confident and comfortable to approach the teacher and share personal and academic issues. in fact, building rapport is not an easy task for efl teacher to be established in teaching and learning activity (gebhard, 2009; webb & barett, 2014). even though it will be automatically maintained after some periods of time (swenson, 2010), especially in face-to-face meeting (coutrim, 2016; murphy & manzanares, 2012), mostly efl teachers still face many difficulties in maintaining the rapport. gebhard (2009) exposed the teacher’s problem in managing classroom interaction. in his book, gebhard (2009) mentioned 3 problems faced by english teacher in classroom interaction; (1) the teacher feels having not enough time to talk with the students since the teacher mostly cannot manage the time well; (2) the teacher faces limited english speaker students so that the interaction does not run well; and (3) the teacher cannot remember students’ name and remembering name is the problem faced by almost all teachers who manage big classroom. in order to build the rapport, a teacher may provide himself or herself with self-assessment. many researchers believed that self-assessment raises learners’ awareness to do self-monitoring to their progress (e.g. baniabdelrahman, 2010; butler & lee, 2010; egodawatte, 2010; harris, 1997; kato, 2009; meihami & razmjoo, 2016; srimavin & darasawang, 2004), to be self-motivated (butler & lee, 2010; ross, 2006; srimavin & darasawang, 2004), and to be selfdirected in learning (butler & lee, 2010; harris, 1997; kato, 2009), and it is also applicable for teacher’s professional development (airasian & gullickson, 1994; ross & bruce, 2007). teachers mostly act without being aware of why they do what they have been doing in classroom (çimer, çimer, & vekli, 2013), and self-assessment can help the teacher becomes aware of the needs in establishing teaching and learning activity and help them to improve their performance in teaching (avalos, 2011; montgomery & baker, 2007; ross & bruce, 2007). by doing selfassessment in teaching, teachers can do selfreflection to analyze the classroom situation and take more responsibility for their future actions in class (airasian & gullickson, 1994). providing necessary support, such as self-assessment, for the teachers may be enough to keep them motivated in teaching (lumpe, haney, & czerniak, 2000). however, a self-assessment instrument for building rapport has not been developed yet by any researchers. to fill this gap, this study is established to construct a self-assessment for teacher in building rapport in efl classroom. efl teachers can do selfreflection and self-evaluation on their teaching through the instrument developed and find ways to enhance positive rapport to foster positive learning environment. literature review in building a rapport, a teacher needs to concern two factors influencing the rapport development. one factor influencing rapport the most is respect. respect is a vital factor in dealing with any kind of problem behavior that appears in classroom (harmer, 2007a; 2007b). any problem behavior may appear because of the unrealistic learning goal set in the classroom which can be too difficult or too easy for the students. being realistic with the learning goal is a way to give respect to the students who have different levels in learning and language acquisition (scott & ytreberg (2000). brown (2001) added that giving respect to their ideas is also necessary to maintain good rapport. it includes the attitude of the teacher in responding the students’ talk. the way of teacher talk to students influences the respect of students (harmer, 2007a; 2007b). one example of teacher talk commonly happened in classroom is in giving feedback. teacher needs to consider correcting the mistakes carefully without losing any positive effort from the students (paul, 2006) since not all students are happy to be corrected, but some of them need more support and positive reinforcement (harmer, 2007a; 2007b). therefore, positive feedback which motivates the students without making them feel down is needed to be enhanced in classroom (paul, 2006). besides teacher talk, another aspect needed to be recognized is teacher’s gestures. gesture, expression, and mime should be appropriate with the language use in classroom (harmer, 2007a; 2007b). eye contact needed to show interest and attention toward students’ talk (levine & adelman, 1982) and giving smile build a positive atmosphere around classroom (paul, 2006). therefore, a teacher who gives respect to students will show positive attitude nova, m. constructing teacher’s self-assessment of rapport building in efl classroom 91 towards them and be respectful in handling any problems in classroom (harmer, 2007a; 2007b). another factor gives big influence to rapport development is fairness. scott & ytreberg (2000) stated that being fair is also necessary in building relationship with the students since the students can sense the unfairness from the teacher. since they are learning a language, they need to have equal chance to practice their language and to be assist by the teacher (harmer, 2007a; 2007b) whether they are active or inactive learner, and good or bad learner (paul, 2006). it is necessary for the teacher to give a fair attention to each student in the classroom, not only focusing on the bad one, but also concern with the good one (paul, 2006). treating the students equally is helpful in establishing and maintaining rapport (harmer, 2007a; 2007b). to maintain the rapport, the efl teacher needs to find appropriate strategies to be implemented in the classroom. some strategies in maintaining teacher-students rapport has been developed by experts. brown (2001) recommends 7 activities to teacher in establishing the teacher-students’ relationship by (1) showing interest in each student as a person; (2) giving feedback on each person’s progress; (3) openly soliciting students’ ideas and feelings; (4) valuing and respecting what students think and say; (5) laughing with them and not at them; (6) working with them as a team and not against them; and (7) developing a genuine sense of vicarious joy when they learn something or otherwise succeed (pp. 203). additional activities in building rapport are also promoted by harmer (2007a; 2007b). he promotes 4 activities the teacher can use to foster the relationship between the teacher and the students and also develop a successful classroom interaction by (1) recognizing the students’ name, character, and background; (2) listening properly to the students as an individual; (3) having respect to the students; and (4) being equal and fair in treating and giving attention to the students (pp. 113-115). method this study was a design research study. van den akker (1999) mentioned the aim of design research is “not to elaborate and implement the complete interventions, but to come to (successive) prototypes that increasingly meet the innovative aspirations and requirements” (p. 7). the aim of design research can be specified in two more specific goals: (1) providing ideas (suggestions, directions) for optimizing the quality of the product to be developed; and (2) generating, articulating and testing design principles (van den akker, 1999, p. 5). since its purpose is not to elaborate and implement the product, the process of development research is often cyclic or spiral, including analysis, design, evaluation and revision activities, until a satisfying balance between ideals and realization has been achieved (van den akker, 1999). to fulfill the principle of design research, a design research guideline from curriculum perspective from mckenney, nieveen & van den akker (2006) was applied. this guideline provides 5 steps in conducting design research from curriculum perspective, including (1) explicit conceptual framework, (2) congruent study design, (3) triangulation, (4) inductive and deductive data analysis, and (5) full description. in conducting the study, there were two main participants involved: expert judges and efl teachers. two expert judges from the expertise of english language teaching and assessment were selected to participate in validity testing. 57 efl teachers who came from different educational institutions were randomly selected and contacted to participate in reliability testing, with the following distributions of school levels: junior high school (31.58%), senior high school (43.86%), and vocational school (24.56%), and consisted of 12 males and 45 females. findings and discussion explicit conceptual framework based on the related studies and literature mentioned in the previous section, it is recommended that efl teacher should build the rapport in teaching and learning activities which can create effective learning activity (bruney, 2012; özer et al., 2015; pianta et al., 2012; sánchez et al., 2013; swenson, 2010; webb & barett, 2014), gain students’ interest in being involved in learning (pianta et al., 2012; sánchez et al., 2013; swenson, 2010; webb & barett, 2014), and motivate the students to be confident and brave to use english (nguyen, 2007; pianta et al., 2012; sánchez et al., 2013; suryati, 2015). therefore, there is a need to enhance rapport building in classroom. a draft of building rapport principles in efl classroom was proposed based on the related studies and literature. the draft consisted of 11 principles in building rapport; (1) recognizing students (harmer, 2007a; 2007b); (2) working cooperatively (brown, 2001); (3) building trust (bruney, 2012; sánchez et al., 2013); (4) being fair and equal (bruney, 2012; harmer, 2007a; 2007b; scott & ytreberg, 2000); (5) sharing idea (brown, 2001); (6) sharing feeling (bruney, 2012); (7) sharing experience (bruney, 2012); (8) sharing humor (brown, 2001); (9) listening properly (brown, 2001; harmer, 2007a; 2007b; pianta et al., 2012); (10) expressing non-verbal communication (brown, 2001; levine & adelman, 1982; paul, 2006); and (11) giving feedback (brown, 2001; harmer, 2007a; 2007b; pianta et al., 2012). congruent study design the idea of enhancing teacher’s self-assessment was promoted since self-assessment is also applicable for teacher’s development (ross & bruce, 2007). selfassessment can help the teacher become aware of the needs in establishing teaching and learning activity and help them improve their performance in teaching (avalos, 2011; montgomery & baker, 2007; ross & bruce, 2007). by doing self-assessment in teaching, teacher can do self-reflection to analyze the classroom situation and take more responsibility for their future actions in class (airasian & gullickson, 1994). self-assessment also contributes to teachers’ beliefs about their ability to improve students’ learning, and the teacher becomes more confident about their future performance since they believe that through their own actions they have helped students in learning (ross & bruce, 2007). providing necessary support, such as self-assessment, for the nova, m. constructing teacher’s self-assessment of rapport building in efl classroom 92 teacher may be enough to keep them motivated in teaching (lumpe, haney, & czerniak, 2000). therefore, a self-assessment in building rapport can be a solution for teacher to develop their quality in teaching and create an effective learning activity. an instrument used for a teacher’s selfassessment in building rapport was developed based on the conceptual framework of principles of rapport building in classroom. from the 11 principles of building rapport, 35 items were constructed; 3 items for each principle, except for being fair and equal (consisted of 5 items), sharing humor (consisted of 2 items), and giving feedback (consisted of 4 items). a 4-point likert scale was used to respond to each item of the instrument; strongly disagree (=1), disagree (=2), agree (=3), and strongly agree (=4). oscarson (1997, in butler & lee, 2010) mentioned that if the items of questionnaire are constructed in respondents’ first language, the respondents can more accurately self-assess their performance compared to when the items are delivered in their target language. therefore, the questionnaire survey was constructed in bahasa indonesia since this study investigated indonesian efl teachers. triangulation triangulation is used to test the instruments’ validity and reliability. for instrument’s validity, the instrument was delivered to the experts and was assessed by the experts to find the content validity, construct validity, and face validity. comments were given and the instrument was then revised. the revised version of the instrument was then distributed to efl teachers for reliability test. instrument’s reliability was tested by 57 efl teachers from various institutions. the efl teachers were required to complete the survey in approximately 10-15 minutes. besides, a simple interview was also conducted to investigate whether the activities provided in questionnaire survey are essential in building rapport. inductive and deductive data analysis all collected data were then analyzed through spss 19.0. the reliability analysis was conducted, and the overall cronbach’s alpha coefficient of the instrument was .928. because it was higher than .8 (the rational goal of internal consistency) (gliem & gliem, 2003), the instrument can be considered as a reliable instrument to be used for study sample. full description an instrument of teacher’s self-assessment of rapport building has been developed. it consists of 11 sections which represent the eleven principles of rapport building and 35 statements. the complete self-assessment instrument can be seen in appendix 1. the first section is recognizing students. three statements are included in this section which indicate teacher’s awareness in recognizing students through three ways, by (1) greeting them, (2) calling them with their name, and (3) knowing their ability. allday and pakurar (2007) revealed that greeting the students at the door of classroom, with their name and praise them, increases student on-task behavior. it shows that greeting students give positive effect on their learning. besides greeting, recognizing their names is also necessary to establish good rapport with students since it makes them feel pleased (harmer, 2007a; 2007b). it is fundamental to develop a positive sense of community in the classroom and it gives an impression that the teacher cares about their success and develops a sense of trust (glenz, 2014). harmer (2007a; 2007b) also mentioned that by “knowing their names is also about knowing about students” (p. 26; p. 114). therefore, there is a need to know their ability in order to set the learning outcome based on their knowledge (harmer, 2007a) and awareness about students’ characteristic and ability (manning, 2006). the second section is working cooperatively. three statements are included in this section, which indicate teacher’s awareness of having cooperativeness with the students. brown (2001) mentioned one way to connect positive rapport in the classroom is by working with the students as a team, and not against them. teamwork creates positive relationships which are necessary for knowledge sharing and effective discussion (georgiadou, siakas, & berki, 2006). working cooperatively with students as a team makes the students tend to be less disruptive behavior in class, be more positive, have supportive relationships, and have more positive attitudes toward learning activity (felder & brent, 2007). the interaction between teacher and students will raise students’ effort (davis, 1999) and foster their engagement in learning (brank & wylie, 2013). the third section is building trust. three statements are included in this section, which indicate teacher’s awareness of having trust on their students. the trust between teacher and students is essential as a fundamental concept of effective learning (özer et al., 2015). trusting the student makes student feel more confident and comfortable to approach the teacher and share personal and academic issues with the teacher (sánchez et al., 2013; bruney, 2012). having trust in the classroom creates a safe environment for learning in which “students can grow and learn and develop personally, socially, emotionally, and academically under the direction of their teacher” (bruney, 2012, p. 48) and the teacher can “spend less time with classroom management issues” (bruney, 2012, p. 33). the fourth section is being fair and equal. five statements are included in this section, which indicate teacher’s awareness of being equal and fair in treating their students in classroom. scott & ytreberg (2000) stated that being fair is also necessary in building relationship with the students since the students can sense the unfairness from the teacher. since they are learning a language, they need to have equal chances to practice their language and to be assist by the teacher (harmer, 2007a; 2007b), whether they are active or inactive learners, and good or bad learners (paul, 2006). it is necessary for the teacher to give a fair attention to each student in the classroom, not only focusing on the bad ones, but also concern with the good ones (paul, 2006). treating the students equally is helpful in establishing and maintaining rapport (harmer, 2007a; 2007b), and it contributes to enhance a balance amount of interaction between students and the teacher in classroom (sánchez et al., 2013). the fifth section is sharing idea. three statements are included in this section, which indicate a teacher’s awareness of sharing their idea with nova, m. constructing teacher’s self-assessment of rapport building in efl classroom 93 his/her students and vice versa. by asking for students’ ideas and thoughts and also providing opportunities for students to share their idea (pianta et al., 2012), the students can express their ideas and opinions (sánchez et al., 2013), and the teacher should help the students to elaborate their ideas more (suryati, 2015). the sixth section is sharing feeling. three statements are included in this section, which indicate teachers’ awareness of sharing their feeling with their students and vice versa. sharing feeling with students encourages the students to trust and learn from the teacher (bruney, 2012), and they will feel more confident and comfortable to approach the teacher and share personal and academic issues with the teacher (sánchez et al., 2013; bruney, 2012). furthermore, when a student shares his or her feelings, it makes a positive perspective toward the teacher (wrenn & wrenn, 2009) and their feelings and opinions should be valued (bruney, 2012). the seventh section is sharing experience. three statements are included in this section, which indicate teachers’ awareness of sharing their experience with their students and vice versa. sharing experiences with students increases students’ interest in the relevance of the material into real life contexts (wrenn & wrenn, 2009). gordon (2009 in wrenn & wrenn, 2009) suggested that “teachers should promote experiences that require students to become active learners” (p. 260). sharing experience may promote awareness of learning responsibility (tinto, 2003), in which experience shared should be followed by reflection on previous learning to transform the students’ previous understanding into some applicable manners (wrenn & wrenn, 2009) for further learning. the eighth section is sharing humor. two statements are included in this section, which indicate teachers’ awareness of sharing humor and laugh with their students in classroom. humor can be used for reducing stress (macadam, 1985; steele, 1998), relieving monotonous and boredom classroom, helping students stay tuned in learning, keeping their attention, and building their confidence (lovorn, 2008), which unlocks social barriers between teacher and student (macadam, 1985) and creates a more positive classroom environment (steele, 1998). when students laugh, “they experience pleasure with a sense of openness to discussion and interaction” (lovorn, 2008, p. 2). therefore, humor can be used as an effective way to deal with any difficult situations in classroom (lovorn, 2008) and establish a positive climate in classrooms (steele, 1998). the ninth section is listening properly. three statements are included in this section, which indicate teachers’ awareness of listening to their students properly and intensively. the teacher needs to listen properly to the students as an individual to make a reflection on the way of hs/her teaching, whether the technique is being liked by the students, any activities motivate the students to learn, or the students’ reaction on the teacher’s teaching style (harmer, 2007a; 2007b). the importance of listening and paying attention to students’ explanations contributes to build an equal communication between teacher and the students (sánchez et al., 2013). the tenth section is expressing non-verbal communication. three statements are included in this section, which indicate teachers’ awareness of expressing their non-verbal communication to their students. nonverbal communication, including facial expression, eye contact, tone of voice, body postures, and gestures (ozieblo, 2013; stamatis, 2011), is often used for gaining attention (geng, 2011) and emphasizing the meaning of words in utterance (harmer, 2007b; levine & adelman, 1982) in face-toface interactions (ozieblo, 2013). to be successful in communication, especially in teaching, teacher needs to be able in using not only the verbal communication but also in non-verbal communication (behjat, bayat, & kargar, 2014), such as having eye contact to gain students’ attention and positive attitude toward teacher, giving smile to affect students’ positive perception of the teacher (beebe, 1980), or using facial expression to express certain emotion and feeling (ozieblo, 2013). the eleventh section is giving feedback. four statements are included in this section, which indicate teachers’ awareness of providing feedback on students’ performance in classroom. feedback can be used to raise students’ awareness of their errors (abdollahifam, 2014; kazemipour, 2014; maarof, yamat, & li, 2011). feedback plays an important role in motivating students for further learning, which informs them about their learning progress and their improvement for the weaknesses (abdollahifam, 2014; alavi & kaivanpanah, 2007; maarof et al., 2011; tran, 2007). therefore, the teacher needs to ensure that the students receive “immediate, unambiguous, and meaningful feedback” (davis, 1999, p. 2) which is positive and motivates the students (paul, 2006) and does not hurt students’ feeling (abdollahifam, 2014). conclusion teacher’s self-assessment of rapport building can be used as an instrument in assessing efl teacher’s development and professionalism, especially in building and maintaining rapport in efl classroom. by using the instrument, the efl teachers can do self-reflection and self-evaluation on their teaching and finds ways to enhance positive rapport to foster positive learning environment. besides, it can also be used as an awareness tool for the teacher on conducting teaching and learning activity which maintains rapport in the classroom. nevertheless, this study has some limitations which can affect the effectiveness of the use of the instrument. first, the small amount of sample may be a consideration in instrument’s reliability. therefore, a bigger amount of sample is needed to test the validaty and reliability of the instrument in assessing teacher in rapport building in efl classroom. second, the sample of study taken was from indonesia. different strategies and techniques in building relationship with students used by efl teacher may influence the result of applicability of this instrument. different cultures and different perspectives in using non-verbal communication can affect the teaching and learning process. therefore, reliability of instrument in other cultures is needed to validate the instrument to be widely used in efl teaching and learning classroom. further research is also needed to be conducted on the effectiveness of implementing teacher’s self-assessment in rapport building to nova, m. constructing teacher’s self-assessment of rapport building in efl classroom 94 evaluate whether the instrument is considered a useful strategy for promoting rapport building. acknowledgement the research is funded by indonesia endowment fund (lpdp). references abdollahifam, s. 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(2009). enhancing learning by integrating theory and practice. international journal of teaching and learning in higher education, 21(2), 258-265. retrieved from http://www.isetl.org/ijtlhe/pdf/ijtlhe727.pdf 60 philosophical foundation of teaching as a profession and its implication on teacher education1 soedijarto2 abstract this paper aimed at explaining philosophical foundation of teaching as profession and suggesting its implication on the program of teacher education in indonesia. a history of teacher education is described in the first discussion to provide a background for the idea of teaching as professional occupation. the history of teacher education starting from ducth colonial era until the education law on teacher and lecturer number 14 year 2005 prevailed has a complex dynamic where teachers’ qualifications before the education law existed were various. the education law makes teachers’ qualifications more homogenous where it states that a teacher needs to have a full bachelor degree (s1) or at least diploma iv. the demand of law is reasonable because teachers’ role and responsibility are very challenging. in accordance with this, the philosophical foundation of teaching as a profession is to achieve education missions to support existence of a modern and democratic country of indonesia based on pancasila. it means that teachers need to be competent enough to develop competences and mould character of students based on stated competence standards. competent teachers have to be able to arrange instructional planning, to design instructional program, to manage instructional processes, to evaluate instructional processes and achievement, to diagnose learning difficulties, to encourage and to motivate learners. to be competent teachers, they need to accomplish three stages of teacher education and training, namely: 1) academic professional education; 2) professional education and training; 3) practical professional training. of globalization, and to foster social cohesion in must be met from primary and secondary school onwards. teachers are instrumental in the development of attitudes in positive or negative to learning. teachers can awaken curiosity, stimulate independence, encourage intellectual irigour and create the conditions for success: in formal and i. introduction “teachers have crucial roles to play in preparing young people not only to face the future with confidence to build it with purpose and responsibility. the new challenges facing education to contribute to development, to help people understand, and to some extend come terms with the phenomenon 1 presented at “international conference on teacher education : redesigning professional teacher education”, in upi bandung, april 6,2010 2 professor of education, jakarta state university 3 jacques delors, learning : the treasure within, report to unesco of the international commission on education for the zls` century (1998), paris, unesco, p.141 international journal of education vol. 5, no. 1, november 2010, 60-69 soedijarto, philosophical foundation of teaching as a profession and its implication 61 continuing education.’ intentionally, i start writing this paper by quoting the conclusion of the unesco.3 international commission on education for 21st century, to recognize how crucial has the role of the teachers been expected in preparing young generation to face the hard reality of world in the 21st century that known as the era of globalization. history has also recorded that, in the third decade of the 20th century, indonesian national education hero ki hajar dewantara though his motto of the role of the teacher has stated : ing ngarso sung tulodho (before the learner give example), ing madyo mangun karso (in the middle of the learners give encouragement and motivation), tut wuri handayani (from behind empowering the learners), has put how crucial should be the role of the teacher to mould characters and mind of the learners. this meaningful “motto” seems not to be understood correctly. for when we follow the indonesia’s education history, we see that have not translated this motto properly to develop teacher education. when we read the function and aims of education stated in education law no. 20 year 2003, it is clear how important to translate the message of ki hajar dewantara and the conclusion of unesco international commission on education for 21” century regarding the expected role of the teacher as quoted, into the redesigning professional teacher education. based on this background fulfilling the request of the committee of this conferenc , i would discuss the following topics : (1) the history of teacher e uca ion in ndonesia; (2) the meaning of teaching as a profession to meet the demands of the expected crucial role of teacher; (3) the implication teaching as profession on the program of teacher education; and (4) concluding remarks. ii. the history of teacher education in indonesia since 1950 indonesia through its education laws, year 1950 jo 1954, 1965, 1989, and 2003 has always stress on the aims of education to prepare young indonesia to be morally mature, healthy, skillful, independent, creative, intelligent, democratic and responsible to the society and nation at large. it is clear that to be able to prepare young generation with the those characteristics need teachers that are capable of taking roles as expected by ki hajar dewantara as well as unesco commission that have been quoted. the history of indonesia educaticn show that, before 2005, with promulgation of the education law on teacher and lecturer no. 14 year 2005, the teacher education to prepare teachers, look upon from the demands of the expected roles of teacher, have not been relevant. the following will show how indonesia has run teacher education. during the dutch colonial time, before 1942, when the educational !,vstem was so stratified between school for the villages (volk schools and second class school), schools for the children of the civil servant (dutch indonesian school), and schooi for european and aristocrat (european 62 international journal of education, vol. 5, no. 1, november 2010 school), the teacher education was also so diversified. education for villages school teachers is only two years education after elementary school (courses for village school), education for second class school teachers is four years teacher education after elementary school ((normal school), while education for teachers of dutch indonesia school is six years teacher education after dutch indonesian elementary school (dutch-indonesia teacher education). at that era village school is only three years education with local language as medium of instruction, second class school is five years with local and malay (indonesia) languages for medium of instruction, while dutch indonesia elementary school is seven years with dutch as medium of instruction, and european elementary school vears with dutch as medium of instruction. after independence indonesia eliminate the stratified school system and adopted unified of school system. thus indonesia elementary school (people school) are open for all citizens disregard their social background, besides on the parallel level there are islamic school (madrasah ibtidaiyah [elementary school]), (madrasah tsanawiyah [junior high school]), and (madrasah aliyah [senior high school]). to run this school the education of the teachers are as follow : 1. up to 1957, the education for elementary school teachers is four years teacher education (teacher education b, sgb); the education of junior high school teachers is three years after junior high school (teacher education a, sga), while the education of senior high school teacher is two years subject matter courses, called b i, b ii. 2. since 1957 up to 1989, the education for elementary school teacher is sga for junior high school teachers is two years teacher education after senior high school (pgslp), while for senior high school teachers are courses b i and b ii in 1954 for the first time indonesia institute formal teacher education as post secondary education, at the level of university education known “perguruan tinggi pendidikan guru (ptpg), higher education for teacher education that prepare secondary school teachers. this institute in 1957 integrated into university system became the faculty teacher of education and education science (fkip). and in 1963 through political process changed became institute of teacher education and education science (ikip) by presidential decree no. 1 year 1963. in 1999 the institute developed into general university system one of them is ikip bandung that kept the characteristic of being a higher education that concentrate on education with the name bandung university of education. the other development on teacher education that needs to be recorded is the abolition of the spg and integrated into ikip/fkip in 1989 with the emergence of two years teacher education after senior high school for elementary school teacher known as diploma ii. soedijarto, philosophical foundation of teaching as a profession and its implication 63 with this historical background, at present we are facing heterogeneous education qualification of teachers from those with six years education after elementary school to those having graduate and post graduate degree in teacher education. thus the promulgation of the education law no. 14 year 2005 on teacher and lecturer is really a historical stage on indonesia education in general and teacher education in particular. for with this decision the status of teaching as a profession has parallel degree with other profession such as medical and law. the question is what is the meaning of having teaching as a profession of the same level with medical doctor and law? the following section is going to discuss the issue. iii. the meaning of teaching as profession and its meaning after learning the history of indonesia teacher education and the roles of teacher as expected by ki hajar dewantara, and unesco commission of education for 21th c e n t u r y, i c a n u n d e r s t a n d w h y indonesian education system that has been put as an instrument to contribute to the building of indonesia nation state that is modern and democratic based the pancasila (five principles, this is my free translation from “mencerdaskan kehidupan bangsa”4 have not been fully successful. one important factor they seems to be neglected with regard to the 4 a term used in indonesia constitution 1945 related to the mission of government of free indonesia unsuccessful education mission is on the teacher qualification. thus also since 1950 indonesia has conducted series of education reform through changing education law and school curriculum, the last one is education law no. 20 year 2003 that adopted modern theories and philosophy of education such as active learning model, education as a process cultural transformation, and education has a function to develop competence and mould character5, i doubt that this mission can be achieved with unqualified teachers. in this regard i look at the education law no. 14 year 2005 as a milestone to make the idea to put education as instrument to contribute to the achievement of the mission of nation and character building can be achieved. for this new law has put teaching having a status as professional that required “advanced education and special training”, thus equal with education for medical doctor and other profession. this means that in my perception teachers that has not get the qualification of advanced education and special training (s 1+) cannot be regarded as professional teachers. thus up to the present time most of indonesian teachers have not had a status of professional teachers. for this we cannot blame them of being incapable of taking a role to develop competence and moulding character. for this role, teacher must to capable of conducting planning, and designing learning program, to develop learning program, to manage learning process, to evaluate learning process 5 education law no. 20 year 2003, articles 1,3 and 4. 64 international journal of education, vol. 5, no. 1, november 2010 and learning achievement and diagnose learning difficulties, to encourage and to motivate the learner, and other roles expected by ki hajar dewantara. thus more than other profession teacher is a profession that not only should be able to do planning, development, management, evaluation and diagnosis but the teacher also expected to be a leader, a motivator, as well as ideal type of person to be followed. for this very reason, might be, why plato in his book the republic book vii put teacher, beside research scientist, and legislator that need higher education as stated by r. s. brumbaugh : “and a center of higher education continues the training of a more highly selected group of student, who will become research scientist, educators, and legislators”.6 in plato’s view the position of teacher is equal with legislator. in this regard he said : the teacher and legislator are the twin guardians of the society.7 thus if plato, put the position of teacher so high as parallel with legislator, in 1969 martin buber view that the essence of education is essentially education of character8 put the role of the teacher, in the following statement : “for genuine educator does not merely individual function of his pupil, as one intending to teach him only to know or capable of certain definite 6 robert s. brumbaugh & nathaniel m lawrence, philosphers on education : six essays on the foundation of western (1963), boston, houghton mifflin co. p. 39 7 ibid., p.38 8 martin buber, between man and man, 1969,the macmillan co., p. 104 things; but his concern is always the person as a whole, both in the actually in which he lives, before you know and in his possibilities, what he can become.9 with regard to look at the strategic position of the teacher in the educational process that include moulding character as expected by unesco commission as well as education. in the early 20th century (1926) soekarno, then the president of republic of indonesia (1945 1965), referring to jean jaaes stress that teacher can educate not only base on his willingness, or knowledge but especially what “he is”, means his personality as the personification of values”10 from series of discussions stated in this section, it is clear that the philosophical foundation underlying teaching as a professional occupations is to achieve the mission of education to support the building of nation state of indonesia that is modem and democratic based in the pancasila. for this, education should be run to develop competence and moulding character of the indonesian young generation. for this very reason, only teachers with professional qualification that has the capability of planning, and designing learning program, developing learning program managing learning process, evaluating learning process and learnin2 achievement, and diagnosing learninq difficulty as well as able to lead, to motivate, to encourage, and become 9 ibid., p. 104 10 `soekarno “menjadi goeroe di masa kebangunan” (to become teacher in era of development : in the book “under the banner of revolution) jakarta, 1959 soedijarto, philosophical foundation of teaching as a profession and its implication 65 a personification of values that will capable of bearing the roles. the question is “how to develop and run teacher education that can produce professional teacher as describe in this section?” the following section is going to discuss this topic. iv. the implication of teaching as a profession on teacher education system as discussed in the previous section it is clear how many education philosophers from plato to ki hajar dewantara as well as studies conducted by unesco has put the position of teacher as the most crucial factor in making the education process successful in achieving educational goals. and that, for indonesia, the goals of the education has not been only for mastering three r, reading, writing, and arithmetic for elementary schools and mastering knowledge and skills for post-elementary schools but for developing competence and moulding character of young generation as a part of building nation state of indonesia. thus this imply that teacher should not be only the one that capable of mastering knowledge and transferring it to the learners but be should, in the words of unesco that has been quoted “can awaken curiosity, stimulate independence, encourage intellectual rigour and create condition of success”. even plato put educator as the guardian of the society. ironically in my observation since 1950 up to 2005, we have not seriously prepare teachers to act as expected by plato, ki hajar dewantara, and unesco international commission education for the 215’ century. the last mentioned commission even stress that the role of teacher is the most important in this century than before as stated in the following quotation: “the importance of the role of teachers an agent of change, promoting understanding and tolerance, has never been more obvious than today. it is likely to become even more critical in the twenty-first century. the need for change, from narrow nationalism to universalism, from ethic to cultural prejudice, to tolerance, understanding and pluralism, from autocracy to democracy, in its various manifestations, from a technologically divided world where high technology is the privilege of the few to technologically united world, places enormous responsibilities on teachers who participate in the moulding of the characters and minds of the new generation.11 after knowing how high has the expectation of the role and capacity of teachers to support educational program that has a function in the process of national development, in the word of education law no. 20 year 2003, “developing dignified national civilization”12, the question is “how to prepare them?” to answer this question we should have a clear concept on what competence the teacher should master, and what basic knowledge they need to acquire to become professional teacher that can take a role in planning, developing, managing, evaluate, and 11 jacques delors, op.cit., pp. 141 142 12 article 3 education law no. 20 year 2003 66 international journal of education, vol. 5, no. 1, november 2010 diagnose learning program relevant to learner’s background and the educational objective relevant to societal demands. in practice we can observe that there are teachers that might master the subject-matter they should transfer as teaching material but don’t understand the characteristics of the children, psychologically,as well as culturally. there are also teachers that love children but almost don’t master the subjectmatter. the first type of teachers usually could be found among high school teachers, while the second one mostly could be found among elementary school teachers. this can happened because many high school teachers disregard the importance of understanding the learners, while many elementary school teachers are very weak in mastering subject-matter especially in mathematic, many of them even have been poor in mathematics since they were in high school. this condition cannot be tolerated. this means that teacher should not only master subject matter and understanding the characteristics of the learners in accordance with their age and background but also of mastering various basic knowledge such as learning theories, educational technology, the philosophy of education, sociology of lcation, and anthropology of education, as well as the philosophy and the state system ~ the nation in which schools are operating and functioning. in short, to make teacher capable of conducting teachers role that include planning, developing, programming, managing, evaluation, and di. relevant to the learner’s need and educational objectives a, should master the following knowledge : (1) the charat accordance with age and their background; (2) scientific disc, ways of knowing; (3) learning theories, educational technology including learning methodology; (5) education evaluation system (6) philosophy of education, sociology of education and anthropology of education; and (7) the state philosophy and state system of the nation. certainly in the world has had a long tradition in running teacher education system. however we still need to question “how far has each of our teachers educational system has really been planned as a professional teacher education in sense of an institution of advance education and special training that can produce professional teacher that master academic discipline and professional knowledge as has been identified and mastering professional competence as mentioned before?” as has been discussed in the second section, indonesia’s experience in running teacher education system has developed from four to six years teachers education (sgb & sga) after elementary school for elementary school teachers and two years teacher training courses after senior high school for high school teacher, and in 1954 started running higher education institute for teacher education (ptpg) (three to five years education after senior high school) for high school teachers. this institute of higher education for teacher education that as established in 1954, as independence teacher college has evolutionary change into school of education of the university system in 1957, in 1963 then become the institute soedijarto, philosophical foundation of teaching as a profession and its implication 67 of teacher education and educational science (ikip), and eventually by 1999, all of ikips transform into general university system that still has function to produce teachers and other education personal. it is importance to note here, that in indonesia education history that, although the teachers college have been established since 1954, but the existence of teacher training course two years after senior high school (b i) and two years course after (b ii) as well as elementary school teacher training (spg) three years after junior highschool prevail until 1963, b i and b ii were integrated into ikip and spg was eliminated in 1989 when requirement to become elementary school teachers is two years education after senior high school (d il, diplom ii). with this glimpse history of indonesia teacher education we can have an idea how heterogeneous are the educational background of indonesia teaching personnel. thus with the new law on teacher no. 14 year 2005 that regulate that the minimum education qualification of teacher will be university graduate or equivalent that is d iv four years non academic higher education program, hopefully will make the educational qualification of indonesian teachers will be more homogeneous and professional. the question further is “how to make the four years higher education program for preparing teacher as stated in new law on teacher will be made used as an effective, relevant, and efficient professional teacher education program, that can produce professional teachers that master knowledge and competences properly?” we r e c o g n i z e t h a t t h e r e a r e various models of teacher education program in the world, each with its own characteristics due to the stage of education development of each nation. for this, this paper in presenting the idea of professional teacher education program, certainly will be based on the writers understanding in the state and role of the education in indonesian national development. in the development country such as the united states teacher education as professional education has been regarded as post-gradute program, for this the prerequisite for the professional study of teaching is a bachelor degree in the arts and science13. its seems that the professional study of teaching program is following a consecutive model, for after only mastering basic knowledge and scientific discipline they can pursue professional teaching study. since indonesian law on teacher put the requirement education qualification of teachers is university graduate of the first stratum (equivalent to ba/ b.sc.) this means that teacher education program should be run in eight semesters or about four years program. in this line this paper is proposing three stages of program : a. academic professional education in six semesters at this stage, the program is planned to help teachers candidates acquire and master essential knowledge of relevant scientific 13 task force for teaching as a profession, a nation prepared : teachers for the 21st century, carnegie forum on education and the economy, 1986, p. 3 68 international journal of education, vol. 5, no. 1, november 2010 discipline and knowledge related to pre-professional teaching study, such as psychology (learning theories, developmental psychology), philosophy and theories of education, educational psychology (including evaluation, test, and measurement), and educational technology. b. professional education and professional training at this stage, candidates learning to make use the relevant knowledge master at the first stage program to plan, develop, manage and evaluate learning program in accordance with their relevant specialization (elementary school teachers, subjectmatter teachers) c. practical professional training after finishing the two stages of education, the students will be graduated as the holder of academic professional degree in teacher education but has not get certificate of professional teacher. for this, following the practice of preparing medical doctor, teachers candidate that has hold academic degree should follow professional training to implement all the knowledge and basic competence of professional teacher in school set up and act as assistant teacher for at least one semester before getting certificate as professional teacher. the question need to be discussed is should teacher education program carried out in “concurrently way” or “consecutive way”? however will not discuss this issue lenghly, but since teacher as expected by ki hajar dewantara should be able to become an ideal example before the learners, preparing teacher with sound character and personality, “concurrent system”, especially for elementary and junior high school is more preferable. to explain this reason beside this preference need special paper. since i am not assign to discuss this issue i prefer not to discuss this further. before closing this section, allow me to express my view that to make this program be an effective program it is desirable to have the last stage of the program the teacher candidate stay in teacher education dormitory. and don’t forget that selection of candidates is very important. for plato, teacher candidate should be among selected group of students. in this case, the indonesian association of educationist in march 9, 2007 has proposed to the president of the republic of indonesia that teacher should be selected among high school graduates with grade in mathematic at least 7 (scale l 10).14 v. concluding remaks from the discussion presented from section i to iv, some conclusions can be generated: i . although since 1945 indonesia has put educational system as a part of building nation state of indonesia based in the pancasila, until 2005 teacher education 14 “rekomendasi tentang strategi dan kebijakan penyelenggaraan pendidikan nasional”, dalam buku soedijarto, landasan dan arah pendidikan nasional kita, (2008),jakarta, penerbit buku kompas hal. 464-478 soedijarto, philosophical foundation of teaching as a profession and its implication 69 has not been designed to have teachers that capable of taking role to develop competence and moulding character of the young generation 2. teaching as a profession should be interpreted as putting teaching as an occupation that require advance education and special training, that is a profession that make the holder can do planning, developing, managing, evaluating learning program and diagnosing learning difficulties. 3. to be able to produce professional teacher with the characteristics stated in part 2, teacher education program should be design through three stages :(1) academic professional education; (2) professional education and professional training and (3) practical professional training. to make this program effective “concurrent model of teacher education”, especially for elementary and junior high school is desirable. these are some thoughts on teacher education that i can contribute for further discussion. database connection failed! 70 how parents foster bilingualism in the family: a case study of an indonesian student family in perth, western australia lilis ummi fa’iezah abstract this study investigated how indonesian children in australia as a foreign country temporarily switch their indonesian language with english, what parents’ attitudes toward the children’s language is, and how indonesian parents encourage the use of bahasa indonesia by their children at home (in australia). a case study method with qualitative approach was used. participants of the study were one family of indonesian students comprising a 35-year-old mother with 6 and 8-year-old sons. the mother was chosen because she was considered as repositories of culture and responsible for the maintenance of tradition and language. data collected through observation and open-ended interview. the study showed that the indonesian children soon adopted english and gradually lost their mother language because of their less frequent use and interaction with the users. the indonesian mother had to struggle to maintain her children’s mother tongue, since she and her family planed to go back to indonesia. parents had to make an effort to maintain their children’s indonesian language skills. use of mother tongue as the home language considered to be a good way to foster children’s indonesian use. this could help the children re-learning indonesian they had a good understanding of it. keywords: bilingualism, mother tongue, foreign language, language maintenance, language lost. their home country, where english is not used as the daily language, soon after completing their study. it is actually crucial for indonesian parents to realize that sometimes the mother tongue can be at risk of being lost. for example; if people live in another country where the community use a language (say, english) other than their mother tongue, it can be sure that their children will use english more than their mother tongue (romaine, 1999). so, bahasa indonesia as their mother tongue will chapter 1: introduction the indonesian students who are doing phd or masters programs in australian universities usually bring their families to australia as well. their children usually attend public schools in australia. consequently, the children will learn english, which is the language of instruction in those schools and in the community. as a result, the children may be very fluent in english and forget their mother tongue. the problem comes when the indonesian students must return to international journal of education vol. 5, no. 1, november 2010, 70-84 lilis ummi fa’iezah, how parents foster bilingualism in the family 71 be at risk because the use of it in this situation (that is, in australia) is less frequent. as a result, without use and maintenance of the mother tongue by the parents, gradually the mother tongue of the children will be less used and then lost (harding and riley, 1986; baker, 1996; fishman, 2004). on one hand, for indonesian parents, their children’s proficiency in the english language is very beneficial for their future careers. on the other hand, those children may lose their mother tongue (bahasa indonesia) as a consequence of learning english. some evidence says that immigrant children (both permanent and temporary) who learn english in school may have firstlanguage attrition or loss as a result of becoming assimilated into the englishspeaking environment in the schools or society (fillmore, 1991; siegel, 2004; kuncha and bathula, 2004). it is actually important for the family of indonesian students in overseas countries, such as australia, to maintain their children’s mother tongue because they have to return to indonesia in a couple of years. it seems so hard for those indonesian students to keep their children fluent in bahasa indonesia because they are surrounded by the english language. hoffman (1991) observed that under certain cultural, social, educational and political conditions, a community might change its language to another. moreover, hoffman (1991, p.186) said that “… when a community does not maintain its language but gradually adopts another one”. research aims this present study is important because it seeks to look particularly at parents’ attitudes towards the children’s language. it also develops a better understanding about how indonesian parents encourage the use of bahasa indonesia by their children at home (in australia). research question this study asks a single question, which is then divided into four subquestions: how do indonesian parents maintain their mother tongue? 1. what are their attitudes toward bahasa indonesia and english? 2. what strategies do they have to maintain bahasa indonesia? 3. what do they actually do to encourage the use of their mother tongue? 4. what are the difficulties arising from their efforts? chapter 2: literature review 2.1. language maintenance issues migrant families come from all over the world to settle in other countries at various times and for various reasons. whether those families stay permanently or temporarily, they need to deal with language maintenance if their first language is other than the language of the community. according to baker (1996, p.43), language maintenance “refers to relative language stability in its number and distribution of speakers, its proficient usage in children and adults, and to retaining the use of the language in 72 international journal of education, vol. 5, no. 1, november 2010 specific domains (e.g. home, school, religion).” people need to maintain their original language because language is not only a tool of communication but it can also show people’s cultural identity (fishman, 2001). moreover, fishman (2001) said that one generation needs to pass the language to the following generation. it can be understood that the language of a minority group will die as a result of less use by its community (rohani et al., 2005). rohani et al. (2005) added that soon after the children of a family participate in school-related activities and communicate with the majority language, their attitudes toward their heritage language will change and they will use it less. some researchers such as baker (1996) and rohani et al. (2005) remarked that attitudes toward the mother tongue and language maintenance vary from one community to another and from one family to another. some families are enthusiastic when their children acquire the second language quickly. others are worried that their children shift totally to the other language and then they try to find ways to maintain their children’s first language. parents concerned about the language maintenance of their children, while settling in a community that has a different language from their own, will generally find ways to keep their children fluent in their mother tongue. some strategies such as communicating with children by using the mother tongue and introducing the original culture to them may be implemented (harding and riley, 1986). the success of language maintenance probably depends on the attitudes of parents towards the first language (baker, 1996). parents may need to make the mother tongue the home language in order to make children use it more. in the other words, the home can be used as the base of language maintenance (harding and riley, 1986). 2.2. receptive bilingualism it seems difficult for parents to maintain their children’s language while living in a country where the dominant language that is used by the community is different. although parents may make some efforts to make their children speak their mother tongue, the results may not be successful. as a consequence of the failure of parents to make their children use the mother tongue, their children may only understand their first language but they cannot use it for communication (harding and riley, 1986). harding and riley (1986) stressed that this situation, called ‘receptive bilingualism’, is common. it means that “the individual concerned understand the language, but cannot, will not or does not speak it” (p.43). it is common among receptive bilingual children to reply to their parents speaking with the language they know better (harding and riley, 1986). for example, indonesian children who live in the australian community tend to reply their parents, who speak bahasa indonesia, with english. these indonesian children may understand perfectly what their parents are saying, lilis ummi fa’iezah, how parents foster bilingualism in the family 73 but in the circumstances where they use the language less, they tend to be incapable of speaking the language (baker, 1996). although it is easier said than done to maintain the children’s mother tongue, harding and riley (1986) suggested that parents should maintain it, especially the ones who decide to move back to their home country soon. harding and riley (1986) also pointed out that although children may only be able to read the language, and not use it for a communication tool, when they return to their home country they can develop their speaking and writing abilities quickly with only a little difficulty. this can be good news for parents for maintaining their children’s first language if they make a decision to return to their country of origin after a number of years in other countries. 2.3. previous studies there is a growing number of researches about the importance for families to maintain their children’s original language. research conducted by nicoladis and grabois (2002), which used a 17-month-old adopted chinese child, proved that language loss could take place quite rapidly for a child of this age. it was reported that gradually, day by day, this child acquired english without difficulty. nicoladis and grabois (2002) then stressed that the possibility of language loss can begin as early as toddler stage. research carried out by fillmore (1991) and bhela (2003) revealed that the patterns of language use in a family change soon after the children learn english. moreover, fillmore (1991) said that the younger the children are when they learn english, the quicker english has an effect on their primary language. fillmore also stated that this situation may crucially happen at ages younger than 5, because children have not reached a stable condition of their language acquisition. since children do not care about prestige and status, they simply use the language that gives them more access to their environment. they then easily give up their primary language. siegel’s study (2004) exposed that parents and society have significant roles in maintaining a child’s original language. this study was supported by bhela (2003) who showed that although there are some strong attempts by immigrant families to ensure that their children become knowledgeable in their primary language, such as using the mother tongue as the home language; their children gradually show increasing reluctance to use their mother tongue as the tool of communication. harding and riley, who studied french and english societies (1986), found that immigrant families who deal with the matter of language maintenance will usually face a number of problems. in many cases, the mother tongue of the family is not considered as ‘a high status foreign language’, so this family obviously concentrates more on the dominant language in the society. additionally, if parents do not maintain the bilingualism of their children, in a short time their children will lose their mother tongue. harding and riley 74 international journal of education, vol. 5, no. 1, november 2010 (1986) suggested that there is no basis for the belief that certain languages are better and more prestigious that others, which is why parents should make any efforts to maintain their children’s primary language. hence, no parents will say “we tried bilingualism, but it didn’t work” (p.79). it was suggested by rohani et al. (2005) that attitudes and actions within the family had a significant influence on the maintenance of the mother tongue. in their research, rohani at al. (2005) found that the role of family in language maintenance was both explicit, through purposeful actions intended to help children learn and maintain their language, and implicit, such as the language environment of the home or through access to greater communities of first language speakers. chapter 3: methodology 2.1. subjects the participants of the study were only one family of indonesian students, consisting of a 35-year-old mother with 6 and 8-year-old sons. the reason why the mother was chosen is “because they are considered as repositories of culture and responsible for the maintenance of tradition and language” (kuncha & bathula, 2004, p.3). both children attend an australian public school. the request of this family was that if they were interviewed, the names of the family would not be mentioned. this study will use the terms ‘mrs. p’ for the mother, ‘a’ for the first son and ‘b’ for the second son. this family actually came from different language backgrounds. the father came from east kalimantan (borneo island) and the mother came from yogyakarta (java island). they worked in south kalimantan. both parents speak their own dialects and bahasa indonesia. so, they communicate by using bahasa indonesa. (moreover, the community of south kalimantan speaks a different dialect from the one of east kalimantan.) consequently, the only language that the children use to communicate with their parents and other people is bahasa indonesia. 2.2. method of data collection and analysis creswell (2005) stated that a qualitative method is believed superior for this type of study because its approach recognizes that reality is socially and subjectively constructed rather than being determined objectively. based on creswell’s statement, the present study was conducted using the qualitative method. in term of educational research, creswell (2005, p.39) mentioned more specifically that qualitative research is: “a type of educational research in which the researcher relies on the views of participants, asks broad, general questions, collects data consisting largely of words (or text) from participants, describes and analysis these words for themes, and conducts the inquiry in a subjective biased manner”. since this study is a qualitative study, the emphasis is on gathering rich information about a small number lilis ummi fa’iezah, how parents foster bilingualism in the family 75 of people or organizations rather than a limited amount of information about a large number of people or organizations (creswell, 2005; cohen, 2005). the case study method was used for this study because it offered a method to observe phenomena in detail and was relatively unencumbered by theoretical bias (cohen, 2004). the interpretive method would also be carried out in this study since the writer constructed the meaning of the data based upon her interpretation and knowledge (creswell, 2005). this method allowed the writer to produce descriptive data that is the result of the written or spoken words of the participants and other observable data resources (taylor and bogdan, 1998). this study incorporated two types of data collection: interviews and observations. in this study, the open-ended interview was used. creswell (2005, p.214) noticed that by using the open-ended interview “the participant can best voice their experiences unconstrained by any perspectives of the researchers or past research findings”. it meant that the mother had maximum freedom to express her opinions. the interview was tape-recorded. the record was later transcribed into english. the children were observed only to avoid making them feel uncomfortable with the interview situation. in this study, the writer positioned herself as a non-participant observer: she conducted an observation without being part of it (cohen at al., 2004). the specific content of the observation was focused on the children’s actual behavior in various conversations, such as conversations with each other, peers, other people and their mother. the writer answered the research questions based on those interviews and observation data. 1.3. procedure the writer conducted the interview with the mother in her house. this interview was done in bahasa indonesia and in bahasa indonesia gaul (colloquial language). sometimes, we used the javanese language into our conversation because both of us came from the same region in indonesia. all the interview data was tape-recorded. the writer also did telephone and e-mail interviews to get the addition information that was needed. all the interview data was transcribed into bahasa indonesia and then translated into english. the observations were conducted on different occasions, which approximately took 20-30 minutes each. it also depended on the appointments with mrs. p. in answering the questions, the writer used her interpretation and knowledge, which are supported by the observation data available. 1.4. limitation of the research. firstly, the interviews were conducted using bahasa indonesia, bahasa indonesia gaul (colloquial language) and javanese dialect. the data were transcribed into bahasa indonesia and then translated into english. this meant that some meanings might have been lost in the process of translation. 76 international journal of education, vol. 5, no. 1, november 2010 however, using bahasa indonesia was the request of the mother as the respondent of this study. the mother said that she could voice out her ideas more clearly and comfortably by using bahasa indonesia. although it took a long time, after the process of the data transcription, the writer translated the bahasa indonesian transcription into english. secondly, due to the limited time available, the writer only interviewed one family to get the data. this study would have been richer if the interviewed was carried out with more than one family. thirdly, in this study, the writer positioned herself as a non-participant observer only to keep the children comfortable. this study would have been better if the writer could have positioned herself as part of those children’s activities (participant observer) such as playing with them, so richer data could have been gathered. chapter 4: findings 4.1. mrs. p’s family two years ago, mrs. p’s family moved to australia for study reasons. mr. p has a scholarship to study in an australian university for four years. mr. p spends time in the university laboratory. he goes to the university in the morning and comes home at night. mrs. p is a housewife. she works parttime to earn some money. she also takes an english course at tafe to kill time and to improve her english. according to the writer, her english is good. in daily activities, mrs. p takes more responsibility for her sons because her husband is busy. the children spend most of their time with their mother, except at weekends when their father stays at home. at weekends, they go to church or go shopping together. the children, a and b, go to a government school which is not too far from their house. it takes only 10 minutes for mrs. p to bring the children to school by car. after dropping the children at school, mrs. p still has time to reach her workplace or her english course. she does this activity every day except on school holidays. 4.2. attitudes towards bahasa indonesia and english after six months of living in australia, the children acquired english fluently because they learnt it at school. at first, mrs. p felt amazed to see how quickly their children acquired the language even from day one at school. “i could not believe when they went back from their school and they said ‘mommy, how are you?’ and ‘mommy, i am hungry’. i was very happy at that time. i meant they learnt english well. in the following day when i dropped them school, they said ‘speak english mom … it is at school’. they wanted me to speak english only at their school area …” at around 12 months, mrs. p realized that their children spoke english almost all the time at home. they still spoke bahasa indonesia especially with their parents. they lilis ummi fa’iezah, how parents foster bilingualism in the family 77 spoke more english each other and their friends around the house. mrs. p sometimes listened to the children’s conversation, which used english. even, mrs. p learnt how to speak english from them. “honestly, at the beginning i thought if their english was good they could easily deal with all their school activities. they could do their homeworks or story telling that acquired them to speak english. i could also learn how to speak english from them”. mrs. p was happy because she knew that english is essential for her children to face today’s world. so, she encouraged her children to learn english and spoke english all the time. english was also important for their children because they lived in australia. “i think english is important because they live in australia. when we go back to indonesia, i do not need to put them in the english course after school because they already know it. they will get jobs easier someday when they are growing, if they know english very well”. mrs. p then realized that her children were increasingly reluctant to speak bahasa indonesia at home. the children then started speaking bahasa indonesia only with their parents. at that time, mrs. p became conscious that her children someday will lose their bahasa indonesia, but they need to go back to indonesia soon after mr. p finishes his study. mrs. p subsequently realized how important bahasa indonesia for her children was, thus she encouraged the children to speak bahasa indonesia but did not force them to. “at that time, i started thinking that my kids will not be able to speak bahasa indonesia anymore. when they go back to indonesia, they will have trouble. i then started asking them to use bahasa indonesia at home but i was not angry if they refused to. they wanted to speak it with me or their father but not with each other. if i heard they speak english, i reminded them to speak bahasa indonesia”. mrs. p said that there is no international school in kalimantan; consequently, the children will go to the government school which uses bahasa indonesia as the language of instruction. mrs. p then started thinking about maintaining their children’s original language. “the children will go to government school. there is no international school in kalimantan. they will use bahasa indonesia at school. if they still don’t understand bahasa indonesia they will only get little trouble. yeah … they may need to learn how to speak and write”. 4.3. the parents’ strategy mrs. p’s efforts were working in the beginning, but later the children only spoke bahasa indonesia with each other when they were around their parents. when the children thought their parents could not hear their conversation they used english. 78 international journal of education, vol. 5, no. 1, november 2010 “they spoke bahasa indonesia when they are around me. if they were far, they spoke english. they thought i couldn’t hear them. sometimes they just whispered each other when they were around me. i knew they spoke english”. mrs. p kept speaking bahasa indonesia to them and reminded them to do that as well although they became sad and sometimes refused to speak. realizing this, mrs. p did not force them to speak bahasa indonesia but she still kept speaking it to them. she just encouraged the children to speak bahasa indonesia, even if only a few words. “i reminded them to speak bahasa indonesia although only to speak one or two words. for example, i asked one of them to return a book to my neighbor, i gave him a message such as “say ‘buku dari mama, terima kasih’” (this book is from my mom, thank you). she believed that although the children could not speak bahasa indonesia, they still could understand it if they heard it frequently. “they talked, laughed each other, but when suddenly i came they stopped talking. they looked sad. i did not ask or force them to use bahasa indonesia but i kept using it while speaking with them. i believed that if they could still answer me, it meant they understood”. one morning, the writer came to mrs. p’s house. that time was a school holiday so mrs. p’s children were at home. when the writer spoke to one of mrs. p’s sons (a), he replied in english. the writer knew that he really understood that the writer wanted to meet his mother even if the writer used bahasa indonesia gaul (the colloquial language). q: apa kabar, a? (how are you, a?) a: i am good. q: mama nggak pergi kan? (mom is at home, isn’t?) a: yeah ... she’s at home. q: mama lagi ngapain? (what is your mom doing?) a: she’s just reading, i’ll tell her that you’re coming. the writer came again to the family’s house on another day. they were preparing to go swimming. mrs. p asked me to come with them to the swimming pool. b was not ready at that time because he was still looking for something when finally he asked his mom about it. mrs. p sometimes pretended that she did not understand what her children meant in english, in order to make her children use bahasa indonesia. b: mom, where is my goggles? mrs. p : apa itu goggle, mama nggak tau? (what are goggles, i don’t know?) b: my goggles. mrs. p: iya, mama nggak tau, bahasa indonesianya apa? (i don’t know, what is it in bahasa indonesia?) b: kaca mata for berenang. (glasses for swimming.) mrs.p: nih… pakai bahasa indonesialah, jadinya mama tau. (here it is ... you are supposed to use bahasa indonesia so i know what you mean.) b: yeah …yeah … whatever. lilis ummi fa’iezah, how parents foster bilingualism in the family 79 4.4. the parents’ efforts until now, mrs. p has used ‘speaking bahasa indonesia’ at home as the ‘unwritten rule’ for the family, although in fact only she and her husband speak it to the children, whereas the children reply it by using english. “i use bahasa indonesia always at home. no english at all to speak with the children. it is difficult and almost impossible to ask them to speak bahasa indonesia because they reply my words in english”. since this family is a religious family, they go to the church every sunday afternoon. they choose the church that provides the bahasa indonesia service for indonesian people. in the church, they meet other indonesian families. they speak bahasa indonesia there. unfortunately, the majority of children in that church service use english. a and b speak english with their friends there. mrs p. says that since the service is in bahasa indonesia, at least the children also listen to material which is explained in bahasa indonesia. “i bring them to the indonesian community church. they sit down listening to someone who is talking in bahasa indonesia. in the rest time, they play with all indonesian kids, they use english. if they speak with their friends, it is not easy to remind them to use bahasa indonesia”. when the writer came at night recently, this family was reading the bible together. the writer saw that the children listened to their parents talking about the bible story, which was explained in bahasa indonesia. they laughed when their parents told funny stories. their expressions showed that they understood about what their parents were explaining. this family also put the children in indonesian class every saturday which is located in the indonesian consulate. some australian children who like to learn bahasa indonesia and gamelan (indonesian musical instruments) come to this class. in this class, they are taught to understand indonesian culture as well. according to mrs. p, in the class their teachers always encourage the children to speak bahasa indonesia but after the class ends, they speak english again with other children. that evening, the writer came with mrs. p, a and b to the indonesian consulate. while they learnt bahasa indonesia, the writer and mrs. p were waiting in the parking area which was used by children to play during recess. when recess came, the children played in the car park area. the writer saw that no children spoke bahasa indonesia at that time. mrs. p said: “i put them there so they can learn bahasa indonesia, but everybody spoke english. moreover, some of their friends are australian, so they speak english outside the classroom”. although every month this family attends the indonesian community meeting, the children are still reluctant to use bahasa indonesia. it is more difficult to ask them to speak bahasa indonesia because almost no 80 international journal of education, vol. 5, no. 1, november 2010 indonesian children speak bahasa indonesia except the children who have just come to australia. mrs. p said that usually the new children will remain quiet at first. they start talking to friends when they start acquiring e “my family sometimes comes to visit friends or some friends come to our house. we talk in bahasa indonesia but the children speak english. last time a new friend just came from indonesia, he brought his children. the children couldn’t speak english yet so, they just kept quiet. when we met those children again, they already spoke with our children in english”. when mrs. p went back to indonesia with her family during the school holidays, last december, for about six weeks, she said that the children were easily involved in the family activities because they understand bahasa indonesia. at first, a and b just didn’t say a single word in bahasa indonesia because it was difficult for them to do that. they gradually spoke bahasa indonesia although the very simply. based on her experiences with the children showing they can easily speak bahasa indonesia after they had been in indonesia for a short time, mrs. p said that she will continue speaking it to help her children understand it. “yeah … at the beginning they kept silent, after that they spoke the simplest sentences such as ‘kamu mau main?’ (do you want to play?), ‘saya lapar’ (i am hungry), ‘boleh pinjam sepeda?’ (can i borrow your bike?). i think, if they still understand bahasa indonesia, they can adjust themselves easily when they go back to indonesia. so i keep speaking bahasa indonesia at home”. 4.5. the difficulty of maintenance. one afternoon when the writer came to mrs. p’s house, there were some indonesian children there. they were the indonesian children who are in the same class with mrs. p’s children. those children were playing ‘yo-gioh’ cards which are popular among children. all of them communicated in english. mrs. p said to me: “… look, it is so difficult, isn’t it. i ask them to use bahasa indonesia, but their ‘environment’ forces them to speak english”. more specifically, mrs. p said that since the children also need english skills to deal with school work, they depend more on english. homework, reading tasks, conversation with friends and teachers et cetera require them to be familiar with english. in addition, mrs. p said that television programs, school activities, and peers have greater influence than the home situation does on the development of her children’s english language skills. her controls are difficult to apply. moreover, mrs. p has her own activities, so she cannot devote all her time to maintain her children primary language. “… my children like cartoon films, i have no indonesian films here. everything on tv is in english …” lilis ummi fa’iezah, how parents foster bilingualism in the family 81 chapter 5: discussion from mrs. p’s explanations, there is evidence of a conflict between wishing her children become expert in english, while at the same time wanting them to be proficient as well in their mother tongue. on one hand, parents believe that mastering english is very important for their children in today’s world, especially for their future careers. on the other hand, it is also important to maintain the children’s mother tongue because they will go back to their home country. however, the reluctance of children to speak the mother tongue cannot be separated from the dominant influence of the majority language which is used by a community (bhela, 2003). moreover, children at their age are not secure yet with their mother tongue so they probably shift to the language which has more influence in their lives (fillmore, 1991). it is clear from mrs. p’s comments that first of all she shows a positive attitude toward english. mrs. p is very happy and proud because her children can acquire fluent english. she thinks that english can give an advantage not only to her children but also to her. she can learn english from her children. but her attitude toward english became less positive when she realized that her children are reluctant to use bahasa indonesia. as suggested by kuncha and bathula (2004), ‘necessity and pride’ have been two influencing factors on language shift. some researchers (harding and riley, 1986; rohani et al., 2005) also remarked that positive attitudes toward english can speed up the language shift into english. before realizing that her children showed increasing reluctance to speak bahasa indonesia, mrs. p’s attitudes towards bahasa indonesia were less positive. this situation caused less use of bahasa indonesia by the family. harding and riley (1986) said that “if a language no longer serves the child’s communicative needs, he will not use it and if he doesn’t use it he will forget it, quickly and completely” (p.41). since mrs. p realized that her children could forget bahasa indonesia, she then managed to maintain it. mrs. p encourages her children to acquire fluent english while at the same time they understand bahasa indonesia as well. mr. p makes any attempts to make the children use bahasa indonesia at home. the p family uses bahasa indonesia as the ‘home language’. more importantly, this family also reminds the children to speak bahasa indonesia if they use english at home. the use of bahasa indonesia at home is in line with what rohani at al. (2005) said: that if it is hoped to maintain a language, that language must be integrated into the home environment. this means parents should be able to offer and include children in their everyday interaction (fillmore, 1991). there is some evidence in this study, from the interviews with mrs. p, that show the efforts made by this family to maintain the mother tongue of her children. mrs p believes that efforts such as speaking bahasa indonesia at home, attending some indonesian 82 international journal of education, vol. 5, no. 1, november 2010 events, and visiting indonesia can increase the use of bahasa indonesia by her children. although these efforts are not effective enough, since the children only understand bahasa indonesia without being able to speak or write it, at least they can frequently hear people speaking bahasa indonesia. although this family cannot bring the children to be completely bilingual, mrs. p can successfully develop receptive bilingualism for her children (harding and riley, 1986). according to harding and riley (1986), mrs. p’s children could acquire bahasa indonesia easily when they go back to indonesia because basically they already have a good understanding of it. according to mrs. p, there are some serious problems arising from their efforts to maintain her children’s original language. firstly, the position of english as the dominant language in the community and the instruction of language at school make the children feel that without english they will not be able to participate at school and in community activities. it is true that language is a powerful influence upon young children soon after entering english-speaking classrooms (fillmore, 1991). secondly, young children cannot be separated from their peers and friends. children need to know english if they want to be accepted by their friends (bosemark, 1998). bosemark (1998) stated that there are no language teachers who are better than other children or one’s own peers. thirdly, it is not easy to find books and television programs that use bahasa indonesia. it may be beyond mrs. p’s imagination to go back to or find books for her children in her home country. in fact, television programs and books cannot be separated from the lifestyle of children. harding and riley (1986) stressed that “if the language is ‘rare’, acquiring even the simplest of materials can be difficult ...” (p.78). chapter 6: conclusion this study reveals how an indonesian mother who has been living in australia for a few years struggles to maintain her children’s mother tongue, since she and her family plan to go back to indonesia soon after her husband finishes study. a dilemma arises when on one hand she wants her children acquire fluent english, which is good for their future careers in indonesia, whereas on the other hand she also wants her children to acquire bahasa indonesia because they will go back to indonesia. parents need to make an effort to maintain their children’s language skills. efforts such as using the mother tongue as the home language may be a good way to foster the children’s use of it. children perhaps cannot speak or write bahasa indonesia, but at least they can understand it. so, this can help the children re-learn bahasa indonesia because basically they have a good understanding of it. this study contributes to the general understanding of the problems which may be faced by indonesian families regarding the maintenance of their children’s mother tongue. from one point of view, raising children to be bilingual is not easy. there are many lilis ummi fa’iezah, how parents foster bilingualism in the family 83 forces from the dominant language community that make the children forget their mother tongue. although it is good to maintain the children’s mother tongue, in fact it is also not easy. perhaps parent can do the best by defending against the loss of their children’s mother tongue. references baker, c. 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(2004). language maintenance, language shift, and reversing langguage shift. in bhatia, t. k. and ritchie, w. c. (eds.), the handbook of bilingualism (pp.406-436). australia: blackwell publishing ltd. harding, e. and riley, p (1986). the bilingual family; a handbook for parents. cambridge: cambridge university press. hoffman, c. (1991). an introduction to bilingualism. london: longman. kuncha, r. m. & bathula, h. (2004). the role of attitudes in language shift and language maintenance in a new immigrant community: a case study. working paper no. 1. retrieved from http://www. crie.org_nz/research_paper/ research.html nicoladis, e. and grabois, h. (2002). learning english and losing chinese: a case study of a child adopted from china. international journal of bilingualism, 14, 442-457. rohani, s., choi, c., amjad, r. n., burnett, c., and colahan, c. (2005). language maintenance and the role of the family amongst immigrant groups in the united states: persian-speaking baha’is, cantonese, urdu, spanish and japanese: an exploratory study. center for multiple languages and literacy. department of international and transcultural studies. retrieved october 9, 2006 from www.tc.columbia.edu/i/ a/3280_language maintenance andtheroleofthefamily.pdf 84 international journal of education, vol. 5, no. 1, november 2010 romaine (1999). bilingualism. england: blackwell publishing. siegel, s. y. (2004). a case study of one japanese heritage language program in arizona. bilingual research journal, 28(1), 123135. taylor, s.j. and bogdan, r. 1998, introduction to qualitative research methods, usa: john wiley database connection failed! international journal of education vol. 10 no. 1, august 2017, pp. 46-52 ©2017 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v10i1.5566 46 the use of quantitative research method and statistical data analysis in dissertation: an evaluation study disman; mohammad ali; m. syaom barliana school of postgraduates studies, universitas pendidikan indonesia, disman@upi.edu; aombarli@upi.edu; emaa.laith@upi.edu first draft received: 3 february 2017 final proof received: 26 august 2017 abstract writing a dissertation is one of the requirements every postgraduate student has to accomplish in completing his/her doctorate program; and it is written based on research. this study addresses the problem concerning the pattern of weaknesses in the students’ research, particularly related to the use of research and statistical methods. its objectives are to explore the weakness pattern of their research method and statistical data processing and analyze various causes of the pattern. the study is focused on the dissertations written by universitas pendidikan indonesia’s school of postgraduate studies’ students that used a quantitative approach based on the review undertaken by the school’s commission from academic year 2012/2013 to 2013/2014. the study employed a qualitative approach and data analysis was done by using logical analysis of the review results. findings of the study indicate there are various weaknesses in the students’ dissertations, particularly related to the way of thinking and inappropriate use of research method and statistical method. inappropriate population, bias sampling technique, and inappropriate data analysis process and hypothesis testing are also found in the dissertations. keywords: dissertation quality; application of research and statistical methods. to cite this paper (in apa style): disman, ali, m., & barliana, s. m. (2017). the use of quantitative research method and statistical data analysis in dissertation: an evaluation study. international journal of education, 10(1), 46-52. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v10i1.5566 introduction the ability of writing an academic paper plays an important role in deciding the educational success of a person, starting from basic education level through university level. at the university level, writing an academic paper has become the requirement of one’s graduation. the increasing ability to write an academic paper for every university student becomes very important to develop academic thinking skill (bizzell, 1992). to those who will become an expert in a particular field, academic writing ability is very crucial, including writing and publishing article, writing and publishing book, writing and presenting conference paper, and conducting scientific research (hyland, 2002). in fact, most of the students in the bachelor, master’s and doctoral degrees programs in indonesian universities, including those of the universitas pendidikan indonesia’s school of postgraduate studies, are having difficulties in conducting research, reporting the research results, and writing an academic article based on the research. the observation result shows many of them are unable to do apply writing behaviors, so the ability in doing and reporting research, researching, and writing an academic article still does not meet the expectation. writing a thesis and dissertation is definitely such a tough process to be through that even most of the writers call the process as a “roller coaster journey” (roberts, 2004). with the exact ups and downs in each phase of the writing processes, writing indeed becomes a difficulty for college students. data showed that more than half of college students in the us who took doctoral degree ended up with a drop out (cantor, 1993; roberts, 2004). they had finished all the subjects, but they could not accomplish the last requirement of the doctoral program. based on this fact, the phrase abd (all but dissertation) appears for those who could not finish their dissertation (brause, 2000; roberts, 2004). the success of the college students who study at the school of postgraduate studies (sps) of universitas pendidikan indonesia (upi), especially those who undertake doctoral education program is determined by the accomplishment of writing a dissertation. the quality of a dissertation does not only increase self-impression of the graduates, but also the institution. one of the strategic efforts that have been made by upi, in this case, is forming a commission of upi’s sps, whose job is to review dissertations, give recommendations to the school of post-graduate studies, and assess students’ exams. the main duty of the commission is to do an assessment on the substantial, methodological, and technical aspects of the dissertation as well as mailto:aombarli@upi.edu disman, ali, m., & barliana, s. m. the use of quantitative research method and statistical data analysis in dissertation: an evaluation study classrooms 47 making recommendations for the doctoral students who are supervised by the supervisors (promotors). from 2012 to 2013, the commission had done a very professional job and reported various minor errors and weaknesses of the dissertations reviewed. the commission’s findings became important information for identifying every aspect of students’ dissertations’ weaknesses. based on the information, the present study made a review and analysis of the quality of the doctoral students’ dissertations. the main focus of this research is on the problems related to the use of research method and quantitative data analysis in the students’ dissertations which were written based on the quantitative approach. previous research on a similar topic has been conducted by fitt, walker, and leary (2009) and fitt (2011), focusing on the literature review in doctoral dissertations in instructional technology. the objective of this research is, therefore, to discover the common weaknesses and strengths of the dissertations written by students as well as their influencing factors. the research is done to the dissertations reviewed by the commissions from 2012 to 2014, employing quantitative research. literature review writing any text, including academic writing, reflects the creativity of the writer (roberts, 2004; glatthorn & joyner, 2005; kamler & thomson, 2006; thody, 2006). the creativity should be constructed by finding ideas, assuming the problems until the project is starting, and writing an academic article. writing is not only about picturing the process of writing ideas in the form of words, but also picturing the “entire event” of research processes, starting from initiating an idea to zero drafting (bolker, 1998). generally, a thesis or a dissertation should have a relevant literature review, the past research paper’s description, the upcoming result as well as discussion, and conclusion and suggestion for the next research (phillips & pugh, 1994). according to (phillips & pugh, 1994), thesis and dissertation have the following contents, i.e., introduction, literature review, method, result, discussion, and conclusions. the research method is a part of the content that demonstrates the research validity. research method describes methodology, content, and research procedures in details (hamilton & clare, 2003:12). the research methodology is important for illustrating a comprehensive, consistent, and accurate procedure of research, in order to give the other researchers a replication about the way data was analyzed (calabrese, 2006). the researcher reports what was happening on the research, including: settings ( the place where the research took place); participants (research correspondents); methods (research method); data collection (how data were collected), and; data analysis (how data were analyzed). the research methodology includes primary data or voice/textual reports of research methods and secondary data from other sources to justify that the method is suitable to the research and another trusted research (thody, 2006). according to hamilton and clare (2003), research methodology should have research design which covers research plan; research participants, and how they are selected; ethics approval (if necessary); detailed procedures of the research data; and how data are collected, processed, analyzed, and constructed. research result is the main part of a piece of research. here, a dissertation with or without research will be easily differentiated (allison & race, 2004). in this essential part, a researcher is supposed to be concerned about the background problem, hypothesis, and theoretical literature behind the research. it is mainly needed to integrate and relate the research results, background theory, and research methodology. that is why, research result is essential in drawing a conclusion so that the whole arguments of the research are relevant (thomas & brubaker, 2000). the objective and function of the research result are to demonstrate the quantitative data and findings as comprehensively as possible. it is essential to initiate the research data planning. the data have to be crucially based on what is happening in the research as the consequence of the research procedure used. data ought to be presented logically and be understandable for the reader. data are mainly the recapitulation of the image. when data are presented systematically, they give clear information to the reader. therefore, the ways of presenting data are based on the way data are collected or based on the research questions (thomas & brubaker, 2000; paltridge & stairfield, 2007). evans and gruba (2002), hamilton and clare (2003), glatthorn and joyner (2005) stated that, first, data should be presented in a clear and comprehensive way by orderly arranging the data according to research problems; for example, research questions, hypothesis, research objective or research theme; presenting the data by subheadings; and using visual aids such as table, figure, diagram, model, or graphs, diagram, model, graph for summarizing data. second, data should not be confusing. once data are presented, the writer should make a comment and integrate the data with previous research. third, a successful dissertation has these following attributes: there are well-presented table/s and figure/s, comprehensive data on the important points, logically presented data, and systematic data arrangement. fourth, a good dissertation should sufficiently put the data on the appendix so the reader, who would like to, will know how data are collected. for example, the researcher saves the interview transcripts in the appendix to show the relationship with the summary of the interview. research discussion is the most important aspect of the dissertation, written accordingly based on the research result. research discussion is the comprehensive explanation of background theory of literature review and the whole research. according to thomas & brubaker (2000), research discussion is the further explanation of theory and implication of the research result for an evaluative and integrated result. research discussion refers to the interpretation and significance of research results. data show what is happening in the research, and discussion shows the meaning behind the collected data. data sum the effect, while discussion explains international journal of education vol. 10 no. 1, august 2017, pp. 46-52 ©2017 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v10i1.5566 48 the effect (hart, 2005). data are a required aspect of answering the research questions. explaining the research data is the most difficult thing college students would think. it is because the tension of rational part and creative part of the brain will be very clear during comparing the research result and hypothetical theory (evan & gruba, 2002). despite the data being presented, this part is more evaluative and integrative at how good the researcher supports the hypothesis to answer the research question (thomas & brubaker, 2000). at the end, a dissertation has become the monumental piece of someone in his/her professional career. this is why assessing the quality of dissertations has been tremendously discussed. pros and cons about the indicators of a quality dissertation cannot be avoided. lovitts (2005) has done research from 2003-2004 involving 276 lecturers from 74 departments with 10 different disciplines in 9 universities in order to arrange the categories of dissertation, namely outstanding, very good, acceptable, and unacceptable. the arrangement of the indicators is actually to show the expectation of the lecturers. what practitioners should subsequently do is translating the expectations into a form of rubric of criteria of each dimension of dissertation in detail. these are the references being used for analyzing the dissertation quality in this study. method the research applied a qualitative approach, focusing on the process and meaning. through this research, qualitative information from descriptive analysis can explain the tendency, ways of thinking, and irregularities of the dissertations. constructivist philosophy, on which the study is based, assumes that facts show the plural dimensions, interactions, and exchanges of social experiences. the analytical descriptive design was used in this research, which involved ontological activities. this research emphasizes the real picture of the dissertation in order to support the data presentation. the qualitative design is considered more appropriate because dissertation quality is essentially something plural and multi-perspectives. this design can show the relationship between the researcher and the respondents to find the meaning of the research. the data as the proof are the main part of the study. yin (2011) explained that data are the smallest or lowest entities or recorded elements resulting from some experience, observation, experiment, or other similar situation. therefore, data is the smallest element of the experiences, observations, trial and error. based on the definition, data in the forms of documents, situations, and occasions were assessed by the commission of upi’s post-graduate studies. consequently, the main data resources of this qualitative research are comprehensive words, actions, and additional data as complement. the main data resource is the reviewers of the commission of upi’s post-graduate studies. the secondary data are the reviews of 106 dissertations written by doctoral students of the study programs of: social science (6), guidance and counseling (12), bahasa indonesia (8), english language (5), curriculum development (7), out of school education (9); education administration (27), natural sciences (7), physical education (1), mathematics (9), general education (10), value education (2), and technical and vocational education (3). in accordance with the main objective of the research, the data collected are ultimately focused on the quantitative research methodology used in the dissertations. this means the data were mainly related to research design, validity, experimental design, and analysis. the analytical data usually are related to the hypothesis testing, assumptions, and research result presentation. the researchers in this qualitative research act as the human instrument who explore data and select facts and information as needed for adaptability, responsibility, knowledge, and capability to handle the sensitivity, to identify the problems, to clarify and arrange the summary, and to explore and analyze the special response (cohen, manion, and morrison, 2007). the researchers were involved directly in the reviews of the dissertations provided by the commission. table 1 displays the instrument used as the analytical guidance on the use of research methodology in dissertation using the quantitative approach with hypothetical and/or inferential statistics. the analysis was done using the model of interactive analysis (miles &huberman, 1984). this model has three components, namely data reduction, data presentation, and verification. these components are interactive and continuous, forming a cycle. the analysis procedures can be explained as follow. data reduction: the researchers resume, consider the essential things, focusing only on the important parts, and find a theme and pattern of the weaknesses of the dissertations found by the commission. the researchers arrange the data at a glance. data presentation: in this component, the researchers reduce the in-hand information from the first procedure and present the narrative texts based on the common weaknesses of the dissertations found. in this procedure, the researchers only arrange the data at a glance. verification: the researchers elaborate the research focus in detail and do deeper analysis until the conclusion about the common weaknesses of the dissertations is drawn. disman, ali, m., & barliana, s. m. the use of quantitative research method and statistical data analysis in dissertation: an evaluation study classrooms 49 table 1 a guide to analyze the dissertations research question indicator question item methodology appropriate methodology 1. the research methodology is appropriate for the research problem 2. methodology involves types of research 3. clear reasons behind the use of research methodology 4. clear form of research procedure unit analysis appropriate unit analysis 1. the decision of unit analysis is appropriate with the research problem 2. the decision of unit analysis is appropriate with the problem of organization, group, or individual object and subject of the research the decision of object and subject of the research 1. the appropriateness of deciding the object of the research 2. the appropriateness of deciding the subject of the research sample and population appropriate sample and population 1. appropriate decision of research population 2. appropriate decision of research sample sampling sampling technique is clearly emphasized 1. clear reason behind the decision of sampling 2. appropriate decision of sampling technique (probability and non-probability) 3. the reason of sampling technique is clearly emphasized 4. the sampling procedures are clearly explained variable operational of the research precise variable operational of the research 1. research concept is defined as the theoretical review 2. appropriate variable decision through clear indicators 3. the indicator is taken from trusted theoretical resources research instrument appropriate decision of the research instrument 1. appropriateness of research instrument with research problem and methodology 2. type, reason, and developmental procedure of research instrument are described clearly 3. the main instrument is supposed to act as human instrument 4. instruments can collect quantitative data research validity and reliability research validity and reliability is clearly reported. 5. whether instrument is being tested for the validity and reliability 6. whether validity and reliability are tested appropriately 7. whether the statistical decision is appropriate validity and reliability instrument validity and reliability instrument is clearly reported 1. validity and reliability testing 2. validity and reliability properly tested 3. appropriate decision of statistical literature statistical hypothesis change research hypothesis into statistical hypothesis 1. is there any statistical hypothesis? 2. is the hypothesis appropriate with the theory? 3. is the hypothesis appropriate? analytical data technique presents the validity and appropriateness of the analytical data technique 1. appropriate steps of considering the technique of data analysis 2. appropriate use of analytical technique of the descriptive research 3. appropriate testing of the hypothesis presents the validity and appropriateness of statistical inferential technique 1. proper decision of statistical test in correlation with the theory 2. proper decision of statistical test based on the scale variable 3. appropriate testing of the statistics based on the structural equation 4. appropriate testing approach based on parametric or nonparametric statistics 5. appropriate statistical testing based on the characteristics of the variable 6. proper decision on the significance test 7. proper decision on the assumption of the parametric statistics 8. proper explanation of statistical testing international journal of education vol. 10 no. 1, august 2017, pp. 46-52 ©2017 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v10i1.5566 50 research results and discussion the analysis of research methodology and statistical data processing for dissertations with quantitative research, the commission’s review results show the types of fundamental weaknesses in the elaboration of research methodology related to the main issues of data analysis about the research design, research result validity, threats to validity, randomization, experimental research, and units of data analysis. meanwhile, the data analysis is related to the hypotheses, hypothesis testing, the assumptions of hypothesis testing technique, and the elaboration of analytical research data of the dissertation. the weakness in deciding research method, data analysis units, population, sample, and sampling technique. the description of the research methodology is only concerned with definition. meanwhile, it supposed to describe the reason and how the methodology is used. furthermore, population and sample of the research do not consider data units; many kinds of data resources are selected without clear reasons; improper sampling technique; unreasonable sampling criteria; unrepresentative sampling to the population; unreasonable sampling technique; inappropriate methodology; illogical research population; error of sampling technique; inappropriate target and accessible population; incomplete explanation about sampling composition; and unclear data collection. the debatability of the statistical data analysis method used. the weaknesses found in this area include: improper data analysis technique, incomplete data analysis, irrelevancy between hypothesis formulation and statistical hypothesis, too many hypotheses, irrelevant statistical method, the use of unrealistic research methodology, weakness in data analysis technique related to the research question(s), improper hypothesis testing technique, unclear contribution of the research result, research on model instruction is not completed with the explanation of the essential model, improper statistical assumption, statistical assumption is only normality and linear testing when non-linear testing is needed. in addition, other errors found include: at the testing of double regression and structural equation modelling (sem), the statistical assumption is not properly applied which makes the requirement wrong: multicollinearity, heteroscedasticity, autocorrelation; improper use of variable analysis; elaboration of the hypothesis testing is used to differ the correlations, determinations, and coefficient analysis; improper decision about hypothesis testing using double regression and path analyses; and insufficient knowledge about regression testing and path analysis. discussion the research results show that the definition of research methodology is mostly given in the dissertations using quantitative research method; however, the dissertations mostly do not explain about what, how, and why the methodology is used. in addition, the postgraduate students are unaware of the research approach and methodology, so they misunderstand the definition. research methodology refers to how the formation and procedure of the research are. broadly speaking, research methodology is the procedure of how to organize the problems in order to know the information as the solution of the problem. therefore, the methodology is an overall scientific procedure to find the solution of a problem. with those procedures, one can conduct the research as a continuation of the previous research methodology with similar objects and subjects and with the identical result. related to the research objects and subjects, units of data analysis, population and sample, sampling technique, and the research results, the postgraduate students do not properly differentiate between the research objects and subjects. these are considered as a weakness in the writing of the dissertation. research object is the variable to observe (borden and abbot, 2002). the observable phenomenon is represented by a concept or variable which is general and uses a certain testing or measurement as a continual process. variables are the important components in data presentation, problem questions, and representation of the certain concept and variable. some postgraduate students do not completely understand the object and subject of their research. in deciding the units of analysis, the students are unable to differentiate the units of analysis of individuals, groups, or organizations. for example, the unit of analysis of a piece of research is supposed to be at organization level, but the data are taken from the individuals or vice versa. this kind of error makes a dissertation becomes meaningless and rejected for national or international publication. meanwhile, the research subjects relate to the persons who are being investigated and the individuals as the units of analysis. the formulation of a research problem has to consider how to decide the units of analysis, for it will be related to the research design, data collection, and data analysis decision. the research is related to the perception or behavior of how data are taken, namely from individuals, groups, institutions, or organizations. the data collection is supposed be clear and relevant to the research participants. the unit of analysis is how the element is analyzed or the research element to be comprehended for a certain problem. the research subject is generally understood as individual, family, group, organization, and formal and informal structure. in research on organizational behavior, for example, there are three levels of analysis, i.e., individual level, group level, and organization level. the unit of analysis is important to draw conclusions. hence, when it is mistakenly decided, the conclusion becomes inappropriate. related to data resources, the weaknesses are found in how the students fail to provide reasonable explanations for selecting certain data resources. data resources should be related to the units of analysis. in deciding data resources, the students are frequently unaware of the percentages of the samples. population can be persons, or groupd of people, organizations, things, or objects. related to this, disman, ali, m., & barliana, s. m. the use of quantitative research method and statistical data analysis in dissertation: an evaluation study classrooms 51 weaknesses are discovered in the definition of the population and the sample. ideally, the population is the target of generalization. the population should be specified entirely. units of a population should be relevant to the specification set by the researcher(s). on the other hand, the sample refers to a part of the population realistically taken by using a certain technique. thus, to select the sample, theoretical definition should be discussed based on the operational definition obviously, the sampling problem can be solved using random sampling, but the post-graduate students in this research often assume that if random sampling is done, the research is basically on the track. meanwhile, to decide the sampling technique, a certain condition is required, such as research budget or other important considerations. in considering sampling technique, it is basically based on the probability or non-probability sample. it is based on the extent to which its generalization will go through and the research goals to be achieved. the probability sampling technique is used for the representative sample to a wider generalization, while the non-probability sample is used if the time, budget, and other components are to be considered instead of the generalization. another important aspect of quantitative research is the statistical data analysis as in regard to answering the research problem and testing the hypothesis. the statistical method is chosen for understanding the research data that leads to a proper conclusion. the research has found that the data analysis technique is misused. it is due to a lack of awareness in deciding the statistical method, the validity of research formation, measurement scale of the variable, and power-efficiency testing. hamilton and clare (2003) showed that research procedure is differentiated by causal research, that is the research that presents causes from certain problems (experimental or non– experimental study). correlational research is the research that presents essential variables that correlate other variables, and comparative research is the research that shows the difference of one group with another group of certain variables. statistical data analysis technique should be relevant to the research plan. the researcher is supposed to be aware of the research formation, sampling technique, and type of hypothesis, also the theory on which the research is based. it is essential to integrate and correlate the research result, descriptive result, and the hypothesis test. therefore, it is essential to acquire the conclusion so that the arguments of the research discussion will be relatively connected with the analysis (thomas & brubaker, 2000). the study implies the need for improving the quality of the dissertations written by upi postgraduate students by improving dissertation supervision, developing the capacity of the supervisor in quantitative research and academic writing and publication. hence, the students will be able to conduct quantitative research, report it, and write academic article(s) publishable by any reputable journals. it should be noted that the main weakness of this study is a lack of generalization due to the limited sample involved and the case study method employed. it is suggested, therefore, that the study needs to be repeated in other cases and/or in a wider scope by employing more samples selected from several universities, so the typical weaknesses in the postgraduate students’ dissertation can be identified. conclusions some of the weaknesses found in the dissertations written by upi’s post-graduate students which use quantitative research are found in how the researchers decide the research methodology and the reasons why they choose it. the weaknesses are also found in defining the research population and sample, considering the units of data analysis, using the sampling technique, defining sample size, and applying proper data collection technique(s). the statistical hypothesis testing and data analysis technique are found to be improper, too, as well as irrelevant statistical hypothesis, inappropriate hypothesis testing, ineffective contribution of research result to the theory, and improper use of the assumption of hypothetical testing. the final target of writing a dissertation is not only reporting research, but also writing for academic publication in any accredited national journal or in any indexed international journal. the findings confirm that improvement in dissertation writing is needed. therefore, it is recommended that the school of postgraduate studies of upi assign the supervisors of dissertation with expertise relevant to students’ dissertation topics, as shown also by the supervisors’ track records in academic publication. dissertation supervisors are also encouraged to always improve their knowledge capacity in terms of research methodology, quantitative data analysis, and supervisory service. the students, on the other hand, should also improve their capability in doing research and be eager to learn from articles published in the academic journals. references allison, b., & race, p., (2004). the student’s guides to preparing dissertations and theses. london: routledge. bizzell, p. (1992). academic discourse and critical consciousness. pittsburgh: university of pittsburgh press. bolker, j. (1998). writing your dissertation in fifteen minutes a day. new york: henry holt and company, llc. bordens, k. s., & abbot, b. b., (2002). research design and method: a process approach. san francisco: mcgraw hill. brause, s. r. (2000). writing your doctoral dissertation: invisible rules for success. london: falmer press. calabrese, r. l. (2006). the elements of an effective dissertation and thesis. a step-by-step guide to getting it right the first time. lanham, maryland: rowman and littlefield education. cantor, j. a. (1993). a guide to academic writing. westport, connecticut: greenwood press. international journal of education vol. 10 no. 1, august 2017, pp. 46-52 ©2017 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v10i1.5566 52 cohen, l., manion, l., & morrison, k (2007). research method in education. london: routledge palmer. evans, d., & gruba, p. (2002). how to write a better thesis. melbourne: melbourne university press. fitt, m. h., walker, a. e., & leary, h. m. (2009). assessing the quality of doctoral dissertation literature reviews in instructional technology. paper presented at the annual meeting of the american educational research association, san diego, ca. fitt, m. f. h. (2011). an investigation of the doctoral dissertation literature review: from the materials we use to prepare students to the materials that students prepare (dissertation, published). utah state university, usa. glatthorn, a.a., & joyner, r. l. (2005). writing the winning thesis or dissertation. thousand oaks, california: corwin press. hamilton, h., & clare, j. (2003). the shape and form of research writing. in j. clare., & h. hamilton. (2003). (editor). writing research. transforming data into text. london: churchill livingston. hart, c. (2005). doing your masters’ dissertation. london: sage publications ltd. hyland, k. (2002). teaching and researching writing. london: pearson education limited. kamler, b., & thomson, p. (2006). helping doctoral students write. pedagogies for supervision. oxon: routledge. lovitts, b. (2005). how to grade a dissertation. academe. national academy of engineering. miles, m. b. & huberman, a. m. (1984). qualitative data analysis: a sourcebook of new method. california: sage publishing. paltridge, b., & satrfield, s. (2007). thesis and dissertation writing in a second language. a hanbook for supervisors. london: routledge. roberts, c. m. (2004). the dissertation journey. a practical and comprehensive guide to planning, writing and defending your dissertation. thousand oaks, california: corwin press. thody, a. (2006). writing and presenting research. london: sage publications. thomas, r. m., & brubaker, d.l. (2000). theses and dissertation: a guide to planning, research, and writing. westport, connecticut: bergin and garvey. yin, r. k. (2011). applications of case study research. 2nd edition. newbury park, california: sage publications. international journal of education vol. 10 no. 2, february 2018, pp. 88-94 ©2018 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: http://dx.doi.org/ 88 perceptions and practices of efl teachers in implementing active learning in english classes: the case of three selected secondary schools in dawro zone, snnprs, ethiopia mebratu mulatu, woldemariam bezabih hawassa university, ethiopia mebratumulatu@gmail.com; woldebezabih12@gmail.com first draft received: 12 oct 2017 accepted: 29 dec 2017 final proof received: 5 feb 2018 abstract the purpose of this study was to investigate teachers’ perceptions and practices of active learning in efl classrooms in three selected secondary schools in genna bossa woreda of dawro zone, snnprs. to conduct the study, a descriptive survey design was employed. a total of 12 teachers and 60 students of the high, medium, and lower achievers participated in the study through availability and purposive sampling technique. the study was complemented by mixed methods approach with data collection tools such as observation checklists, questionnaires, and interviews. the quantitative data were analyzed using frequency, percentage, mean, and grand mean and the qualitative were analyzed thematically. the findings of the study revealed that most of the respondents have perceived active learning positively. in spite of their good perceptions, their practices of active learning were low/poor. the major factors affecting the effective implementation of active learning were large class size with fixed sitting arrangement, inadequate teacher training, tendency of focusing on teacher-centered method, and time scarcity. finally, it is recommended that responsible bodies rearrange the conditions and facilitate necessary inputs for the implementation. keywords: perception; practice; active learning to cite this paper (in apa style): mulatu, m., & bezabih, w. (2018). perceptions and practices of efl teachers in implementing active learning in english classes: the case of three selected secondary schools in dawro zone, snnprs, ethiopia. international journal of education, 10(2), 88-94. doi: http://dx.doi.org/ introduction the main objective of education is to enable learners to develop knowledge, skills, and attitudes which are achieved through different methods. methods are means of conveying ideas and skills to impart and acquire knowledge of different subject matters in a more concrete and comprehensive way. at different times, different methods of learning have been investigated and remained dominant for certain period of time such as teacher-centered methods (bethel, 2011). as an alternative way, active learning has become widely recognized as a desired strategy for teaching language since english language is being used as a medium of instruction from primary to tertiary levels in ethiopia, and the nature of language learning itself requires close interaction of students with their teachers and peer groups with various exposures in the classroom and outside. hence, learners are expected to have adequate proficiency in using the language. this is basically true because the students’ skill in using the language highly determines their academic success (atkins, banteyirga, & nuru, 1995). therefore, students are expected to develop their english language proficiency through appropriate methodology, as it is obvious that the language has been considered as one of the most vital areas of focus in the school curriculum in our country (taye, 2008; girma, 2013; ayele, 2014). similarly, aschalew (2012, p. 74) stated that: we live in a dynamic world where everything is changing. as a result, what we think true today may be false tomorrow and what we think false today may be true tomorrow. hence, we have to adjust ourselves to the changing world or modify it to fit our needs. it is education that enables us to do so. this means that education enables us to lead a better life in this dynamic world. in this respect, education has passed through continuous changes. due to the number of weaknesses with teacher-centered approach, active learning method was researched and supported by many scholars. according to the constructivist learning theory, active learning is known by the name “discovery learning”. learning begins with the experience of the student. the social constructivists think that the concept follows the action rather than preceding it. in other words, the activity leads to the concepts. moreover, the constructivists’ learning theory mailto:mebratumulatu@gmail.com mailto:woldebezabih12@gmail.com melatu, m., & bezabih, w. perceptions and practices of efl teachers in implementing active learning in english classes 89 is based on the principle that through their involvement in various activities, students discover their way of learning (aggarwal, 2006). the idea that students are passive recipients of knowledge and that teachers are the transmitters of that knowledge is giving way to the notion that students learn better when they are involved in the process of creating knowledge for themselves. moreover, the goals of education encompass not only the acquisition of knowledge, but also the guidance of the individual to his/her fullest potential (clark et al., 2008). it is obvious that using english language for communicative purpose is not at a satisfactory level in most high schools, colleges, and universities in ethiopia. learners’ proficiency in language use in the schools is much lower than the level required of them (icdr, 1999). in spite of the number of years the students have been exposed to english language instruction, their level of performance in using the language is very low. the researchers believe that this is due to the lack of practice of active learning method regularly in english lesson classes, as they have noticed the problems from their experience in teaching english at primary, secondary schools, colleges, and universities. the researchers also believe that one of the possible reasons for this is the inappropriateness of the methods and techniques employed in teaching english. as mackey (1965, p. 138) said the teaching methodology can be “…the cause of success or failure in language learning; for it is ultimately the method that determines the ‘what?’ and the ‘how?’ of language instructions.” there were numerous studies that have been conducted in different corners of the world to solve problems in the implementation of active learning in schools. for instance, taye (2008) and bethel (2011) conducted their study on practices and perceptions of al in dilla university and school communities in implementing active learning in bulbula secondary school respectively, and their findings revealed that even school communities have positive perceptions in the implementations of active learning; its implementation in english lessons still needs further investigation. in their result, they disclosed that teachers and instructors have theoretical understandings about active learning. in relation to this, there were also other researchers who conducted their m.a thesis regarding student-centered/active learning method; among them were moges, (2007); binyam, (2014); and arikew, (2015). their studies focused on large class sizes, shortage of time, awareness problems, and readiness to implement active learning methodology which are among the challenges affecting its implementation in english classes. in the same way, girma (2013) and ayele (2014) conducted their research on the same issue, and their findings revealed that active learning failed to be practiced in schools due to scarcity of time to cover the portion, students attention on exam oriented topics and lack of adequate materials. as we can see from either local or international researchers, their findings mainly focused on the challenges that limit the implementation of al in efl classes because most of them tried to mention the barriers to al practices in different levels are related to numerous responsible bodies in schools. however, none of them extended their work more specifically to teachers’ perceptions which particularly play an important role in implementing al in efl classes. to this end, the main objective of this study is to investigate efl teachers’ perceptions and practices in implementing active learning in english lessons/ classes at three selected secondary schools in genna bossa woreda of (woldehane, ofa and dilamo) in dawro zone, snnprs. it specifically aims to examine the perceptions of efl teachers of active learning method in english lesson classes and to identify how often efl teachers practice active learning method in english lessons/classes in the schools. methods research design the study employed descriptive survey designs to collect, process, analyze and present the data. thus, descriptive survey design was employed by using mixed methods of data collecting and describing in organized ways, including the characteristics, features or facts about the given population in this study to make the obtained data more feasible and preferable to examine the present situation on perceptions and practices of efl teachers in implementing active learning in secondary schools of the research site. setting, population and sampling techniques the setting for this investigation was genna bossa woreda, which is one of the rural woreda in dawro zone, snnprs, which is located at the distance of 300 km far away from hawassa and 575 km from addis ababa, the capital of ethiopia. the target population of this study included efl teachers of grade 9 and 10, and students from three selected secondary schools were attending the same grade level. teachers were considered as rich sources of data, so all english teachers from the three schools were selected. students were also selected purposively as additional source of data to get necessary information. to select the sample size for this study, two sampling techniques were employed (purposive and availability sampling). zone and woreda were selected from others through purposive sampling method based on the prevalence of inadequacy practice of efl teachers to implement active learning in the schools. again, among seven secondary schools in woreda, three schools were selected using purposive sampling technique because of the feasibility to the study and the familiarity to the researchers to have access of information. based on this, the researchers believed that the sample size of three secondary schools would be representative enough to draw sound generalizations at the end of the study. since it is difficult to employ all the population due to limited resource, the setting and the samples were delimited accordingly. thus, the secondary schools selected as a sample encompass the population in woldehane, dilamo and ofa secondary schools. in relation to international journal of education vol. 10 no. 2, february 2018, pp. 88-97 ©2017 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: http://dx.doi.org/ 90 teachers, all teachers in the three schools (total= 12) were taken as a samples: 9 from woldehane, 1 from dilamo, and 2 from ofa using availability sampling, and 60 students were selected from those schools employing stratified sampling out of the total students. the students were selected by grouping them in to strata based on their achievements: higher, medium and lower achievers. then, the students who represented each stratum were selected through simple random sampling technique. data gathering tools the study employed mainly qualitative and quantitative data collection tools. the relevant data were collected through different instruments, such as, observation, questionnaires, and interviews. thus, the researchers preferred the qualitative method to describe the data that were collected by semi-structured interviews and the quantitative method to describe all close-ended questionnaires and observation checklist. classroom observations were conducted in order to check whether the teachers are practicing active learning and students participation based on the principles that it is to be implemented during teaching and learning process in the english classroom. five teachers were selected by simple random technique for observation (three teachers from woldehane and the rests 2 from dilamo and ofa secondary schools). one of the researchers was a non-participant observer who collected data without taking part in the teaching learning process, but the other researcher was a co-observer directly entering the classroom with observation checklists and looking and collecting data. two observers were assigned deliberately to collect data from the same context to minimize the subjectivity which comes from individual’s bias. interview was also one of the selected data collecting instruments for the sake of assessing teachers’ perceptions regarding al. the researchers used tape recorder, video, and photo camera while conducting the interview and it was conducted at their schools. it is clear that interview can provide in-depth data that is not possible with questionnaire. data from interview were supplemented with other responses in application of the study. therefore, to support and cross-check the findings from the questionnaire, wellconstructed semi-structured interview questions were prepared to collect and administer data from three selected secondary school teachers by the researchers. furthermore, two sets of questionnaires (one set for the teachers and the other for students) were adapted, designed, and administered. the questionnaires were adapted from moges (2007) and taye (2008) based on the objectives of the study and review of related literature covered in this paper. data gathering procedures regarding data gathering procedures, the researchers followed a series of procedures in the study. therefore, a pilot study was conducted prior to the administration of the final questionnaires to all respondents. it was carried out by developing the adapted questionnaires and those were submitted to the experienced teachers and advisor for the sake of comment. after ensuring the appropriateness of questionnaires by advisor and teachers, the researchers made discussion with school directors, selected efl teachers and students regarding the purpose of data they were going to gather and how it would have been done. first, the researchers collected data through classroom observation, and then they conducted interview with some selected efl teachers, more specifically to assess or examine their perceptions of al and their practice of al in the classroom. finally, the questionnaires were distributed to the respondents, and data were collected. the reason that the researchers sequenced the data gathering tools accordingly was that if teachers responded to questionnaires early, they might have arranged make up classes which they may not be practicing in the usual time. so, it helped the researchers to get valid and reliable information regarding practices of active learning in english classes. all of these data gathering procedures ensure the reliability and validity of data in the study. data analysis procedures both quantitative and qualitative methods of data analysis were employed in order to answer the research questions and to attain the objectives. the quantitative data were collected, coded, tabulated, analyzed, described, and interpreted in a manner that supports findings obtained from the study. first, the data were gathered through close-ended questionnaires by using a five-point likert scales (strongly agree, agree, undecided, disagree and strongly disagree) as suggested by best (2003) and kothari (2004). then, they were tabulated in terms of frequency, percentage, and mean value (to compute the proportionality of individual response of the items) by assessing the scale value to each of the five scale responses. classroom observation was also analyzed using frequency and percentage. thus, the data processing and analysis were employed by the statistical package for social science (spss) version 20 computer to analyze the quantitative data. next to that, data gathered through semi-structured interview were analyzed by using qualitative method with textual/thematic analysis. finally, conclusions and recommendations were made based on the findings. results and discussions using teachers’ questionnaire, responses about their perceptions of active learning were tabulated and presented. in analyzing the perceptions of teachers on active learning, the results of questionnaire entitled “perceptions of efl teachers towards active learning” are presented in tables 1 and 2, respectively. international journal of education vol. 10 no. 2, february 2018, pp. 88-97 ©2017 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: http://dx.doi.org/ 91 table 1: perceptions of teachers in implementing alms in efl classrooms items strongly agree agree undecid ed disagree strongly disagree mean value f % f % f % f % f % 1 the quality of education can be improved if teachers shift their instruction from the lecture methods to al. 7 58.3 5 41.7 3.58 2 active learning enhances students’ level of understanding and involves them in problem solving. 3 25.0 6 50.0 3 25.0 4.00 3 active learning creates the opportunities to share experiences and encourages friendship among students. 4 33.3 5 41.7 3 25.0 4.08 4 active learning enhances active involvement of students in learning instead of passive listening. 1 8.3 6 50.0 5 41.7 3.67 5 active learning enhances self-confidence and independent learning of students. 3 25.0 6 50.0 3 25.0 4.00 6 teachers must encourage students to communicate effectively. 3 25.0 9 75.0 4.25 7 active learning offers opportunities for progress of students in language use. 2 16.7 5 41.7 5 41.7 3.75 8 active learning prepares students for active participation in the lesson. 5 41.7 4 33.3 3 25.0 4.17 9 active learning makes students responsible for their own learning. 8 66.7 3 25.0 1 8.3 3.58 10 i am sure student-centered approach has a great contribution to scale up the quality of education. 5 41.7 4 33.3 3 25.0 3.17 grand mean 3.83 as shown in table 1, the items related to assumptions about active learning, advantages of active learning and their views about active learning were presented properly to find out their perceptions. item 1 aims to assess if the quality of education can be improved when teachers shift their instruction from the lecture methods to alm. as it can be seen in table 1, 7 (58.3%) and the mean value of their responses (3.58) ranges from “agree” to “strongly agree.” hence, most of the teachers agreed on the idea. on the other hand, item 2 assess if active learning enhances students’ level of understanding and involves them in problem solving. the percentages for ‘strongly agree’ and ‘agree’ were 3 (25%), 6 (50%) respectively and the mean value for this response was 4.00. that means teachers reflected their strong agreement. this implies that most of the teachers believe that al can enhance students’ level of understanding and enables them to solve problems independently. table 2: perceptions of teachers especially on the side effects of al according to their assumption items 5= strongly agree 4 = agree 3 = undecided 2= disagree 1=strongly disagree mean value f % f % f % f % f % 11 teaching is the sole responsibility of teachers 2 16.7 3 25.0 2 16.7 5 41.7 2.17 12 active learning minimizes students and teachers workloads and save time. 7 58.3 2 16.7 3 25.0 2.33 13 active learning frustrates behavior of students 7 58.3 1 8.3 4 33.3 2.25 14 active learning is not economical to use instructional aids. 2 16.7 5 41.7 4 33.3 1 8.3 2.67 15 i know that active learning adds work load on teachers. 2 16.7 7 58.3 2 16.7 1 8.3 2.83 16 if there is no lecture method, it is impossible to control the students/the class become noisy while they perform active learning 1 8.3 7 58.3 3 25.0 1 8.3 2.67 international journal of education vol. 10 no. 2, february 2018, pp. 88-97 ©2017 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: http://dx.doi.org/ 92 methodology 17 it is a tiresome activity for teachers to implement active learning in language classroom. 4 33.3 4 33.3 4 33.3 3.00 18 i believe that teaching facts alone is enough to prepare students to understand their environment. 1 8.3 4 33.3 4 33.3 3 25.0 2.25 grand mean 2.52 according to table 2, item 11 was strongly disagreed by most of the teachers. this means teaching is the sole responsibility of teachers and is not the way in which students are benefited. in addition, they were asked to show their view on that teaching fact alone is enough to prepare students to understand their environment which is stated in item 18 of table 2. accordingly, among the teachers, except one said “agree” but others replied it as neutral and disagree, 4 (33.3%), and 3 (25.0%) responded it as “strongly disagree”. for all items, the mean values exceed from 3.00 to 4.17. this indicates that most of their view/perceptions towards al is approximately average/good. item 14 tries to examine whether active learning is economical or not economical to use instructional aids. a high percentage 4 (33.3%) of the respondents disagreed and 5 (41.7) replied undecided with the statement. based on the analysis of the data, most of the teachers had a positive perception of al, but some of them lack awareness about the term itself since they responded neutral/undecided for many items in the questionnaire. during the interview, it was disclosed that all teachers (who were interviewed) had a positive perception of active learning. concerning this, hatfield (as cited in moe, 2004, p. 79) stated active learning is not only a set of activities, but the perception on the part of the teacher and the learner that makes learning effective. again, it is obvious that al demands not only teachers to be experts in their fields, but also that teachers should understand how students learn. thus, various research findings confirmed that there is a strong relationship between teachers’ perception towards active learning and their attempt to implement it. for instance, a survey study carried out in botswana in 2009 proved that teachers who had a positive perception towards active learning showed a better effort in implementing and using al than those teachers who perceived it negatively (gde, 2009). however, yurdabakan (2012) claimed that teachers’ positive perception towards active learning should be knowledge based. that is to say those efl teachers should have all the details and principles of active learning for effective implementation. table 3. teachers’ use of alms in efl classrooms no. items how often do you use these alms in the classroom? 5= always 4= frequently 3= sometimes 2= rarely 1= not at all mean value f % f % f % f % f % 1.1 lecture/ explanation 1 8.3 7 58.3 4 33.3 3.75 1.2 problem solving method 2 16.7 8 66.7 2 16.7 2.00 1.3 role-playing 3 25.0 7 58.3 2 16.7 2.08 1.4 group discussion /syndicate 1 8.3 3 25.0 6 50.0 2 16.7 3.25 1.5 brain storming 1 8.3 3 25.0 8 66.7 8 66.7 2.42 1.6 peer teaching 3 25.0 7 58.3 2 16.7 2.08 1.7 cooperative learning 1 8.3 4 33.3 7 58.3 2.50 1.8 group work 4 33.3 6 50.0 2 16.7 3.17 1.9 demonstration 1 8.3 6 50.0 5 41.7 1.67 1.10 student independent work by giving homework/ assignments 3 25.0 6 50.0 3 25.0 3.00 1.11 inquiry method 3 25.0 4 33.3 5 41.7 1.83 1.12 case study 1 8.3 5 41.7 6 50.0 1.58 1.13 discovery method 2 16.7 5 41.7 5 41.7 1.75 1.14 educational visits/field trip 12 100 1.00 grand mean 2.30 to assess the extent to which al has been employed in teaching english, both teachers and students reacted through the questionnaire, and again teachers through the interview. these were also substantiated by the classroom observation. as presented in table 3, most of the teachers in the school practice explanation/lecturing method in item 1.1 as rated by 7 (58.3%), that is followed by group work in item 1.8 with a rating of 4 international journal of education vol. 10 no. 2, february 2018, pp. 88-97 ©2017 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: http://dx.doi.org/ 93 (33.3%). some of them also said that they use alm sometimes, which implies that most of them are interested in teacher-centered methodology rather than student-centered strategies. among the respondents, 6 (50%) said that they rarely provide tasks like inquiry method, case study, brain storming, problem solving, and cooperative learning in the classroom which are very vital for students to develop self-confidence, deep thinking, and problem-solving potential. according to the analysis, the findings revealed that teachers in the referred schools frequently employed explanations/lectures, discussions, group or pair works, student independent work by giving homework/assignments. on the other hand, other al techniques, which are expected to be widely used in teaching english—those that can expose learners to develop various critical thinking abilities like brain storming, and discovery learning capacity and others such as problem solving, inquiry learning, case study, project method, etc.—were rarely employed/or relatively not at all in teaching english. in line with this, bonwell and eison (2003) noticed that students must do more than just listen. they need to read, write, discuss or engage in problem solving activities. in real active learning model, students must be engaged in higher order thinking skills such as synthesis, analysis, and evaluation. in general, based on the above discussion, it is possible to say that the degree of practicing major active learning techniques in teaching english was low and the kind of techniques teachers widely used was the traditional ones. analysis of classroom observation classroom observation was also used to collect data to see whether teachers apply al or not and how they apply its techniques in teaching english. it confirmed that there was not enough sitting space; all the seats were not movable, and the classroom layout was not arranged to facilitate active learning. this tells that classroom situation is almost not suitable to implement al. in short, the inappropriateness of class size and immovability of desks (sitting) made al not implemented besides teachers’ perception. it means that the classroom situation supported most of teachers’ practice of the strategies in english classroom negatively, which implicitly means that their average perception towards al with unsuitable classroom situation hindered them from implementing it in the classrooms. as indicated in the observation, we can indirectly deduce that almost all teachers in the schools are more dominant and active than learners, which implies that they tended to use teacher-centered instruction. similarly, recent findings of eyob (2014) and asrat (2014) confirmed that the classroom arrangements are the main challenges of implementing active learning, next to large class size. analysis of interview among 12 efl teachers, four teachers were selected for interview on the basis of their teaching experience since the researchers believed that they can provide valuable data regarding the implementation of alm in efl classrooms in their school. all teachers were taken from wss because they are more experienced in teaching english, starting from the least seven years up to 29 service years. in addition to that, three of them were selected for observation. to assure the validity and reliability of data, digital photo and video camera were used to record and document their responses and for keeping the confidentiality. according to the interview conducted with them in relation the nature of al, almost all of the teachers replied that al means practical way of teaching and learning process, and it is a student-centered approach that helps students feel confident and share their responsibilities in the classroom. furthermore, most of them assured that the practicability of al in their school was in question that they did not implement it, usually due to time and large portions of content nature of the subject. in connection to the advantages of al method, most of them revealed that using al has a great contribution for improving students’ active participation in the lesson and developing self-confidence. it also mediates learners with effective language use if teachers and students frequently practice it. this directly confirms that all teachers involved in the interview perceive al positively and they have clear understanding on the importance of it. moreover, they replied “sometimes” for the question that says how often they practice al in the classroom. this finding agrees with aderie (2015) which stated that active participation of learners is more perceivable in classrooms where teachers use active learning methods; however, the practice is very rare. this depicts that even if there are no common and usual practices of alm in their schools, group work, group discussion, pair work and peer teaching are used sometimes. conclusions the main purpose of this study was to assess the perception and practices of efl teachers in implementing al in english lessons, particularly the case of three selected secondary schools, namely (woldehane, dilamo and ofa) in genna bossa woreda of dawro zone, snnprs. all the subjects of this study were english teachers who were teaching from grades nine to ten (2 nd cycle) and students in the referred schools. the data were gathered using questionnaires, classroom observations, and interviews. the questionnaires were administered to all 12 english teachers in the three schools and 60 students of high, medium, and low achievers (40 from grade 10 and 20 from grade 9). all teachers and students returned the questionnaire. the classroom observation was conducted with five teachers who were teaching grade 9 and 10 students. the interview was also conducted with four efl teachers who were included in the observation. the data obtained through questionnaires and classroom observations were analyzed in percentages, mean values, and grand mean values and based on the analysis of the data, the following findings were obtained from the study. the analysis of the data indicates that most of the teachers involved in the study have perceived al melatu, m., & bezabih, w. perceptions and practices of efl teachers in implementing active learning in english classes 94 positively. however, the extent of perception of some teachers varies between experienced and inexperienced ones; that means it is higher among the experienced than in experienced ones. thus, it was indicated that the participating groups assured that when the teachers practice active learning, the students learn better and develop the ability to express their feelings confidently. in addition, the participants viewed that al plays an important role in developing selfconfidence. furthermore, they believe that to practice it, they must get special training and support. moreover, the analysis of the data disclosed that the extent of the practices of active learning in the referred schools was found to be low. the two groups of the respondents (teachers and students) confirmed that they practice active learning in their classrooms “sometimes” and relatively their response approaches to “rarely”, which leads to a conclusion that the practices of active learning are below the required level. it is difficult to realize the intended objectives and practices without considering various factors that could contribute in one way or another to enhancing learning at any level. this is because educational achievements are the outcomes of interwoven factors. based on the findings of the study, the researcher would like to forward the following recommendations for the improvement of the practices of active learning. concerned bodies/stakeholders should be aware of the application of al in the classroom in collaboration with school directors; woreda and zone education offices and departments should arrange either short or long term training on it and facilitate good environments for the implementation of al. therefore, it is important to carry out in-service, short term training so that their use of al will be improved. moreover, the students are also expected to be active participants and involve themselves in the lesson, so they should also be aware of the importance the methodology. in general, those all mentioned above gaps lead the magnitude of practicing active learning to be low. hence, short-term training for the teachers on the issue should be emphasized by concerned bodies in collaboration with different colleges and universities in nearby schools, woredas, zone and region. in short, in order to correct this deplorable situation profile that teachers at every level must fit, teacher training institutions must be strengthened and enriched, and teacher advancement or promotion scale previously set should be implemented. references aggarwal, j. c. (1996). principles, methods and techniques of teaching. new delhi: vikas publishing house pvt ltd. aderie, a. (2015). assessing teachers’ practices of active learning in english classes: the case of gohatsion secondary school, north shoa zone, in oromiyan region (m.a thesis). haramaya university, ethiopia. aschalew t. (2012). teachers’ perceptions and practices of active learning in haramaya university, eastern ethiopia: the case of faculty of education. research journal, 1(4), 74-83. atkins, j., banteyirga, h., & nuru, m. (1995). skills development methodology-part 1. addis ababa: aau press. ayele, d. (2014). teachers’ job satisfaction and commitment in general secondary schools of hadiya zone, in southern nation nationality and people of regional state (thesis). jimma university, jimma. clark, b. (2008). active learning in the context of efl classroom. journal of social sciences and education, 2(3), 1-13. eyob, a. (2014). a study on the implementation of active learning: exploring its practices, challenges and opportunities in teaching english lessons (unpublished m.a. thesis). hawassa university, ethiopia. bethel, b. (2011). practice and perception of bulbula school community towards the implementation of active learning in teaching english (bulbula secondary school in focus). addis ababa: addis ababa university press. binyam, a. (2014). the utilization of active learning: the case of nifas silk lafto sub-city governmental upper primary school (m.a thesis). addis ababa university, addis ababa. bonwell, c., & eison, a. (2003). active learning: creating excitement in the classroom. rhen: grips. girma, a. (2013). teachers’ and students’ perceptions and practices of active learning in communicative english class (unpublished m.a thesis). hawassa university., hawassa. icdr. (1999). teacher education handbook. addis ababa: finfine printing and publishing. mackey, f. (1965). language teaching analysis. london: indiana university press. moe. (2003). teso pre-service committee a notional curriculum guideline for pre service teacher education programs. addis ababa. moges, a. (2007). the assessment of the techniques practiced by efl teachers in implementing active learning: upper primary schools in gondar town in focus (m.a thesis). addis ababa university, addis ababa. taye, g. (2008). perceptions and practices of active learning in dilla university (m.a thesis). addis ababa university, addis ababa. yurdabakan, i. (2012).the effects of active learning on foreign language self-concept and reading comprehension achievement. international journal on new trends in education and their implications, 3(4), 43-48. international journal of education vol. 10 no. 1, august 2017, pp. 73-81 ©2017 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v10i1.6848 73 a speech act analysis of teacher talk in an efl classroom sri meiweni basra 1 , luthfiyatun thoyyibah 2 english education program, indonesia university of education srimeiweni.basra@gmail.com, luthfiyatun20@gmail.com first draft received: 30 may 2017 final proof received: 14 august 2017 abstract the inappropriate use of speech act in efl classroom may lead to misunderstanding due to the distinct cultures between the origin of language and the users. the purposes of the research are to find out speech act classification mostly used by an efl teacher while teaching, the reason of why certain classification was preferred and the implication of the selected speech act classification toward the teaching and learning process. this research is a case study research involving an english teacher teaching an efl class. the study uses searle’s taxonomy of speech act classification as the instrument. the findings of the research show the frequency of each classification found as the following: 70% for directives, 21% for representative, 6% for expressive and 3% for commissive. directive speech acts are used mostly by the teacher because the teacher adopts the principle of communicative language teaching. the use of directive speech act apparently make implication towards the improvement of the students’ productive skills. the study concludes that the choice of speech acts classification determine the teaching approach and vice versa. it is recommended for english teachers wishing to help students to achieve communicative competence to use more directive speech acts. keywords: speech act; directive; representative; expressive; declarative. to cite this paper (in apa style): basra, s. m., & thoyyibah, l. (2017). a speech act analysis of teacher talk in an efl classroom. international journal of education, 10(1), 73-81. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v10i1.6848 introduction the success in running english teaching and learning process in the classroom depends on various factors, one of which is the language used by the teacher. celce-murcia (2000) pointed out that language use applied in the classroom affect students’ process and progress of learning. in the matter of efl (english as a foreign language) teaching in indonesian context, in which the teachers are not the natives of english, running efl teaching and learning is troubling in terms of delivering the lesson using english and getting students to understand the instruction mentioned using the language. however, there are problems related to the use of english (as a foreign language) in the classroom. nuraini (2015) in her research mentioned a problem in the use of speech acts in english classroom. she argued that the use of speech acts in indonesian efl class leads to a misunderstanding due to the inappropriate use of the speech acts uttered. students may have different interpretations of a simple utterance said by the teacher. this is caused by the failure of using ifids (illocutionary force indicating devices) or deciding to use either direct or indirect speech acts in certain situation. the culture contributes to different styles of language use applied in making utterances. for instance, seifoori and emadi (2015) found out that americans and persians have different ways in complimenting. this is related to the way they see the culture, the values in it comprising social distance, status, and the belief of how to reach for politeness or directness in communication. this study is aimed at investigating classroom speech acts performed by an english teacher in terms of speech acts classification determined by the theory of john r. searle (1999). the study hopefully fills the gap of research regarding speech acts classification analysis which has been conducted previously mostly by focusing on the analysis of political speeches. the british philosopher j.l austin was the first one coming up with the theory of speech acts. the work of austin and his theories about speech acts were further developed by an american philosopher john r. searle. yule (1996) stated that speech acts are often associated with the term of illocutionary acts. both terms, speech acts and illocutionary acts, have the same idea that there is communicative force behind the performance of an utterance. speech acts or illocutionary acts have classifications. different scholars develop their own mailto:srimeiweni.basra@gmail.com mailto:luthfiyatun20@gmail.com basra, s. m., & thoyyibah, l. a speech act analysis of teacher talk in an efl classroom 74 taxonomy of speech acts classification. one of the well-known classifications comes from the work of john r. searle. searle (1999) categorized five different types of illocutionary acts; assertive force, directive force, commissive force, expressive force, and declarative force. enyi (2016) concluded from his study that different speech acts have different perlocutionary effects. he also said that deciding to use certain speech acts classification is affected by certain factors. for example, government officials giving political speeches may decide to use more assertive, expressive, and commissive acts to gain people attention and persuade people in order to achieve their goals. in the case of speech acts in political speeches, hashim (2015) found that commissive speech act takes the highest frequency of speech acts uttered in two political speeches (john kerry’s in 2004 presidential campaign and george bush’ in 2004 inaugural adress). it is then followed by assertive, directive, and expessive. the finding reflects that the overall speech act uttered in both speeches analyzed is aimed at convincing the audience to take their sides. in line with hashim (2015), enyi (2016) also found a representation of the act of convincing people through president mohammadu buhari’s maiden coup address of january 1st 1984 and his inaugural address on may 29 th 2015 speeches. commissive takes 35% and 54% for the former and the latter speech and is followed by assertive (32% and 35%). vows, promisses, and pledges are expressed to gain citizens’attention to vote for him. unlike political speeches which emphasize more comissive speech acts, advertisements take emphasis on another kind of speech act, that is directive speech act. chiluwa (2007) discovered directive speech acts are used dominantly in 95% of popular soft drink advertisements between 2000 and 2006. this aims to get audiences to buy the products advertised. similarly, facebook status also has its own type of speech acts. ilyas and khushi (2012) conducted a speech act analysis on facebook status updates from 60 males and females. the analysis reveals that expressive speech acts take the biggest portion of all speech acts types in searle’s taxonomy due to the fact that facebook is mostly used to express feelings and ideas. the previous research reveals that each purpose of communication has its own pragmatic characteristics. political speeches are characterized by commissive speech acts, advertisments emphasize the use of directive speech acts, and facebook status updates frequently carry more expressive speech acts. this matter goes the same in the efl teaching and learning process. teachers in classroom also decide which speech acts classification to use to achieve their goal of teaching and learning. the decision of using certain speech acts in the teaching process in classroom may result on certain impacts. based on the perspectives elaborated earlier, this study is conducted to investigate the classification of speech act used by an english teacher in efl classrooms in indonesian context. therefore, there are three objectives of this study. the first one is to find out which classification of speech act is mostly used by a teacher in teaching an efl classroom. the second objective is finding out the reasons why certain classification of speech act is preferred by the teacher. the third one is figuring out the implication of using the preferred classification of speech act towards either the teaching process or students’ achievement. this study, theoretically, contributes to fill the gap of speech act research on the matter of speech acts or illocutionary acts classification. most studies commonly analyze political speeches, advertisement, and the strategy of performing certain speech acts (such as complimenting, apologizing, refusing and so on). therefore, this study hopefully enriches the literature of the study of speech acts used by teacher in efl classrooms in indonesian context. besides, for english teachers, this study also contributes ideas and insights on how the choice of language function (speech act classification) may affect the classroom process, including the students themselves, their score, or their learning progress. finally, this study is expected to encourage teachers to improve their quality of teaching by first starting to reflect and evaluate on how they use illocutionary acts in their teaching process. review of the literature teacher talk teacher talk is the talk that a teacher does in the teaching and learning process. lei (2009) stated that good communication in the teaching and learning process depends on a good and effective teacher talk. apparently, harmer (2007) implied that students learn from the teacher talk. that is the reason why the teachers are expected to know how to talk to students and adjust the language that they use because teacher talk gives a chance for students to hear the language which they more or less understand. communicative teacher talk has some features according to lei (2009). some of them are referential questions and content feedback. referential questions are questions in which the teacher genuinely does not know the answer of. by posing such questions, the teacher engages students to answer the question and talk. content feedback means the teacher comments on what students are saying. harmer (2007) pointed out that too much teacher talk can make students lose their chance to talk, and he actually stated that a good teacher maximizes time for students to talk and minimize time for him/her to talk. however, a study from sadeghi, ansari, and rahmani (2015) proves that appropriate teacher talk brings positive effect on students’ engagement and sri meiweni basra – luthfiyatun thoyyibah│a speech act analysis of teacher talk in an efl classroom 75 attitudes. appropriate teacher talk can contribute either to the presence of politeness or directness in teaching which will impact on the teaching process and students. pragmatics pragmatics is a broad term in the field of linguistics. akinwotu (2013) simply defined pragmatics as the study of language in use. mey (2001) pointed out that pragmatics is characterized by the idea that language is used by its user and the use of language depends on norms, rules and beliefs exist in the community where the users live. this means that pragmatics is a branch of linguistics knowledge which encompasses the blending of the knowledge of morphology, phonology, syntax and even semantics. pragmatics has something to do with the fact that users use language in context and that language is restricted to culture. grundy (2008) stated that the meaning and the intention of utterances uttered by users are determined by the existence of a context. he also added that culture and context play roles in communication. it is because without contexts, a hearer does not understand what a speaker intends to say by his/her words. grundy’s emphasis clearly points out that culture cannot be separated from the language when users communicate. every country does not always share the same culture. recognizing the rule, habits, and beliefs of each culture counts in achieving understandable and accepted utterances when one wishes to communicate in a particular language existing in a particular culture. speech acts the theories about speech acts can be traced back from the works of j.l austin in the lectures he delivered, which later on were codified in a book called how to do things with words. the book was published in 1962 after his death. austin (1962) stated that sometimes, when people utter an utterance, it is not always to describe something. instead, by uttering utterances, they actually do something. speech acts are those acts of making statement or question, giving commands or order, refusing, complimenting, apologizing, and etc. yule (1996) acknowledged that by performing speech acts, people do not merely say something using the language out of the blue. instead, they have intention and force behind the utterances they utter and those utterances may affect the behavior of the hearer. there are three categories or dimensions of speech acts. grundy (2008) explained that when people say something, they may involve the three dimensions, which are locutionary acts, illocutionary acts, and perlocutionary acts. a. locutionary acts locutionary acts are basic utterances uttered by people shaped in the right grammar and understandable vocabulary. from the examples given by yule (1996) in his book, it is clear that he tried to say that one of the requirements to meet in performing locutionary acts is that both the speaker and the hearer share the same language; otherwise, there will be misunderstanding or the meaning intended will not be understood by the hearer. b. illocutionary acts yule (1996) stated that the term “illocutionary acts” is often closely associated with the term speech act. when people have communicative force in saying an utterance, it means that they are performing an illocutionary act. for example, saying “put it out” may have a different kind of force behind that. the speaker may say that because he tries to stop a lady smoking in a smoke free area, or he sees a window curtain is on fire. having intention to say particular utterances contribute to the idea of illocutionary acts. c. perlocutionary acts people (speakers) perform perlocutionary acts by expecting to affect other people’s (hearers’) behavior. affecting behavior does not necessarily mean getting the hearer to do physical movements; it also deals with the change of thought or habit of the hearer. this statement is in line with yule (1996) who pointed out that perlocutionary acts bring the-so-called perlocutionary effect. one of the examples illustrating this situation is when a speaker is feeling sad of being left out, he says “i am useless” to a friend. by hearing the utterance, the hearer is affected and feels sorry. felling sorry is the effect of the perlocutionary acts of the utterance “i am useless”. the term “speech act” comprises many theories under it. it includes the theory of performative verbs, ifids (illocutionary force indicating devices, felicity conditions, speech acts classification, direct and indirect speech acts, speech events, and so on. speech acts classification a number of different scholars revealed different speech acts classifications which actually were originated from austin’s. oluremi (2016) pointed out that austin’s speech acts classifications include verdictives, exercitives, commissives, behabitives, and expositives. however, a popular american philosopher, john r. searle, extended the ideas, making his taxonomy a reference or framework of speech act classification used by many researchers conducting research on speech act classification. searle (1999) categorized five different types of illocutionary acts; assertive force, directive force, commissive force, expressive force, and declarative force. yule (1996) represented a table of the five speech acts classification based on the theory of searle. basra, s. m., & thoyyibah, l. a speech act analysis of teacher talk in an efl classroom 76 table 1. speech act classification speech act type direction of fit s = speaker; x = situation declarative words change the world s causes x assertive make words fit the world s believes x expressive make words fit the world s feels x directive make the world fit words s wants x commissive make the world fit words s intends x a. declarative force declarative force has a principle that words change the world. it means that speech act uttered by a speaker changes the world or situation. it is illustrated by the sentences below. [1] police officer: you are under-arrest! when a police officer says utterance [1] to a person doing a crime, the utterance changes the situation of the criminal. from the status of a free man, the person doing the crime is put in jail. however, if the utterance [1] is uttered by a teacher to a student, the utterance does not make any difference or change whatsoever the student because the ones who have the rights to say the utterance [1] are only police officers. b. assertive force making words fit the world means that speech acts with assertive force is used to state what the speaker believes to be the case or not the case. yule (1996) said that assertive force is used to represent the world as the speaker believes it is. below are the examples of speech acts with assertive force. [2] the earth is flat [3] roses smell good c. expressive force as shown by the table 1, by performing speech acts with expressive force, speaker wants to show what he/she feels about particular situations. expressive force expresses psychological state such as likes and dislikes, joy, sorrow, pain, and many others. [4] and [5] are the examples. [4] i am really sorry. [5] congratulation d. directive force performing speech acts with directive force means that the speaker wants to get someone to do something. giving commands and orders are some examples of speech acts with directive force. [6] is one of the examples. [6] go away! e. commissive force commissive force in speech acts shows speaker’s intention. yule (1996) stated that speakers use commissive force to express promises, threats, refusals, or pledges. it has something to do with showing speaker’s intention in the future as shown in [7]. [7] i promise to buy you ice cream after school. method research design since this study is aimed at investigating classroom speech acts performed by an english teacher in terms of speech acts classification determined by the theory of john r. searle, this study is categorized under the principle of qualitative research design, specifically, a case study. geertz in cohen (2007) pointed out that a case study has something to do with investigating how a phenomenon is like by looking closely at the case and providing a thick description explaining participants’ thoughts about and feelings for a situation. a case study is a perfect fit for this study, as this study attempts to reveal how speech acts are used by a teacher of english. this study elaborates the case and findings as they really are without manipulations. participants an english teacher participated in this study. she comes from west java, indonesia. she is 25 years old. she teaches in a well-known english course in bandung and has been teaching for about three years. the level of students she teaches varies from a1 level to c1 level using the level of cefr (common european framework of reference) based on introductory guide to the common european framework of reference for english language teachers (2013). the teacher was chosen for some reasons. first of all, she teaches in the classroom using full english. second, the exposure of english she has is good enough as the place where she teaches or works regulates people to speak english both for teachers and students. third, with a score toefl of 602, she is able to teach almost all levels of students in the english course. the class was chosen based on the highest average score among all in the english course in the level of b1 in cefr. students’ ages in that b1 level class are varied, starting from 16 years old to 22 years old. sri meiweni basra – luthfiyatun thoyyibah│a speech act analysis of teacher talk in an efl classroom 77 material there are three types of data which were collected. first, a full-length video of a teaching and learning process in one meeting. the video is 1 hour, 26 minutes and 34 seconds in length. second, teacher’s interview and the last one is the documents of students’ scores. procedure in the process of collecting the data, observation was conducted. the data to be analyzed were collected by videotaping the process of teaching and learning. next, the teacher was interviewed to confirm some cases of speech acts happening in the classroom while she was teaching. in addition, the document of students’ scores was collected from the teacher. before analyzing the data and finding out the speech act classification, the videotaped-data were transcribed. the speech acts, performed by the teacher while teaching in the classroom, were subsequently analyzed within the framework of the five major classifications of speech acts developed by searle: assertives, directives, commissives, expressives, declaratives. to determine the sentences to be categorized into searle’s speech act classification, a framework was developed based on speech act word clues or characteristics proposed by qadir and riloff (2011), who further developed speech act word clues listed by searle (1976). next, the percentage of each speech acts classification was counted and interpretation was drawn from the findings and was descriptively described. findings and discussion this section presents the findings and their interpretation, organized in terms of the sequence of the research questions. classification of speech acts used by the teacher to students in an efl classroom declarations (0%) it is found that there are only four speech act classifications used by the teacher to teach in the classroom. the teacher excludes the use of declarative speech act classification. it is obviously due to the nature of declarative speech act, in which yule (1996) explained that declarative speech act changes the world of the hearer via utterances uttered by a speaker. the speaker needs to have a special institutional role to change the world of the hearer. the changing world of the hearer means that the situation which is changed from him/her/them caused by a speaker is not easy to be avoided or broken or left. the change of situation caused by a speaker to a hearer stays longer; for example, when a priest declares somebody to be somebody else’s wife or husband. a mother or a doctor is not legalized to marry a couple. to sum up, the teacher does not use declarative speech act in her teaching. representatives (21%) out of 673 utterances, it is found that 141 of them have the characteristics of representative speech acts. by developing searle’s speech act word clue lists, qadir and riloff (2011) came up with a number of representative speech act word clues. the list includes the act of hypothesizing, insisting, boasting, complaining, concluding, deducing, diagnosing, claiming, assuming, and suspecting. the finding related to representative speech acts obtained from the data includes the act of concluding and repeating students’ answer to make sure or conclude what is said as what it is. some samples from the data are presented in the table below. table 2. representative speech act utterance representative speech act categories “yeah, so 4” (actually it means “yes, so there are four questions all together”) concluding “this is from aurora” claiming “i think this is such a hard question” assuming s : “maybe meatball” t : “oh…meatball, okay” concluding/stating s : “20” t : “20 of february, alright” concluding/stating apparently, from the teacher interview, the teacher admitted that her act of repeating students’ answer was one of the efforts of listening. the nature of listening here is not “hearing”; rather, the teacher tried to show that she cared about what her students tried to say. in addition, being there for students and listening to what they say and their opinions are efforts of establishing a good rapport. harmer (2007) actually stated that building a good rapport, such as making students feel that the teacher treats them right, contributes to grow students’ intrinsic motivation. thus, when the motivation is there with the students, it encourages basra, s. m., & thoyyibah, l. a speech act analysis of teacher talk in an efl classroom 78 them more to pay attention and get actively involved in the teaching and learning process in the classroom. expressive (6%) 39 utterances characterized by expressive speech act word clue are found in the data. qadir and riloff (2011) categorized utterances with expressive essence by signaling clues like thanking, apologizing, congratulating, condoling, deploring, appreciating, and welcoming. among those 39 utterances, most expressive speech act uttered are listed below.  “thank you”,  “i’m sorry”, and  “oh my god!” the utterance like “thank you” is always mentioned by the teacher after receiving things from the students or whenever her students try to remind her about something. “i’m sorry” is uttered when the teacher makes mistakes such as forgetting students’ names or after making jokes that she thinks might hurt her students. in the interview, she admitted that her reason of doing so is basically a habit because people are supposed to say “thank you” when somebody gives them something, say “sorry” if they think they might hurt somebody else’s feeling, and say “oh my god” if people are surprised about something. the other reason is that the teacher wants to grow those basic habits in her students by being a good role model of a social human being. therefore, the students will do the same when they interact inside or outside of the classroom. directives (70%) directive speech acts dominate the utterance said by the teacher in the teaching process. among those 673 utterances, 70% of them have directive speech acts word clues. qadir and riloff (2011) listed clues of directive speech act word. utterances containing the force or intention to ask, order, command, request, beg, plead, pray, entreat, invite, permit, advise, dare, defy, and challenge, are categorized into directives. mostly, the teacher used directives with the intention is to ask the students about something, and to command and request the students to do something. some samples of directive speech acts uttered by the teacher are presented in table 3. table 3. directive speech act utterance directive speech act categories “uhmm... do you know, oh what is that?, other expression rather than saying fine?” asking “so can you please introduce yourself?” requesting “i want you to make two questions about me and also about person sitting next to you” commanding “you can have a sit lintang” inviting “tell me, lintang!” ordering commissives (3%) commissive speech acts are the least mentioned by the teacher while teaching. the teacher only mentioned 19 utterances with commissive essence, which means the percentage is only 3% out of 100%. samples of commissive speech acts are listed in table 4. table 4. commissives speech act utterance “now, we are going to have a conversation, okay” “i am going to open this one first” “they’ll believe it” “okay guys, so we are going to have a break” “we are going to continue it again after the break.” the percentage of each speech act classification is drawn in figure 1. it excludes declarative speech act as it does not exist in the data. to sum up, there are four speech acts classifications found in the study. they are representative/assertive, directive, expressive, and commissive. the dominant one used by the teacher is directive speech act which takes over 70% of the teacher’s talk while doing the teaching. sri meiweni basra – luthfiyatun thoyyibah│a speech act analysis of teacher talk in an efl classroom 79 figure 1. percentages of speech acts classification the teacher’s reasons of using directive speech act dominantly after carrying out teacher interview, it is found that the teacher does not really realize that she mostly used the directive speech acts while teaching. below is the argument she pointed out related to her act in using directive speech act while teaching. “ the reason why i chose directive speech acts in my teaching is not because i know that it was directive speech acts. i didn’t know that until you told me. so, uhm… okay, i used that because i really wanted my students to talk. i gave them chance to talk because, what is that? english is a means of communication. it means that you have to communicate it if it is not the language. so i really want my students to be active, not passive in speaking english. so, what is that?, by asking them a lot of questions, and then, what is that, and then…asking them also talk to their friends, i think it is the best way to teach english as a language. and then also, what else yah… uhm, it is because i also use this clt (communicative language teaching). it means that i just want my students to talk and uhm, and then also to give them a chance to think and then to express their own opinion. i just don’t want to lecture all the time and then that one is not really studentscentered. so if it is students-centered it means that i have to give them the time as much as they need.” therefore, there are two main reasons why the teacher unconsciously use directive speech acts. the first one is it is because the teacher carries the principle of clt (communicative language teaching) approach. richards (2006) defined clt as an approach which highly values communicative competence rather than grammatical competence. it is because learners can learn the building blocks of sentences, but sometimes they are still not very successful in using language in a meaningful communication. therefore, the exposure of communicative competence is the goal of clt. second, the teacher wants to get students to be actively involved in the classroom activities. what the teacher is trying to do is getting them to talk by giving them chances through setting the classroom activities around the approach of clt. the video (data) shows that the teacher organizes a class discussion and asks students to talk in pairs. those activities characterize the approach of clt. the activities fit what richards (2006) pointed out in his book that activities carrying out the approach of clt are the ones which have emphasis on pair or group work, and the ones with meaningful practice, in which the students are given the right to make meaningful choices when practicing. the implication towards either the teaching process or students’ achievement that can be drawn from the finding apparently, good communicative competence is the impact or the implication of using directive speech acts in the classroom as pointed out by arani (2012). the study also reveals the same thing like arani’s that students achieve high scores, especially for two representative 21% directive 70% expressive 6% commissive 3% representative directive expressive commissive basra, s. m., & thoyyibah, l. a speech act analysis of teacher talk in an efl classroom 80 productive skills: speaking and writing. the class consisting of 14 students where the data of this study was taken has the average scores of 80% in speaking and 81% in writing. the scores prove that the use of directive speech act contributes in fostering students’ productive skills, which also helps in building students’ communicative competence. conclusions and recommendation the use of appropriate speech act classification while teaching apparently is based on the teaching approach the teacher adopts. this study aims at investigating speech acts classification of teacher talk in efl classrooms, the reason of the teacher uses certain speech acts, and the implication that can be drawn from the finding. based on the findings and discussion, four classifications of speech acts are found from the data (teacher talk). the total of the utterances uttered by the teacher in one meeting of teaching and learning is 673 utterances. four classifications have different portions, with directive speech acts as the dominant one, taking over 70% of the utterances. the second dominant classification is representative speech act for 21%. the expressive and commissive speech acts have small portions, namely 6% and 3%, respectively. the teacher argued that her reasons of using more directive speech acts are only to get students to talk more and to carry out the principle of communicative language teaching as what she believes. the implication which can be drawn from the finding is that using directive speech acts which involves posing a lot of question, requesting, or commanding contribute to students’ achievements, especially in productive skills. it is because by posing a lot of questions students are encouraged to answer the question and keep talking. therefore, the choice of language and speech acts affects the teaching and learning as well as the teacher and students. the recommendation is addressed for english teachers, especially in indonesian context. teaching indonesian students a language which is foreign for them is not an easy task. then, to expose them more to english, the classroom language instruction which is better to be used is english. however, teaching with foreign language instruction can cause trouble and misunderstanding between teacher and students. english teachers should realize soon their belief in teaching english. if the approach believed is clt, then the speech act classification they need to use daily is directive speech act, which will engage students to talk more. references akinwotu, s. a. 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(1996). pragmatics. oxford: oup. 26 international journal of education, vol. 6, no. 1, november 2011 a conceptual framework: managerial decision making styles and organizational effectiveness among deans of malaysian public universities leele susana jamian, gurnam kaur sidhu, and parmjit singh aperapar abstract scholars in the area of management agree that decision making is both central and fundamental to any organization. this is because the quality of decisions made would influence the effectiveness of the managers and consequently, affect the success of the whole organization. indeed, this also happens in the educational management setting. drawing from an ongoing doctoral research which looked at the relationship between managerial decision making styles and organizational effectiveness among deans of malaysian public universities, this article discusses the formulation of a conceptual framework. the framework put forward in this paper is based on both literature and a study investigating the relationship between managerial decision making styles and organizational effectiveness among deans of malaysian public universities. second, the paper also attempts to discuss the possible research issues that could justify the development of the conceptual framework of the topic. literature reveals that there are potential links pointing to the relationships between the variables. however, as to date there is little empirical scholarly research conducted in the educational management and leadership setting concerning the variables discussed in this study. keywords: decision making styles, decision making skills, organizational effectiveness, deans. are fundamental to all leadership and management processes. in the field of management, drucker (with maciariello, 2008) has placed decision making as the highest skill to be understood and acquired by managers. this is because decisions made have a significant impact on the performance of an organisation. similarly, from the introduction decision making is always central to any organisation. numerous scholars in the area of management agree that decision making is one of the most pivotal elements in the administration of any organizations (alqarni, 2003). in the same vein, jones (2005) advocated that decision and its process leele susana jamian, educational administration and leadership faculty of education, universiti teknologi mara malaysia, 40200 shah alam, selangor, malaysia. +019-2187514, leelephd@ yahoo.com gurnam kaur sidhu, faculty of education, universiti teknologi mara malaysia, 40200 shah alam, selangor, malaysia. +6019-2375826, gurnamsidhu@salam.uitm.edu.my parmjit singh aperapar, faculty of education, universiti teknologi mara malaysia, 40200 shah alam, selangor, malaysia. +6013-3500567, parmj378@salam.uitm.edu.my leele susana jamian, gurnam kaur sidhu, and parmjit singh aperapar, a conceptual framework 27 educational management perspective, decision making is seen as a major responsibility of all the academic administrators. in fact, it is a sine quo non of all formal educational administration since educational organisations are basically decisionmaking structured entities (hoy and miskel, 2007). thus, this paper aims to present a discussion on the formulation of a conceptual framework based on both literature and an on-going doctoral study investigating the relationship between managerial decision making styles and the multi dimensions of organizational effectiveness, among deans of malaysian public universities. secondly, it also aims to present discussion on the possible research problems that could justify the development of the conceptual framework of the topic. nonetheless, literature reveals that there are potential links pointing to the relationship between these two variables. however, as to date there is little empirical scholarly research conducted pertaining to the topic in the area of educational administration, management and leadership setting especially among deans in malaysian public universities. along with the aims, three key words and definitions such as framework, concept and theory are presented below in order to facilitate understanding on the formulation of this concept paper. leadership and decision making numerous theories and explanations on leadership have been developed in order to investigate leadership effectiveness (dubrin, dalgish and miller, 2006). boulgarides and cohen (2001) disclose that leadership style is defined as a consistency in pattern of behaviour showed by a leader over a period of time. along with many researchers, they claimed leadership styles seem to be optimal depending on the situation. similarly, a framework for understanding leadership by robbin (1997) extends the model of situational perspective that leads to the leadership effectiveness study. according to him, leadership effectiveness is referred to obtaining desirable outcomes such as productivity, quality and satisfaction in a given situation. nonetheless, he emphasizes whether or not a leader is effective would depend on key variables such as leader characteristics and traits, leader behaviours and style, group member characteristics, and both the internal and external environment. in light of the leadership study, boulgarides and cohen (2001) revealed in their study that the leadership style can be reflected and measured by using ones’ decision making. harris (1998) defines decision making as a study of “identifying and choosing alternatives based on the values and preferences of the decision maker”. decision making implies some alternatives choices that need to be considered. in this situation, harris clarifies that a person may not only want to identify as many alternatives as possible but above all, to choose the one best fits the specified goals, desires, lifestyles, values and so on. secondly, decision making is defined by looking into the process itself. harris (1998) 28 international journal of education, vol. 6, no. 1, november 2011 mentioned that decision making is the “process of sufficiently reducing uncertainty and doubt about alternatives to allow a reasonable choice to be made from among them.” according to him, decision making emphasizes the information gathering function. it is where uncertainty is reduced rather than eliminated. in addition, very few decisions are made with “absolute certainty because complete knowledge about all the alternatives is seldom possible. thus, every decision involves a certain amount of risk”. goodman, fandt, michlitsch and lewis (2006) state in their book entitled management challenges for tomorrow’s leaders that decision making is a process through which managers or leaders identify and resolve problems and capitalize on opportunities. good decision making is paramount at all levels in organization. it starts with recognition of problems and opportunities and eventually concludes with assessment of the results of actions taken to solve those problems. a problem emerges when some aspect of organizational performance is less than desirable. when an unsatisfactory result occurs, a successful manager will both recognize the problem and search for solutions. based on the literature mentioned above it is important to note that many scholars in the area of leadership had conducted research on leader effectiveness by measuring one’s decision style by using specific instrument. nonetheless, scholars in the area of leadership always believe that rigour empirical researches on leadership need to be carried out in order to investigate academic excellence in the academic organisations. zairi (2009) the writers of a book entitled the total transformational thinking in academic leadership a new dna asserted that a new dna is required in becoming a leader in the academic environment. they defend that it is crucial to understand what the key attributes of an effective leader in an academic setting. figure 1 below illustrates the model of becoming a leader in an academic environment – the new dna, put forward by zairi (2008, cited in zairi 2009). based on the model below, institutes of higher education (hereafter ihe) need to conduct investigation and determine the individual capacity as in “who are they?” since this information would help to build the leadership of the academic leaders. in addition, other aspects of leaders are also included as part of the new dna in search of the transformational leaders particularly in the era of 21st century such “mainroad” or constancy of purpose, “catalyst” or drivers of change, “farmers” or distinctive culture and may other leadership aspects. as far as this paper is concerned, the conceptual framework developed for this paper focuses on the leadership style that is reflected in the deans’ managerial decision styles. hence, the introduction to decision making above is included in order to provide some perspectives of what decision making is all about. leele susana jamian, gurnam kaur sidhu, and parmjit singh aperapar, a conceptual framework 29 the significance of decision making why do many scholars think decision making is essential? drucker, (1967, as cited in harrison, 1999) emphasized what determines an effective organization will always fall back to an effective leader who is also an effective decision maker. leonard, scholl and kowalski (1999) agreed that decision making is the fundamental function in any organizations. this is because the quality of decisions made would influence the effectiveness of the managers and consequently, affects the success of the whole organization. similarly, hammond (1999) advocated that the success in all the roles orchestrated by a manager in an organisation reflects the decisions that he or she made. further, rue and byars (2000) stated that a manager must first be a good decision maker before he or she could be a good planner, organizer, staffer, leader, and controller (regardless in any organization). however, jones (2005) emphasized that decision making is seen as one of the important competency components in leadership. he noted, both decisions and the process of decision-making are explicitly “fundamental to all leadership and management processes”. reputation of organisation leadership values leadership “brand” distinctive culture (dna) drivers of change constancy of purpose individual capability define figure 1: becoming a leader in an academic environment – the new dna zairi, ectqm (2008, cited in zairi, 2009) decision making styles rowe and boulgarides (1992) affirmed that there is a need to measure decision making styles since “individual’s decision styles form the backbone of effective decision making”. apart 30 international journal of education, vol. 6, no. 1, november 2011 from this, both scholars declared that investigation on leadership would include the study on decision making styles since how one’s style relates to another’s can be regarded as a personto-person relationship or a manager-toa-group relationship. drucker (1966, as cited in rowe and boulgarides, 1992) pointed out that effective executives concentrate only on essential matters that they do not actually “make a great many decisions”. a few crucial decisions which impart the highest level of understanding, consistency in a situation, strategic and generic rather than problem solving are the criteria needed in a decision maker. above all, the notion of style flexibility has the dominant effect rather than one best style only since a flexible style can be matched to suit the change in a specific situation, thus improving its effectiveness. further, decision making styles help to probe the psychological structure of the mind and also they could clearly display how an individual thinks differently based on his or her perception and values. in addition to the above, decisions are built within ones’ “unique frame of reference or psychological set of each individual” (rowe and boulgarides, 1992) and this would transcend their subjective reality. specifically, the decision making styles inventory that has been employed in the proposed study is based on four driving forces and situation confronting the decision-makers developed by rowe and boulgarides (1992). the scores derived from the inventory categorized a decision maker into four basic decision styles namely; directive, behavioural, analytical and conceptual. having to measure an individual’s style pattern is pivotal since this would predict how one will react to various situations. in an absolute sense, decision styles are the tabulated scores that one receives after answering a set of questions in the decision making styles inventory. however in a relative sense, decision style inventory is the “way” where style is utilized based on decision making situations. based on these scholars, effective decision-makers are the ones whose style matches the requirements of the decision situations. in other words, decision style is referred as “the way in which a manager perceives information and mentally process that information to arrive at decisions” (pg. 28). with this understanding, managerial decision making styles are seen as an important variable to be measured since this would reveal implication as to whether academic managers do have considerable flexibility or rigidity in changing their decision making styles based on situation warrants (rowe and boulgarides, 1992). figure 2 shows the decision making style model which has two components such as cognitive complexity and values orientations. the lower half of figure 2 indicates the directive and behavioural styles prefer structure and the upper half prefer complexity. the cognitive complexity dimension separates the upper and the lower half as well as distinguishes managers from leaders (zaleznick, 1970 as cited in rowe and boulgarides, leele susana jamian, gurnam kaur sidhu, and parmjit singh aperapar, a conceptual framework 31 1992). based on the figure too, the value dimensions separate the left and right halves and cover the task and people dimensions. the left half of the figure indicates the analytic and directive styles that prefer task. however, on the right half indicates the conceptual and behavioural styles that prefer people. figure 2: decision style model left hemisphere right hemisphere complexity analytic conceptual leaders cognitive complexity directive behavioural structure manager task people values figure 2. decision style model further details of the four decision making styles postulated by rowe and boulgarides (1992) are as below. directive style this decision style is characterized by autocratic and internal orientation. individuals with this style have low tolerance for ambiguity and low cognitive complexity. the focus is on technical decisions which involve a need for speed, efficiency and limited alternatives. at the same time, they prefer specific information to be given verbally. they are also focused, structured, aggressive, rigid, dominant and tight controlled individuals. they also have the drive to achieve results but on the other hand, they need security and status. analytical style this decision style is characterized by an autocratic bent. individuals with this style have a much greater tolerance for ambiguity and more cognitive complex personality. they always need more information and consideration for alternatives since they focus on technical decisions. they are typified by the ability to cope with new situations. therefore, they enjoy more problem solving and always strive to achieve for the maximum. position and ego seem to be important characteristics and often reach the top posts in a company or start their own since they need more control. however, they are not rapid in decision making but enjoy variety and prefer written reports. they also welcome and enjoy challenges and examine every detail in a situation. conceptual style this style is characterized by high cognitive, a people orientation and typically be a thinker rather than doer. hence, there is trust and openness in relations and shared goals with subordinates. they tend to be idealists and may emphasize more on ethics and values. they are also creative and can readily understand complex relationships. they tend to use data from numerous sources and consider many alternatives. they focus on long range with high organizational commitment. above all, they are achievement-oriented, value praise, recognition and independence. they prefer loose control to power and 32 international journal of education, vol. 6, no. 1, november 2011 exhibit participation. behavioural style – this style is characterized by supportive and friendly orientation (concerned with subordinates’ well being and peopleoriented). individuals with this style have low cognitive complexity scale but they have deep social concerns for organization and development for people. they normally provide counselling, receptive to suggestions, communicate easily, portray warmth, empathetic, persuasive, compromising and accept loose control. they focus on short term range and use meetings for communicating. they tend to avoid conflict, seek acceptance but sometimes are insecure. organizational effectiveness in relation to decision making variable, this current paper also attempts to relate and investigate whether decision making styles among deans influence the multi dimensions of organizational effectiveness in malaysian public universities. pertaining to the formulation of the conceptual framework, the multi dimensions of organizational effectiveness is established to be the dependent variable investigated. so, why is organizational effectiveness the concern? in recent years, many institutions of higher education (ihe) organizations globally have been the subject of public scrutiny from varied constituencies such as stakeholders and societies to measure their own organizational effectiveness and performance. pounder (1997) emphasized the importance of assessing organizational effectiveness in the western ihe particularly in the united states of america and the united kingdom. according to him assessing organizational effectiveness has gained much attention for the past few decades from researchers and scholars due to the worldwide pressure on the evidence of effective performance. however, as to date, the world class university rankings have put more pressure for many ihe globally, to compete and to be among the best top 200 universities in the world. consequently, measuring the organizational effectiveness among ihe throughout the world has been the major and debatable issue. with this new world order phenomenon in ihe and coupled with various contemporary environmental changes such as globalization phenomenon, rapid changes in technology, accelerating development in knowledge and greater widening opportunities in education worldwide have resulted the government of malaysia to relook upon the status of its public universities and act upon immediate changes in tandem with the objective to be the regional centre of excellence in education. nonetheless, strong inertia effect that stems from the current and rapid global changes has somehow affected the current malaysian educational landscape which requires urgent and robust educational transformation or also known as educational re-engineering towards better performance. in the light of this urgent transformation, the higher education minister, dato sri mustapa (the star, 14th august 2008) stated that leele susana jamian, gurnam kaur sidhu, and parmjit singh aperapar, a conceptual framework 33 it is crucial for local university deans to embark on leadership training as they make “universities tick”. further, the usm pro-chancellor tan sri lin sin yan who attended the same academic discourse said “…people who run universities and departments must be subject to checks and balances” (the star, 14th august 2008). zooming into one of the subtopics, the checking quality effectiveness, zairi, marwa and chowdhury (2009) accentuated that investigations over current performance levels, trends overtime and comparison data key measures and indicators purposes allow an organisation to evaluate what is working and what is not. hence, some excellent universities would go all out to design audits with the aims to appraise activities, practices, records, or policies of the organisation in a well structured manner and determine whether an organisation has the ability to meet or exceed a standard. further, by checking the quality effectiveness, this in turn could highly provide a number of benefits such as allowing the academic organisation to observe what is really taking place and later provide the insights to enable the organisation to take action prior to any potential serious problems or to assist certain necessary actions that need to be done in the organization. lastly, by checking quality effectiveness, these scholars are of the opinion that the information gathered can be used to evaluate which processes, policies, procedures and practices are effective or vice-versa. they also addressed the predetermined areas highlighted pertaining to the quality effectiveness. in particular, the areas of quality effectiveness should comply to the customer contract requirements or government regulations. many scholars agreed that ihe globally are facing significant challenges. zairi, marwa and chowdhury (2009) added that excellent universities do play a role in addressing the challenges in the 21st century. this is because universities are the agents for both the development of knowledgebased economies and for thriving civil societies. as a result, the existence of viable ihe is necessary in any modern democratic society. they noted that basic educational programmes and courses have become important commodities globally particularly in developing countries since these countries have the advantage over the low-cost manufacturing and services. for instance, the availability of excellent staff that is one-fifth of the cost of a staff with the same academic level in a developed-country. these scholars further indicated that in order to be relevant and competitive, universities must provide high value services “by being immediate innovative, integrative, conceptual and multidisciplinary” to meet numerous changing and dynamic demands of the global corporations. coupled with a number of justifications, zairi (2008, as cited in zairi, marwa and chowdhury, 2009) put forward the academic excellence model with the intention to equip the needs of the different stakeholders as well as to realign activities into an integrative 34 international journal of education, vol. 6, no. 1, november 2011 rather than the centralised management and control structure behaviours. the model displayed in figure 3 below suggests a step-by-step approach in designing organisational structure and direction of leadership in a university with the aim to impart the truly unique and excellent business education programme. with the aim to drive the academic excellence in ihe, zairi (2008, as cited in zairi, 2009) has included the checking on quality effectiveness as one of the highlights. by doing this, universities are hoped to extend the necessary capabilities in achieving excellence standards and to build a culture of continuous measurement and optimization. in relation to the formulation of the conceptual framework, the organization effectiveness variable is adapted from the original work of cameron (1978a). this instrument which is in a form of survey questionnaire was originally used to identify and assess the major characteristics of colleges and universities that are associated with effectiveness. respondents were required to identify characteristics that are typical of effective institutions with which they were familiar. as a result, questionnaire items were identified and constructed to be included in the instrument. the original survey instrument consisted of 57 items investigating nine multi dimensions. however, in order to suit the local malaysian universities setting, only five dimensions of organizational effectiveness were investigated. they are the: driving academic excellence have we got the momentum going how do we get there? are we gaining speed? are we on track? how is our capability doing? how good are we? where can we improve? which innovation idea do we pursue? what breakthrough thinking can we introduce? where do we want to be to be? figure 3 driving excellence in academia. zairi, ectqm (2008, cited in zairi, 2009) leele susana jamian, gurnam kaur sidhu, and parmjit singh aperapar, a conceptual framework 35 1. student educational development 2. faculty and administrator employee satisfaction 3. professional development and quality of the faculty 4. system openness and community interaction 5. organizational health. based on cameron (1986) those items in the organizational effectiveness questionnaires asked individuals to provide “descriptive information” and not “evaluative judgments, regarding the extent to which their institution possessed certain characteristics”. in addition, respondents were not instructed to rate effectiveness but most importantly, they will need to describe the characteristics that they possess. the emphasis is on description rather than evaluation. he added that this is essential to decrease the likelihood of providing “bias evaluations of their own organization’s effectiveness in a positive direction” (in this case organization referred to faculty. a survey on organizational effectiveness will be conducted in order to explore the respondents’ perceptions regarding their institutions through the use of seven likert-type scales. the organizational effectiveness survey would measure the mean score for each dimension of higher institution effectiveness as mentioned above. in view of the literature above, this current paper is presented with the aims to present the formulation of a conceptual framework and present issues pertaining to the relationship between managerial decision styles and organizational effectiveness among deans of malaysian public universities. the relationship between decision making styles and organizational effectiveness realizing the strong global tidal wave that education is no longer for the elites but moving towards massification, the ministry of higher education in malaysia has leapfroged to implement a robust educational transformation especially in the internalization of university. the new globalization process eventually has transformed education from ‘public goods’ to a ‘commodity’ based on students’ mobility, worldwide expertise and numerous new programmes. the call for massification is imperative especially in the effort to supply knowledge-workers who are skilful and intelligent. due to this contemporary global trend, the effectiveness measures in malaysian public ihe need to be constantly conducted (ministry of higher education, 2007). parallel to the above scenario; educational transformation, the massification of education and measures of effectiveness and performance, the fifth malaysian prime minister of malaysia, dato seri abdullah bin haji ahmad badawi stated: …however, what we now have to ask ourselves is whether the quality of our education system has moved in tandem with its growth in quantity; whether the younger generation passing through our national education system is adequately equipped to 36 international journal of education, vol. 6, no. 1, november 2011 thrive in an increasingly global and competitive environment. i believe we will need nothing less than an ‘education revolution’ to ensure that our aspirations to instil a new performance culture in the public and private sectors are not crippled by our inability… . (p.4) the report by the committee to study, review and make recommendations concerning the development and direction of higher education in malaysia (ministry of higher education, 2006) based on the above statement, educational revolution is reckoned as urgent and timely due to the new performance culture. in line with this, the government of malaysia via the ministry of higher education (mohe) has taken quite a robust action in restructuring malaysian public ihe. in doing so, three major reports on higher education have been produced as the genesis of the action plan. they are: 1. the report by the committee to study, review and make recommendations concerning the development and direction of higher education in malaysia (halatuju report) july 2005 (ministry of higher education, 2006) 2. the transformation of higher education document, january 2007 3. the national higher education strategic plan, august 2007 mohe’s long term strategic plan which is also known as the national higher education action plan for 2007-2010 has eventually emerged in the effort to materialize the educational transformation. the prime objective of those documents is to strengthen and enhance the malaysian public ihe. parallel to the new performance culture, it is believed that effectiveness measure in ihe is highly needed and timely. therefore, the conceptual framework is developed in the effort to assess the current status of organizational effectiveness in malaysian public universities. as to materialize the pronouncement, the initial step of restructuring the ministry of education by the prime minister was implemented in the year 2006. the ministry of education was soon restructured into the ministry of education (moe) and the ministry of higher education (mohe). on top of that, the appointment of the committee to study, review and make recommendations concerning the development and direction of higher education in malaysia which operating under the supervision of mohe is another initiative to educational revolution. in line with this, the committee has identified a number of critical aspects that need immediate action to advance ihe. in the effort to strengthen malaysian public ihe, the committee states that it: …is strongly in favour that universities being managed as corporate organizations and not be micro-managed by mohe. the committee stands by its conviction that a corporate management style is a very important imperative leele susana jamian, gurnam kaur sidhu, and parmjit singh aperapar, a conceptual framework 37 that should be operationalised if the government is earnest in promoting the efficiency and effectiveness of the universities. committee recommends the board of directors (in universities) be fully empowered to administer the universities, and that the minister of higher education delegates to the board of directors the authority and responsibility to administer the universities, so that all operational and decision-making prerogatives are transferred from the mohe to the universities. (p. xxxi) the committee to study, review and make recommendations concerning the development and direction of higher education in malaysia. (ministry of higher education, 2006) as evidenced by the literature above (mohe, 2006), the statement has illustrated that the development of this conceptual framework on whether decision making styles of academic leaders such as deans influence the organizational effectiveness in malaysian public universities is relevant and timely. the study which was initiated by the fifth prime minister and conducted by the appointed committee, suggested that if the government is serious in promoting efficiency and effectiveness in public ihe, these institutions should be managed as corporate organizations by the individual universities themselves (board of directors) and no longer by the ministry of higher education (mohe). by analyzing the statement critically, it can be implied that somehow in order to improve efficiency and effectiveness, universities should be empowered to operate as individual corporate organization instead of being micro-managed by the stakeholders. in the same vein, the researchers are of the opinion that somehow there is a ‘reasonable doubt’ over the organizational effectiveness that propels such a major planning over the educational transformation in malaysia. it is strongly felt that the analysis of this literature has revealed the concern over organizational effectiveness. hence, it is paramount to measure the current status of the organizational effectiveness of the malaysian public universities. pertaining to the above, although the ministry of higher education suggested that measuring organizational effectiveness and performance is paramount, yet scant empirical research has been conducted. based on literature, although there seems to be relationship between decision making prerogatives and educational organizational effectiveness and performance, little is known when malaysian public universities are concerned. on top of that, measuring relationship between decision making related area and organizational effectiveness is rarely conducted in both local and international ihe settings. in relation to the all the potential relationship among the variables suggested, literature revealed that there are potential links pointing to the relationships between the variables. zairi (2009) mentioned that what the academic leaders must do in the 21st century is to attain and sustain the 38 international journal of education, vol. 6, no. 1, november 2011 commanding positions both in terms of performance and esteem. hence, knowing what type of leadership universities must have is a central issue since this is what determines excellence in heis. they stated that excellence in ihe is being emphasized since it cannot happen by itself. indeed excellence has to be obtained via visionary leadership and a continuous drive of value, high quality standards and superior performance outcomes. in fact, they mentioned that the role of leadership in the academic context has been the main focus and it is equally important to the role of leadership in both private and other public sectors’ contexts. both universities and other ihe are suggested to focus on identifying the critical factors that are required “for developing a vision for excellence, driving it and delivering its outcomes”. therefore, the creation of the continuum of leadership roles at various levels is highlighted to ensure a total engagement, alignment and high impact visionary effort are achieved. a synthesis of all the information above indicates that leadership study in the area of managerial decision making style among academic leaders has a pertinent implication to organizational effectiveness and performance. precisely, what has been mentioned earlier by management scholar; drucker (1967, as cited in harrison, 1999) is pivotal when he mentioned, what determines an effective organization will always fall back to an effective leader who is also an effective decision maker. in this respect, a conceptual framework is developed with the aim to explore and identify the decision making styles practiced among deans and their relationship to the multi dimensions of organizational effectiveness in malaysian public universities. based on evidence from various literatures, the researchers embark on the development of this conceptual paper. figure 3 below displays the summary of the conceptual framework discussed for a proposed empirical research. independent variable dependent variable proposed outcome d e c i s i o n m a k i n g style inventory (by rowe and mason) 4 dimensions: 1. directive 2. analytical 3. conceptual 4. behavioural organizattional effectiveness (by kim cameron) adapted into 5 dimensions: 1. student educational development 2. faculty and administrator employee satisfaction 3. professional development and quality of the faculty 4. system openness and community interaction 5. organizational health. model : managerial decision making style and organizational effectiveness among deans of public university in comprehensive ihe figure 4 a conceptual framwork: managerial decision making styles, and organizational effectiveness of deans in malaysian public universities leele susana jamian, gurnam kaur sidhu, and parmjit singh aperapar, a conceptual framework 39 based on discussion above, figure 4 is put forward as the conceptual framework of a proposed empirical research. the managerial decision making style is set as the independent variable or the predictor whereas the organizational effectiveness is set as the dependent variable or the outcome. the managerial decision styles model which is adapted from rowe and boulgarides (1992) consists of four different styles namely; directive, analytical, conceptual and behavioural styles. whereas, the organizational effectiveness model which is adapted from cameron (1986) consists of five multi dimensions namely; the students educational development, faculty and administrator employee satisfaction, professional development and quality of the faculty system openness and community interaction and organizational health. thus, the conceptual framework above is set as the groundwork of the empirical research that would statistically measure the relationship between managerial decision making styles and organizational effectiveness among deans of malaysian public universities. in addition, a proposed model of relationship between these variables will be presented if findings transpire. issues pertaining decision styles of deans and organizational effectiveness malaysian ihe the duties of deans in ihe encompass a series of dynamic roles that stand both as managers and leaders. bensimon & neumann (1993, as cited in wolverton et al., 2001) mentioned that external changes which take place in the real world somehow affect the academic landscape and this gives impact to the roles of deans in ihe. initially, deans are regarded as managers of academic institutions and their duties mainly focus on the administration of students which include managing, planning, budgeting, advocating, fundraising and cultural perspectives (wolverton et al., 2001). however, in tandem with the new globalization era, the duties of deans in ihe are far more challenging that most of them are regarded both as managers and leaders of change. so where do all these roles lead to? a synergy between these two roles; as a manager and a leader, has led deans to make various and continuous decision makings in the effort to make their academic organizations effective and thus, leads towards quality education. however, as to date little empirical research has been investigated concerning deans’ management skills in the malaysian ihe setting. so far, a few studies have investigated the deans’ management skills and organizational effectiveness and performance, but none have investigated the managerial decision making styles and skills particularly among deans of public universities in malaysia. among the studies conducted on deans is the profiles of deanship in malaysian public universities (parmjit, et al., 2009). the scholars stated that much literature agreed that deans should be able to lead and above all possess management skills in order to navigate effective 40 international journal of education, vol. 6, no. 1, november 2011 academic organizations. however, the study revealed that both groups of respondents consisting of deans and deputy deans along with heads of departments, ranked decision-making skills as the highest management competency required by deans. this is followed by other management skills such as communication skills, problem-solving skills, interpersonal skills, public relation skills, negotiation skills and lastly ict skills (parmjit et al., 2007). even though this study managed to illuminate empirical data on the most needed management skills among deans and top administrators in local malaysian universities, little is known about their managerial decision styles and decision making skills. besides the above, managerial decision making related area has so far been commonly investigated among corporate managers and leaders in private organizations worldwide. however, there are few studies that have been conducted among the local ihe settings particularly among deans of malaysian public universities. another local research which focuses on deans of public university was conducted by zaharah mokhtar (2002). her study entitled managerial practices of university academic administrators: a case study, addresses the deans’ managerial practices in one of the malaysian public universities. the study touches only on aspects such as dean’s decisional roles particularly as entrepreneur, disturbance handler, resource allocator and negotiator. on top of that, the study employs a qualitative research design which involves only six deans from six faculties. consequently, the results only encapsulate the deans’ experiences and feelings in search of meaning and understanding of the complexities of managing a faculty. in regards to the above studies on deans in malaysian public ihe, none has actually investigated the deans’ decision making styles and skills. hence, the formulation of this conceptual framework is timely since it not only helps to heighten understanding of both variables but more importantly hopes to narrow the gap of what is needed most in deans’ management skills and leadership. on the one hand, a study on decision making styles would help imply as to whether deans do have considerable flexibility (rowe and boulgarides, 1992, pg. 28) or rigidity in changing their decision making styles based on situation warrants. on the other hand, results on decision making skills would reveal implication as to whether deans are effective decision makers that heighten the possibility of success. subsequently, there is a need to explore and measure the current practices of deans’ managerial decision making styles so that the exploration could be an impetus for further enhancement measures in their management skills and leadership. besides the above independent variable set as managerial decision styles, the need to measure organizational effectiveness as dependent variable in local universities is even greater and more pressing considering the new performance leele susana jamian, gurnam kaur sidhu, and parmjit singh aperapar, a conceptual framework 41 culture in the era of globalization. in view of this, the demand for changes in the current environment has pressed malaysian government, government agencies and institutions of higher education as a whole to improve strategy and approach to ensure quality (ministry of higher education, 2006). realizing these challenges, a concern for measuring organizational effectiveness and performance in local public universities tends to emerge directly from the current academic global environment. unlike most of the developed countries that conducted high number of research in the area of organizational effectiveness, as to date only one empirical study was conducted in malaysian public universities with the intention to assess the performance in terms of quality and how malaysian public ihe stand among each other. academic reputation survey (ares) or also known as percubaan sistem penarafan akademik (setara) was conducted by the ministry of higher education in 2006 with the help of academicians from malaysian local universities such as universiti kebangsaan malaysia and universiti malaya and other agencies such as the national accreditation division (lan) and the quality assurance division, ministry of higher education (qad) (kajian reputasi akademik & hasil penarafan institusi pengajian tinggi awam by the minister of higher education, dato’ mustapa mohamed, 2007). by measuring organizational effectiveness in terms of both strengths and weaknesses, malaysian public universities could further strive to improve quality and eventually forecast their way in the world rankings (mohamed khaled; higher education minister, the star, saturday 17th may 2008). the last pertinent question, do managerial decision making styles among deans in malaysian public universities affect the multi dimensions of organizational effectiveness? within the higher education setting, deans of faculties are considered as the most important and influential key persons who navigate and determine the success of the overall faculty administration and management. ideally, many scholars in the area of management agreed that decision making gives impact to the success or failure of its organization (leonard, scholl and kowalski, 1999 and drucker, 1967, as cited in harrison, 1999). however, realistically not many studies have been conducted to gauge the level of relationship between decision making related area of deans and organizational effectiveness. thus, knowing and measuring what and how much the strength of managerial decision making factor influence the organizational effectiveness is pivotal in search of quality improvement. this in turn would provide some platform for the local public universities to improve management skills and performance particularly among the academic managers and leaders. conclusion to date, literature has revealed that there are potential links pointing to the relationships between the variables formulated above; managerial decision 42 international journal of education, vol. 6, no. 1, november 2011 making styles and organizational effectiveness. however, there is hardly any empirical study conducted to statistically measure between decision making related area and organizational effectiveness among deans particularly in the malaysian local public universities setting. realizing this, the development of the conceptual framework is imperative as to set the groundwork of the proposed empirical study. in this respect, a conceptual framework to investigate the relationships of decision making styles and decision making skills towards organizational effectiveness among deans of public universities in 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(2009). total transformational thinking in academic leadership a new dna. bradford: european centre for best practice management (ecbpm) publishing house uk. international journal of education vol. 10 no. 2, february 2018, pp. 157-161 ©2018 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v10i2.8903 157 teaching english with an internet-based nature of google docs to improve students’ critical thinking erly wahyuni faculty of teacher training and education, university of muhammadiyah, malang, indonesia erlywahyuni@ymail.com first draft received: 18 august 2017 accepted: 12 dec 2017 final proof received: 5 feb 2018 abstract one of the 4c skills required by the students in today’s global community is critical thinking. critical thinking skill is not a skill that can evolve by itself along with the development of human body. accordingly, it requires creativity on teachers’ side. the teacher can consider strategies and methods that can enhance students’ thinking ability. one of the strategies used by the teacher in teaching language to enhance learners’ critical thinking is internet-based nature of google docs, an online application that can enrich learning environment by transferring teaching instruments that are usercentered. the objectives of this study are to identify the learning activities designed by the teacher to develop critical thinking; and describe the activities that expose the skill and to know the students’ responses toward the activities of teaching english with google docs. this study employed descriptive qualitative method. the subjects consisted of an english teacher and 24 senior high school students in malang. the instruments used included observation and open-ended questionnaire. the result of the analysis indicates that the english teacher designed the learning activities consisting of three main parts: a) pre-teaching that focuses on the orientation and registration of students to use email or user account to access to google app; b) during teaching which focuses on students’ engagement of remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating; and c) post-teaching which includes sharing and providing students with opportunities to receive immediate feedback on their work. meanwhile, the learning activities to develop students’ critical thinking not only refer to the teaching of english skills and those of language components but also integrating literary texts with answering effective questions. the students have positive responses toward the activities and they feel comfortable using technology as a medium to learn. furthermore, they expect technology to be used in classroom as they completely adopted it in their lives. keywords: teaching english; critical thinking; google docs to cite this paper (in apa style): wahyuni, e. (2018). teaching english with an internet-based nature of google docs to improve students’ critical thinking. international journal of education, 10(2), 149-161. http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v10i2.8903 introduction partnership for 21st century learning (2014) mentions that one of the 4c skills required by the students in today’s global community is critical thinking. meanwhile, critical thinking skills are not a skill that can evolve by itself in line with the physical development of human. these skills must be trained through the provision of stimulus that requires a person to think critically. school as an institution of education providers has a responsibility to help students develop other skills beside academic competence that are essential to their lives, such as critical thinking skills. the 2013 curriculum emphasizes modern pedagogic dimension in learning with the aim at improving the ability of high-level thinking (ministry of education and cultures, 2013). critical thinking skills need to be given to students regarding the implementation of language learning, especially reading for high school students that are still directed at the intellectual or cognitive dimension. in terms of literacy, the average students are only able to find information, but very weak to interpret, reflect and evaluate the content of reading. in other words, language learning method ignores other cognitive developments; for example, to improve critical thinking (yusuf, 2013). due to the importance of implementing critical thinking for language learning, teachers should pay attention to these skills for students to have good thinking skills and better ability to formulate strategies and tactics in order to achieve success in global competition in the future. through critical thinking, students are invited to participate actively and effectively to build their own knowledge (ramsey, 2009). previous research on critical thinking in language learning has been done by junining (2015) with the result that the students’ cognitive, affective and psychomotor ability has already appeared in k13, which is a national curriculum in 2013 for primary and secondary education in the context of indonesia. however, the implementation needs to be evaluated regularly. keeping students exited and active in the classroom requires creativity on teachers’ side. once the teacher establishes the student-centered classroom and creates a framework for incorporating mailto:erlywahyuni@ymail.com wahyuni teaching english with an internet-based nature of google docs to improve students’ critical thinking 158 thinking skills into lessons, he or she can then consider strategies and methods that can enhance students’ thinking ability. nowadays a wide diversity of methods is available, both teacher and students can choose a way to meet their need. the goal of teaching is not only to pass the knowledge, but also to encourage students to self-development. technology can enrich learning environment by transfering teaching instruments toward user centered (marcus-quinn, 2013). internet based-nature of google docs is one of the online applications that can enrich learning environment by transferring teaching instruments toward users. furthermore, research on the use of internet for language learning activities has been conducted by zhang (2013) about developing an efl teaching and learning website, sharing the various english resources, and cultivating teacher and learner autonomy. meanwhile, online training organized by seameo community development (2017) conducted language learning with the topic of hots as teaching strategy (improving hots through language) addressed to language teachers of junior and senior high school in indonesia to become participants to facilitate group task. every group of language teacher practices to identify the level of hots from the eliterary texts and share the result through distance learning. the above facts underline and motivate the researcher to know the learning activities done by an english teacher in a senior high school to enhance learners’ critical thinking and her students’ responses toward the activity with internet–based nature of google docs. method the design chosen for this research study is a descriptive qualitative one which investigates the nature of phenomena that exist by observing and describing the behavior of a subject without influencing it in any way (johnson, 2005).the location of the research was in sma muhammadiyah i batu malang; one of the private senior high schools in malang, east java indonesia. participants the data were compiled from an english teacher as the subject of the research and 21 students of the eleventh grade of sma muhammadiyah i batu malang. the instruments used were observation, questionnaire, and document. the observation was done to identify the activities designed by the english teacher, the implementation during the learning process from preactivity, during-activity, and post-activity. the document is a lesson plan that provides additional data regarding the main research question. meanwhile, the open-ended questions consist of 5 questions. here, the students were free to answer the question based on their own knowledge or feelings. data collection and data analysis after the data were collected, they were then analyzed. likert scale was used to gauge attitudes, values, and opinions. students were asked to complete a questionnaire that requires them to indicate the extent to which they agree or disagree with a series of statements (hall, 2010). the techniques of analyzing the data in this research included data reduction, data presentation, and conclusion: drawing or verifying (miles and huberman, 2013). results and discussion the result of the study indicated that the english teacher of sma muhammadiyah i batu malang designed the lesson plan with the activities using internet-based nature of google docs. the teacher, in this case, implemented six integrated activities referring to the revision of bloom taxonomy’s (2006, retrieved on march 2nd, 2013) such as: a) remembering, b) understanding, c) applying, d) analyzing, e) evaluating and f) creating. the learning activities designed by the teacher to develop critical thinking consist of three main parts: a) pre-teaching focusing on the orientation and register students to use email or user account to access to google apps, b) during teaching focusing on students’ engagement of remembering, understanding, applying, analysing, evaluating, and creating and, c) post-teaching including sharing and commenting students with opportunities to receive immediate feedback on their work. based on the observation, the teaching english to improve students’ critical thinking in language classes is split into two main parts with reference to the integrated teaching activities of english and those of language components: grammar-structure and vocabulary. following are the tasks of teaching and learning english that require students’ interaction, creativity, and critical thinking. a) pre-teaching the activity starts with simple tasks that allow students to become familiar with the structure and content of the site, and then move on to tasks that foster critical analysis and evaluation of information. the students get orientation and create an email and an account of google apps. the first activity is to download a literary text (narrative text) online and instruct them to identify the language features of the short story “jack and the beanstalk” such as verbs, nouns, adjectives, adverds etc. the verbs found such as give, grind, smell, etc.(present tense), hid, crept out, ate, laid etc. (past tense), is stealing (present continuous tense), poor, angry,big, fearsome, fool ,etc.(adjective), once upon a time, sometime,etc. (adverb), long and short vowels (/ͻ/ and /ͻ:/) in the words like not, from, morning (/i/ and /i:/ ) big and his, diphthongs /ou/ in the words cow, bone, gold and so on. the students have to be able to recall verbs, nouns, adjectives, adverbs etc. the second is brainstorming with examining the text (surveying the title, illustrations) and making questions like "what do you think this title will be about"? or "tell me three things you will be learning in this lesson about this topic or story"? b) while-teaching international journal of education vol. 10 no. 2, february 2018, pp. 157-161 ©2018 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v10i2.8903 159 the activity is to apply new vocabulary by creating their own descriptions and comparing certain subjects. the students in groups are provided with the descriptive text with those words missing. they can listen to the recording three times: the first time is purely devoted to listening and trying to work out what the missing words are; the second time deals with filling the gaps; and the third time consists of checking to confirm whether the answers are right or wrong. the students collaborate in pairs then discuss and share the answers online and practise pronouncing the words with the teacher through further listening to the audio exposure of the words. the purpose of the activities is to sharpen students’ listening and speaking ability in learning pronunciation of different verbs forms and others (saha, 2008). the students are provided with the text of a set of comprehension questions. the students read the text and the teacher gives them some time to do the silent reading, focusing their attention on questions geared toward the surface understanding of the text. student in pairs then create their own description and question and answers of the subject. after doing the exercises collaboratelly, students should have not only a general understanding of the text but also the ability to be able to describe and compare certain subjects. the students then swap the result of their work with other students and share together online. by examining the text, language learners learn not only about the grammar and vocabulary but also the writing mechanics and organization. they can see how correct punctuation is applied, how ideas, events and facts are organized into good paragraphs and finally how the paragraphs are combined into captivating stories.the next activity related to writing skill is by asking students to write down sentences or paragraphs based on their own experience and understanding about a certain topic then create it in a story. it is a part of personal jurnal witing. during these activities the students expand their knowledge individually and then discuss and share the opinions with group members. the students present their result using web tool and together with the teacher check the language components by using google docs comment function or discussion function. c) post-teaching includes sharing and commenting students with opportunities to receive immediate feedback on their work. the students together with the teacher evaluate the discussion by identifying their weaknesses and afterward practice solving the problem. the students’ respose toward the learning activities with the internet-based nature of google docs the items below are the open-ended questions given to the students. 1. what do you know about google aps or google docs? 2. what activity do you like with google docs in class? 3. what are the benefit of the activity using google docs in class for you yourself? 4. how is your feeling after having activity with internet-based of google docs ? 5. how is the internet access in the school? table 1 presents the questionnaire that requires students to indicate the extent to which they agree or disagree with the collaborative activity. table 1. the questionnaire no. item sa a un decided d sd 1 2 3 4 5 1. i have already known google docs 2. i usually use it for doing the assignment 3. the internet access is available in the school 4. the teacher usually uses internet in teaching english 5 the teacher usually prepares the suitable activites using internet 6. using google docs can help us review, peer edit and live updating our works together 7. my friends and the teacher gives comments and feedback on our work 8. doing activity in groups using google docs practice us solving problem 9. we enjoyed the activity when google docs was used 10. i am very like if teaching and learning in the class with internet base nowadays students depend on the internet and feel confortable using technology as a medium to learn. it can be seen from result of the questionnaire that among the 21 students, 16 (76.19%) of them had been familiar with google app and they knew about it. the students used google docs only in the class for the activities such as writing descriptive and narrative texts and also paragraph writing. meanwhile based on the observation the teacher implemented the lesson plan in teaching and she sometimes used google docs for integrated writing and reading, and very rare for listening and speaking. the teacher prepared suitable activities in groups’ discussion using google docs to make students active and creative in class eventhough the access of internet in the school did not run well and it sometimes disturbed the learning process. otherwise, according to the students that the activities with google docs not only help them identify their mistakes and weaknesses but also solve their wahyuni teaching english with an internet-based nature of google docs to improve students’ critical thinking 160 problem directly. the percentages of students’ responses, and feelings for this activity are different, 18 students (85.71 %) say strongly agree with the activity with internet-based nature of google docs, 2 students; (9.52%) agree, and 1 student (4.76 %) is undecided, but no student says “strongly disagree” with collaborative activities. meanwhile, the students who feel very satisfied are 4 students (19.29%); satisfied, 16 students (76.19%); and average, 1 student (4.76%). no student feels very dissatisfied with this. on the other hand, students expect technology to be used in classroom as they have completely adopted it in their lives (gonzales-vera, 2016,). the level of students’ satisfaction with learning english collaboratively with google docs can be seen in the graph in figure 1. figure 1. students’ satisfaction on collaborative learning with google docs research shows that educational experiences that are active, social, contextual, engaging, and studentowned lead to deeper learning. the benefits of collaborative learning include: development of higherlevel thinking, oral communication, self-management, and leadership skills. critical thinking skill cannot evolve by itself along with the physical development of human but it must be trained through a stimulus that requires a person to think critically. school as an institution of education providers has a responsibility to help students develop critical thinking skills therefore, teacher was required to be creative to design and build the students competence (kameo, 2007). based on the regulation of ministry of education and culture of the republic of indonesia number 81a of 2013 students should have attitude, skill and knowledge (cognitive, affective and psychomotor) competence. therefore, it is a must for a teacher to foster the development of the four domains in students by creating many activities in the teaching and learning process. internet is a very essential tool to create an interactive media. redecker et al. (2011) maintain that twenty-first century teacher education must place greater emphasis on instructional design, teambuilding, facilitating learning and new ways to foster creativity and innovation. icts must be integrated into teacher education programs and become commonplace as a tool used throughout teaching careers (ó grádaigh, 2014). however, that nowadays using internet is appropriate to create integrated activities that can expose the skill (poore, 2013). literary texts are the authentic reading material that can provide teacher with the integrated activities. without any creativity and activities created, the class will be boring and not interested anymore. google docs is one of share resources and a web-based collaborative system means of cooperation between the students or group of students with other subject in doing their works and media interactive learning. the teachers together with the students can each editing, reviewing and correcting one another in doing their works online and exchange ideas among fellow students and teachers and this is one of the examples that can build and develop students’ creativity, critical reading, critical thinking, and also problem solving. conclusion based on the result of the finding, it can be summarized that the learning activities designed by the teachers have a characteristic that is solving problem. collaborative learning assists students to develop critical thinking skills and achieves richer knowledge generation through shared goals, shared exploration, and a shared process of making meaning. the learning activity help foster students’ critical thinking with three phases activities that are a) pre-activity with orientation, giving motivation and asking student to register an account of google apps, b) while-activity integrates english skills with steps of remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating and c) post-activity is giving feedback and evaluating the result of learning process. furthermore, the teaching english with internet-based nature of google docs not only enable the students to create sets of cognitive, affective and behavioral competencies but also by combining that abilities the students’ competence will be able to maximize so that adult who have critical thinking skill attain good ability to analyze and to think logically so as to produce proper consideration and decision to face the challenges of the future. references bloom, j. (2006). selected concepts of curriculum. retrieved from www.jeffbloom.net/docs/selected concepts of curriculum. pdf). gonzales-vera,p. (2016). the e-generation: the use of technology for foreign language learning, in international journal of education vol. 10 no. 2, february 2018, pp. 157-161 ©2018 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v10i2.8903 161 a .pareja-lora, c. calle-martinez, & p. rodriguez-arancon (eds), new prespective on teaching and working with languages in the digital era (pp. 51-61). dublin: researchpublishing.net johnson, r. b. (2005). educatioal research: quantitative and qualitative. retrieved from www.south.edu/coe/bset/johnson. junining, e. (2015). developing critical thinking skill in language teaching: oral interpretation class. proceedings of ictte fkip uns, 1(1), 123132. kameo, r. m. 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(2008). teaching listening as an english language skill. retrieved from: http://www.articlesbase.com/languagesarticles/ teaching-listening-as-anenglish-languageskill-367095.html seameo (southeast asian ministers of education organization) secretariat. (online training) hots as teaching strategy (improving hots through language) bangkok 10110 thailand. 2017 yusuf, s. (2013). international student’ assessment in indonesia. hd learning week washington dc, february 6‐7, 2013. zhang, c. (2013). a study of internet use in efl teaching and learning in northwest china. asian social science, 9(2), 48-52. http://ftp.jrc.es/eurdoc/jrc66836.pdf http://www.articlesbase.com/languagesarticles/teaching-listening-as-anhttp://www.articlesbase.com/languagesarticles/teaching-listening-as-antampubolon, yusuf, & dahlan mindfulness as the fundamental element in developing effective communication between late adolescents and parents 106 mindfulness as the fundamental element in developing effective communication between late adolescents and parents merryana kurnia tampubolon, syamsu yusuf, and tina hayati dahlan educational psychology study program, school of postgraduates studies, universitas pendidikan indonesia, indonesia merryana.kurnia@upi.edu first draft received: 22 feb 2021 date accepted: 14 april 2021 final proof received: 23 may 2021 abstract the purpose of this article is to explain the fundamental element that helps develop effective communication between parents and late adolescents. while undergoing academic activities in higher education, late adolescents often experience various academic stresses. to deal with these, late adolescents need to communicate with their parents as their closest relatives. this way, they can get positive support to be more motivated and responsible in academic activities. late adolescents parents good communication may also reduce learning burnout and depression. however, the types of communication that occurred are not as expected. it does not provide the right solutions, and it makes late adolescents feel judged, unrespected and even causes conflicts. therefore, parents and adolescents need to know the fundamental element to develop effective communication between them. through literature review as the preliminary research conducted to determine what elements can develop effective communication, findings showed that mindfulness is the fundamental element in developing effective communication between parents and their late adolescents who are experiencing academic stress in higher education. keywords: academic stress; effective communication; late adolescents; mindfulness to cite this paper (in apa style): tampubolon, m.k., yusuf, s., dahlan, t.h. (202_). mindfulness as the fundamental element in developing effective communication between late adolescents and parents. international journal of education, 14(2), 106-116. https://doi.org/10.17509/ije.v14i2.43876 introduction family interaction requires effective communication among its members. it allows each member to share ideas and feelings that can strengthen the relationship. according to de vito (2016), the effectiveness of interpersonal communication and the ability to engage in satisfying conversations affect a person's sense of happiness. (de vito, 2016). communication is one of the important aspects in conducting interpersonal interactions, including within the family (thakkar & sheth, 2014), to convey information, educate and influence each other in order to obtain a change in attitude (effendy, 2009), creating quality relationships between parents and adolescents (kusuma, 2017). through good communication, adolescents and parents can maintain relationships (suryadinata, 2016), convey their opinions and difficulties to their parents openly (christian & jatmika, 2018). while studying in higher education, late adolescents experience a transition period by facing various activities in a new community. with the existing situation, late adolescents are required to be independent, however, they are not able to be fully independent because in some ways they are still dependent on their parents (alfakalia, 2017). when carrying out learning activities at the universities, various things can cause tension in students, such as stress due to demands for time for collecting assignments, exams, competition (murphy & archer, 1996), experiencing academic stress, decreased motivation (oetomo, yuwanto & rahaju, 2019). parents need to accompany adolescents to make decisions independently regarding life plans, problems related to education, ideology, things that require greater responsibility (bella & ratna, 2018). the application of the distance learning (pjj) method in learning activities at universities during the pandemic, encourages students to be more independent in learning, wisely use ict devices. the increasing frequency and duration of engagement with various applications that use the internet network causes social media fatigue in late adolescents. (rahardjo, qomariyah, mulyani & andriani, 2020). students also experience academic stress when they cannot do their experiment in the laboratory (winarti, 2021), academic stress, and various problems in learning (jannah & santoso, 2021; lubis & rasyid, 2021; waode, 2020). gunawan as cited in nugraha (2019) explained that out of 441 students studying at universities in bandung, 80 people were found to be depressed and 24 people had attempted suicide, with various causes, problems in the family and with matters related to the social environment. hidayat as cited in susanti (2019) explained that the results of a survey of first-semester students at universities in bandung, it was found that 30.5 percent of students experienced depression, 20 percent thought seriously about suicide, 6 percent had tried to commit suicide with various causes including academic stress, bad relationship with parents. https://doi.org/10.17509/ije.v14i2.43876 international journal of education vol. 14 no. 2, august-2021, pp. 106-116 ©2021 universitas pendidikan indonesia https://doi.org/10.17509/ije.v14i2.43876 107 effective communication between parents and their late adolescents who are experiencing academic stress in higher education is very important. it can give opportunities for the late adolescents to convey their feelings and discuss their problems without being afraid. jasra from kpai as cited in halidi & varwati (2020) explained that parents need to be a safe place for the child to pour their feelings and problems, including when they face academic stress in learning from home during the pandemic. parents' attention to their late adolescents’ learning activities affects their learning motivation and enthusiasm in doing assignments and thesis (agustina & kurniawan, 2020). the better the communication between parents and children, the lower the academic stress experienced by first-year students in higher education (saraswati, antari & saputra, 2020). however, ineffective communication will cause problems for late adolescents. rita pranawati from kpai as cited in sasongko (2015) explained that when communicating with children, parents tend to ask questions related to knowledge in a closed-form so that they do not provide opportunities for children to tell more about their situation. students often experience academic pressure while undergoing learning activities in higher education. students who cannot be detected as having experienced stress since the beginning of college can experience depression, even suicide (khasanah, pramudibyanto & widuroyekti, 2020). this shows that it is a must for parents and late adolescents who are under pressure while undergoing academic activities in higher education to have effective communication. there is a relationship between parental communication patterns and the level of academic stress experienced by first-year students in higher education (saraswati et al., 2020) according to previous research, there are not many studies that explain how communication between parents and late adolescents who study in higher education can be developed to be more effective, even though this is really important to late adolescents who need to communicate various problems and academic pressures they face to their parents. through literature reviews from various references such as articles, books, news, and documents from other electronic media, it is hoped that the findings can show what is the fundamental element in developing effective communication between parents and late adolescents who experience academic stress in higher education. method this research was conducted using the literature review method, as the preliminary stage in the research. the aim of this research is to determine the elements needed to develop effective communication between parents and late adolescents who experience academic stress in higher education. the data collected is secondary data obtained through google scholar search in order to obtain information on quality articles in online journals. articles are mostly published in the last ten years with academic indexes, such as google scholar, pubmed, directory of open access journals, sinta (science and technology index), textbooks from various academic publishers, online repositories. data were also obtained from dictionaries, writings and official documents, and electronic news that are relevant to the research objectives. findings from the various literature reviews, the researcher collected more detailed information related to the characteristics of late adolescence and academic stress faced in higher education, the understanding of the importance of effective communication, the concept of mindfulness, and its implications in developing more effective communication. all the information which is relevant to this research objective will be analyzed to find what elements are needed in developing effective communication between parents and late teens who experience academic stress in higher education. late adolescents in higher education there are various views in determining the age range of adolescence. according to data from the ministry of education and culture (2013, p.1), adolescents who study at the high school level are on average 1618 years old, and those who study at the undergraduate level of higher education are in the 1923 year age range (kementerian pendidikan dan kebudayaan, 2013). havighurst (1972) as cited in nurihsan & agustin (2016) argues adolescence is in the age range of 12-21 years. the adolescent transition period starts from around the age of 10 to 12 years and ends at the age of about 18-22 years (santrock, 2012). the age range of adolescence can be divided into three stages, namely the age of 12-15 years referred to as early adolescence, 15-18 years as middle adolescence, 18-22 years of late adolescence (varenhorst, 1988). students who are at the age of 18-22 years are said to be in a transition period from adolescence to adulthood and are generally separated from their families to start living their own lives for the first time. during the process of establishing independence, there is a potential crisis point, and this crisis is understood as something of a “threat” in the process experienced. (erikson, 1968). late adolescents are more required to have independence in carrying out various things, including in carrying out learning activities in higher education. students need to be more independent in exploring the learning materials they are undergoing in order to have better competencies (yuliati & saputra, 2020). in general, the phenomena experienced by late adolescents in higher education have similarities, where they are increasingly required to be more independent. friendships in groups are still considered important. the development of cognitive thinking increasingly enables adolescents to be able to consider aspects of moral, rational, and reflective thinking, (papalia & feldman, 2012). adolescents at the period of late adolescence undergo a transition in physical, cognitive, and socioemotional changes to the age range of young https://doi.org/10.17509/ije.v14i2.43876 tampubolon, yusuf, & dahlan mindfulness as the fundamental element in developing effective communication between late adolescents and parents 108 adulthood. (livesey & rostain, 2017). changes in a person's brain during adolescence undergo significant structural changes. from the results of a longitudinal study conducted by giedd (2008) on subjects aged 3-30 years, functional and structural improvements in connectivity and integrative processing, and an altered balance between limbic and frontal lobe functions, are increasingly widespread in early adulthood. the front part of the brain (prefrontal cortex) which regulates the ability to reason, make decisions, self-control, will reach maturity at the age of 18-25 years, even more. in effect, adolescents are controlled by emotions rather than the ability to think, and reason. (giedd, 2008; santrock, 2012). at the age of 18-21 years, adolescents are able to think objectively in considering matters related to work and professionalism (jordaan, college, universip & york,1974). at this age, they have begun to make their own decisions even though they still need advice from others, plan for further studies and careers in the future, have a more valid view of their personality (healey, 1982; jordaan et al., 1974; yusuf, 2019). the age period of 18-25 years is neither adolescence or young adulthood. this new developmental theory begins in the late adolescence to twenties, with a focus on 18-25 years of age. at this age range, individuals leave the dependence of childhood and adolescence and begin to carry out emerging adult roles such as exploring the possible direction of life in the future in various aspects of life. (arnett, 2000). the characteristics of adolescents in this age range are self-instability, identity exploration, self-focused (focusing on themselves), feeling in between (feeling themselves in a transition period), having the opportunity to change their lives with various possibilities (santrock, 2012). academic stress in higher education according to misra and castillo (2004), academic stress is the pressure experienced by students' subjective perception of the amount of knowledge that must be mastered along with the perception of not having enough time to do it. academic stress is related to academic failure, feelings of failure, and even awareness of the possibility of failure. academic stress is caused by academic stressors and a situation where students are unable to face academic demands and perceive them as distractions (sayekti, 2017). academic stress is a condition in which a mismatch between environmental demands and the actual resources of students occurs, which causes students to be increasingly burdened (rahmawati, 2012), due to the emergence of subjective perceptions of an academic condition that elicit student responses, both in the form of negative physical reactions, behavior, thoughts, and emotions due to the pressure (barseli & ifdil, 2017). with the distance learning method (pjj) in higher education during pandemics, students often experience academic pressure. students cannot meet face to face with lecturers and their college friends, their motivation and enthusiasm have decreased. frequent use of ict tools can cause social media fatigue, where the cognitive load is large while the ability to process information is lacking (rahardjo et al., 2020). for students who need learning in the laboratory, they experience pressure because they cannot conduct experiments or practicum using the equipment needed according to the lecture material (winarti, 2021). in the absence of practicum and face-to-face learning, students can experience a decrease in motivation and enthusiasm for learning which results in students experiencing tension in learning (asmanullah, hamdani & indonesia, 2019; annur, 2020). students experience academic stress and burnout which adversely affects the way students communicate (agustin, setiyadi & puspita, 2020). for students who are not detected as experiencing stress from the start, they have the potential to experience depression (khasanah et al., 2020). mindfulness concept mindfulness (being aware or mindful) which is synonymous with ‘awareness’ is often described as an act of paying full attention, there is a purpose, at the moment, and non-judgmental. when parenting practices are accompanied by awareness, this leads parents to see themselves and their children further inward, see and understand them more wisely with a compassionate heart, through what they see. mindful parenting is a parenting concept that refers to the principles of mindfulness (kabat-zinn & kabat-zinn, 1976), refers to parenting in which mindful practices and concepts integrate the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of parents (coatsworth, duncan, greenberg & nix, 2010) there are five dimensions based on the concept of psychological awareness where mindfulness is based on intervention and parenting studies in mindful parenting, namely: 1) listening with full attention in a focused manner; 2) emotional awareness in oneself and in children; 3) selfregulation related to the relationship in parenting; 4) accept oneself and the child, do not judge the behavior of the child and himself; 5) have a compassionate heart with sincere love. (duncan, coatsworth, & greenberg.2009; de bruin, zijlstra, geurtzen, van zundert, van de weijer-bergsma, hartman, bögels. 2014) mindfulness is very important for the process of communicating between individuals. individuals who apply mindfulness in communicating need to consider the following: 1) learn to view someone in a certain category; 2) openness; 3) be aware of very strong feelings in first impressions; 4) be aware of the possibility of misinterpretation; 5) be aware of unproductive communication patterns; 6) remind yourself of the uniqueness of the current communication situation; 7) identification and evaluation. interpersonal communication is influenced by the quality of the relationship between individuals. (burgoon, berger, & waldron, 2000; de vito, 2016). the importance of effective communication interpersonal communication is the verbal and nonverbal interaction between two (or sometimes more than two) interdependent people (de vito, 2016). communication is considered to occur as long international journal of education vol. 14 no. 2, august-2021, pp. 106-116 ©2021 universitas pendidikan indonesia https://doi.org/10.17509/ije.v14i2.43876 109 as there is a common meaning of what is being said and discussed. (effendy, 2009). the dimensions of interpersonal communication are (1) openness in the form of self-expression from communicators to effective communicants, expressions of words when speaking, self-disclosure, listening with full awareness (mindfully), happy to listen; (2) showing empathy that fosters selfconfidence from the communicant towards the communicator; (3) a supportive attitude that is seen through the support given by the communicator to the communicant, non-judgmental, an attitude of respect, being honest, not wanting to win alone; (4) a positive attitude (positiveness), giving good motivation; and (5) equality where the communicating parties respect each other and are aware that each individual has something important to convey and contribute (de vito, 2010; de vito, 2016; wardhani, soedarsono & esfandari, 2016). in communicating, a person's ability to be aware of who he or she is (self-awareness) and aware of the situation, will affect the quality of communication made to others (de vito, 2016). communication will be effective if the stimulus desired by the sender of the message (source) effectively corresponds or matches the stimulus received by the recipient of the message (tubbs, 2006). effective communication occurs if someone succeeds in conveying what he means, or if the stimuli conveyed by the sender of the message are in accordance with the stimuli received. to build effective communication, tubbs concludes that there are few things that can be used as parameters: careful understanding of the content created by the sender of the message, the influence on the relationship that can be done well to be improved, and encouragement for the message to perform an action as expected through the information communicated (tubbs, 2012). effectiveness and communication are essential components in communication (wang et al., 2019). during the transition period and undergoing activities in college, it is necessary for parents to support and approach their late adolescents (adams, ryan, & keating, 2000). adolescents and parents can maintain closeness between them through good communication (suryadinata, 2016). during this pandemic, distance learning activities provide opportunities for parents to establish better communication with their late adolescents and increase their abilities (puspitorini, 2020). the way parents communicate has an influence on the independence of their adolescents while studying in higher education (nursaptini et al., 2020). ineffective communication between parents and late adolescents has a negative impact on their lives and the relationship between them. lack of communication intensity can cause parents to be late in knowing the problems faced by their late adolescents in higher education (iswinarno & ardiansyah, 2020), and have the potential to reduce the harmonious relationship between parents and adolescents (setyawan, 2017). bad communication between parents and late adolescents causes deviant behavior in late adolescents (syifaunnufush & diana, 2017). communication that is not smooth causes disharmony and conflict between parents and their late adolescents. (vinny, 2018). parental communication patterns have an influence on the lives of late adolescents in higher education. according to saraswati et al., (2020) regarding the relationship between parental communication and academic stress for first-year students in college, the better the communication between parents and late adolescents, the lower the academic stress experienced by them. the pattern of communication carried out by parents with their late adolescents who study and live far apart in different cities, is able to produce effective communication for both of them (permata, 2013; yudha, 2019). there is a positive influence of communication between parents and adolescents in dimensions of feelings and moral actions, as well as the character of adolescents as a whole (situmorang, hastuti & herawati, 2016). good communication between parents and adolescents has an influence on the students’ lives in adapting to the new environment in higher education (gunandar & utami, 2017; rasika, 2015) discussion based on effective communication according to de vito (2016), underlying aspects such as 1) openness, listening with full awareness and full attention; 2) show empathy and try to understand the content of the message being communicated; 3) communicate in a supportive way, non-judgmental, acceptance and respectful; 4) being positive, motivate; 5) realizing the existence of equity in the importance of the message conveyed by each person are very important. the following paragraphs explain how mindfulness can be applied in communication between parents and adolescents. mindfulness as the fundamental element in developing effective communication previous research has shown that effective communication between parents and late adolescents is not easy to develop for various reasons. the difference in era or generation can be one of the causes. rapid social and technological developments have caused this gap to widen. parents often have difficulty keeping up with changing social and technology developments, making it difficult to understand the condition of their late adolescents. as of late adolescents, they find it difficult to understand the thinking patterns of their parents which are still considered traditional. aspects of traditional parenting such as controlling adolescents’ behavior, controlling psychological aspects of them, responsiveness, support for autonomy, are related to the emergence of internal problems in adolescents (thakkar & sheth, 2014). communication is the tool that can bridge the gap between them. this helps parents and adolescents to respect each other's opinions more (lippold, duncan, coatsworth, nix & greenberg, 2015; thakkar & sheth, 2014). https://doi.org/10.17509/ije.v14i2.43876 tampubolon, yusuf, & dahlan mindfulness as the fundamental element in developing effective communication between late adolescents and parents 110 openness, willingness to listen openly, and full attention the openness of communicators happens when communicating in the form of self-expression from communicators to communicants shown through spontaneous reactions, expressions of words when speaking, self-disclosure accompanied by full awareness, willingness to listen openly with full attention. de vito (2016) explains that openness is one of the dimensions of mindfulness that is needed in the process of communicating between individuals. the communicator needs to be open to new information and one's points of view, trying to see from their perspective even though it is contrary to the thoughts of each person. (de vito, 2016: 33). this can avoid misinterpretation of the message conveyed between them. according to mindfulness in communication, the communicator must be open to new information and others points of view and do not have strong feelings in first impressions. (burgoon, berger, & waldron, 2000; de vito, 2016). the attitude of openness can affect the ability of individuals to express their respective opinions and accept each other's points of view (de bruin et al., 2014). openness is a way to resolve existing differences. sharing feelings, thoughts maturely, accepting and understanding, building relationships be more closely. when parents have the willingness to listen to their adolescents openly in communication, it can also motivate them to be open. through open communication, late adolescents can convey the difficulties they face and deliver their opinions to their parents calmly without feeling worried (christian & jatmika, 2018). the family will function optimally if there is open communication and attitude, and mutual acceptance (zuhri, 2009). effective communication can be seen from good relationships among family members and the existence of mutual understanding (tubbs, 2012) parents must pay close attention and listen very carefully to what their adolescents say in every interaction. mindful parents will be sensitive to the content, tone of voice, facial expressions, and body language effectively, so that through those signs parents can detect the child's needs and the meaning of what they say. when the children become adolescents, listening with full attention is very necessary because physically parents cannot monitor most of the behavior of their adolescents, even the information that parents get about their adolescents most likely come from verbal conversations, not through direct observation (smetana, metzger, gettman & campione-barr, 2006). in communicating with late adolescents, parents must listen mindfully, try to understand every message conveyed in order to get the right message. de bruin et al., (2014), explain that parents need to listen mindfully, will not be easily distracted, stay focused and will not be busy thinking about things. parents who have high levels of mindful parenting adopt a positive parenting style and also apply it in interacting and communicating with them, will give a good influence on their child (lippold et al., 2015). parents are not always able to know what adolescents do in their activities. attentive parenting and the meaning of presence does not mean that parents should always keep an eye on what their adolescents are doing, intervening, and help them facing challenges (smetana et al.,2006). according to riesch and chanchong (2003), there is parental awareness of the importance of appropriate communication techniques in listening, sharing feelings, empathizing, controlling emotions, and speaking assertively when communicating. when communicating, young adults are willing to accept blame for conflicts or misunderstandings that occur in certain situations, but if there is a lack of respect and hostility from the other party, they will change the topic and not bring it up. the mindful parenting program provided was able to improve the aspect of listening with full attention from parents to adolescents and to support interaction between them (mubarok, 2016). sometimes, students who study and live in a different city from their parents do not want to bother their parents with the academic stress they experience. they reduce the intensity of communicating with parents in the hope of not wanting to bother parents. parents need to understand the developmental conditions of their late adolescents studying in higher education who are increasingly choosing to be independent so that they are able to understand how much the intensity of communication is right for their late adolescents there was a significant influence between the intensity of parental communication on reducing the stress level of students who study in different cities from their parents (nuzuli. 2020). in the current era of ict, conveying messages through posts on social media has become a habit for late adolescents. this causes them to often use social media to show parents the activities they are doing in higher education. however, research shows that late adolescents prefer to communicate face-toface rather than through a smartphone if it is possible. both parents and their adolescents who study in different cities prefer face-to-face communication. this method provides an opportunity for them to develop ways of communicating between them (singh, nur fatin & singh 2018). communicate with empathy according to de vito (2016), showing empathy from the communicator will build a sense of trust from the communicant towards the communicator, both verbally and nonverbally. with empathy, parents try to see things from their child’s point of view and to understand what their child may be feeling or experiencing. this includes an awareness of parents’ own feelings, as well. (kabat-zinn & kabat-zinn, 1967). the social support from parents who respect their late adolescents according to the stage of development they are experiencing, accept the adolescents’ situation as they are, and make them feel appreciated. this is very influential for late adolescents who face academic stress. the most influential social support from parents for their late adolescents who experience academic stress is the support to understand and appreciate them (ernawati & rusmawati, 2015). parents need to understand the international journal of education vol. 14 no. 2, august-2021, pp. 106-116 ©2021 universitas pendidikan indonesia https://doi.org/10.17509/ije.v14i2.43876 111 position of their late adolescents who are starting to be independent and in making decisions (arnett, 2000). parents who are empathetic and have compassion for late adolescents, are understanding of the needs and pressures experienced by the adolescents, and are motivated to comfort them according to their needs. a heart full of compassion both for himself as a parent and for his or her adolescent can be seen from the sincere concern of parents for adolescents and for the struggles that they are being experienced (duncan et al., 2009). the form and the way parents communicate with their adolescents, will affect their sense of security and make it easier for them to recover from various stresses (bowlby, 1982). with the establishment of a good and consistent way of communicating between parents and adolescents, the conversations that occur, whether related to discipline or instructions, will not cause problems between them (setyawan, 2017). parents can learn a great deal about themselves by bringing mindfulness to the thoughts and feelings that come up when their child is sharing something difficult with them. when showing empathy, it is important for parents to have effective listening and full awareness in recognizing the emotional feelings of themselves and their late adolescents. the dimension of selfawareness as a parent is seen in the ability of parents to prioritize what they feel before taking action when the child is sad or disappointed, there is an attempt to maintain emotional balance, not reactive even in difficult situations. parents need to have the ability to correctly identify the emotional state of themselves and their late adolescents so that communication that is accompanied by attentiveness can be carried out without judgment. the ability of parents to identify the emotional state of themselves and their children in a mindful manner enables them to make conscious choices about how to respond appropriately rather than reactively (duncan et al., 2009). in mindful parenting, the background of parenting experienced by parents in the past affects parenting. this explains why emotional awareness in parents and emotional awareness in children emerge as separate factors in the mindful parenting approach (de bruin et al., 2014). parents need to understand how to communicate with teenage boys or teenage girls. the approach taken in communicating something to someone is influenced by their gender. a mindful parent becomes more aware of the differences in communication patterns between boys and girls related to moral, social, career, and spiritual issues (thakkar & sheth, 2014). communicate in a supportive, non-judgmental, acceptance and respectful way late adolescents need support from their parents regarding the academic stress they experience in higher education. when they communicate their problems with their parents, they need to be understood from their perspective. as parents, they need to understand the messages their adolescents convey from the adolescent’s perspective. through this, the adolescents can feel more respected and accepted. mindful parents have compassion, accept children's emotions without judgment even when they are struggling in life (de bruin et al., 2014; kabat-zinn & kabat-zinn, 1967). parents' acceptance of late adolescents needs to be understood by late adolescents as an acknowledgment that the challenges they face and the mistakes they have made are part of the life process. however, acceptance from parents here does not mean agreeing to every child's or adolescents’ behavior if it is not in accordance with parents’ expectations. parents need to communicate and explain their standards and expectations for their child's behavior, according to the cultural context and developmental level of the child. (duncan et al., 2009). parents who understand the stage development of adolescence know how to communicate with late adolescents in an appropriate way. when parents deliver messages in the form of advice and even commands or instructions, their late adolescents will appreciate and respect them. parents also play a role in helping late adolescents studying in higher education who face difficulties in doing assignments and who experience decreased motivation and selfconfidence (alfikalia, 2017). parental communication patterns affect the level of academic stress experienced by first-year students in higher education. the better the parent-late adolescents’ communication pattern, the lower the level of academic stress experienced by the late adolescents (saraswati et al., 2020). late adolescents do not want to be spoken to in a way like with children. they want to be appreciated as more independent individuals, do not want to be criticized, and want to be respected. if they feel unaccepted by their parents, they tend to hold back, change the topic, manipulate, avoid, choose not to continue the communication (riesch et al., 2003). it is important for parents to understand their late adolescents’ emotions according to the stage of development. parents who are involved in every process of development and emotional condition of their late adolescents, are able to provide empathetic support, and better relationships. parents must be able to show respect, tolerance for independence, personal uniqueness, and freedom of expression for their late adolescents who are facing problems. (islamadina & yulianti, 2005). there are different considerations when late adolescents convey their condition in carrying out academic activities. students in higher education sometimes convey their condition to their parents by communicating it through posts on social media. the content of the post can be in the form of academic success, sports activities, problems in learning activities. students often post things that look good in order to build a positive self-image. (fang & gong, 2020) positive thinking, motivate, be aware of the situation having positive thoughts in communicating involves several aspects, such as reflective listening, empathy, providing supportive comments, enabling family members to share preferences and needs with one another. conversely, negative communication https://doi.org/10.17509/ije.v14i2.43876 tampubolon, yusuf, & dahlan mindfulness as the fundamental element in developing effective communication between late adolescents and parents 112 such as conveying disproportionate messages speaking without empathy will reduce the ability of family members to convey their feelings to one another (olson & russell, 1983). by giving full attention when communicating with late adolescents, it can motivate them to express more what they think and feel (smetana et al., 2006), and parents can better understand what their adolescents are thinking and feeling more accurately so as to reduce conflicts and disagreements that may occur (hastings & grusec, 1998). some basic mindfulness techniques can reduce automatic responses to stress and reduce emotional reactivity by listening attentively, nonreactively, and non-judgmentally; acknowledging another's emotions without taking them personally so as not to get carried away in negative emotions (bogels & restifo, 2010). parents need to learn to accept their children according to the stage of development, both physically, cognitively, socially, and emotionally. late adolescents begin to be independent when facing various pressures and problems faced in higher education. sometimes adolescents ask for parental attention, hoping for parental love, but at the same time they want to have distance from them and want parents to be away from them. parents need to have the right way to convince their children that they are on their side and that children are valuable. adolescents want their words and criticisms not to be taken as personal by their parents, but rather a sign of their internal struggle against the pressure they are experiencing. (kabat-zinn & kabat-zinn, 1967) regarding parenting on adolescents, parents need to know the situation when communication happens. to embrace adolescent behavior, parents need to understand the concept of self-regulation related to goals, be able to consider the standards used, the capacities and strengths of parents and adolescents to achieve goals with changes that may occur. self-regulation is based on certain standards, related to norms, culture, applicable laws, and so on. the lack of clarity in determining the intended standard will cause confusion, ambiguity, vulnerability to failure, and even stress on adolescents and parents. (ostafin et al., 2015). parents who are mindful of their own emotional state, have emotional non-reactivity responding to children's behavior which refers to self-regulation abilities in parenting. they are aware not to react too quickly to the child’s response, accepting the child's emotion (de bruin et al., 2014). based on research conducted by el-dl & alkharusi (2020), it is known that there is a statistically positive relationship between a person's self-regulated learning strategy with intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, task values, self-efficacy, and academic achievement. a person has a huge influence on his ability to deal with and to solve problems in higher education (winarti, 2021; asmanullah et al., 2019) during the pandemic, parents have the opportunity to communicate intensely when children experience academic stress according to learning from home and deliver their insight on how to control using gadgets. intense communication develops a closer relationship between parents and late adolescents. (puspitorini, 2020). not only face-toface, good communication from parents to teenagers via the telephone can also have a positive impact if the message is conveyed properly and in the form of advice that can motivate late adolescents to be more enthusiastic about completing their studies on time in higher education (gems, 2013). equality parents have to have an awareness that the message conveyed by the communicator and the communicant is equally important. both communicator and communicant need to realize that each individual involved in communication has something important to tell and contribute. in this case, full awareness of individuals who communicate with each other is very important because the possibility of misinterpreting messages and communications that lead to unproductiveness may arise. a person needs to identify and evaluate the communication process that is happening at that time with full awareness, so that they can immediately decide what response needs to be taken when communicating, whether it is necessary to stop talking for a moment or continue the conversation, especially for complicated situations. a few suggestions for communicating equality in all interactions are 1) avoid “should” and “ought” statements, do not put the listener in a one-down position; 2) make requests and avoid making demands; 3) avoid interrupting; 4) acknowledge the other person’s contributions; 5) recognize that different cultures treat equality very differently (de vito, 2016). mindfulness enables parents to see their child more clearly, listen attentively and trust their hearts. this supports parents in facing daily parenting challenges and finding ways to act wisely and be a source of unconditional love for their child (kabatzinn & kabat-zinn, 1997). parents who are warm, are responsive to the needs of their adolescents, and very supportive of the independence of late adolescents. (islamadina & yulianti, 2005). parents who have a high level of acceptance are nonjudgmental, have a good understanding of their children's emotions, and decrease the depression and anxiety they experienced. with this approach, parents increasingly recognize internal problems in adolescents, accept and understand (geurtze & scholte, 2014; gouveia, 2016; parent, mckee & rough, 2015). mindful parenting shows parenting practices that teach children how to express and convey their feelings which will increase the self-regulation of adolescents themselves (gottman, katz & hooven, 1997). the higher the intensity of communication that occurs between late adolescents and parents, the late adolescent self-regulation will increase, and lower the intensity of communication will decrease the adolescents’ self-regulation (azizah, 2013).parents who understand the importance of mindful parenting are associated with children's cognition will build a sense of parental competence in parenting practices, and will not blame themselves when facing various problems in parenting interactions. parents who feel competent and have fewer negative parent-centered attributions may international journal of education vol. 14 no. 2, august-2021, pp. 106-116 ©2021 universitas pendidikan indonesia https://doi.org/10.17509/ije.v14i2.43876 113 become more aware of the parenting role. (lippold et al., 2019) when late adolescents complain about academic stress they experience, parents need to communicate their opinions by considering internal factors within the late adolescents as well as external factors outside the child. this can reduce the judgmental attitude of parents towards their late adolescents (winarti, 2021). for communication between adolescents and their parents to be carried out freely and openly, parents need to develop an understanding of the stages of adolescent development (putri, hasyim, yanzi, 2016). parents who often have the initiative to contact their late adolescents to find out how their condition is an effort for parents to build effective communication with them. (permata, 2013). parents who apply mindfulness in their parenting will appreciate the message conveyed by their late adolescents, not seeing it as an unimportant message compared to what parents convey. at the age range of late adolescence, teenagers and young adults begin to carry out emerging adult roles, such as exploring possible directions for life in the future in various aspects of life (arnett, 2000). parents must realize that in this age range, late adolescents experience self-instability, identity exploration, selffocused, feeling in between, feeling the opportunity to change the direction of their lives (santrock, 2012). parents need to appreciate the messages conveyed by their late adolescents are as important as what they are conveying. communication with parents is important for late adolescents in the process towards adulthood. different ways of communicating should not be considered a barrier. the process of adolescents in forming ideas and beliefs about themselves, affects the way parents communicate with them. when parents are able to communicate effectively, their adolescents will show respect and appreciation for their parents. (mcgrath, 2012). mindful parenting is a continual process of deepening and refining parents’ awareness and ability to be present and act wisely. an important part of the process is how parents seeing themselves with some degree of kindness and compassion, accepting their limitations, their blindness, their attachments, and work with adolescents mindfully as best they can. parents can use all the occasions and communication that arise with their adolescents to break down the barriers in their own minds and hearts, to see more clearly into parents, and to be more effectively present for their adolescents. conclusion late adolescents often have problems dealing with academic stress in higher education. when they face various academic pressures, they need to communicate their problems and academic pressures they face to parents to find the right solutions, increase learning motivation, reduce tension and boredom, and even avoid the possibility of depression. parents and late adolescents need to understand that it is important to know the fundamental element in developing effective communication. through the literature review approach, results showed that the implementation of mindfulness in communicating between parents and late adolescents can develop effective communication. the mindful parents will consider the characteristics of the stage development of the late adolescents, communicate more openly, focus, full attention, listening mindfully, empathy, be supportive, think positive, non-judgmental, respectful, have awareness that each individual involved in communication has something important to tell and contribute while communicating with them. parents who have a good understanding of the mindfulness approach and applied this approach in communication, make the late adolescents feel appreciated and accepted, feel cared for, do not feel judged, are more motivated, and are better able to cope with the pressure in higher education. it also builds a good relationship between parents and late adolescents. during the study, researchers found a lack of information about how to develop effective communication between parents and late adolescents. researchers also have not found what effective communication means in terms of the perception of late adolescents. understanding the meaning of effective communication from the perspective of late adolescents will enrich parents to choose the right and appropriate approach when communicating with late adolescents studying in higher education so that communication can be more effective and strengthen the relationship between parents and late adolescents. references adams, g. r., ryan, b. a., & keating, l. 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(2009). pola komunikasi orang tua kandung terhadap anak remaja yang mengalami depresi ( studi deskriptif kualitatif pola komunikasi orang tua terhadap anak remaja yang mengalami depresi). 1(2), 80–93. international journal of education vol. 10 no. 2, february 2018, pp. 101-106 ©2018 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: http://dx.doi.org/ 101 prediction of physical variable to squat long jump achievement (a multivariate correlational study on trained students of a state senior high school in pekalongan regency) abdurrachman1, sugiyanto2, muchsin doewes3 1sebelas maret university of surakarta, indonesia mans.fisio@gmail.com first draft received: 14 nov 2017 accepted: 6 jan 2017 final proof received: 22 feb 2018 abstract achievement of squat long jump needs to be supported with several components that are divided into anthropometric elements and physical abilities. this study aims to determine the relationship and the extent to which squat long jump achievement can predict limb length, body mass index, body flexibility, and running speed. the subjects of this research were trained students of state senior high schools in pekalongan regency, with a total sample of 60 students. the independent variables in this research included limb length, body mass index, body flexibility, and running speed, whereas the dependent variables consisted of long jump and squat style achievement. the data were obtained through the test and measurement of each variable. this study used multivariate correlational method. data were analyzed with normality test, linearity test, simple and multiple regression analysis, and hypotheses were tested with t-test and f-test. the results showed that limb length, body mass index, and flexibility had a positive relationship, whereas body mass index and running speed had a negative relationship with the squat long jump achievement. the prediction value of limb length was 0.027, body mass index 0.049, body flexibility 0.026, and running speed -0.234. the conclusion of this study is that there was a significant relationship among the variables, and limb length, body mass index, body flexibility and running speed can be predicted based on squat long jump achievement. keywords: limb length, body mass index, body flexibility, running speed, squat long jump achievement to cite this paper (in apa style): abdurrachman, sugiyanto, & doewes, m. (2018). prediction of physical variable to squat long jump achievement (a multivariate correlational study on trained students of a state senior high school in pekalongan regency). international journal of education, 10 (2), 101-106. doi: http://dx.doi.org/ introduction sport is a conscious and systematic process that is carried out through various activities in order to gain ability and skills according to the individual’s physical and mental conditions. sports activities involve cognitive, affective, and psychomotor aspects. athletics is the “mother” of most sports, where athletic movements such as walk, running, jump and throwing are subsumed under athletics (bahagia, 1999). athletics is a combination of several types of sports that can be grouped into running, throwing and jumping. bahagia (1999) listed types of jumping in athletics, namely long jump, jumping up, high jump, and pole vault. long jump is “a jumping movement that begins with a horizontal movement and is transformed into vertical movement by doing repulsion on one of the strongest legs to get the distance as far as possible” (wiarto, 2013, p. 32). according to syarifuddin (1992), the long jump is a form of moving forward one foot in an effort to carry weight as long as possible in the air (flying in the air) and is done quickly by doing repulsive force on one foot to reach a distance as far as possible. the fundamental factor that a jumper must possess is the ability to master the technical skills and good physical condition. adequate physical condition will support the appearance of long jump when making a leap. thus, physical condition becomes important for jumpers because it is a foundation for learning techniques, tactics, strategies, and the psychology. in the opinion of suharno (1993), the factors that determine maximal achievement include: (1) indigenous factors: good physical and mental health, body shape and body proportions, physical conditions and abilities, perfect mastery of techniques, mastery of strategies to problems, having the psychological aspect and good personality and having the maturity of soul; (2) exogenous factors: coach, coach assistant, trainer, venue, equipment, finance, organization, environment, government participation, methods, abdurrachman, sugiyanto, & doewes prediction of physical variable to squat long jumpachievement 102 and training system. as for some components of the physical condition that greatly support the achievement of the long jump, they are power, strength, flexibility, speed, agility, balance, coordination, and reaction (sajoto, 1998). several studies have been conducted related to jumping style of long jump performance with varying results, including azizi (2014) who studied the contribution of limb muscle strength, weight, and body height to squat long jumpand found that leg muscle strength, weight, and height contributed to the ability of long jump squat style. huda & subiono (2016) discovered that the factors of speed, weight and explosive power had an average contribution of 69.3% to long jump ability. a significant correlation between back flexibility and limb length and long jump ability was found by ilham (2016). davis et al. (2012) results from this study suggest that jumping and sprinting are related to success in ultimate athletes. the authors suggested that future research in similar populations should include more performance tests, such as the repeated anaerobic sprint test protocol (rast), and agility tests, such as the pro-agility test, as these might prove to be useful screening tools. from a practical standpoint, results from these tests also can provide an evaluation of the athletes, as well as the efficacy of strength and conditioning programs. finally, yaqin (2013) revealed that there was no effect related to the prefix distance on the long jump, but the speed at the long jump influenced the result of the long jump squat style. based on the description above, the study aims to determine whether there is a relationship and prediction on the factors of anthropometric and physical ability to the achievement of long jump squat style, as research on this area has not been found in the literature. the anthropometric factors referred to here are limb length and body mass index (bmi), whereas the physical condition includes back flexibility and running speed. literature review long jump is one of the branches in athletic sports. as a branch from athletic sports, movements performed in long jumps are combined with the athletic basic movements, namely running movements in the prefix to provide maximum repulsion and jump movement as it goes on to optimize the distance of the jump (syarifuddin, 1992). the long jump is a form of jumping movement that begins with a horizontal movement and is transformed into a vertical movement by performing repulsive force on one of the strongest legs to obtain the greatest distance (wiarto, 2013). ballesteros in mardiana, purwadi, and satya (2009) suggested that long jumps are the result of horizontal speeds made during the prefix with the vertical power generated from the strength of the repelling leg. according to santoso et al. (2007), long jump movement consists of: prefix, refuse, jump, float and landed in a sandbox. according to mardiana, purwadi, & satya (2009) the basic principle of long jump is to build the beginning of the fastest and do the strongest repulsion toward the front-up with one leg to reach the optimal height when flying so as to produce a long distance leap. this is similarly put forward by sumardi (2000, p. 13) who stated, “long jump is a movement of lifting the body from one point to another further or taller with a square run fast or slow by resting one leg and landing with the feet or other limbs with a good balance". marwanto (2007) explained that the length of the limb is the vertical distance between the feet to the groin as measured by standing upright. the limb as a member of the lower motion serves as a support for upper limb motion, as well as determinant of movement in walking, running, jumping or kicking. a person who has longer limb lengths will likely have a better jump because of the wider jump or step toward the front. so, the longer the limbs the further the jump or run in the long jump (ilham, 2016). the ideal body proportion is very important in achieving high achievement, as each sport demands an ideal body in accordance with the terms of the sport that is followed. in general, athletes especially for long jump athletes should have the ideal height or portion (amirudin, 2016). hamlin and sugiyama (2013) stated that the body influences a person's ability to exercise. this is very much true for the long jumping athlete, because with a good body proportion the athlete will easily do repulsion and get longer drift time during the phase of drift. as hidayatullah (2003) argued, athletic athletes with high achievements require a special biological profile with features of biometric ability and good psychological characteristics. the biometric aspects include weight, height of the body type. so the achievement of squat long jump is determined by ideal weight or lightweight to help create a longer drift in the air. meanwhile, back flexibility is thought to play a role in the determination of the long jump achievement whereby an athlete is concerned with the body during the floating phase, because the back flexibility makes it easier for an athlete to position his body while flying and also when it falls (ilham, 2016). the back flexibility will provide the angle of movement in the long jump swing. in this case, it is explained that flexibility is the effectiveness in an athlete’s adjustment to do all the body activities with stretching as far as possible, especially on the muscles and ligaments around the joints. the higher the back flexibility, the greater the angle of body movement in the swing, so that the power generated is also greater at the time before touching the sand when both legs are extended international journal of education vol. 10 no. 2, february 2018, pp. 101-107 ©2018 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: http://dx.doi.org/ 103 forward and the body bent (jarver, 2005). back flexibility is visible at the time of the fly where the body rapidly tends its forward so that both limbs can reach the farthest point in the jump result. finally, running speed or prefix speed is one component of basic physical conditions that may affect jumping achievement in long jump numbers. the running speed of a jumper can increase the power of the forward impulse and when doing repulsion or take off (jarver, 2005). speed here is defined as the ability to perform similar movements in a row in the shortest possible time or the ability to pursue a motion in the shortest possible time (harsono, 1988). running speed is defined simply as the step length or step frequency. to increase running speed is by increasing one or both of these parameters, keeping in mind the good running technique (syarifuddin, 1992). methods this study used correlational method with survey, test, and measurement. tests and measurements were performed to obtain a description of the relationship and predictions of limb length (x1), body mass index (x2), body flexibility (x3) and running speed (x4) on the squat long jump achievement (y). this study was conducted from may-june 2017. the population of this research included the trained students who of state senior high schools in pekalongan regency. samples were taken using a simple random sampling technique, resulting in 60 students. the measurement instruments used in this study were as follows: the limb length used midline measuring instrument; body mass index using body weight and height with strata meter and scales; body flexibility using the flexibility test with sit and reach test; running speed using a 40 meter run track and a stopwatch; and squat style long jump achievement using field squat style long jump test and a meter gauge. the measurement data were analyzed with regression techniques. before performing the test of analysis, a number of test requirements to determine the feasibility of data were carried out. the prerequisite test consisted of a test of normality and a linearity test. after the prerequisite test, the next analysis was hypothesis test, including the correlation coefficient analysis, multiple linear regression, f-test and t-test. the research data were processed using spss 19.0 application. this application can help calculate data to reduce errors in calculations. results based on the measurements of the variables of limb length, body mass index, body flexibility, running speed, and squat style long jump achievement conducted, the following results were found: limb length minimum 70 and maximum 90, mean 78.6 with a standard deviation of 4.4501; body mass index (bmi), min. 17 and max. 29.4, mean 21.6 with a standard deviation of 2.8177; body flexibility min 23, max. 47, mean 34.4 with a standard deviation of 5.5945; running speed min. value of 4.2, max. value of 6.6, mean 5.3 with a standard deviation of 0.6533; and achievement of squat style long jump: minimum value 3.2, max. value 5.2, mean 4.4 with a standard deviation of 0.4330. the results of data normality test performed on each group using spss 19.0 application through kolmogorov-smirnov test are provided in table 1. table 1 normality test kolmogorov-smirnov a statist ic df sig. limb leght .104 60 .174 body mass index .079 60 .200 * body flexibility .092 60 .200 * running speed .111 60 .051 long jump achievement .100 60 .200 * from the normality test results in table 1, it was found that the data for all variables were normally distributed, as the values of significance for every variable were greater than 0.05. table 2 linearity of regression test independent variable dependent variable f sig. (linearity) sig. (deviation from linearity) linearity limb length (x1) squat long jump achievement (y) 0,543 0,119 0,907 linier body mass index (x2) 2,230 0,005 0,157 linier body flexibility (x3) 1,035 0,000 0,447 linier running speed (x4) 1,520 0,000 0,130 linier from the results of regression test provided in table 2, it can be seen that the variables of limb length (x1), body mass index (x2), body flexibility (x3), and running speed (x4) had a significantly linear relationship with the achievement of squat style long jump (y). table 3 coefficient correlations analysis abdurrachman, sugiyanto, & doewes prediction of physical variable to squat long jumpachievement 104 model summary model r r square adjusted r square std. error of the estimate 1 .715 a .511 .475 .3137 a. predictors: (constant), limb length, body mass index, body flexibility, running speed for correlation coefficient, based on the results presented in table 3, it can be seen that that there was a significant relationship between the limb length, body mass index, body flexibility, and running speed simultaneously with the achievement of squat style long jump with a score of 0.715. table 4 signification of correlation results anova b model sum of squares df mean square f sig. 1 regression 5.649 4 1.412 14.352 .000 a residual 5.412 55 .098 total 11.062 59 a. predictors: (constant), limb length, body mass index, body flexibility, running speed b. dependent variable: squat long jump achievement hypothesis test for the variables of limb length, body mass index, flexibility, and running speed simultaneously using f-test with 5% significance level resulted in a significance value of (0.000) <0.05 and fcount = 14.352 > ftable = 2.540; then the hypothesis was accepted which means that there was a simultaneously significant relationship between the length of the limb, body mass index, body flexibility, and running speed with the squat style long jump achievement. table 5 coefficient multiregression analysis test coefficients a model unstandardized coefficients standardized coefficients t sig. b std. error beta 1 (constant) 3.711 .859 4.319 .000 limb length .027 .009 .278 2.915 .005 body mass index -.049 .015 -.318 -3.223 .002 body flexibility .026 .008 .330 3.274 .002 running speed -.234 .069 -.352 -3.382 .001 a. dependent variable: squat long jump achievement similarly, as shown by table 5, the values of t for all variables were greater than the tcritical. this means there was individually a significant relationship between each of the variables (limb length, body mass index, body flexibility, and running speed) with the dependent variable of squat style long jump achievement. the result of coefficient correlation analysis can be written in the following simple linear regression formula: ŷ = 3.711 + 0.027 x1 – 0.049 x2 + 0.026 x3 – 0.234 x4. the interpretation of the regression formula is as follow: constanta (a) means that if the variables of limb length, body mass index, body flexibility, and running speed have the value of zero (0), then the value of the squat style long jump achievement variable is 3.711. limb length coefficient value was 0.027. this implies that the limb length variable had a positive relationship with the long jump achievement of the squat style which means that for each limb length increase, the jump in the squat style would rise by 0.027 meters with the assumption that the other independent variables of the regression model were fixed. meanwhile, the coefficient value of body mass index was -0.049. this implies that the body mass index variable had a negative relationship with the squat long jump achievement, which means any decrease in the body mass index by one unit would result in a rise by 0.049 meters in the jump, with the assumption that the other independent variables of the regression model were fixed. with a coefficient value of 0.026, body flexibility had a positive correlation with the squat long jump achievement, international journal of education vol. 10 no. 2, february 2018, pp. 101-107 ©2018 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: http://dx.doi.org/ 105 which means that each increase of flexibility by one unit would increase the jump by 0.026 meters, with the assumption that the other independent variables from the regression model were fixed. finally, the coefficient value of running speed was -0.234. this implies that the variable of running speed had a negative relationship with the squat long jump achievement, which means any decrease in the running speed by one unit, then the squat long jump achievement would rise by 0.234 meters, with the assumption that the other independent variables of the regression model were fixed. discussion in this study it was found that long jump athletes with different limb lengths would have different achievements in their jump results. each increase of limb length by one unit would result in a rise by 0.027 meters in the jump. although the data analysis shows the prediction of the length of the limb to the achievement of long jump is quite low, limb length is a strength advantage, because long legs do not rule out the effects on muscle strength. the longer the muscle, the stronger the move (warsito, 2001). in terms of biomechanics, limb length has a longer range. thus, long limbs have longer swings, which can help achieve maximum jump spacing. the advantage of limbs length is possible to increase the length of steps that can be taken (syarifudin, 1992). this result is different from that of previous research (azizi, 2014; marwanto, 2007), where previous research has suggested that limb lengths contribute and even predict squat style jump performance. meanwhile, in this study limb length had a fairly low analysis results, but basically still had a relationship and a prediction value. the body mass index has a role in predicting the long jump with squat style. it means any decrease in body mass index of one unit will cause a rise by 0.049 meters in the jump. body weight and height is a part in biometrics that can affect the achievement of sports. adisasmita (1992, p. 65) sayd that “the attraction of the earth catches a point called "weight point". the weight is located at the waist, slightly below the navel. hidayatullah (2003, pp. 12-13) added, “high achievement sports require a special biological profile with biometric abilities and good psychological characteristics. the biometric aspects include height, weight, height of sitting, length of upper and lower limbs, body type and others". so it can be concluded that anatomical factors, especially height and weight, are one of the most important supporting factors for a long jump athlete. this result is in accordance with that of previous study of amirudin (2016) that the body mass index has a relationship, contribution and prediction of long jump results. furthermore, as sajoto (1988) pointed out, the determinants of sport achievement can be grouped into four aspects, one of which is the biological aspects which include: body posture and structure, consisting of height, body weight, and body shape. so, someone who has more stature will usually have long legs and will run fast and reach longer steps. previous research has also shown that body flexibility has an influence and can predict the long jump style with squat style results at the time before the landing, i.e. the foot is extended forward with the body bent forward (ilham, 2016). good landing is a continuation of the pattern on the long jump with squat style. at the moment before touching the sand, both limbs are straightened/stretched forward and the body bent forward (jarver, 2015). the role of back spacing in the long jump is seen when the body whips forward as it flies. good formation will provide a boost to mastery of techniques when performing long jump techniques, especially when flying in the air. in this study the variable of body flexibility also has a positive relationship with the achievement of long jump with squat style, which means any increase in body flexibility by one unit then the squat style long jump achievement will rise by 0.026 meters. meanwhile, running speed had a negative relationship with the achievement of long jump with squat style, which means any decrease in the running speed by one unit then the achievement of long jump with squat style will rise by 0.234 meters. achievements that are optimal to achieve can be obtained by always paying attention to a fast technique, so that will produce a distance leap that is far. in this research, it is found that running speed is the most contributing factor to long jump with squat style, which is in correspondence with the result of previous research (amirudin, 2016). the results of this study show there was a relationship and prediction between the limb length, body mass index, body flexibility, and running speed simultaneously with the squat style long jump achievement. there was also a positive relationship between limb length and body flexibility; in other words, the greater the limb lengths and flexibility, the greater the results in the long jump with squat style achievement. the variables of body mass index and running speed also had a positive relationship, which means if the body mass index and running speed were smaller, the results of the long jump with squat style achievement would be greater. thus, in this study if an athlete has a long limb, an ideal body in this case with a low body mass index, great body flexibility, and fast running ability, the athlete will get maximum jump results. so, it can be concluded that limb muscle strength, weight and height, influence and support the maximum result of long jump with squat style. still, there are other factors that affect the results of long jump with squat style that are not included in this study. abdurrachman, sugiyanto, & doewes prediction of physical variable to squat long jumpachievement 106 conclusions based on the results of the research, this study concludes that the variables of limb length, body mass index, body flexibility, and running speed have a partial and simultaneous relationship and become predictors of squat style long jump achievement of the trained students at state senior high schools in pekalongan regency. the results of hypothesis testing can be summarized as follows: there was a significant correlation between the length of the limbs and long jump with squat style achievement with a prediction of 0.027; there was a significant correlation between body mass index and long jump with squat style achievement with a prediction of 0.049; there is a significant correlation between the flexibility of the body and the long jump with squat style achievement with a prediction of 0.026; and there was a significant relationship between running speed and long jump with squat style achievement with a prediction of -0.234. based on the above conclusions, then there are some suggestions addressed for teachers or athletic trainers, especially long distance sport coaches in developing students or athletes in that they should pay attention to the four factors that become research variables. training programs should improve the ability of long jump with squat style. in the selection of athletes for sports, especially long jump squat style, the factors in the study can be taken as part of the consideration. finally, subsequent researchers are suggested to redevelop the factors that predict the achievement of long jump with squat style. references mardiana, a., purwadi, & satya, w.i. 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(2013). pengaruh awalan lari 10 m dan 20 m terhadap hasil belajar lompat jauh gaya jongkok. jurnal pendidikan olahraga dan kesehatan, 1(2), 400–405. international journal of education vol. 11 no. 1, august 2018, pp. 87-92 ©2018 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v11i1.9113 86 the implementation of authentic assessment in extensive reading rosendi galih susani indonesian language education and literature study program faculty of teachers training and education, sanata dharma university rosendigalih@gmail.com first draft received: 06 dec 2017 accepted: 29 april 2018 final proof received: 31 july 2018 abstract the implementation of authentic assessment can help teachers to know the extent to which students are able to apply their knowledge and skills in accordance with the contexts of real situations. this is because authentic assessment focuses on activities or tasks that students do, as the knowledge and skills taught are tailored to the real contexts. the research objective is to describe the implementation of authentic assessment in extensive reading course in indonesian language education and literature study program sanata dharma university. this research used descriptive qualitative analysis method. the instruments used in this study were tests. the researcher conducted the implementation of authentic assessment in extensive reading on identifying the meanings of difficult words, idioms, and expressions. the obtained data show that the students’ average extensive reading ability was 80 with a very high category. the implementation of authentic assessment could provide some benefits such as (a) identifying the direct measurement of expected competence indicators of students’ performances; (b) encouraging students to demonstrate their performance in a real and meaningful situation; (c) providing students with the opportunity to construct their learning outcomes by selecting and compiling answers based on their knowledge and the situational analysis so that the answers are relevant and meaningful; and (d) integrating teaching, learning, and assessment activities. it is then recommended that authentic assessment be applied in the teaching and learning of reading courses. keywords: authentic assessment; extensive reading; indonesian language and literature program to cite this paper (in apa style): susani, r. g. (2018). the implementation of authentic assessment in extensive reading. international journal of education, 11(1), 87-92. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v11i1.9113 introduction someone who always performs a daily reading activity can be ascertained to have good ability and skills in reading. good reading ability and skills will benefit the reader to accept various pieces of information and knowledge beneficial for life. burn in krismanto, halik, and sayidiman (2015) explained that reading ability is an ability which is owned by more developed society. a society that already has reading culture will automatically tend to adjust itself to the development that occurs in the world. in line with this explanation, students as the successors of their nation must have the reading skill. in the university context, the teaching and learning of the course extensive reading should focus on improving students' reading ability. in this regard, at least there are a few ways to do, and one of them is assigning authentic tasks. abidin (2012) argued the use of authentic assessment is believed to be able to give students the ability to resolve real issues as well as providing opportunities for students able to think, act, and work systematically. majid (2014) explained that authentic assessment is the process of collecting a variety of data that can give a description of students' progress. meanwhile, sani (2016) defined authentic assessment as the kind of assessment that leads students to demonstrate the skills and competencies needed to overcome the problems and situations encountered in the real world. one type of authentic assessment is performance assessment. majid (2014) explained that the performance assessment has several methods to record the results of such performance-based assessment check list, notes, scale judgment, and memory. majid (2014) further described the steps that must be done in preparing an authentic assessment draft. first is to identify the standards. the term “standard” is defined as a brief statement that must be known or be done by students at certain points. second is to choose an authentic task. the selection of mailto:rosendigalih@gmail.com susani, r. g. the implementation of authentic assessment in extensive reading 87 authentic tasks should be adjusted with the standard analysis and assess the actual reality. third is to identify the criteria for the task. the criteria in question are indicators of good performance on a task. criteria should be stated clearly and briefly. fourth is to create the criterion standard (rubric). pratiwi (2014) added some points: (1) analytical rubrics are designed to assess students' ability in details in quantitative method; (2) analytical rubrics contain various aspects of competence standards, detailed description of achievement, score (categories), and the explanation of scoring results into categories; and (3) the students’ ability is to be deduced based on the total score of each aspect. based on the expert's opinion, the researcher can conclude that authentic assessment is an assessment that focuses on activities or tasks that students do, in which the knowledge and skills taught are tailored to the real contexts. the tasks can train the students to think in higher order thinking. widodo and kadarwati (2012) asserted that with higher order thinking, students are able to distinguish ideas clearly, argue well, solve problems, construct explanations, hypothesize, and understand complex matters. authentic tasks can help students in increasing the use of appropriate language in daily life. to get truly genuine learning activities, authentic teaching materials, authentic tasks which support students’ understanding, and authentic assessment are needed; the latter is needed as one of assessments which focus on activities or tasks done by students as an application of knowledge and skills tailored to real contexts. in indonesian language education and literature study program, there is an extensive reading course. suhartini (2012) describes extensive reading as reading widely. the object includes as many texts as possible in the shortest time possible. however, it turns out that the lecturing processes sometimes do not occur as expected. there are several problems that usually appear in extensive reading, such as students’ reading interest is still low, many students are still too lazy to do the reading because they usually will only read if there is a need, there are physical disorders that become obstacles in reading, and students are not able to understand the texts. another problem that often occurs in the process of extensive reading is that students sometimes are less careful in defining certain meanings. in this case, the extensive reading process greatly affects the information obtained by the students. among the methods previously mentioned, the implementation of authentic assessment can be a good choice. abidin (2012) stated that the use of authentic assessment is believed to be able to give students the ability to resolve real issues as well as providing opportunities for students to be able to think, act, and work systematically. in this article, the researcher will propose the implementation of authentic assessment employed in extensive reading to identify students’ extensive reading proficiency. previous research has also revealed the importance of authentic assessment in reading skills. abidin (2012) explained that authentic assessment can be used to support the success of building students’ skills in reading comprehension. authentic assessment can be useful in effectively determining students' reading skill sets. masrukhin (2014) added that authentic assessment is the real mirror of the condition of students’ learning. authentic tasks can be a useful tool to an instructor. these tasks can be used as an assessment to accurately determine the true state of student learning. absari, sudiana, and wendra (2015) in their research showed that the use of authentic assessment can help the teacher understand students’ ability to demonstrate their understanding. authentic assessment can also describe improvements in students’ learning outcomes in order to observe, question, reason, try, and communicate. this is supported by wiana, et al. (2015, p. 5) which suggests that authentic judgments are important in improving learning outcomes. authentic assessment is no longer implemented using traditional assessment formats such as multiple-choice, matching, true-false, and “paper and pencil” standardized test. teachers can use a format that encourages students to complete a task by performatively demonstrating a method of solving a problem. from exposure to authentic tasks, we can conclude that one of the authentic assessment formats which can be developed by teachers is in the form of tasks. reynisdóttir (2016) reported that the innovation from a conservative/traditional assessment to an authentic assessment shows that there is effort to fulfill students’ needs. teachers do not only think about and prepare students’ needs, but also make targets which will become students’ competences. kinay and bağçeci (2016) also demonstrated that an authentic assessment can improve pre-service teachers’ problem-solving abilities. meanwhile, aziz and yusoff (2016) found that authentic assessment could help improve the process writing of children in primary schools. as the previous research shown, the implementation of authentic assessment at the university level in indonesia has not garnered sufficient attention. hence, the present research would like to describe methods of implementation of authentic assessment in specifically in the extensive reading course in the indonesian language literature program at sanata dharma university. in particular, the material which was assessed was related to defining the meaning of words, idioms, and phrases. this research will be useful to develop an authentic assessment extensive reading skills in the study program of indonesian language and literature. in addition, this research can be used by teacher candidates and lecturers who will implement authentic assessment in reading skills. method the researcher will describe the implementation of extensive reading assessment of the first semester students of the academic year 2017/2018 of pbsi study program sanata dharma university yogyakarta. this research used descriptive qualitative analysis method. the instruments used in this study were test instruments. multiyaningsih (2014) defined a test as a international journal of education vol. 11 no. 1, august 2018, pp. 87-92 ©2018 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v11i1.9113 88 data gathering method that serves to measure a right or wrong answer. the correct answer will receive a score and a wrong answer will not receive a score. thus, the results of the measurement by using the test are categorized as quantitative data. the source of data of this study was test scores of students of class a from the first semester of academic year 2017/2018 who took extensive reading in the indonesian language and literature program at sanata dharma university, yogyakarta. the students as a data source provided the data in the form of extensive reading assignments. extensive reading assignments included comprehending news texts to define the meaning of difficult words, the meaning of idioms, and the meaning of phrases. the researcher examined extensive reading tasks by using authentic assessment to determine class a students' understanding in defining the meaning of difficult words, the meaning of idioms, and the meaning of phrases in the texts. the data collection technique in this study used the documentation through extensive reading assignments done by students in defining the meaning of words, idioms, and expressions in the news texts by conducting the assessment that had been developed by the researcher and validated by experts. the data analysis technique used was descriptive qualitative. the researcher performed the following steps. first, the researcher examined the expected final ability in the lecture. second, the researcher formulated materials, tasks, and assessments based on the expected competence. third, the researcher determined the proper assessment instrument. furthermore, the procedures in analyzing the data were (1) assessing and scoring on each students’ answer sheets, (2) assessing and scoring by using a scale of 1-4. the researcher did not only determine the scale but also determined the criteria related to the content and process, such as giving 4 for a number that has the most complete answer. after that, the researcher was able to obtain the average value of all studied aspects. in extensive reading, the lecturer gave the tasks to define the meaning of difficult words, idioms, and expressions in the news texts. the researcher assessed the task by using an authentic assessment that had been developed and had been validated by experts. here's a scoring rubric developed by the researcher. susani, r. g. the implementation of authentic assessment in extensive reading 89 table 3 the authentic assessment in defining the meaning of difficult words, idioms, and expressions in the news texts the expected final ability : being able to define the meaning of difficult words, idioms, and expressions student’s name : _________________________ student’s identity number : _________________________ no. aspect of assessment score criteria 1. report presentation 4 reports are presented clearly and systematically 3 reports are presented fairly clear and systematical 2 reports are presented less clearly and less systematically 1 reports are presented unclear and not systematic 2. completeness and accuracy of report content 4 the content of the report is very complete and supporting by evidences 3 the content of the report is complete and accompanied by supporting evidence 2 the content of the report is incomplete and the evidence provided is less favorable 1 the content of the report is incomplete and do not include supporting evidence 3. able to find difficult words, the meaning of idioms, and the meaning of expressions 4 overall able to find 100-70 more difficult words, idioms, and phrases 3 overall able to find 69-40 difficult words, idioms, and phrases 2 overall able to find 40-20 more difficult words, idioms, and phrases 1 overall able to find less than 20 difficult words, idioms, and phrases 4. able to define difficult words, the meaning of idioms, and the meaning of expressions 4 there are no errors in defining the difficult word, the meaning of idioms, and the meaning of expressions 3 there are 1-10 mistakes in defining difficult words, the meaning of idioms, and the meaning of phrases 2 there are 11-20 errors in defining difficult words, the meaning of idioms, and the meaning of phrases 1 there are more than 20 errors in defining difficult words, the meaning of idioms, and the meaning of phrases 5. the accuracy of the use of elements of indonesian language 4 there is no mistake to use the elements of indonesian language 3 there are 1-10 mistakes in using the elements of indonesian language 2 there are 11-20 mistakes in using the elements of indonesian language 1 there are more than 20 in using the elements of indonesian language table 3 can be used as a guide in implementing authentic assessment. then, to simplify authentic assessment, teachers can use a practical assessment instrument such as presented in table 4. table 4. the assessment instrument to identify difficult words, the meaning of idioms, and the meaning of phrases name: student’s identity number: no. aspect of assessment score 4 3 2 1 1. report presentation 2. completeness and accuracy of report content 3. able to find difficult words, the meaning of idioms, and the meaning of expressions 4. able to define difficult words, the meaning of idioms, and the meaning of expressions international journal of education vol. 11 no. 1, august 2018, pp. 87-92 ©2018 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v11i1.9113 90 5. the accuracy of the use of elements of indonesian language table 5 display the guidelines to use the instrument. scoring guideline: total score maximum total score x 100 = score table 5. the assessment criteria assessment criteria score interval criteria letter conversion 4 80-100 very high a 3 59-79 high b 2 39-78 fairly low c 1 <39 low d after finding out the score of each student, and then the researcher calculated the average (mean) based on nurgiyantoro’s (2012, p. 219) formula as follows. �̅� = ∑n n information: σn = total score n = number of students 𝑋 = average (mean) findings and discussions starting from various steps and research processes, finally the researchers obtained accurate research results. the results of extensive reading essay in defining the meaning of words, idioms, and expressions, the students were assessed in terms of (1) the report presentation, (2) the completeness and accuracy of the content of the report, (3) the study of finding difficult words, the meaning of idioms, and the meaning of expressions, (4) the study to define difficult words, the meaning of idioms, and the meaning of phrases, and (5) the accuracy of the use of elements in indonesian language. the result table of final score of the extensive reading task in defining the meaning of words, idioms, and phrases is a table for viewing and determining students' extensive reading comprehension. the scores of students who have done the activities of defining the meaning of words, idioms, and phrases are presented in table 6. table 6 the percentage value defining the meaning of words, idioms, and expressions no. interval criteria letter conversion frequency of student percentage average value criteria 1. 80-100 very high a 9 score 90 obtained by 7 students score 80 obtained by 2 students 42.86% 80 very high (a) 2. 59-79 high b 12 score 75 obtained by 10 students score 70 obtained by 2 students 57.14% 3. 39-78 fairly low c 0 4. <39 low d 0 number of students 21 table 6 shows that students with very high ability are 9 students (42.86%) with very high criteria and 12 students (57.14%) with high criteria. the researcher drew a conclusion that most of students with percentage 57.14% that consists of 12 students have ability to define the meaning of words, idioms, and expressions well (high). the average value of students in defining the meaning of words, idioms, and expressions produced by students is 80 with very high criteria. the detailed information can be seen in the bar chart of figure 1. 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 very high high fairly low low susani, r. g. the implementation of authentic assessment in extensive reading 91 figure 1. the bar diagram defining the meaning of words, idioms, and phrases the data from extensive reading in defining the meaning of words, idioms, and expressions were done by class a students of the first semester of academic year 2017/2018 pbsi study program sanata dharma university have high ability to define the meaning of words, idioms, and expressions. furthermore, the average value of the students can be expected the following formula. �̅� = 1680 21 = 80 the result of the calculation explains that the average value of the students is 80 with very high category. apparently, the authentic task can train learners’ higher order thinking, which corresponds to the findings of research by widodo and kadarwati (2012). it also cannot be separated from teaching materials that have authentic nature. furthermore, the application of authentic assessment can determine students’ ability to apply their knowledge and skills in accordance with the context of a real situation, affirming previous research results stressing on the closeness of this assessment to real life situations (sani, 2016) authentic assessment is also capable of measuring comprehensive reading abilities of students. this has an impact on the achievement of goals set in learning reading skills. the assessment rubric is one of the most effective ways to know students' reading skills accurately. through the application of authentic assessment, teachers are expected to improve their professionalism in managing the learning process (kinay and bağçeci, 2016). the average score of the students who obtained 80 with high category shows that the students are able to apply their knowledge and skills based on real situation contexts. the students are already expected to understand difficult words, idioms, and expressions when they do their reading activity. without authentic assessment guidelines, teachers may face difficulties in measuring the level of student’s understanding. it is hoped that after experiencing the learning activities, the students are able to practice their knowledge and skills continually. if teachers are able to prepare the assessment which is based on tasks given to students and also giving tasks based on learning materials, teachers can show their professionalism. the authentic assessment which has been designed and applied will help teachers to know students’ competences. from the learning results which apply authentic assessment, teachers can evaluate teaching methods based on materials, tasks, and assessments. the results also make teachers know students’ needs better. from students’ point of view, the students also can gain benefits to improve their learning excellently. after the researcher employed an authentic assessment to measure reading skills in identifying the meanings of difficult words, idioms, and expressions, the researcher could determine the level of students’ comprehension well. it turned out that the employment of an authentic assessment could train students to solve real problems so that they become accustomed to think, act, and work systematically. this research has added to the existing research on authentic assessment more than just a focus on how to measure students’ competences in identifying the meanings of difficult words, idioms, and expressions, but also how to measure the aspect of report presentation, completeness and accuracy of the report content, and the accuracy of the use of indonesian language elements. based on these assessments, the researcher could determine students’ development. the researcher could measure these aspects from performance assessment which had been designed previously. based on the discussion, the most important part of designing an authentic assessment is that teachers are able to identify standards by formulating brief statements to measure expected competences, choose assignments given to students, and determine assignments criteria, indicators, and assessment rubrics. if these simple acts can be applied, teachers will be able to determine students’ comprehension level based on needed aspects. conclusion the researcher could draw some conclusions based on the research results to determine the extensive reading ability in defining the meaning of words, idioms, and expressions of class a students of the first semester of academic year 2017/2018 in the indonesian language and literature study program at sanata dharma university as follows. first, based on the results of the study, students' extensive reading comprehension gained an average of 80 with a very high category. second, the implementation of authentic assessment could provide benefits, such as (a) identifying the direct measurement of expected competence indicators of students’ performances; (b) encouraging students to demonstrate a performance in a real and meaningful situation; (c) providing students an opportunity to construct their learning outcomes by selecting and compiling answers based on their knowledge and the situational analysis so that the answers were relevant and meaningful; and (d) integrating teaching, learning, and assessment activities. future research can further investigate the use of authentic assessment in reading skills in other levels of education, such as primary and secondary school. alternatively, interested researchers can also examine the use of authentic assessment for other language skills. references abidin, y. (2012). model penilaian otentik dalam pembelajaran membaca pemahaman beroreintasi pendidikan karakter. jurnal pendidikan karakter, 2, 164-178. absari, i. g. a. k. l., sudiana, i. n., & wendra, i. w. (2015). penilaian autentik guru bahasa indonesia dalam pembelajaran menulis siswa kelas vii di smp negeri 1 singaraja. e-journal universitas pendidikan ganesha, 3(1), 1-12. international journal of education vol. 11 no. 1, august 2018, pp. 87-92 ©2018 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v11i1.9113 92 aziz, m. n. a., & yusoff, n. m. improving process writing with the use authentic assessment. international journal of evaluation and research in education (ijere), 5(3), 200-204. kinay, i. & bağçeci, b. (2016). the investigation of the effects of authentic assessment approach on prospective teachers’ problem-solving skills. international education studies, 8(9), 51-59. krismanto, w., halik, a., & sayidiman. 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(2012). model pembelajaran membaca ekstensif dengan menggunakan model quantum thinker pada siswa kelas viii smp negeri 1 sukawening garut tahun ajaran 2011/2012. stkip siliwangi publication, 1-7. wiana, j. a. e., gading, & kusmariyatni. (2015). penerapan penilaian otentik untuk meningkatkan hasil belajar ipa kelas iv sd negeri 2 pupuan. e-journal pgsd universitas pendidikan ganesha, 3(1), 1-10. widodo, t., & kadarwati, s. (2013). higher order thinking berbasis pemecahan masalah untuk meningkatkan hasil belajar berorientasi pembentukan karakter siswa. cakrawala pendidikan, 1, 161-171. international journal of education vol. 11 no. 1, august 2018, pp. 35-49 ©2018 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v11i1.9400 35 reflective teaching toward efl teachers’ professional autonomy: revisiting its development in indonesia arif husein lubis universitas pendidikan indonesia, bandung, indonesia lubis_ah@yahoo.com first draft received: 30 dec 2017 accepted: 15 june 2018 final proof received: 29 aug 2018 abstract it has been approximately 25 years that reflective teaching in efl context, particularly in asia is encouraged and reviewed. the notable goal emphasizes the teachers’ role as critical lifelong learners in or outside the classroom to bring about continuous mutual development between them and the surroundings. although myriad research-based studies have paid attention to the developmental praxis of reflective teaching, scant published articles highlight the progress of its empowerment process and quality in indonesia. thus, this paper will address some points related to how this realm is addressed and developed, reflecting from the preceding and contemporary discussion and its milestone in indonesia within asia scope. furthermore, the envision of future direction is prompted from current portrait, existing challenges, and expectations concerning the theoretical foundation, means and models, ict integration, and character education toward 21stcentury english teachers’ professional autonomy. keywords: reflective teaching; teacher education; indonesian efl teachers; professional autonomy to cite this paper (in apa style): lubis, a. h. (2018). reflective teaching toward efl teachers’ professional autonomy: revisiting its development in indonesia. international journal of education, 11(1), 35-49. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v11i1.9400 introduction the praxis of english language teaching has its own dynamic complexities (broady, 2002; prapphal, 2004) and development on methodological philosophy (richards & rodgers, 1986) upon which globalization, advancement of knowledge and ict, as well as the students’ linguistic and demographic diversities (commins & miramontes, 2005) put great influence across asia countries (wang, 2011; musa, lie, & azman, 2012; chinh, 2013; kirkpatrick, 2016). such a status quo, then, keeps reinforcing the educational parties to flourish the quality of the preservice teachers’ professional preparation and in-service teachers’ professional development. considering the relationship between such quality flourishment and the principle concept of teaching itself, it obviously pinpoints that the process for humanizing human-beings as one fundamental objective of teaching can only be accomplished through the involvement of deliberate thinking about its design, action, and reflection aspects as a one-stop cyclical process. on the other hand, those establishing their comfort-zone teaching routines without such aforementioned involvement will likely be considered as experiencing the decline of their professional commitment and professionalism (akbari, 2007). teachers are encouraged to have the sense of responsiveness and openmindedness as the requisite to be reflective teachers. some important characteristics to embrace comprise: professionalism as a lifelong learning; adaptive to the changing lubis, a. h. reflective teaching toward efl teachers’ professional autonomy: revisiting its development in indonesia 36 situations; and responsive to the diverse students’ characteristics. however, such encouragement of fostering reflective teaching, as though, becomes the ultimate yet inconclusive agenda within teachers’ continuous professional development programs considering inadequate early exposure on the transparencies of doing reflective teaching itself. consequently, limited experience and understanding in preservice teacher education period result in encountering feeling-lost moment after they get into in-service teacher education period. although myriad research-based studies have paid attention to the developmental praxis of reflective teaching, scant published articles highlight the progress of its empowerment process and quality in indonesia. prompted from the issue, the present study will provide a critical review on the direction of reflective teaching development in indonesia reflected from asia and beyond. this literature review discusses a revisit on its milestone and prospective direction in promoting efl teachers’ self-actualization to realize the ultimate goal of reflective teaching, i.e. gaining professional autonomy. it encompasses an overview of reflective teaching reviewed from its philosophical history and characteristics, the importance of implementing rt, the milestone of research on rt in indonesia and other asia countries, and the challenges and expectations of the prospective rt development continuously. method this study employs a qualitative approach with literature review method through document analysis (leech & onwuegbuzie, 2008). the first data source is from the research-based articles in national and international journals in some asian countries in the last 25 years. second, the data were taken from the books comprising the current portrait of the asia-pacific teachers’ professional development from unesco, the guideline of teachers’ continuous professional development [cpd] in india and saudi arabia, and the coverage of teacher education in china. third, the government documents were used in the forms of modules of guru pembelajar (learning teachers) and some relevant regulations about teachers’ professional development. each data source is presented sequentially. discussion reflective teaching: a longitudinal dialectics at least almost for about forty-eight years in the middle of dewey’s (1933) and schön’s (1983) masterpieces on reflection and reflective practitioner, the concept of reflective teaching has not been so debated and popular until the beginning of the 1990s to current circumstances. however, they both have argued that teaching has been considered as a profession in which the reflection itself becomes the heart of every professional activity. what differentiates this concept to other decision-making actions is the involvement of “a consecutive ordering of ideas in such a way that each determines the next as its proper outcome, while each, in turn, leans back on its predecessors (dewey, 1933, pp. 2-3).” such definition is then cleared out in a more practical statement by schön (1983) that reflective practice puts great concern on problem setting as the source of understanding one’s experience and performance criticizing the prior traditional assumption of idealists that technical rationality is bound in every professional practice as a problem-solving process exalting the one-best means of encountering associated problem (selection from the available means), while fundamentally lacking problem setting as the source of one’s proposition (p. 39). the reflective practice movement started its philosophical and practical expansion to teaching realm particularly in english language classrooms in the 1990s. profoundly speaking, the introduction of reflective teaching as an approach (richards & lockhart, 2007, p. 1) encompasses an active and continuous recognition (zeichner & liston, 1996, p. 5), critical self-examination, and reflection (fendler, 2003; richards & lockhart, 2007; minott, 2009) of own teaching and learning values and beliefs (zeichner & liston, 1996). it becomes the requisite of cyclical problem-solving process comprising of decision making, planning, action (richards & lockhart, 2007), analysis, and anticipatory planning (kumaravideluli, 2003, p. 10). in its process, teachers involve deliberate thinking, while mirroring experience as a international journal of education vol. 11 no. 1, august 2018, pp. 35-49 ©2018 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v11i1.9400 37 disposition to bring about positive changes on their teaching practices in a way beyond instructional techniques and passively routinized procedures (sze, 1999, p. 133). such a process is believed to constitute to an evaluation of self-knowledge, own teaching aspects, development of teaching strategies, and implementation of selfmonitoring on the applied changes or adaptation (richards & lockhart, 2007, p. 2). in tandem with the contemporary discussions on the conceptions and models of reflective teaching, it is worth doing then to consider why such an approach is valuable for foreign language teachers’ pedagogical and professional development. ghaye (2011) provides a general insight that “reflective practice can enhance human flourishing by focusing on the establishment of positive relationships, engagement, emotions, and maintaining the meaning or purpose of life (p. 13).” it is in line with the fundamental concept of reflection as the product of paradigm shifts from seeking the one best method to seeking alternatives and involving wider scopes of language teaching and learning, i.e., cognitivism and behaviorism to post-modernism and social constructivism (richards, 2008). the thrust of self-awareness and critical thinking in encountering daily-teaching circumstances enriches them to help achieve a better understanding of own teaching and learning milestone quality (richards & lockhart, 2007) and their attitudes toward the profession itself from the accumulation of dialectic clarification upon the substance of their stories (sze, 1999, p. 147). such reflective routinized practice will enable foreign language teachers to activate their potentials in wider society as selfempowerment and professional development (richards & lockhart, 2007) resulting in the school’s improvement (minott, 2009). a long-term commitment from the government to foster rt toward efl teachers’ professional autonomy through its inclusion in teacher education programs is inextricably intertwined. such encouragement indirectly enhances their adaptive state of readiness in that divergent learning circumstances trigger them for better achievable and measurable learning outcomes (loughran, 2002, p. 35). brookfield (1995) added that the reflective teaching through teacher education promotes comprehension skill upon various teaching approaches to testify the prescribed assumptions about teaching and learning. then, it determines the future plans and actions. as a result, the process ensures them that english language teachers are not only the knowledge transmitters but the thoughtful inquiryoriented practitioners and researchers as well (ross, 1987; beck & kosnik, 2001). the milestone of research on reflective teaching in efl context to the extent dialectic examination still becomes a particular interest among philosophers, the concept of reflective teaching has also propelled many scholars, foreign language analysts, and elt researchers across countries in asia to share their scientific findings and evidencebased insights to the light of its significant praxis for 21st-century english as a foreign language teaching (eflt) development. myriad contemporary research-based published articles have been recorded in the last 25 years involving fifteen countries, i.e. china, hong kong, india, indonesia, iran, japan, korea, kuwait, philippine, russia, saudi arabia, singapore, taiwan, turkey, and yemen. considering the debate on how practical and significant the practice of rt is, previous studies reviewed the exploration of applicable modes in fostering rt along with its significance. they include: response journals (lee, 2008); journal writing associated with reflective thinking (ho & richards, 1993); the application of action research (dehghan & sahragard, 2015) in scaffolding in-service teachers’ reflection (chodidjah, 2017); the combination of journal writing and peer observation in fostering reflective practice (lakshmi, 2014); and the engagement of employing various tools of reflective practice (fakazli & gönen, 2017). some others explored the implementation of reflective teaching associated with teachers’ performance (fatemipour & hosseingholikhani, 2014; sanopao, 2016) and elt development in a learner-centered situation (sharafi & rokni, 2014); role of rt for effective teaching (menon & alamelu, 2011); and systemic functional linguistics [sfl]-assisted reflective writing practice for preservice lubis, a. h. reflective teaching toward efl teachers’ professional autonomy: revisiting its development in indonesia 38 teachers (suaib & tohamba, 2017). most studies’ focus is the investigation of teachers’ perception on using various means of rt realization in the english language classroom and the disseminative training to foster their abilities on selfinquiry, self-awareness, self-assessment, critical thinking, and lifelong learning competencies. the second concern is on the measurement of teachers’ perceptions, attitudes, capability, and quality. they include: the understanding and assessment of reflective thinking (lee, 2005); the relationship between the level of teachers’ rt performance (ferdowsi & afghari, 2015; li & ye, 2016) and either reflective thinking ability (negari & beiranvand, 2013; afshar & farahani, 2015), conceptions of teaching and learning (rahimi & chabok, 2013), or teachers’ burnout (ghazalbas & afghari, 2015). some others related teachers’ reflection to practical capabilities like the inclusion of strategy-based instruction (jadidi & keshavarz, 2013) and classroom management (sammaknejad & marzban, 2016). other scholars investigated the teachers’ reflection profiles (yeşilbursa, 2011) and levels (astika, 2014; ansarin, farrokhi, & rahmani, 2015; amalia, 2017; lubis, 2017; nurfaidah, lengkanawati, & sukyadi, 2017) associated with reflective practice levels (faghihi & sarab, 2016); the milestone of rt in language teacher education programs (al-ahdal & al-awaid, 2014); and teachers’ beliefs on rt for their professional development (alfaki, 2014). it goes through the methodology development in researching reflective teaching and the promotion of rt models within training programs. interestingly, only akbari, behzadpoor, and dadvand (2010) concerned the instrument development of an english language teaching reflection inventory from iran. under quantitative design, they developed their prior inventory of 42 likert-scale items which comprises six elements of teaching reflection, i.e., practical, cognitive, affective, metacognitive, critical, and moral through the process of piloting and testing employing exploratory and confirmatory data analysis. the data showed that moral element and some items in the affective and practical elements were eliminated leaving out 19 items. meanwhile, the promotion of rt models included upgrading program and framework on teachers’ level of critical reflectivity (ho, 2009); rt for esp scope (almabekova, 2010; saylag, 2012); rt on teachers’ teaching performance through teacher training program (lan & wang, 2013); and the provision of a particular model (kayapinar, 2016) namely reflective practitioner development model (rpdm). some studies have also encompassed technology application for implementing rt. they include: the application of online platform for developing reflective practice (brooke, 2012; 2014); the use of blog (mynard, 2007) and digital media (harendita, 2017) as the means of reflection itself and the empowerment of videomediated reflective teaching through professional community (jalilifar & nattaq, 2013). most of the articles reported on the involvement of ict as a means of mediating the process of introducing, nurturing, and monitoring rt practice for english language teachers whether in a self-directed environment or in a community-based one. the development and attainment of those aforementioned research have shed light upon the clarity and continuity of rt flourishment and inculcation despite methodological, credible evidence, and technical limitations as the one-stop yet intriguing sides for prospective studies. unfortunately, such development and attainment are still questionable and unresolved in indonesia context due to the limited records on how the foreign language teachers, perceive, behave upon, and utilize various aforementioned reflective teaching modes, concepts, and models within either independent research framework or te programs initiated by the indonesian government. they mostly conducted an exploration on how pre or in-service teachers perform their reflective writing through journal writing (astika, 2014; nurfaidah, et al., 2017); perceive the concept of rt (amalia, 2017; lubis, 2017); and scaffold such practice within ict (harendita, 2017), sfl (suaib & tohamba, 2017), and pd training (chodidjah, 2017) instructions. to conclude, the milestone of research on rt mostly explored teacherlevel capability in which studies on ict and sustainable reflective model in te programs remain the focal absence. international journal of education vol. 11 no. 1, august 2018, pp. 35-49 ©2018 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v11i1.9400 39 prospects in fostering rt within teflin praxis: portrait, challenges, and expectations the efforts of the indonesian government, in this sense ministry of education and culture [moec], ministry of national education [mne], and other contributing parties, in accompanying 21stcentury english language teachers’ continuous professional development (cpd) have been being initiated. viewed from its underlying philosophy, three policies become the driving means of promoting teachers’ self-awareness to apply rt toward sustainable professional autonomy, namely: the decree of ministry of national education (2007; 2008), and the decree of moec (2014). fundamentally, under the value of democracy and pluralism, those policies respectively encompass the dissemination of four standard competencies (suherdi, 2012), i.e., pedagogic, personal, social, and professional competencies for formal school teachers from kindergarten to secondary levels, special education school teachers, and instructors. those competencies for instructors of any courses and training programs require more clamor in terms of implementing reflective teaching. the policy mandates that pedagogical competence encompasses the mastery of using media and ict as well as reflective teaching to enhance learning quality through reflection-for-action and reflection-in-action. personal competence pinpoints teachers’ ability to perform openmindedness upon different views and behaviors and to activate self-autonomy, responsiveness, wisdom, and cooperative characters. meanwhile, social and professional competencies are bound within the urgency of doing self-development through the continuous reflective teaching which is fostered by doing self-evaluation on self-performance continuously and using ict as the medium. china, according to hu’s (2005) comprehensive historical review article, the moe (department of development and planning) in association with sec١ (department of planning and construction) also imposed the compulsory education law and the teachers law mandating that decentralization on educational policy and elt development should be realized considering the emphasis of contemporary progressive ideology, individual development and creativity, and educational exploration. compared to other asia countries, i.e. india, saudi arabia, uzbekistan, mongolia, republic of korea, pakistan, sri lanka, china, and philippines, to mention a few, the indonesian government’s initiatives principally have uniformity with those countries in which school-based professional development will be the fundamental shared goals under the guidance of moec, mne, and associated the educational institution for educational practitioners [lptk] under ministry of research and higher education [mrhe]. on the other side, lack of commitment in maintaining the quality of the teachers’ professional development as well as the ict-based pd programs for equality across regions and demographic diversities is still increasingly demanding compared to uzbekistan, mongolia, and republic of korea (united nations educational, scientific, and cultural organization [unesco], 2016). as the continuum of such principle in promoting english language teachers’ cpd and reflective teaching, the transparencies of teacher education programs themselves become another focal target. some encouraged practices within the guidelines for teacher cpd for rmsa in india formulated in 2015, which comprise: training, observation, improvement process, study groups, inquiry or action research, individual-directed activities, and mentoring. the immersion of ict within the cpd program includes alternatives for distance education approaches for teacher training. saudi arabia takes into account mostly on training-oriented practices, i.e., lecture, discussion, visiting other schools or classroom, workshop, programmed learning, brainstorming, role-playing, and case studies (alghamdi & li, 2011). while, china divides the coverage of teacher education for preservice teachers from inservice ones (hu, 2005). the former courses cover the obligation to self-equip with the competence of implementing technology-and-computer-aided teaching and learning instructions through preparing and organizing ict-based materials. the latter ones cover the curriculum support programmes for knowledge and lubis, a. h. reflective teaching toward efl teachers’ professional autonomy: revisiting its development in indonesia 40 pedagogical competencies (school teachers) and academic or further higher education pursues (teacher educators or trainers) under constructivism and reflective process and approach. to address so, the directorate general of teachers and education personnel under moec of indonesia launched guru pembelajar in 2013. this program becomes the realization in response to the teacher and lecturer law (2005) mandating the implementation of teachers’ training and development as the actualization of professional educators. in addition, it was raised from the still-low average scores of teachers’ competency test [ukg٢] in the last two periods of implementation, 47 and 56, which are under the standard minimum of 60 from the moec website (http://sergur.kemdiknas.go.id) on teacher certification. the focal purpose is the enhancement of preservice professional preparation and in-service teachers’ (including english language teachers) abilities, attitudes, and skills in performing their professional activities. different from the aforementioned three asia countries, this program consists of two main platforms: workshop and training within which either face-to-face or online mode is employed based on the demographic needs. the scenario (p. 21) of such implementation is for the sake of three objectives: (1) disseminating attitudes of guru pembelajar; (2) encouraging professional competence; and (3) encouraging pedagogical competence, which can be assessed and evaluated based on the advent indicators of perseverance, insightful capacity, and ingenious attitudes. in so doing, selfreflection becomes the foundation upon the comprehending of subject-related concepts and effective learning management in which exposition, qa session, discussion, forum, hands-on tasks, and practicum integrated within a cyclical training process aim to create a critically reflective learning environment. in tandem with the program initiation, the team also launched some modules of guru pembelajar (moec, 2016) in the same year facilitating the four standard competencies and the mandates within the regulations of state ministry for the empowerment of state apparatus and birocracy reform (2009) about functional position and credit points for teachers’ pd. concerning reflective teaching, the toolkits consist of some rtrelated materials for all levels of education except kindergarten (moec, 2016). the professional competence of kindergarten teachers pinpoints the ability to do selfreflection on their own teaching performance within which teachers’ performance assessment form [pkg] is employed as the measurement tool. meanwhile, elementary (either low or high grade) to senior high teachers will be flourished by the introduction and inculcation of reflective teaching definition along with its three dimensions: reflectionin-action, reflection-on-action, and reflection-about-action as the realization of pkb (called cpd) mandate. to succeed such implementation, video recording, reflective journal, direct spoken reflection, peer-reviewed observation or the other way around, and classroom action research are designed to indulge them to be 21st-century critically reflective language teaching practitioners. it is in line with what choi and lee (2007) proposed regarding a bottom-up model of efl teacher development for asia countries based on surveys about teacher qualifications and education programs. although the materials are comprehensively provided equipped by case study as well with the inclusion of ict and teachers’ associations and forums as an effort of encouraging collaborative reflection process, limitations are also identified concerning the promotion of rt. they comprise:  there seems no identified match between the definition of three dimensions with the example since the example only shows how a teacher performs lesson-plan-oriented reflection process. although stating that reflection about action reviews the ethical, moral, political, economic, sociological, and wider aspects, the included examples and case studies seem not to embrace any of those aspects.  teachers are encouraged to understand and apply the materials appropriately without a firm explanation and examples from other resources as well as a clear reflective model or cycle to conduct the learning.  there is no follow-up action or reflective model or cycle for integrating ict into international journal of education vol. 11 no. 1, august 2018, pp. 35-49 ©2018 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v11i1.9400 41 the reflective teaching materials and exercises.  there is still a misconception and ambiguous statement on the module stating, “at glance, there is no relationship between self-development and learning reflection (p.8).” on the other hand, the concept of teaching experience disseminated in the materials tends to inform the teachers that it is not a particular and personal issue (p.19).  they are just inside the program, not possibly maintained inside the individual teacher’s heart of teaching since there is no advent cooperation between what the government (e.g., an integrative role model) promotes and what the schools develop afterward. it seems only a oneday training session, not a lifelong reflective development cycle.  there is no comprehensive conception on how to take a follow-up from the reflection through remedial learning or teaching and car since reflection as mentioned before fundamentally requires critical self-inquiry regarding ethical, socio-economic, and political concerns of both the teachers and learners’ philosophy of language learning. on the other side, remedial learning or teaching is a top-down evaluation depending mostly on the intellectual results of classroom members. some contemporary challenges for now’s and future’s direction in promoting reflective teaching within teachers’ pd programs are then in line with those critics and limitations. the first scope is on defining the term rt as the question raised by zeichner and liston (1996, p. 7) that misunderstanding of whether reflective teaching is only thinking about teaching matters or whether any systematic procedure of self-inquiry can assist english language teachers to have reflective thinking. those still become the detrimental commonplace thought of such definitional and conceptual vagueness and ambiguity (sze, 1999, p. 145). it automatically leads to unclear formulation on the materials development and exposure within the te programs. what akbari (2007, p. 193-197) concerns regarding the quality of the reflective cycle in the current’s te programs might be true that such elt circles still lack necessary critical dimension. type of reflection being promoted tends to emphasize memory concentration as the core of wrongly-assisted retrospective evaluation resulting in less attention to personal capabilities of imagination and creativity. problem identification may not be equipped by not encouraging teachers’ sensitivity to review beyond-methodology substances and beyond-school-gate phenomena as well (ghaye, 2011, pp. 1112). it is because the extent to which investigation on the confluence between teachers’ knowledge bases (local or existing knowledge), i.e., personal, institutional, intercultural, contextual, pedagogical, linguistic, and interpersonal ones (mann, 2005) and self-reflection quality remains untouchable. the third scope is from the teachers’ beliefs and attitudes toward rt. the statement ‘ignorance is a bliss’ gives a great impact on their, novice or experienced, reflection process. their traditional beliefs of eflt have been so embedded that busy teacher syndrome (farrell, 1999, p. 52) induces the desire of neglection to have a critical reflection. hence, prospective areas for future direction in promoting sustainable reflective teaching for efl teachers need to be researched, reviewed, and monitored. for teachers, the exploration of means in implementing rt is worth doing, yet still scant in terms of maximizing self-awareness and self-potentials toward self-directed professional development. to mention a few, some scholars have provided useful insights in terms of journal writing conception (boud, 2001; richards & lockhart, 2007; fuller, 2013; chalikandy, 2014) in whether individual or collaborative modes (murray, 2010; trites, 2010); whether unstructured like free writing or structured like autobiographical writing (romero, 2010), portfolios, and profiles (zalipour, 2015). some of them also suggested alternative ways including lessons video-taping or recordings (richards & lockhart, 2007; fuller, 2013; chalikandy, 2014); self or peer observation (murphy, 2001; richards & lockhart, 2007; chalikandy, 2014); lesson reports, surveys, and questionnaires (richards & lockhart, 2007; chalikandy, 2014). some others lubis, a. h. reflective teaching toward efl teachers’ professional autonomy: revisiting its development in indonesia 42 suggested internal or external reflection from colleague or student’s feedback (fuller, 2013; chalikandy, 2014) or student focus groups (chalikandy, 2014); car (richards & lockhart, 2007); and participation in pd-focused workshops, conferences, and teacher support network or associations locally, nationally, or internationally (murray, 2010; reichmann, 2010). innovations on ict-based journal writing, such as online discussion board (jones & ryan, 2017) and e-mail journaling are also increasingly being promoted. the rationale of such practices reinforces 21stcentury english language teachers toward constructivist classroom agents. it is characterized by what focal roles they should hold and how active their involvement is along with the students in the learning process, which should be based on constructivist epistemology. school environment then also becomes the pivotal role in fostering such awareness. considering the demography of indonesian schools along with the educational system, they seem to lack autonomy. it is because the practice of reflective teaching until now is like a vertical relationship in which the mandate only comes from the government without encouraging the schools themselves through its principals to self-management of such pd activity. some aspects of the expected vision are still demanding reflected from tierney (1988) in minott (2009, pp. 1118). the first prospective environment is initial and continuous socialization in terms of what roles of either the school staffs or the teachers are assigned to and what reflective activities can be done considering the changing nature of elt and language learners. then, provision of on-going maintenance of reflective values within the arranged activities can be maximized through the principals’ participation in the embrace and supervision stages in a collaborative atmosphere. the inclusion of ict as a strategy embracing the concept of multimodality may also aid the promotion of the initiated reflective teaching programs (kaneko-marques, 2015). however, it is still in the form of training and education sessions from the central system, not in the schools. the last aspect encompasses the establishment of support for reflective teaching activities from all school members. the availability of access to learning materials development as the realization of applying the concept of whole-school professional development gives considerable influence. it will enable not only the teachers as the focal agents of change but also the schools as the contributing element within the maintenance of their motivation and efforts. besides the consideration of adopting an appropriate reflective model along with its procedures, good selection of the available modes should become another agenda; particularly the inclusion of ict for the success of its implementation. the moec and mne of indonesia have been concerning the use of technologies as one of the objectives of professional and pedagogical competencies for english language teachers to possess. unfortunately, such involvement is in fact not blended within the application of selected modes – a case study, peer observation, and reflective journal – to mention a few. further studies are worth to be conducted under the foci of what ictbased modes are available and how those modes contribute to the light of rt development through its configuration with the existing and other alternative contemporary modes. some literature has provided insights on this issue including: the application of critical incidents analysis (farrell, 2013; brandenburg & mcdonough, 2017), peer coaching (richards & farrell, 2005), video-stimulated iwb (schmid, 2011), virtual diaries in distance te (bergmann & da silva, 2013), and european portfolio for student teachers of languages [epostl]. it is a document-based reflection on didactic knowledge and skills (newby et al., 2007) as well as strengths and weaknesses based on the systematic feedback (dirnberger & weitensfelder, 2009, p. 30). an expansion of such portfolio includes the use of internet-based eportfolio, such as: twitter tweets, video collage, blogging, and v-logging under the technological pedagogical content knowledge [tpack] framework (mishra & koehler, 2006 on the grounding concept; parkes, dredger, & hicks, 2013 on the rubric transparencies), to mention a few. apart from those technical matters, the knowledge bases input for the pre and inservice efl teachers’ cpd should be noticed in the process of te curriculum international journal of education vol. 11 no. 1, august 2018, pp. 35-49 ©2018 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v11i1.9400 43 design and development. since teaching as a profession regards professional (careeroriented claim, johnston, 2003) and personal competencies (moral and ethics affairs related to pedagogical capacity interlinked with the wider scopes of language teaching, mori, 2004) as the heart of that career, the introduction, shaping, and maintenance of both values along with moral dimension as another prospective urgency for the government side should be put into concern (mann, 2005). at least, seven points asserted by rossner (1992) including: “language development, counseling skills, assertiveness training, confidence-building, computing, meditation, and cultural broadening” can be used as the initial input to measure. thus, it cannot be separated from the typology of reflection itself starting from descriptive process to critical evaluation (jay & johnson, 2002) as the product of knowledge bases input. selfcapacity and self-reflexivity of english language teachers are intriguing to be investigated within the three phases progressively resulting in the coverage of dimensions that are being reflected on. the integration between the typology proposed by jay and johnson (2002) and critical dimensions of reflection asserted by richards and lockhart (2007) is helpful for the administrators in providing a purposeful and cyclical process of rt-based teacher education. the last yet not least prospective agenda is the dissemination of reflective characters considering the goal of guru pembelajar program previously discussed. it may be the most critical factor contributing to the success of either the government’s te programs or the lifelong self-pd. unfortunately and undeniably, character education finely keeps concerning the students’ world and seems isolated from the objective of individual teacher’s attainment within the current te (based on the framework of 2013 curriculum). on the other hand, reflective teaching, in this matter, is a lifelong teacher-initiated process of making sense of the nature of elt and bringing about positive changes to insideand-beyond classroom circumstances (murray, 2010). indeed, considering the teacher and lecturer law (2005) through the guideline of guru pembelajar, three characters are disseminated, i.e., reflective, responsive, and adaptive to the changing situations. however, neither sustainable linkage nor government regulation is available mandating a collaborative supervision, administration, or follow-up with the participating schools to keep maintaining those characters when the english language teachers must encounter the real circumstances in or outside the classroom. the more detrimental mindset regarding the concept of reflective teaching as the simplicity of looking over the realms of technical teaching while building blocks and resistance to personal, professional, institutional, and socio-political aspects of reflection (lubis, 2016). such status quo, until nowadays, may result from the egothreatening circumstances of dynamic and contemporary elt realms triggered by the state of anxiety, unreadiness, helplessness, and blindly subjective judgment, i.e., hostility upon the classroom challenges, which always immediately demand the teachers to perform reflective actions. the sources of that character deterioration and conservatism are worth to be investigated for further studies. the results may implicate to the portrait of the myths and realities of indonesian te programs for efl teachers regarding its character education progress through the role of schools and individual self-esteem. one notable ‘antidote’, which has actually been introduced since 2004, is the practice of classroom action research. the rationale of the inclusion of car in the aforementioned four basic competencies is its significant role for personal and professional development (burns, 2010; mann, 2015) and students’ learning progress (zalipour, 2015) as part of reflective teaching characterized by exploratory teaching. however, the current debate about the policy underlines the teachers’ discussion that teaching and educating activities become the main and utmost duties, while research belongs to the lecturers’ one. feeling burdened by the more demanding mandates of teaching workloads and other duties pertaining to their professional development regards research as complementary, even tertiary duty to accomplish. on the other side, additional roles they should possess, i.e., trained coders, local researchers, and global citizens fundamentally deal with the nature lubis, a. h. reflective teaching toward efl teachers’ professional autonomy: revisiting its development in indonesia 44 of reflective teaching. the mne regulation (2007) also includes car as one of the means of realizing such roles and reflective teaching itself. what denny (2005, p. 9-10) suggests may be beneficial in terms of what contributing climate to the successful implementation of car supervision under te programs. they comprise: moral and academic support within the culture of trust and collaboration between the teachers, schools, and associated government parties; time management considering the teachers’ workloads; secure and confidential atmosphere; role modelling; and collaborative groups and research skills encouragement (see dana & yendolhoppey, 2014 on the cyclical process of its implementation). thus, the integration of these requisites and character education of a 21st-century reflective practitioner is worth to be prioritized and further investigated. conclusion and suggestion this paper provides a critical review of both the current portrait and milestone of reflective teaching development for efl teachers in indonesia reflected from asia and wider communities. its prospective direction considering the challenges as well as expectations reflecting from current limitations and contemporary associated literature is also addressed. it is not an inherent skill or innate capability of any person who is just willing to dedicate him/herself as an efl teacher. in addition, its concept is not embracing one firm and absolute framework and dimensions, rather reflexive to subject-specific matters while personal one respecting diversely changing professional, personal, 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(1996). reflective teaching: an introduction. mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum. http://asiatefl2017.uny.ac.id/sites/asiatefl2017.../list%20of%20abstracts-uploaded.pdf/ http://asiatefl2017.uny.ac.id/sites/asiatefl2017.../list%20of%20abstracts-uploaded.pdf/ http://asiatefl2017.uny.ac.id/sites/asiatefl2017.../list%20of%20abstracts-uploaded.pdf/ international journal of education vol. 9 no. 2, februari 2017, pp. 126-132 ©2017 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v9i2.5474 126 bildungsroman for character education in higher education: an indonesian context nita novianti universitas pendidikan indonesia nitanoviantiwahyu@upi.edu first draft received: 10 november 2016 final proof received: 18 february 2017 abstract considering the lack of research on character education in higher education, this paper proposes that bildungsroman, a genre concerned with a protagonist‘s development and education from childhood to adulthood, fits perfectly into the recent need of literary works for teaching character education in college. employing literature review, this paper argues that bildungsroman satisfies the major requirements for literary works for character education in college drawn from o‘sullivan (2004). bildungsroman also provides a rich source for cultivation of character traits as stipulated by the indonesian department of national education (2010). furthermore, the general theme of self-development is highly appropriate to the nature of character education in higher education, namely as a continuation and consolidation of the character developed in college students‘ previous education. it is expected that the present study will contribute to the teaching of character education through literature, although further studies are required in order to explore the effective teaching and learning techniques. keywords: bildungsroman; character education; higher education; literature. to cite this paper (in apa style): novianti, n. (2017). bildungsroman for character education in higher education: an indonesian context. international journal of education, 9(2), 126-132 doi: dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v9i2.5474 introduction character education has recently has regained its importance in the world of education. it is, according to lickona, (1991: p. 6) is ―as old as education itself,‖ where ―down through history, in countries all over the world, education has had two great goals: to help young people become smart, and to help them become good.‖ indeed, the importance of character education has been perceived throughout the times in various parts of the world, possibly with different labels and with fluctuating emphasis, where at times it can be highlighted and promoted in an exclusive curriculum, and other times, it is embedded or implicitly included in the existing curricula (lickona, 1991; russel, 2012; watz, 2011). in the united states, character education gained its momentum in the early 1990s and was echoed by the great britain later in the same decade (davison in bohlin, 2005). meanwhile, in indonesian context, character education has again come to be the concern of the nation in line with the increasingly perceived moral degradation and the fading sense of nationalism among indonesian youths (gunarti, 2013; kanzunnudin, 2012). this issue of moral degradation that underpins the importance of character education is shared by other countries, such as the us and uk, where in bohlin‘s words, the two countries have ―a shared sense of urgency, a concern to respond swiftly to the growing ―litany of alarm‖‘ (p. 1). the urgency of moral issues among the younger generations has prompted the two countries and indonesia as well to seek solutions in character education. in indonesia, character education was imposed by the government in the form of ministry‘s regulation in 2009, followed by the ministry of culture and education‘s formulation of a curriculum for character education and the list of character traits to be developed. character education was then officiated with the declaration of national culture and character education as a national movement in january 2010 and further asserted by the then president susilo bambang yudhoyono in the commemoration of national education day on may 2, 2010. from that time onwards, character education has been formulated in the 2013 curriculum that is alternatively called the curriculum of character education, emphasizing three main aspects, namely character, knowledge, and skill. character education has since been integrated into all subjects at all school levels. since its inclusion in all subjects—in other words, character education no longer exclusively belongs to religious or moral education—the incorporation of character education into various subjects has been explored and researched, with literature being in no exception. unfortunately, despite the increasingly perceived importance of literature for character education, most research on the integration of literature and character education has exclusively focused on primary and secondary school students (brynildssen, 2002; ikhwan, 2013; nurgiyantoro, 2010; klein-ezell et al., 2014; kusmarwantini, 2012; olaniyan-shobowale, 2016; tyra, 2012), leaving a gap in research on character education for higher education students. indeed, character education in higher education is not as well-established as is that in primary and secondary schools. findings from silay‘s research (2013), for example, reveal that university academics mailto:nitanoviantiwahyu@upi.edu http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v9i2.5474 novianti, bildungsroman for character education in higher education: an indonesian context 127 in general agree that character education does not take place in universities. her findings are reciprocal to those of kuh and umbach (2004), who reported that ―some argue that the values and ethical systems of individual students are pretty well set before they come to college‖ (38), thereby creating a misconception that college or higher education is not responsible for teaching character education to students. attesting to the perceived resistance of colleges towards the implementation of character education, schwartz (2000, p. a68) put forward several misconceptions concerning character education for college students, namely: ―1) a person‘s character is formed by the time he or she gets to college; 2) colleges, and especially faculty members, aren‘t in the business of fostering character; and 3) the term ‗character‘ is a code word for religious or conservative ideology.‖ these three misconceptions have to some extent justified colleges‘ resistance to implement character education. nevertheless, the importance of character education in higher education has been increasingly perceived, especially in indonesia (farida, 2012). advocates of character education in indonesia, such as dharmawan (2014, p. 9), argued that based on the holistic approach, character education has to be implemented continually, so that the moral values already cultivated in children will not be halted in their development at a certain school level or age. furthermore, as kuh & umbach (2004) explained, ‗[t]he college experience can at the least accentuate a student‘s values development trajectory . . ., college can further support and channel maturational processes under way to crystallize and integrate the attitudinal and values dimension of a student‘s identity‘ (p. 38). hence, the continuation of character education in higher education is necessary in order to preserve and strengthen the character that has been shaped in the previous schools. as many researchers and educational experts have come to stress the importance of character education in college, research on literature for character education in college has consequently gradually increased in number. however, compared to research on the same topic in primary and secondary schools, it can be said that research on the same topic in college is still far from satisfactory. moreover, there seem to be very few, not to say nonexistent, explorations and analyses of what genres, and more specifically which literary works, best suit the purposes of teaching character education in college. this is highly contrary to the well-established position of children‘s and young adult literature in the teaching of character education in primary and secondary schools, where in fact, various works from these genres have been explored and analyzed for their potential values that are in accordance with the values encouraged by the government to be instilled in primary and secondary school students, which in indonesian case will be those formulated by the department of national education. departing from these gaps, the present study proposes the use of bildungsroman genre to teach character education at the level of college, especially in indonesian context. the considerations for selecting the genre will be provided, by looking at the literature of bildungsroman and taking into account the process of appropriate book selection for character education in higher education. it is argued that the use of bildungsroman will ultimately serve the role of higher education in character education as stated by some scholars above, namely to continue and strengthen the character students have developed in their early schools and at home. before further examining and exploring bildungsroman for teaching character education, a review of previous research focusing specifically on teaching character education through literature in college will be presented. teaching character education through literature in college although not as abundant as research on teaching character education through literature in primary and secondary schools, literature has recorded some researchers who devoted their work on the teaching of character education through literature in higher education. tighe (1998) particularly focused on ―the connection between the study of values and the development of critical thinking skills‖ (p. 57). her research used lois lowry‘s the giver and michael dorris‘ a yellow raft on blue water to find whether the teaching of values or character education through the activities of reading, writing, and discussing the works can both instill good values and improve high school and undergraduate students‘ critical thinking. as a result, her research found that even though there would be no guarantee that the students under research would incorporate the values found in the novels into their life, the literary activities ―provide them with the critical thinking skills to analyze their own personal decisions and to evaluate the possible consequences of such actions‖ (59). it can be inferred that instilling values in students is not a process whose result can be obtained immediately, as it is largely believed that character education is and should be a life-long process, not limited to time and place. in addition, the findings imply that critical thinking is important in the process of instilling values through reading, writing, and discussing literary works, without which, the process of character education will not take place. meanwhile in indonesia, inderawati (2012) has attempted to develop literary appreciation instrument that can be adopted to build student character ―based on [the idea of] the literature for all and literature across the curriculum‖ (p. 941). drawing upon the theories of reader response, conditioning, psycholiterature, and character building as the framework, her research: [p]roduces a valid, effective, and reliable instrument for appreciating literary works to develop the first semester students‘ character at sriwijaya university by reading and appreciating certain kinds of literary works on the personality development course. the literary appreciation‘s instrument is able to increase the effectiveness of students‘ appreciation result by achieving very good category with the emerging of two or more such indicator. (p. 943) in short, her study proved that with an appropriate instrument, literature can be used not only to teach character education to language students, but also to non-language students at novianti, bildungsroman for character education in higher education: an indonesian context 128 college level, while at the same time increasing students‘ literary appreciation in general. while inderawati promoted the idea of literature for all, ripai (2012) has specifically developed thinkpair-share technique for the teaching and learning of writing drama script imbued with the values of character education to students of indonesian language and literature education. his findings proved that the technique was applicable and able to fulfill the requirements of minimum criteria of completion for a subject or course. however, his research did not further examine whether the technique was effective in building the character of the research subjects, namely college students assigned to write drama scripts imbued with values of character education. furthermore, he did not elaborate what values of character education can be found in the drama scripts produced by the students. as the literature demonstrates, research focusing on the exploration of the kinds of literary works suitable for teaching character education in college has not been popular. in the case of tighe, for instance, she did not explain the process of selecting the two novels used in her research. while it is true that almost all genres of literature can be used to teach character education to college students, depending on the techniques employed in teaching them; still, careful selection taking into account the specific nature of character education and college students themselves has to be done. this is in line with parker and ackerman‘s (2007) argument that ―[b]ook selection is a critical element for successful character education‖ (p.1). it is the task of the lecturers or teachers to select books that best suit the objectives of teaching character education by considering the content of the book as well as the characteristics of their students. the discussion will not turn to the literature review of bildungsroman. bildungsroman defined defining a literary term is always an intricate business. indeed, there has been a heated debate as to what constitutes a bildungsroman. as boes explained, ‗the heuristic value of the bildungsroman label has been disputed, defended, taken for granted, and otherwise muddled. the term is sometimes – especially within english departments –used so broadly that seemingly any novel . . . might be subsumed by it‘ (2006, p. 230) (see also iversen, 2009). especially in the flourishing age of young adult literature, this genre is often claimed to have been merged and or included in literary works about youths entering adulthood and the problems they experience throughout the process, such as attested to by au, ‗these ‗coming of age‘ qualities have become popularized in other book genres that target towards youth and adolescent readers‘ (2011, p.3). for the purpose of this study, it is argued that bildungsroman is a distinguished genre of literature. some of its characteristics may have been merged in other genres, ultimately works categorized under the label of young adult literature. however, bildungsroman has existed long before young adult literature established its position. as the name suggests, bildungsroman was first established in german literature, even though one will argue that the genre existed elsewhere in the world even before it was given a fixed term in germany. the dispute over the history of bildungsroman, which is called a ―war‖ of history between ―the german purists‘ and ‗the international pluralists‖ by iversen (2009, p. 11) should also be dismissed for the intention of the present study. rather than debating over the naming of a certain movement or phenomenon, it is far more important to focus on the phenomenon itself and its significance. in this light, boes‘ recount of the history will come in handy. regarding the coinage of this term, he explains, ―the term ‗bildungsroman‘ was introduced to the critical vocabulary by the german philosopher and sociologist wilhelm dilthey (1833 –1941)‖ (boes, 2006, p. 231). he further explained that the genre has since then been defined as ―a novel of formation‖ (2006, p. 232) or self-education, in which the character goes through the process of self-formation and or self-education. the very first novel deemed to represent this genre is goethe‘s wilhelm meister apprenticeship. as the title indicates, the novel is about the apprenticeship of the main character, wilhelm meister. the oxford companion to english literature describes the novel this way: wilhelm provides the model of the innocent, inexperienced, well meaning, but often foolish and erring, young man who sets out in life with either no aim in mind or the wrong one. by a series of false starts and mistakes and with help from well-disposed friends he makes in the course of his experiences, he finally reaches maturity and finds proper profession. (p. 102) as the introduction to the novel indicates, bildungsroman is concerned with the development and formation of a character from innocence to experience, from childhood to adulthood. jerome buckley evinced that the term ―bildung‖ invariably connotes a ―portrait,‖ ―picture,‖ ―shaping,‖ and ―formation‖ (1974, p. 14). in addition, the term ―bildung‖ has also been loosely defined as education. thus, although there are variations and debates for the definition of bildungsroman, this genre is undoubtedly one that is concerned with a character‘s education and development from childhood to adulthood. the ultimate characteristic of this genre will be the existence of character‘s development, both physically and (most importantly) psychologically. the notion above is purported by a number of definitions provided by scholars and critics of bildungsroman. to start with, buckley (1974) stated, ―the bildungsroman in its pure form has been defined as a ‗novel of all around development or self-culture‘ with a more or less conscious attempt on the part of the hero to integrate his powers, to cultivate himself by his experience‖ (p. 13). the key words here are development, self-culture, and experience. a more recent definition is offered by john au. he defined bildungroman as a genre concerned with ―the coming of age and rites of passage of an adolescent and/or young adult and is recognized for how it educates its readers about personal growth and selfconsciousness‖ (au, 2011, p. 2). his definition stands out in that it highlights the nature of the genre as a form of education not only for the protagonist of the work, but also for the reader. in other words, his definition can be said to originate from the initial purpose of this genre that was born in the novianti, bildungsroman for character education in higher education: an indonesian context 129 enlightenment era, namely to educate the youth readers. as summerfield and downward explained, ―the designation bildungsroman was first used by the critic karl morgenstern . . . [who] clearly stated that the genre was to portray the hero‘s bildung (formation) in all its steps and final goal as well as to foster the bildung of the readers‖ (2010, p. 1). in sum, the genre is about a youth as a protagonist venturing in a journey to educate and develop himself, as well as to broaden his horizon with new experiences and new values he encounters within the society where he lives, in order for him to later find his own position in the society as an adult. the definitions offered above, on the other hand, show the apparent flaw of the genre, namely its exclusive focus on male protagonist. fortunately, in its course of development, the genre has come to include female protagonists and even minority groups, such as the case in the contemporary american literature braendlin (as cited in chang et al., 2011), and that ethnic women writers have created a new bildungsroman as a medium by which they can assert their own identity, instead of shaping the identity imposed by the patriarchal system. the emergence of female protagonists from the minority groups has enriched the repertoire of bildungsroman, and in the case of character education, heightened its possibility to be used to teach character education. hence, in the list of works critics in general agree to subsume under this genre, such as, charles dickens's great expectations, charlotte bronte‘s jane eyre, james joyce's portrait of the artist as a young man, j.d. salinger's the catcher in the rye, s.e. hinton's the outsiders, and harper lee‘s to kill a mockingbird, one can find that bildungsroman novels with female protagonists have been included. the list is certainly getting more expanded to include works, such as the porcupine year by louise erdrich, the native american writer, and other works with female protagonists by writers of minority groups. meanwhile, from the repertoire of indonesian literature, works such as hamka‘s di bawah naungan ka’bah, hirata‘s laskar pelangi and its trilogy can be loosely categorized into the genre of bildungsroman. from the explanations given above, there seems to be one connecting thread of inference, namely bildungsroman is a genre concerned with education—not only the education of the protagonist of a certain work, but also the education of the reader. with the undeniable role of bildungsroman in the realm of education, employing this genre in the teaching of character education should be sufficiently justified. to gain a better understanding and more conviction on the proposition, the reasons for teaching character education to college students through bildungsroman in a college class will be discussed in the following sections. why bildungsroman to teach character education to college students? book selection for whatever purpose is never a simple task, more so in the case of character education. in this light, sweeney (2008) stated, ―as any avid reader knows, good literature explores the profound themes of humanity and gives us insight into human nature: growth and initiation, relationships and love, alienation and death. literature is a delightful opportunity to unite academics and character education‖ (p.7). any proponent of teaching character education will certainly agree with the statement. however, what constitutes ‗good literature‘ remains under heated debate, to the extent that such a debate has become pointless. hence, in this particular context, rather than selecting books based on the subjective formulations of what constitutes ‗good books‘ or literary works in this case, it is better to select books for character education based on their suitability to college students‘ ages (thus, their psychological conditions) and the aims of character education itself, especially in indonesian context, as formulated by the ministry of national education. bildungsroman suits the key characteristics of books appropriate for character education in college drawing upon the theory proposed by o‘sullivan (2004), the present research will argue that bildungsroman suits the four characteristics of books that are highly appropriate for character education. although o‘sullivan postulates the characteristics in the context of children‘s literature, they can also be applied to books for college students as the readers. they are as follows: • well-written books containing moral dilemmas • books with enough depth to allow moving beyond literal comprehension • books with admirable but believable characters about the same age as students • books across a wide range of cultures and with both boys and girls as lead characters. (p. 641) the four characteristics stress on the importance of content, in which it should be a neat combination of education and entertainment. the selected books should be light, yet at the same time invite readers to think critically of the problems or dilemmas presented, so as to gain in-depth understanding. the characters of the books should also be realistic and in the same range of age as the readers in order for identification to take place; even better, the books should allow the readers to relate to the characters and their story. in addition, the books should provide a range of variety of cultures for the students/readers to explore. to start with, bildungsroman is indeed a work with moral dilemmas as one of its main themes. the recurrent theme of the protagonists growing up and maturing through their encounter with moral dilemmas in order to finally find their own stance in the society is one of the remarkable characteristics of the genre. in her discussion of the issue of moral in english bildungsroman, brown (2013) has found that moral dilemma is one of the central themes of the genre, where, ―‘moral‘ is defined as dynamic and context-specific, residing not in a general, normative truth, but in the particulars of the lived experience‖ (p. 675). it is clear then that the moral dilemmas faced by the protagonist of bildungsroman are rooted from the fact that moral is not black-and-white, fixed and universal. moral is something that is subject to the protagonist‘ view of life, the society‘s view wherein s/he lives, and the particular issue the protagonist is posed with. in the same vein, teaching character education by means of presenting readers with stories laden novianti, bildungsroman for character education in higher education: an indonesian context 130 with moral dilemmas is termed ―moral judgment approach‖ (prestwich, 2004, p. 142). this approach is indirect in its nature. although the increasing moral problems among children and young adults in general have been made a strong basis to teach character education in a more direct approach, the moral judgment approach is still preferred. interestingly, the nature of bildungsroman is that it indeed ‗educates‘ readers through the moral dilemmas undergone by the protagonist in a non-explicit way, nor it is preachy. it is arguable then that bildungsroman is a novel of education, but it does not ‗preach‘ readers. bohlin (2005) has cautioned that ―the most effective books are the least didactic‖ (p. 27). on a similar note, au (2010) noted that stories are not written merely for pleasure, but also for education. his statement implies that while bildungsroman aims to educate, it is basically a work from which readers will gain pleasure. thus, it can be said that entertainment and education blend well in bildungsroman. the second point that has to be considered in selecting books for character education is the book‘s depth that allows for comprehension. in the context of character education, o‘sullivan‘s point can be translated as the books having the quality of evoking readers‘ critical thinking and reading of the issues the protagonists encounter. readers should be able to see the depth of issues, not just the surface. in this light, au (2010) stated: in order for the novels to educate its readers, the genre must inform them through several literary aspects: psychological, social and cultural, philosophical and aesthetical, and historical. the focus is not aimed towards the surrounding circumstances and problems, but towards the protagonist‘s personal growth and development. (p. 4) au basically believes that readers should understand the protagonist‘s self-formation from several dimensions, or what he terms ‗literary aspects‘, namely ‗psychological, social and cultural, philosophical and aesthetical, and historical.‘ in other words, the protagonist‘s development does not take place in a single and closed entity; it involves various aspects of life. understanding this issue demands readers‘ in-depth understanding through critical thinking to see the underlying aspect and various dimensions affecting one‘s development. the third point is the books should have ‗admirable but believable characters about the same age as the students.‘ this point means that books for character education should have characters that are at the same age as the target audiences, namely the students. in the case of character education in college, college students are usually those at the age of 17-25. especially in indonesian case, in which not many adult learners return to college, college students are mostly at the aforementioned range of ages. indeed, as the definition of bildungsroman denotes, the protagonist in this genre is a youth venturing into the adult world. when the students as readers have the same as age as the protagonists of the work being read, they will easily identify with and relate to the characters and their story. the last requirement proposed by o‘sullivan for book selection of character education is that the books should offer a variety of cultures, allowing students to learn about the protagonists‘ experiences in the context of a particular culture. as explained in the subchapter discussing the definition of bildungsroman, the genre has been enriched by works of both male and female authors and authors from the marginalized groups. this rich repertoire of bildungsroman provides a great possibility for this genre to be used to teach character education, while getting students acquainted with and aware of the diverse cultures in the world. furthermore, readers will be able to learn how different protagonists from different cultural backgrounds cope with their problems, and how their different backgrounds affect their ways of problem solving and decision making. here, teachers or lecturers also play an important role in selecting books to be used for the particular purpose. alternatively, it is highly recommended to negotiate with students on the titles of books to be used. college students naturally have particular interests in books, and teachers should be able to attend to their interest while at the same time catering to the requirements of character education. the discussion has so far been concerned with the suitability of bildungsroman to be used in teaching character education in a more general context. now, it will turn to the indonesian context. the stories can help students identify and reflect on the 18 values shaping character education stipulated by the department of national education in indonesian context, the center for curriculum of department of national education (2010, p. 8) has stipulated 18 values that should shape character education, namely religiosity, honesty, tolerance, discipline, hard-work, creativity, independence, democratic, curiosity, nationalism, patriotism, appreciation for achievements, friendliness, love for peace, love for reading, environmental awareness, social awareness, and responsibility. these values can be regarded as universal values, for character education, regardless of the geographical boundaries, is in general aimed at cultivating the above character traits. this statement is attested to by o‘sullivan (2004, p. 640), who stated that ―society is in general agreement about what constitutes a good character trait. in fact, numerous published lists of virtues are remarkably similar in content.‖ the universality of good character traits or virtues can be equated to the nature of bildungsroman that aims to educate readers across different cultural and national backgrounds. to buttress this argument, two examples of how certain bildungsroman works contain the above traits will be given. the classical work of jane eyre (1847), agreed by many as one of the best english bildungsroman provides a rich source of character traits, such as religiosity, honesty, discipline, hard work, creativity, independence, and curiosity. jane, who is an orphan with no loving family members to support and take care of her, has to survive the hardship that she faces early in her life. her education at lowood restores her faith in god and changes her previously one-sided view of the world; in other words, her religiosity is restored while being able to maintain a balance life in the spiritual and worldly realms. it is her honesty, discipline, hard work, and creativity that makes her survive the harsh life in lowood and her curiosity as well as novianti, bildungsroman for character education in higher education: an indonesian context 131 independence that prompts her to venture into the professional world as a governess. in indonesian literature, laskar pelangi (2005) will be able to teach readers almost all of the 18 character traits mentioned above. to be more specific, the youth characters in laskar pelangi, who come from a remote place in indonesia and lower economic background, present readers with the hardship of remote area‘s students in gaining better education and better life in general. interestingly, notwithstanding all the limitations, especially in access to science and technology, the protagonists can be successful in their studies, to the extent that their achievements exceed the students from the upper class school. their creativity also leads them to win a competition that has always been won by the most favorite and expensive school in their area. the protagonists clearly show many of the character traits listed by the department of national education from which readers can learn and cultivate their own. conclusion it is important to bear in mind that character education is a life-long process; it takes place regardless of time and place. in academic context, character education is also necessary to be administered in college or higher education by means of integration with other subjects, including and ultimately with literature. the present study has offered bildungsroman as one of the genres most suitable for teaching character education to college students due to its characteristics as a novel of education with young adult protagonists intended at young adult readers. character education in college is a continuation and strengthening/consolidation of the character education in the previous schools and the character students have developed elsewhere previously. in the same vein, bildungsroman deals with maturation process that usually starts from childhood/adolescent to which college students can relate to by reflecting on their own past experiences (decision making, problem solving), past attitudes, past behaviors, and how all of them have shaped who they are today, and whether changes are necessary for their present character. in the case of character education, it is not solely the genre or book that has to be considered carefully, special attention should be given to how the book is used to teach character education and how students ―interact‖ with the book. in other words, it is the processes of the students reading the book that is more important. hence, as this study focuses on the exploration of the potentials of bildungsroman serving the teaching of character education, future researchers are encouraged to analyze and explore effective ways of teaching character education to college students through this genre. references au, j. 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(2007). character education in literature-based instruction. faculty publications and presentations, 33. retrieved from http://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/educ_fac_pubs /33. prestwich, d. l. (2004). character education in america‘s schools. the school community journal, 139-150. ripai, a. (2012). pengembangan teknik berpikir berpasangan berbagi pembelajaran menulis teks drama yang bermuatan nilai-nilai pendidikan karakter pada mahasiswa pendidikan bahasa dan sastra indonesia (developing think-pair-share technique in the instruction of play script writing containing character education values to students of indonesian language and literature education). seloka jurnal pendidikan bahasa dan sastra indonesia 1(2), 151-156. retrieved from http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/seloka ryan, k & bohlin k. e. (1999). building character in schools: practical ways to bring moral instruction to life. san francisco: jossey-bass. schwartz, a. j. (2000). it‘s not too late to teach college students about values. the chronicle of higher education, 46(40), 68. silay, n. (2013). character education for university students‘. european journal of educational studies 5(1), 111-120. sojourner, r. j. (2012). the rebirth and retooling of character education in america. mcgraw-hill research foundation. retrieved from www.mcgraw-hillresearchfoundation.org summerfield, g. & lisa d. (eds). (2010). introduction. in new perspectives on the european bildungsroman (pp. 1-10). new york: continuum international publishing group. susanti, r. (2013). penerapan pendidikan karakter di kalangan mahasiswa (implementing character education to college students). jurnal al-ta’lim, 1(6), 480-487. https://doi.org/10.15548/jt.v20i3.46 sweeney, l. (2008). the case for character education. shawnee mission, ks: marsh media. tighe, m. a. (1998). character education + young adult literature = critical thinking skills. the allan review 26(1), 57-63. https://doi.org/10.21061/alan.v26i1.a.12. tyra, c. (2012). bringing books to life: teaching character education through children‘s literature. rising tide, 5, 1-10. retrieved from http://web1.smcm.edu/educationstudies/edstudi es%20mat%20rising%20tide/volume-5.html. watz, m. (2011). an historical analysis of character education. journal of inquiry and action in education 4(2), 34-53. http://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/educ_fac_pubs/33 http://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/educ_fac_pubs/33 http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/seloka http://www.mcgraw-/ https://doi.org/10.21061/alan.v26i1.a http://web1.smcm.edu/educationstudies/edstudies%20mat%20rising%20tide/volu http://web1.smcm.edu/educationstudies/edstudies%20mat%20rising%20tide/volu 114 how standards ‘travel and change between contexts: national standards for tvet teacher education in the uk. norman lucas head of the lifelong and comparative education department, institute of education university of london, n.lucas@ioe.ac.uk abstract this paper focuses on the development and growth of standard-led reform and regulation of tvet teachers and trainers in the uk by developing a theoretical discussion and critique of standards that has a wider relevance to that in other countries. it shows how standards-led regulation in the uk has moved from a permissive to a more rigid approach where new standards have been defined. the study also illustrates how standards are mediated and interpreted differently within the diverse contexts and communities of practice by developing a critique of the standards-led model, an attempt to codify both situated and non-situated knowledge. here, standards are treated as decontextualised, vertical knowledge simply applicable across diverse contexts, subjects/vocational practices, learning in the workplace and training tvet teachers. within the diverse practices of tvet teachers and teacher educators, different types of understandings exist and different types of knowledge and pedagogy are learnt, used and transformed. not only do attempts to deal with the complex zone of professional practice by standards fail to address the inherent ambiguity of standards, but also lead to a bureaucratic, competency-based framework which marginalizes professional knowledge and understanding. keywords: tvet teachers and trainers, standard-led reform and regulation, professional knowledge introduction this paper focuses on the development and growth of standard-led reform and regulation of tvet teachers and trainers the uk. it will develop a theoretical discussion and critique of standards that has a wider relevance to standards-led reform in other national and international contexts particularly towards the notion of trans-national standards for tvet teachers. the paper will start by showing how standards-led regulation in the uk has moved from a relatively permissive, to a more rigid regulatory approach where new standards have been defined alongside further specifications, learning outcomes, units of assessment, teaching role specifications and a ‘standards based qualifications framework’. based upon a theoretical framework developed in earlier research and a critique of the standardsled model of initial teacher education, i will illustrate how standards are mediated and interpreted differently within the diverse contexts and communities of practice that make up the uk further, adult and tvet system. the paper will also develop a critique of the standards-led model that is described as an attempt to codify both situated and non-situated knowledge. in this way standards are treated as though they are decontextualised, vertical knowledge that can then be simply applied across diverse contexts, subjects/vocational practices, learning in the workplace and training tvet teachers. the paper will argue that within the diverse practices of tvet teachers and teacher educators different types of understandings exist and where different types of knowledge and pedagogy are learnt, used and transformed. it will show that attempts to deal with the complex zone of professional practice by standards and ever more detailed specification not only fails to address the inherent ambiguity of standards, but leads to a bureaucratic, competency-based framework which marginalises professional knowledge and understanding. understanding standards as a mediating tool-the production and consumption of standards our theoretical discussion and critique of standards and other related specifications has a wider application to standards led reform. however, we use as a case study attempts by policy makers in the uk to regulate the complex professional practice of teachers in further education with national standards1. in this section we conceptualise standards as mediating tools that move from the context mailto:n.lucas@ioe.ac.uk 115 of policymakers to practitioners and in so doing are interpreted differently as they travel. the model we use to conceptualise and understand standards led us to pose three main questions that we have related to our study of how standards have evolved for fe teachers in england. 1. where do they come from (their origins and nature)? 2. where do they go (how do standards function in the pedagogical domain of fe colleges)? 3. what happens to them on route (how are they transformed through processes of mediation and re-contextualization)? the diagram below incorporates these main questions. it applies wertsch’s concepts of the production and consumption of cultural tools to the transfer of standards between the policy and pedagogical contexts (wertsch, 1998). figure 1: the mediation of national standards between the policy and pedagogical contexts (nasta 2007). where do standards come from (their origins and nature)? this question involves an analysis of when and why national standards were produced, for whom, what they contained and how those who designed them envisaged that they would lead to change. it reflects a vygotskian focus upon identifying the historical and cultural genesis of a particular cultural tool. standards like other cultural artefacts have a recent and an older history. the recent history refers to the 1997-2007 reforms that produced the fento and lluk standards 2 . the older history reflects the rationale for introducing them and the form that they took was related to much older debates about the separation between the vocational and the academic and between occupational and professional models of practice. the question also involves analysing how the evolution of standards reflects the exercise of power in policy making at a national level. the roles played by different national players in the complex superstructure of governmental and quasi-governmental organisations, and representatives of employers, trade unions, universities and national awarding bodies. in unravelling the origins of a cultural tool aspects of its fundamental nature are revealed or as wertsch states, the forces that go into the production of a cultural tool play a major role in determining how it will be used (wertsch, 1998, p.142). 116 where do standards go (how do standards function in the pedagogical domain of the fe college)? in the diagram we use the word consumption, this means how standards are used in the workplace. a very active meaning of the term consumption is implied in wertsch’s writing. cultural tools are not always facilitators of mediated action, and agents do not invariably accept them and use them; rather an agent’s stance toward a mediational means is characterised by resistance or even outright rejection (wertsch, 1998, p144). as the quote above makes explicit, there is a political dimension in the consumption of cultural tools; standards are not neutral, they embody assumptions about the nature of professionalism and teacher qualifications. the interpretation of standards and regulations within fe colleges reflects relationships of power and authority – for example the pervasive influence of managerialism on teaching and learning. above all else an analysis of the consumption of standards is about unravelling how standards function within the specific domain of the fe workplace. focussing on mediation in this context raises issues about how standards are interpreted and used by the subjects for whom they were ostensibly designed – college managers, teacher-educators and trainees. the focus is upon how the context in which teacher trainees work and learn has affected the ways in which they perceive and use standards. in dealing with these critical empirical questions, we draw upon wider concepts from the postvygotskian literature. one is engestrom’s development of star and griesmer’s (1989) concept of cultural tools as boundary-crossing artefact that cross different activity systems (engeström, 1995). the other is fuller and unwin’s (2004) concept of the individual’s learning territory as part of their model of expansive and restrictive learning environments. what happens to standards on route (how are they transformed through processes of mediation and re-contextualization)? the voyage of standards between the worlds of policy makers and those of practitioners is complex and political. standards are interpreted and re-interpreted by groups with different vested interests on their journey through the tangled labyrinth of governmental and quasi-governmental agencies, national awarding bodies and he and fe providers. each transition entails processes of mediation, where agents, for example regulators, qualification designers and teacher educators use standards as a cultural tool to work upon a particular problem. for example, recent research (nasta 2007) showed that while teacher educators recognised how open to interpretation and ambiguous standards where when applied to initial teacher education, trainees adopted a very instrumental approach and saw standards as assessment criteria to be covered. these transitions can also be seen as re-contextualization of knowledge. a fundamental issue is whether the lluk standards lend themselves to re-contextualization. if there are intrinsic problems to do with the nature of the codified knowledge that they represent, the whole basis of standards-led reform of itt could be seen as fundamentally ill-conceived. in general vygotskian perspectives seem better suited to showing how cultural tools are transformed through processes of mediation than dealing with issues that are intrinsic to the tool itself or the structure of the knowledge it represents (young, 2004). below we will draw upon bernstein’s critical distinction between horizontal and vertical discourses to highlight the importance of knowledge and supplement vygotsky’s concept of tool-mediated action when we evaluate the elements of knowledge included in the curricula and itt. understanding standards through vygotsky’s concept of tool-mediated action our interest is about how standards mediate learning within the pedagogical context of fe in the uk. using vygotsky’s concept of tool-mediated action offers a creative and different way of conceptualising standards. drawing upon vygotsky we treat the fento and lluk standards as cultural tools, mediating artefacts with their own origins and trajectories which are shaped and reshaped by subjects working in different policy and pedagogical contexts. 117 vygotsky was researching in the 1920s and 1930s in post-revolutionary russia. he was attempting to develop a marxist theory of psychology that gave primacy to the influence of social and cultural factors in learning and human development. his focus was on how cultural tools, as carriers of the collective intelligence and expertise of previous generations mediate our actions. edwards describes this succinctly when she writes (edwards, 2005), a psychology which explained how the collective was incorporated into the individual through processes of mediation and which could be used to transform ways of thinking and acting to the benefit of the greater good (p.52). vygotsky created a dynamic unit of analysis represented as a triadic relationship between the subject, the object of learning and the cultural tool or mediating artefact. figure 2: vygotsky’s model of tool-mediated action in this model, the subject can be seen as an individual or group. the object is what is being worked on or shaped through the use of the cultural tool, rather than the goal or objective. these three elements are seen as irreducible (cole, 1996, wertsch, 1985, wertsch, 1998). the incorporation of tools into the activity creates a new structural relationship in which the cultural (mediated) and natural (unmediated) routes operate synergistically (cole, 1996, p.119) wersch uses the image of pole vaulting (wertsch, 1998, p.27) to illustrate the fusion between, the subject, the pole vaulter, the mediating artefact, the pole that embodies the invention and technical innovations of those who developed it (i.e. the cultural legacy) and the object getting over the pole successfully, winning the competition or whatever is defined as the legitimate object of pole vaulting. wertsch refers to this integration between subject, object and mediational means as the ‘irreducible tension between agent (the subject) and mediational means (wertsch, 1998, p.141)’. mediating tools can take many forms. they can be semiotic, signs and symbols. they can be physical artefacts such as the pole in the example above and they can involve other individuals or groups. much of vygotsky’s writing was on the subject of semiotic mediation – the role of language and other signs, for example artefacts from the arts, in mediating thought and learning(vygotsky, 1971, vygotsky, 1996, vygotsky & luria, 1994). he was particularly interested in how the child made use of language as a cultural tool in developing conceptual thought – less situated ways of interpreting the world. understanding the historical – the socio-genesis of cultural tools was a critical element. he advocated the genetic method tracing the origins of a cultural tool in order to unravel its nature. this is perhaps unsurprising, given that vygotsky was writing in a marxist context, where history was often seen as a series of stages leading to a predetermined end. he was determined to demonstrate the importance of history and culture as opposed to biology in shaping human thinking and development. the historical timescales that he identified were long periods – the phylogenetic or species history and the cultural-historical or changes across decades and centuries. unravelling the historical dimension of cultural tools remains an important aspect of vygotsky’s legacy. rogoff illustrates the historicity represented in cultural tools when she states (rogoff, 2003): artefacts such as books, orthographies, computer languages and hammers are essentially social, historical objects, transforming with the ideas of both their designers and their later users. they form and are formed by the practices of their use and by related practices, in historical and anticipated communities (p.276). 118 the social element – the anchoring of learning in social activities was also an important dimension and is reflected in current theories of situated learning. this too may have reflected the fundamental premise in marxism that men play a crucial role in changing the social conditions of their existence as they develop collective consciousness and take collective action. in vygotsky’s theory cognitive development consists of individuals changing their ways of understanding, perceiving, noticing, thinking, remembering, classifying, reflecting, problem setting and solving, planning and so on – in shared endeavours with other people building on the cultural practices and traditions of communities (rogoff, 2003, p.237). perhaps, vygotsky’s best known concept, the zone of proximal development (zpd), arises directly from the fundamental idea of tool mediated action. zpd refers to the distance between understanding and knowledge gained from mediated as opposed to unmediated action. lave and wenger indicate its different meanings (lave & wenger, 1991). zpd can refer to the extra learning and capability exhibited by a learner when assisted by or collaborating with more experienced people, for example a teacher or mentor. the idea of the teacher initially ‘scaffolding’ a complex task before the learner tackles it arises from this meaning of zpd (daniels, 2001). in a wider sense, zpd explores the transformation that occurs when learning is mediated through the use of cultural tools. for example, the word-processing programme, dramatically expands the capacity for writing, storing, retrieving and re-working materials. although it is a physical tool, it allows one to completely reconceptualize the way to produce a chapter. cultural tools carry within them knowledge that allow individuals to move beyond the confines of everyday experience or as (cole & wertsch, 2003) state. artefacts so not serve simply to facilitate mental processes that would otherwise exist. instead they fundamentally shape and transform them (p.2). conceiving standards as artifacts is to recognize that like all cultural tools they are transformed by the contexts that they enter and that they in turn transform the activities of the agents (universities, awarding bodies, teacher-educators etc.) who make use of them. this is a very different perspective from those of policy makers from the government and regulatory bodies, who often view standards as fixed occupational outcomes, externally supplied curricula commodities that can be translated into fe teacher education. examining how standards are mediated as they move between the worlds of policy and pedagogy is to recognize that like all cultural tools, they are transformed through mediation. they are not simply transferred from the policy to the pedagogical context. case study. the application of standards to the policy context in the uk in contrast to the past the further education sector has been seen by policy makers as of central importance as a means of social inclusion, as an engine for raising participation in education and training and of central importance to the economy (lucas 2004). as the further and adult education and training sector has moved up the political agenda it has moved from a neglected sector to one of ever-greater regulation. we focus upon effort to raise the standards of teaching by the introduction of national standards regulated by an employer lead body known as the further education national training organisation (fento) accompanying the introduction of compulsory teacher education in 2001 and the employer led lifelong learning uk (lluk) standards which replaced them in 2007. the introduction of the first national occupational standards in 1999 were initially welcomed by many because of the unacceptable variation in the structure and quality of initial teacher education (ite) and professional development arrangements. however, as lucas (2004a) shows, the national standards were arrived at through functional mapping, initially designed to be the basis of an national vocational qualification 3 (nvq). although after consultation the nvq model was abandoned, fento was left with occupational standards designed for a different purpose. while few disagreed with standards as such, they remained occupational standards for an nvq and were of very little 3 the nvq is competency based vocational qualification. 119 actual use in improving the quality of ite programmes and remained a ‘hybrid’ that falls between providing a ‘professional’ or ‘industrial’ framework for fe teachers (lucas 2004). as a result awarding bodies, colleges and many universities mechanically ‘mapped’ the standards against their existing diverse ite provision focusing on ‘covering’ the standards however superficially, particularly because the standards could be interpreted at many levels. such an approach did not take into account the very diverse contexts in which fe teachers practice. in 2003 the first ofsted 4 national survey report was published (ofsted 2003). the report pointed out many weaknesses in the current system arises from defects in teacher education. for the purposes of this paper we wish to mention just two. the first focused on the lack of subject-specific knowledge and pedagogy given to trainees and the second reported that the fento standards did not clearly define the standards required of new teachers. as a consequence, the report said that the fento standards were of limited value in securing common understanding of the pass/fail borderline on courses of initial training or judging the attainment of newly qualified teachers. furthermore, the survey found that most trainees said the language of the standards was remote and seldom used the standards to increase their knowledge and skill because there were far to many standards and subheadings. the ofsted report was followed by a uk government paper called ‘equipping out teachers for the future’ (dfes 2004). this proposed a new set of standards to be introduced in 2007 and many changes to the ite qualifications, emphasising the importance of helping trainees with teaching their subject. given the diversity of subjects in fe 5 it is widely accepted that in the main subject support can only be met by having subject mentors in the workplace/colleges which in turn could be guided by the same set of national standards which ite courses were also endorsed against. the new standards were to be developed by lifelong learning uk (lluk) which replaced fento as a new employer led body in 2002 reflecting the uk government wider policy of replacing national training organisations with larger sector skills councils. the ever growing emphasis on employer led standards, further specifications and subject specific mentoring in the workplace means that teacher education is becoming a more work-based, standards-led model (lucas 2007). the new standards (lluk 2007) are divided into 6 domains; 1. professional values and practice 2. learning and teaching 3. specialist learning and teaching 4. planning for learning 5. assessment for learning 6. access and progression each domain is broken down to three categories, scope (s) knowledge (k) and practice (p). for the purposes of this paper we wish to examine just two examples from the 192 statements 1. as1 teachers in the lifelong learning sector value all learners, their progress and development, their learning goals and aspirations and the experience they bring to their learning 2. a k 1.1 teachers in the lll sector know and understand what motivates learners to learn and the importance of learners’ experience and aspirations 3. ap1.1 teachers in the lifelong learning sector encourage the development and progression of all learners through recognising, valuing and responding to individual motivation and aspirations. 4. ds1 teachers in the lifelong learning sector are committed to planning to promote equality, support diversity and meet the aims and needs of learners 5. dk 1.1 teachers in the lifelong learning know and understand how to plan appropriate, effective coherent and inclusive learning programs and promote equality and engage with diversity 4 ofsted is an inspection body that is funded by and reports to the uk government. 5 in a review of a single fe college crawley (2005) suggests that one can identify up to 200 specialisms. 120 6. dp 1.1 teachers in the lifelong learning sector plan coherent and inclusive learning programs that meet learners needs and curricula requirements, promote equality and engage with diversity effectively. as can be seen from these examples there is a somewhat cyclical relationship between the categories scope, understanding and practice. for example the terms, ‘planning to promote equality’ or ‘engage with diversity effectively’ or ‘plan to meet learner’s needs or value all learners’ are hard to disagree with yet finding a common approach across the diverse teaching and learning contexts of the lifelong learning sector is another question. furthermore, standards such as, ‘teachers should understand principles, frameworks and theories which underpin good practice in learning and teaching’ (ak 4.1) are quite meaningless because good practice is a contested concept across subjects and contexts. recent research also found ite courses using different theories (which are often contested), and struggling with standards to define how much underpinning knowledge, and what breath and depth was required to cover the standards (lucas et al 2004, 2007). but the new lluk 192 standards are not left at the level of statements. they are then broken down into performance criteria (outcomes) very much like national vocational qualification (nvqs) which can then be used to assess trainees. as we will show, the problem with this sort of approach is that when national standards (or any other prescriptive code) leaves government and national agencies, they are interpreted in many different ways, not always leading to a commonality of practice and often having quite unintended consequences (nasta 2007). there simply are no standards for measuring standards. in order to escape this complexity, regulatory bodies revert to the deceptive relative certainty of technicist models, to the comfort zone of further detailed statement specifications and competency statements. as discussed above, regulatory bodies fail to see standards as artefacts that necessarily change as they move from one context to another. in order to prevent this change more specifications are added which in turn become new travelling artifacts. while it may not be the explicit intention of policy makers, we fear that as initial teacher education (ite) becomes subject/practice focused through greater specification of standards and more work-based, the taught or knowledge part of the course, become marginalised and ite takes on the form of an nvq with the national standards becoming the basis of outcomes and competence based criteria. the new lluk standards clearly differ from the fento ones in two major respects. firstly the old fento standards were for the further education sector, the new ones apply to the learning and skills sector and the lifelong learning sector (lll) which is a far more diverse sector then fe including teachers, tutors and trainers in many varied contexts with an emphasis on competence in teaching a particular area of vocational or academic specialism. secondly, as mentioned above, the fento standards were mapped to existing provision allowing for a wide interpretation of their meaning, their depth and breath according to the learning and teaching context. the new lluk standards (lluk 2007) could in theory be used the same way but they are accompanied by a qualifications framework that translates the lluk standards into units of assessment, learning outcomes, role specifications, detailed subject specifications of a minimum core, credit framework and assessment criteria. in other words, the new lluk standards and the accompanying qualifications framework and guidance are far more prescriptive in an attempt by the regulatory body to ensure a commonality of approach and understanding across a very varied teaching and learning context. such an approach as described above assumes that standards or other prescriptive statements move unproblematically between policy and pedagogy and are not seen as mediating artefacts that we describe above. this standards-led approach to raise the quality of teacher education shows no understanding of how inevitably national standards are mediated, transformed and retranslated as the move between very different and changing pedagogical contexts that we describe below. the pedagogical context in uk further education colleges. another problem with the emerging standards-led model of teacher education is that it fails to recognise or capture the diverse and changing nature of teaching in fe college-particularly among full-time staff. an example of this is the promotion of the acquisition of skills and knowledge by students, trainees and employees with a very wide diversity of learning needs and attitudes (huddleston and unwin, 2002). this requires fe teachers to broaden their forms of expertise to include resource-based learning, flexible modular curriculum design, offering advice and guidance to 121 individual students, and to maximise the potential of information and learning technology as a resource for learning. in addition, teachers need to keep up to date in their own academic/vocational specialisms as well as understanding how their specialism relates to the curriculum as a whole, because there is a growing overlap between teaching and learning that cuts across subject boundaries as many so called ‘subject specialists’ in fe colleges now teach on more than one type of programme (simmons 1999). fisher and webb (2006) problematise the notion of ‘subject knowledge’ showing how a typical (vocational) business studies diploma incorporates many aspects (or versions of) of academic disciplines such as english, maths, economics and other ‘bundles of knowledge’. this is particularly true in the case of general vocational programmes, or the many initiatives that reflect government inclusion policies that are sometimes seen as a shift from ‘teaching to welfare’ (gleeson et al 2005). this ‘new fe’ emphasises learning to work in multi-specialist teams requiring collaborative skills and a sufficient knowledge of the college as an organisation to enable them to link their work with other local providers such schools and training partners. furthermore, it has been suggested that many fe teachers do not conceive of themselves as subject specialists (fisher and webb 2006) and for those that do the curriculum requires them to work in ways that are contrary to the concept of a narrow subject specialist. our argument is that fe teachers, particularly full time teachers, have increasingly been required to have more then simply a narrow knowledge about delivering a specialism in a classroom. this is not to suggest that knowledge of the subject matter being taught is not important. there is clearly a relationship between how something is taught and the knowledge the person teaching it possesses (watkins and mortimer 1999). we are suggesting moving beyond models of teaching predominately associated with school-teachers on the one hand and the training traditions on the other. such an extended notion of practice means trainees would not just be obliged to learn the practices of their subject, but would also look beyond the boundaries of their subject to be able to change and question practices and apply new ideas concerning teaching and learning to different contexts. such an approach questions individualistic theories of learning which are embodied in national standards, promoting the idea of different types of pedagogy with learning understood as a social process that takes place as trainees ‘immerse’ themselves with different groups of practitioners and different learning contexts in the workplace. this requires moving beyond the present rather narrow, workplace based, subject-focused and standards-led model of ite. the limitations of standards as a guide to teachers learning in the workplace. as described above, the emerging model of teacher education in fe colleges in the uk is one where standards are applied in the workplace across diverse teaching and learning subjects and contexts. workplace learning is a highly complex process because it cannot be separated from the situation in which it takes place. much that is learnt is unpredictable and is inseparable from individual agency and interpretation. we will draw upon some of the major tenants of the work-based learning literature and focus upon the importance of seeing the learning of further and adult education teachers in the workplace as a complex relationship with many ‘experts’ in multiple learning contexts. in the discussion we wish to challenge the assumption behind the lluk standards that there exists a single, uncontested or harmonious community of professional practice in fe from which trainees can learn (gleeson et al 2005) and in which a common understanding of the standards will emerge. often departments represent different subjects and vocational specialisation with very uneven practice and quality of provision. we will also focus upon the importance of seeing work-based learning as more than a serendipitous process of ‘learning by doing’, or immersing individual teachers in practice, but rather as an intentional structuring of participatory activity which can be seen as a ‘pedagogy of the workplace’(billet 2002). such intentional structuring would require teaching institutions and universities to focus upon and plan the learning opportunities in the workplace as well as prepare trainees to understand how to relate formal and informal learning (guile and griffiths 2001). our approach to workplace learning is underpinned by three theoretical and conceptual understandings. 1. learning is ‘situated process’ that is mediated, among other things, by the individual the starting point of our approach to trainee teacher’s learning in the workplace is the assumption that learning to teach is a ‘situated process’ that takes place in and between contexts. in taking this approach we highlight the importance of seeing learning as a social process and that the basis for 122 analysing learning should be the ‘community of practice’ (lave and wenger 1991). this provides a means of understanding learning as ‘participation‘ not to the ‘individualised’, ‘learning as acquisition’ (sfard 1988) that underlines the standards led model described above. we also draw upon activity theory, with its origins in vygotsky’s (1978) psychology, to provide a way of broadening the notion of context by suggesting that contexts can themselves be seen ‘in context’. while much of the workbased learning literature emphasises the social participatory aspects of learning in ‘communities of practice’, such participatory aspects of learning need to be balanced by reiterating the importance of the disposition or perceptions of individual learners in the process (hodkinson and hodkinson 2004). what is learnt from the same or similar experience may be different depending upon the receptiveness or confidence of the individual who is learning (eraut 2004). the meaning and significance of the experience depends not only on the experience itself but also on how and by whom it is interpreted (brah and hoy 1989, griffiths and guile 1999). such a relationship between individual and situated learning reflects recent research that found that trainee teachers of adults had a very wide variety of prior work, teaching experience, and qualifications. they wanted quite different things from their initial teacher education programmes and had a variety of learning needs and dispositions that they took with them into their ite courses and workplace (lucas et al 2004, 2007). this in turn meant that individual trainees required different participatory experiences, types and amounts of feedback and support during their time in the workplace. while the trainee’s learning could not be separated from the ‘communities of practice’ in their colleges, a trainee’s learning in a particular college context could be seen as both separate and connected to learning within and between different contexts. we wish to argue that mapping learning against a set of national standards cannot begin to cater for the varied and multiple learning needs of trainee teachers and providing a subject mentor within a college department represents just the ‘tip of the iceberg’. the emphasis should be to give multiple opportunities for participation and learning with many mentors or ‘experts’ that can build upon subject specific acts of teaching. rather then seeing learning as a subject mentor ensuring trainees meet a set of standards we would rather characterise the learning of trainee teachers in the workplace as a complex relationship with many people, many mentor and many (often conflicting) communities, which differs according to the individual needs of trainees. 2. the importance of understanding colleges as ‘activity systems’: expansive and restrictive learning for trainees alongside individual agency discussed above, another important factor to consider is the different departments in colleges that provide different opportunities depending upon their subject culture and way of working. engestrom (2000) uses activity theory to conceptualise the relationship between learning within and between contexts by conceptualising workplaces as made up of a series of interconnected and conflicting ‘activity systems’. we wish to suggest that in any fe college, groups that make up departments are best understood as conflicting and interconnected communities. this is what billet (2004) calls ‘workplace cliques’ where some workers are restricted to what others are engaged in and where individuals have particular ways of working. in other words, colleges have a whole number of activity systems often based upon subject cultures (becher 1989) that reflect distinct ideas about how ‘their’ subject is best taught and what should or should not be in the curriculum. this is illustrated in one study of teachers that found quite different collaborative and non-collaborative cultures in different subject departments (hodkinson and hodkinson 2004). in another study of adult basic skills teachers, researchers found different attitudes towards whole class teaching and group work depending upon subject area (lucas et al 2006). in further education colleges, what constitutes ‘best practice’ in teaching and learning is contested and often differs between departments and subject, and vocational cultures. seeing colleges as a series of competing and conflicting activity systems has important implications for a trainee teacher learning in the workplace. fuller and unwin (2004) using engestrom’s notion of restrictive and expansive learning, distinguish between ‘expansive’ and ‘restrictive’ learning environments. some of the dimensions contained in an expansive learning environment are, opportunities to engage in multiple communities of practice at and beyond the workplace, access to a multidimensional approach to the acquisition of expertise and the opportunity to pursue knowledge based courses and qualifications. 123 while learning environments do not simply fall into expansive and restrictive, as there are graduations between and conflicts within single environments, it is worthwhile using fuller and unwin’s distinctions. using the distinction expansive and restrictive learning environment is helpful in identifying factors in a college learning environment that could be considered expansive or restrictive for trainee teachers. for example, it could be argued that a learning environment that offers trainees diverse forms of participation provides expansive learning. or a restrictive one in which trainees participate within a narrow subject-focused range. a learning environment that encourages team-work and collaboration compared to one where teachers are isolated in classrooms or where innovation is discouraged or encouraged and so on. using these distinctions does connect with concerns raised by a recent study of adult basic skills trainee teachers where many trainees’ practical teaching experience was restricted to within one level and one context of teaching (lucas 2007a). this would be hard to describe as an expansive learning environment. 3. the importance of intentionality: towards a ‘pedagogy for the workplace’ for trainee teachers according to billet (2002), what is now needed is a ‘pedagogy for the workplace’ to help understand and assist workplace learning. in our terms this requires an understanding of how trainee fe teachers can best learn through experience. in the present uk standards-driven context this has been addressed rather simply and can be characterised as; the novice teacher has a subject mentor, the mentor gives some tips and the novice is ‘left to get on with it’ and this is assessed by outcomes. rather we would like to see the relationship between mentors and trainee teachers seen in similar way to davydov (1995), when he sees the child and teacher and social surroundings dynamically linked together. this means seeing the mentor as teacher and trainee as child (nasta 2007). the teacher/mentor extends the trainee/child’s ‘zone of proximal development’ (vygotsky 1978), meaning the extra learning brought about by the intervention of a more experienced teacher. this could take the form of a mentor introducing theories and research or facilitating other related or wider experience to help the trainees to extend their understanding beyond the boundaries of individual reflection. thus mentor support and practical experience is intentional and can be seen as a pedagogy for the workplace. the key elements in the ‘pedagogy for the workplace’ comprise of intentional structuring of participative activities, the realisation that there are different kinds of workplace participation, and contexts and individuals will need varying levels of support (billet 2002). such structuring could take the form of immersing trainees in different learning contexts and different levels or looking at practice outside of their particular subject specialism. this is not to say that teachers will not learn other unplanned things but that the pedagogy in the workplace will be made explicit and consciously planned according to the individual learning needs of the trainees. achieving such a thing in any workplace is not only difficult but requires intentionality on the part of the university, teaching institution and individual trainee. for trainee teachers in fe such a development would require colleges seeing themselves as learning environments not just to their traditional learners but to teachers as well. in turn it would also require ite courses to help trainee teachers to learn how to negotiate their learning during work experience and be supported in relating formal and informal learning (guile and griffiths 2001). success depends upon the planned supported opportunities provided to trainees to participate or what lave and wenger (1991) calls a ‘learning curriculum’, where activities are sequenced from low to higher levels of criticality. given the diverse experience, backgrounds and qualifications of fe teachers (lucas et al 2004, 2007) individuals will engage differently with what is offered, and it thus follows that a teacher undergoing ‘initial training’, particularly given that most trainees are undergoing in-service ite programmes, can be seen as a beginner, competent or expert depending upon the situation and the task (fuller and unwin 2002). such complexity is not encompassed by standards. 4. standards and workplace learning: issues of knowledge and pedagogy standards that attempt to describe the occupational skills and knowledge required in the discharge of complex professional role often take the form of complex and elaborate specifications. the 1999 fento standards and the 2006 lluk standards that replace them are no exceptions. both sets of standards make an implicit assumption that it is possible to capture in written statements – codified knowledge the richness and complexities involved in the process of teaching. 124 whilst codification may have some significant advantages in making knowledge transparent and accessible, there is far from common agreement about whether it is possible to capture in this form, the fundamental knowledge and practices of professionals operating in complex teaching and learning environments. as (stevenson, 2001) comments: the unpacking of workplace activity into statements of assessable behaviour, knowledge and/or attitudes is usually quite difficult. even when participants have managed to express their views and needs, and have made attempts to convert these into the style required for standards, syllabuses and qualification statements, one is left with questions of whether the statements ‘add up’ to the desired abilities to undertake the roles that are involved (stephenson, 2001, p649). some authorities have argued that many aspects of a teacher’s practice are based upon tacit rather than explicit knowledge (eraut, 1994, polanyi, 1983), and that it is only in the application of knowledge in action that teachers and other professionals shape their craft. in other words teachers ‘know’ and ‘do’ much more than they can say or can be written in sets of written standards. their knowledge and performance is in many respects unique and dependant upon the contexts in which they work. evans (evans, 2002) draws a distinction between situated and non-situated knowledge and locates the former in an inner social framework based upon the particular community of practitioners and an outer social framework represented in legislation, government policies and so on. within the outer social framework, it is usual for knowledge to be codified in publicly-accessible forms. within the inner social framework, knowledge is shared by the participants in more tacit forms. one of the advantages of situated learning approaches is that it is possible to study how knowledge from the outer social framework is used by agents located in the inner social context. standards could be seen as part of this outer framework, designed as a bridge between the outer and inner frameworks. the key question therefore is how far meaning travels across the bridge that standards are meant to provide. in other words to evaluate the effects that the explicit codified knowledge, represented by standards have had and are having as they are translated into the contexts in which fe teachers work and are trained? in his reflections on the relationships between words as tools for mediating meaning, vygotsky observed that 'a simplified syntax, condensation and a greatly reduced number of words characterize the tendency to predication that appear in external speech when the partners know what is going on. he goes on to observe that 'dialogue always presuppose in the partners sufficient knowledge to permit abbreviated speech (vygotsky, 1996, p.238)' and 'a word acquires its sense from the context in which it appears: in different contexts it changes its sense .... the dictionary definition of a word is no more than a stone in the edifice of sense, no more than a potentiality that finds diversified realization in speech' (vygotsky, 1996, p.245). if the above is accurate then another of vygotsky’s observations might better apply to national standards. ‘in written speech, lacking situational and expressive supports, communication must be achieved only through words and their combinations: this requires the speech activity to take complicated forms' (vygotsky, 1996, p.242). such words and phrases described in the standards above such as ‘engage with diversity effectivley’, or ‘theories that underpin good practice in learning and teaching’ are good examples of words that assume a common understanding but lack situational meaning. we wish to suggest that understand learning is a complex process of participation and interaction in communities of practice that are not captured in the lluk standards. importantly it is also the case that learning in the workplace for teachers in particular, raises issues of knowledge and pedagogy, which may involve the acquisition of, or transformation of knowledge, which is not addressed if learning in the workplace is seen simply as a process of participation (young 2000) which is assessed against national standards. the initial teacher education of teachers is a complex combination of knowledge. it requires specialist knowledge but at the same time much depends on experience and learning on the job. there is no doubt that through participation in the workplace, trainees will learn. what trainees learn is another question, much is unpredictable; it could be bad practice, or it may reinforce some tacit personal knowledge that remains unchallenged. on the other hand, the learning may not be ‘new’ in the sense that it can reinforce or refine existing knowledge, or transform one type of knowledge to another. teaching practice in the workplace is a crucial learning zone for trainee teachers, where not 125 only should new learning take place but also where knowledge is changed and where trainees can begin to ‘make sense’ of knowledge. clearly the relationship between different types of knowledge is far more complex then expressed in the lluk standards above. one example of this was discussed in a research project which evaluated ite courses for adult basic skills teachers which in the uk context included subject specifications and generic national standards (lucas et al 2004). the focus was upon the introduction of subject knowledge and pedagogical to trainee teachers who brought with them a variety of prior experiential knowledge, subject qualifications and practical teaching experience. as a starting point, the researchers suggested that the key issue is how different types of knowledge are, what bernstein (2000) calls ‘recontextualised’. bernstein’s work was not specifically focused upon teacher education, but rather focused upon the distinction between academic or theoretical knowledge and knowledge acquired from experience. the wide diversity of trainees’ past teaching and life experience found in ite courses (lucas et al 2004, 2006), serves as an example of the wide and varied experiential knowledge that trainees bring with them. bernstein refers to this as ‘horizontal knowledge’. in contrast, subject knowledge is on the whole, specialist disciplinary knowledge, which, unlike horizontal knowledge, is not based on experience. it is de-contextualised ‘academic’ knowledge. bernstein refers to this as ‘vertical knowledge’. the problem, according to bernstein, is how to bring the two types of knowledge together this is referred to as the problem of ‘re-contextualisation’. re-contextualisation for the planners of ite programmes means relating subject knowledge (vertical) and knowledge associated with practical pedagogy in the workplace (horizontal) together in ways that enhance practice. it could be argued that this is a fundamental pedagogic problem that all teacher educators face. bernstein’s distinction between vertical and horizontal knowledge becomes more problematic when applied to vocational knowledge because as barnett (2006) suggests, vocational education is job related but also related to knowledge structures (much like vocational pedagogy). here the boundaries between vertical and horizontal discourses become blurred because situated knowledge impinges on vertical knowledge in a unique way. in creating vocational knowledge a process of ‘dual recontextualisation’ takes place where disciplinary knowledge is reorganised for vocational purposes moving from a context-free situation to context-specific work-related situation (barnett 2006). another way of looking at re-contextualisation is to examine shulman’s (1997) idea of ‘transformation’. shulman produced seven categories when analysing the knowledge base of schoolteachers. these categories are described and expanded upon elsewhere (lucas 2007) for the purposes of this paper we wish to focus upon two. firstly, content knowledge which is the same as subject knowledge or the subject matter to be taught. it includes theories, principles and concepts and the validity of the subject. according to shulman, content knowledge is the starting point where novice teachers begin, but this (vertical/formal learning) needs to be ‘transformed’ into a form that learners can understand. this is the second category which he calls pedagogical content knowledge. this is ‘expert’ knowledge and is an amalgam of the other categories of knowledge and experience. it is a complex construction of reality that fits the experience of context, knowledge of learners, knowledge of pedagogy and of subject, content and curriculum knowledge. it is knowledge that is ‘fit for purpose’. it could be argued that the movement from ‘novice’ to ‘expert’ teacher can be seen as the result of the ‘transformation’ of different categories of knowledge. sometimes this is described as ‘intuitive knowledge’ (polyani 1967) or the ‘artistry of teaching’ (schon 1978). like bernstein’s ‘recontextualisation’, the key lies in the ‘transformation’ from content knowledge into a pedagogy that is adaptive and meets the learners needs. this is the essential nature of pedagogical content knowledge that is a mixture of formal and informal, vertical and horizontal. these categories illuminate the complexity of what constitutes teacher knowledge. it is the complex nature of ‘transforming’ or ‘re-contextualising’ different types of interacting knowledge that remains at the hub of improving the practice of fe teachers. our argument is that when discussing the ‘transformation’ of different categories of knowledge, it is the ‘community of practice’ in which the trainee teacher works that represents a crucial zone for this type of learning. for many trainee teachers, particularly those with little teaching experience, it is the workplace that influences the extent to which pedagogical content knowledge is developed, or for that matter hindered. indeed, in 126 more recent work, shulman stresses the importance of developing a more comprehensive conception of teacher learning and development within communities and contexts (shulman and shulman 2004). the implication of this for the trainee teacher is that the ‘transformation’ or ‘recontextualisation’ of knowledge is no longer seen as an isolated individual mental process expressed in outcomes and standards. it takes place through trainees interacting with the world of ideas, participating with other subject teachers and moving beyond specific workplace bound contexts to be influenced or ‘mediated’ by other and wider contexts (young and lucas 1999). in other words, giving support to trainee teachers, particularly subject support in an institution, is an important starting point for trainees. however, there should also be opportunities for the trainee to step back from reflecting on their own experience in order to access other learning and teaching contexts and to connect to wider considerations often expressed in ideas and theory. such concerns are not new and are common to trainee teachers across different sectors. however, discussing the transformation of different types of knowledge through intentional workplace experience does help to conceptualise the problem of relating formal and informal learning through practice and experience, which has always been a challenge for initial teacher education. as discussed above, within the impoverished professional culture in further and adult education in the uk (lucas 2004) this challenge is particularly difficult because the standards-led model of ite emphasises competence with little if any consideration given to professional knowledge. conclusion this paper has illustrated how national standards are mediated and interpreted differently within the diverse contexts and communities of practice that make up the uk further and adult education and training system. we have argued that professional practice is a zone where different types of understandings exist and where different types of knowledge and pedagogy are learnt, used and transformed. we have shown that attempts to deal with the complex zone of professional practice by ever more detailed specification fails to address the inherent ambiguity of national standards and the complex nature of applying codified knowledge to pedagogy. rather such an approach leads to a bureaucratic, competency-based framework which marginalises professional knowledge and understanding. finally we suggest that while national standards may have uses as a general guide and a means of national accountability they need to be understood as artefacts that necessarily change and are transformed as they move between one context to another. without such an understanding they have no meaning to practitioners and merely divert energy away from the stated aims of the national standards to raise the quality of teaching and training in the uk. references barnett. m (2006) vocational knowledge and vocational p edagogy. in young, m and gamble, j. 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(ed.) understanding pedagogy and its impact on learning. london: sage, pp. 98-115. international journal of education vol. 10 no. 2, february 2018, pp. 114-120 ©2018 universitaspendidikan indonesia doi: http://dx.doi.org/ 114 some constraints on high school students’ mathematics performance: awi-zone & westgojam, ethiopia adem mohammed ahmed bahir dar university, ethiopia ademahmed192@gmail.com first draft received: 12 oct 2017 accepted: 29 dec 2017 final proof received: 5 feb 2018 abstract this study was designed to examine the possible constraints that can affect high school students’ mathematics performance in five selected high schools in awi-zone and westgojam. observations and reports from examining bodies revealed that a high percentage of secondary school students continue to perform poorly in mathematics examinations. from a total of forty high schools, five were selected using simple random sampling technique. the respective sections were selected using purposive sampling techniques. four sections were selected from each school. then, 250 samples of students were employed using comprehensive sampling technique. to obtain data, questionnaire, classroom observation, and semi-structured interviews were used. 50 students from each school were selected using simple random sampling technique for the questionnaire. similarly, three teachers from each of the sample school were selected using simple random sampling technique for the questionnaire, classroom observation and interview. the quantitative data were analyzed using one sample t-test whereas the qualitative one was analyzed using descriptive interpretations. the findings showed that students have laid claim on the problem of scoring passing mark as a result of poor mathematics performance. in addition, the result indicates that teachers possess the theories and their application of indirect instruction, organizing mathematics lessons, classroom management using assessment techniques. the findings also implied that there are opportunities to improve students’ performance in mathematics in the high schools to the expected level. furthermore, the findings showed that paraphrasing math word problems improves performance of some students. in relation to the findings of the study, recommendations are forwarded. keywords: constraints; ethiopia; high school students; mathematics performance to cite this paper (in apa style): ahmed, a.m. (2018). some constraints on high school students’ mathematics performance: awi-zone & westgojam, ethiopia. international journal of education, 10(2), 114-120. doi: http://dx.doi.org/ introduction obe (1996) conceptualized mathematics as the master and servant of most fields and thus a source of enlightenment and understanding of the universe. he further states that without mathematics, the understanding of national problems would be unrealistic. in connection, setidisho (2001) presented that no other subject forms a strong adhering force among diverse subdivisions of science as mathematics, and without mathematics, knowledge of science often remains unrealistic. education in science and mathematics, therefore, becomes fundamental principle and essential tool for scientific, technological and economic progress in any country. it gives a nation the capacity to utilize technology for the exploitation of the resources of universe. it is well described in the literature that affective variables have strong influence on mathematics learning and achievement. main factors linking the disadvantages to underachievement can be thematically classified into a deficiency of positive environment and support (banergee, 2016). the frequency with which a student is present in the class, the trait of being well-behaved, and achievement differences are all very strongly correlated (alsace, 2009; graber, 2010). according to mousoulides & philippou (2005), selfefficacy is a strong forecaster of academic performance in mathematics. meanwhile, schenkel (2009) maintained that attitudes towards mathematics represent a like or dislike of the subject and they embrace beliefs, abilities, and views on the usefulness of mathematics. on the same note, according to kebritchi, hirumi, & bai (2010), students' mathematics apprehensions and skills improved as a result of playing mathematics games. according to the teachers, the games were efficient teaching and learning instruments because ahmed some constraints on high school students’ mathematics performance 115 they: (a) had an experiential nature, (b) extended an alternative way of teaching and learning, (c) afforded the students reasons to learn mathematics to solve the game problems and progress in the games, (d) decreased students' mathematics phobia, and (e) increased time on activity. on the other hand, according to the students, the games were efficient because they (a) mixed learning and fun, (b) proposed mathematics in adventurous and explorative context, and (c) challenged students to learn mathematics. in addition, the majority of the students expressed that they preferred playing multi-player versus single-player games. thus, collaborative nature of the games made the games more attractive for students to play. on the other hand, mathematics anxiety is one factor that affects student achievement (zakaria, zain, ahmad, & erlina, 2012). therefore, teachers should strain to understand mathematics anxiety and implement teaching and learning strategies so that students can get the better of their anxiety. researchers of mathematics anxiety verifies that it has been reasonably responsible in taking over test anxiety’s theoretical foundation for mathematics anxiety (hembree, 1990). maloney, schaeffer, & beilock (2013) identified the negative effects of students’ anxiety on assessments of mathematics proficiency and have presented that, for many students’ mathematics tests are capturing far more than their mathematics knowledge. thus, student behavior and teacher guided classroom management positively correlates with student achievement (marsden, 2006). there are some grounds that teacher’s effects are more marked for mathematics achievement in high minority schools konstantopoulos & chung (2011). furthermore, it was found that teacher qualification and student environment did not influence students’ poor performance; however, teaching methods have shaped poor performance of students in general mathematics and further mathematics (gegbe & koroma, 2014). teachers should thus promote and motivate students to love mathematics related subjects. students must formulate positive attitude towards the teacher and the subject matter. it is a fact that teacher factor, students attitude and commitment, methods of teaching mathematics, use of instructional materials and the school environment are to a great extent valid factors that influence students’ poor performance in mathematics in the senior secondary school certificate examination in kogi state, nigeria (umameh, 2011). this is so because as noted by brown (2016), rational mathematical thought necessarily leans on beliefs set within a play of ideological framings within school partition in terms of their stakeholder interface with mathematics. meanwhile, according to peak (2011), improving the academic achievement of students who are often in the middle or average scope and who are mainly minorities and are economically disfavored has been shown to bring about significant improvement in mathematics achievement. oecd (2016) has distinguished typical individual, family, regional, and school level components linked with differential attainment in mathematics and science. mcleod (1992) identified three concepts used in his research that affect mathematics education: beliefs, attitudes, and emotions. he made distinctions among these and described emotions as the most intense and least stable, beliefs as the most stable and least intense, and attitudes as somewhere in between on both dimensions. beliefs were seen as the most 'cognitive' and emotions as the least so. gherasim, butnaru, and mairean (2013) observed gender factors in such variables as achievement goals, classroom environments and achievement in mathematics among young adolescents indicating that girls received higher grades in mathematics than boys. significant gender differences were found in attitudes towards mathematics. more boys than girls read mathematics “outside readers”, took part in mathematics extracurricular activities and consulted reference books when encountering difficulty in mathematics. another research found that amount of homework time, the act of teaching at school of the parents and residential size had nothing to do with attitude, learning habit and academic achievement (wong, 1992). on the other hand, daw (2012) proposed that the amount of homework and the socio-economic achievement gap in mathematics and science are directly proportional in secondary school. it can be expected that the student may not have enough support at home. the employments of focused instructional materials in school are thus further supported. degree of affection of mathematics also deteriorated as students ascended the grade levels, and many students found mathematics lessons tiresome. although most students liked mathematics, they considered it as a crucial subject and were unforced to give attempt to learn mathematics outside school, many of them did not have selfconfidence in learning mathematics. according to burstein (1992), students’ attitude towards mathematics and their performances and achievements are directly proportional to each other. therefore, those students having positive attitude do better than holding negative attitude concerning mathematics (gibbons, kimmel, & o’shea, 1997). so far, in another study by the use of episode writing, “ability to solve mathematics problems”, “having the correct answers”, “accurate and fast solution”, “ability to apply to daily life situations”, “knowing the underlying principle”, “understanding the procedure and strategies”, “ability to clarify concepts”, “knowing the relationships among concepts” and “ability to explain to others” were some of the indicators of understanding as comprehended by the students (wong, 1995). observations and reports from examining bodies in the context of the present research revealed that a high percentage of secondary school students continue to perform poorly in mathematics examinations. according to ministry of education of ethiopia (2015), only 27% of the secondary students’ school performance levels in 2014/15 met the standard, level 3. furthermore, according to the education bureau of international journal of education vol. 10 no. 2, february 2018, pp. 114-120 ©2018 universitaspendidikan indonesia doi: http://dx.doi.org/ 116 amhara region, where the research took place, by 2016 only approximately 33% of students who took grade 10 national exams in the region obtained the passing mark (50%). despite the laudable efforts at developing an acceptable general mathematics curriculum, students’ performance in the subject appears to be declining over the years. meanwhile, schools are established to accomplish specific goals and objectives and incidentally one of the most common criteria of evaluating the effectiveness of any school system is the extent to which the students perform in their examinations. thus, the objectives of this study are to examine the factors responsible for the students’ poor performance in mathematics in selected secondary schools. specifically, it will examine teachers’ and students’ attitude to teaching and learning of mathematics, the nature of school environment, teachers’ teaching methods, and teachers’ use of instructional materials and finally to recommend the concerned body for its remedy. according to agirdag, van houtte, & van avermaet (2012), more than one-level studies of data grounded on a study of 2,845 pupils (aged between 10 and 12 years) in 68 flemish primary schools disclosed that a higher proportion of migrant and working-class pupils in a school is related with lower levels of math achievement in both migrant and indigenous belgian students. the authors’ findings determined that the ethnic composition of the school no longer had a substantial effect on students’ achievement, while the socio-economic status composition did. a significant forecaster of achievement in mathematics is the teacher's communication of objectives and expectations. earlier research (gherasim et al., 2013) has demonstrated the grandness of knowing the goals of an activity for being productive. it is also sensible to believe that if we know what we are looking for, it should be more comfortable to find it. the outcomes of this study demonstrated a positive relationship between the factor—properly communicated objectives—and achievement in mathematics. method basically, quantitative data analysis technique was used to analyze the data and qualitative analysis technique was also used as a supplement to the quantitative data analysis. to see the extent to which the perceived constraints affect the mathematics performance of students, one sample t-test analysis was applied. the data drawn from observation and interview were thematically analyzed qualitatively using descriptions. the research designs used in this study were survey research design and analytical research design. moreover, the research approach used in the study was a quantitative approach supported or complemented by a qualitative research approach. participants the study was designed to explore factors of perceived constraints on students’ performance in mathematics. specifically, this study was designed to examine the effect of perceived constraints on five high school students in mathematics. moreover, this research further aimed to discover the relationship between beliefs and performance of mathematics. in addition, the effects of some factors that teachers identified as constraining students’ poor performance in mathematics were intensively investigated. to this end, the target population of the study was high school students and mathematics instructors in west gojam and awi zones, amhara regional state, ethiopia. from a total of nine functioning high schools, five high schools were selected using simple random sampling technique. the five high schools’ respective mathematics teachers were selected using purposive sampling techniques. then, all mathematics teachers of the five high schools selected using comprehensive sampling technique were samples of this study. fifty students from each of the five high schools were selected using simple random sampling technique for questionnaire and similarly three mathematics teachers from each of the sample high school were selected using simple random sampling technique for questionnaire, observation and interviewing. data gathering instruments in this study, questionnaire, classroom observation, and semi-structured interviews were used as the basic instruments for collecting data. questionnaire including both close ended and open ended questions that encompasses questions of different variables was used as the main data gathering tool. the close ended questions were 5point likert scale questions whereas open ended questions request teachers to describe a recently used problem, explain why they prefer particular types of questions, identify opportunities and constraints of teaching in mathematics classes in their respective high schools and describe the professional development needs of the staff at their school in relation to the implementation of good teaching-learning approaches. furthermore, the semi-structured interview and observation guides were designed in such a way that they provide relevant data that helped us to answer the basic research questions of this study. findings and discussion this part deals with the analysis of results obtained from the questionnaire distributed to students and teachers of the five high schools situated in gojam and awizone, amhara regional state, ethiopia. 250 students were involved in filling the questionnaire. the questionnaire of the students constitutes 20 items categorized under three themes. the questionnaire of the teachers constitutes 25 items categorized under one theme. one sample t-test was employed to examine students’ poor performance in mathematics and teachers’ mathematical knowledge, practice and level of support. the findings are presented, analyzed and interpreted as follows: ahmed some constraints on high school students’ mathematics performance 117 table 1: test anxiety of students: variables expected mean observed mean sd df sig inferior than other classmates 3 2.4 .665 249 .000* keep thinking of questions that i cannot answer in previous part 3 2.6 .802 249 .000* think about the consequence of failing in the exam 3 2.3 .459 249 .000* feel nervous and worry 3 3.5 .672 249 .000* cannot remember what i have learnt before 3 3.1 1.303 249 .226 * significant at alpha value of 0.05; n = 250 the results in table 1 portray that there was a significant mean difference between the expected (3) and the observed (2.4) regarding that in taking math exam, students had negative thought that they were inferior to other classmates which was in favor of the expected mean. this implies that students had bad experience of feeling inferiority concerning math exam. similarly, table 1 shows that there was a significant difference between the expected (3) and the observed (2.6) regarding that students kept thinking about questions that they could not answer. the same is true for thinking about the consequence of failing and feeling nervous and worry in the exam. however, one of the categories that were observed in this study was that whether they can remember what they have learned before the exam or not. as the responses obtained from the students disclosed, there was no significant difference between the expected mean (3) and the observed mean (3.1). this implies that the students’ remembrance only did not help them in answering questions in a mathematics examination. table 2: perception of students on the influence of teachers’ method of teaching and learning materials on students’ poor academic performance: variables expected mean observed mean sd df sig large class size 3 3.1 1.303 249 .082 teachers are not innovative in methodology 3 2.5 .501 249 .032 * instructional materials are not provided for the teachers 3 2.5 1.027 249 .065 inadequate lesson plan 3 3.4 1.202 249 .076 inadequate supervision 3 3.2 .750 249 .047 * * significant at alpha value of 0.05; n = 250 the results in table 2 show that there was a significant difference between means of teachers’ not being innovative in methodology, expected mean (3) and observed mean (2.5), and inadequate supervision, expected mean (3) and observed mean (3.2). however, there was no significant difference between the expected mean and observed mean of large class size, not providing instructional materials, and inadequate lesson plan. table 3: perception of students on their poor academic performance and teachers’ qualifications: variables expected mean observed mean sd df sig lack of quality teachers 3 2.5 1.027 249 .000 * most teachers do not have adequate knowledge of their subject 3 2.45 .776 249 .000 * extreme dependence on text books 3 3.6 .918 249 .000 * lack of professional development 3 3.1 .832 249 .059 inadequate teaching skills 3 3.4 1.116 249 .000 * teachers’ inadequate salary 3 3.0 .776 249 1.00 significant at alpha value of 0.05; n = 250 the results in table 3 shows that there was a significant difference between the mean of lack of quality teachers, expected mean (3) and observed mean (2.5); extreme dependence on text books, expected mean (3) and observed mean(3.6); and inadequate teaching skills expected mean (3) and observed mean(3.4). moreover, there was a significant difference between the expected mean (3) and observed mean (2.45) of having no adequate knowledge of their subject. however, lack of professional development and teachers’ inadequate international journal of education vol. 10 no. 2, february 2018, pp. 114-120 ©2018 universitaspendidikan indonesia doi: http://dx.doi.org/ 118 salary did not have significant difference between the expected mean and observed mean. as it is expected, the current finding was consistent with findings of previous studies. silverman and thompson (2008), for example, explained that instructors’ practices are affected by their own experiences as learners of mathematics as well as by their experiences in classroom teaching as instructors’ of mathematics. this study explored whether and how teachers’ mathematical knowledge for teaching contributes to enhancing students’ mathematics achievement. it was found that teachers’ mathematical knowledge was significantly related to student achievement gains in high school grades. the present study had clear limitations, including the small sample of students and teachers, missing data, and a lack of alignment between our measure of teachers’ mathematical knowledge and student achievement. these problems may bias the effect size coefficients of our content knowledge for teaching variable toward zero, however, we feel confident that the positive effects observed in our analyses were robust and, if anything, underestimated. however, we are less confident in any borderline or null results, such as those found for the teacher preparation measures. therefore, the researcher focused his concluding discussion primarily on the effects of the content knowledge variable on students’ achievement. it was found that teachers’ mathematical knowledge for teaching positively predicted student gains in mathematics achievement in high schools. moreover, the positive effect on student gains in the high schools suggests that teachers’ content knowledge plays a role even in the teaching of very elementary mathematics content. an important feature of these analyses was that the researcher measured mathematical knowledge for teaching, not simply teachers’ computational facility or course taking. consequently, it has been difficult to measure reliably or validly on a large scale. in this work, it has been attempted to build on these scholars’ theories about relationships of subject matter and pedagogy by designing a measure of teachers’ mathematical knowledge for teaching, and hence it can be reported that this more task-sensitive measure is positively related to student achievement. the results modify interpretations of earlier studies exploring the effect of teachers on student achievement (hanushek, 1997). in one hand, they support shulman’s (1986) important critical review of the process-product literature, namely, that studying teacher impact in light of subject-specific behavior is critical. moreover, the findings help visualize a new generation of processproduct studies designed to answer questions about how teachers’ mathematical behavior—in particular, their classroom explanations, representations, and interactions with students’ mathematical thinking—might affect student outcomes. the results of this study also inform findings from the educational production function literature by indicating that a direct measure of teachers’ content knowledge for teaching horns placeholder measures such as courses taken or experience and by suggesting that measures of teacher knowledge should be at least content specific or, even better, specific to the knowledge used in teaching children. the findings of this study both support and challenge recent policy initiatives. if successful, efforts to improve teachers’ mathematical knowledge through content-focused professional development and pre-service programs will improve student achievement, as intended. conclusions training should be given to mathematics teachers in different types of skills (intellectual, teaching, evaluation etc.) to foster the students’ performance. teachers should enrich the students through effective open-ended questions, communication process, organization of mathematics related co-curricular activities, creative discussions, genuine experimentation etc. in the same line, awareness should be given to parents in the way they could help students to foster their mathematical performance informally and at times nonformally. schools need to arrange some special programs for development of mathematics performance. teachers and school heads need to create conducive environment in schools for improving mathematics performance and its development. meanwhile, in order for schools to become more effective via producing more effective mathematics teachers, some quandaries were found. some teachers expressed that many of the students in the upper secondary level have a fallible background of basic mathematics skills. some teachers also indicated that students’ interest in learning mathematics was the primary problem. one teacher had even boldly and confidently declared that many students dislike intense mathematics. a few teachers remarked the grandness of continuous professional development on teaching mathematics. however, the findings of this study proposed that the teachers’ professional development experiences were not very powerful in arriving at positive changes on either the teachers’ practices or their beliefs. it is clear from the study that effectiveness of classroom instruction originates from the teacher. mathematics teachers have to be well–prepared, well– knowledgeable, and extremely supported for modifications in the curriculum and instructional strategies to occur. a special pedagogy noticed in the model teacher that surpassed from the others was the teacher’s calling into question abilities. the teacher was not only an explorer (the teacher rationalized what to do by explaining how and why the operation works), he was also a questioner (the teacher requires the students to be able to develop the procedure themselves). suffolk (2007) connoted that the explainer is teacher–centered, while the questioner is learner– centered. on the other hand, wong (2007) indicated that the teacher involves being the main figure in the mathematics classroom, and not the students. it is the teacher who plans learning activities, which are the fundamental to understanding. the teacher needs to guide the classroom and its learning activities (tsang et ahmed some constraints on high school students’ mathematics performance 119 al., 2014). therefore, one characteristic of efficient classrooms might be teacher–led, yet student–centered. this is in line with khalid’s argument (2006) that effective teaching demands teachers to determine: “what aspects of a task to highlight, assessment techniques that enhance performance into the learning of mathematics, how to organize and direct the work of students, what questions to ask students having varied levels of expertise, and how to support students without taking over the process of [mathematical] thinking for them” (p. 176). based on the findings of the study, the following recommendations were forwarded: the curriculum developers, implementers and educational evaluators and school heads should enforce teachers to apply appropriate teaching methods. teachers need to identify mathematically creative students and forming the teaching group for their improvement of mathematics performance. schools have to arrange special provisions and arrangements for counseling of mathematically creative talents. creativity should be made compulsory and integrated in all primary and secondary school mathematics curriculum, scheme of work, lesson note, lesson plan and in the classroom when teaching and learning take place. the ministry of education should review the teacher education programs for the development of some mechanism for improving 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(2012). mathematics anxiety and achievement among secondary school students. american journal of applied sciences, 9(11), 1828–1832. https://doi.org/10.3844/ajassp.2012.1828.1832 international journal of education, vol. 7 no. 2 may 2014 144 the exploration of pre-service efl teachers’ challenges in field practicum rainal wempi pasaka (rainal.wempi@gmail.com), emi emilia1, lulu laela amalia2 english education department faculty of language and arts education indonesia university of education abstract this study investigates the challenges that six pre-service efl teachers of a bachelor of education (sarjana pendidikan) program experienced in conducting field practicum. this study employs a qualitative research design, with a phenomenological approach. data was gathered through in-depth interviews. the interview data was then scrutinized and codified, respective to emergent themes through thematic analysis procedures (merriam, 1988 in emilia, 2007, p. 84). the findings showed that the pre-service teachers experienced challenges related to lesson preparation, classroom management, and communication breakdown within their field practicum. the study concludes with a recommendation and justification for teacher preparation programs to provide pre-service teachers with: robust theoretical frameworks in order to design instruction; practical experience in classroom management; profound knowledge of english language; and activities that develop strong confidence in teaching. in addition, teacher preparation programs are endorsed to formally inform mentor teachers regarding their roles and responsibilities in the practicum. keywords: pre-service teachers, teacher preparation programs, field practicum 1 first corresponding author 2 second corresponding author introduction field practicums have been recognized as an important feature in teacher preparation programs. the necessity of incorporating fi eld practicums in teacher preparation programs has been pinpointed in much literature. in literature concerning teacher education, it has been noted that fi eld practicums help preservice teachers to integrate theories, learned in teacher training institutes, into practice (hudson & hudson, 2012, p. 12; see also tuli & file, 2009, p. 111-12; haciomeroglu, 2013, p. 132). despite recognition of the necessity of the fi eld practicum, the research fi eld of l2 teacher education has not yet recognized cases within fi eld practicum as a distinguished topic. that is, little has been done to conduct a study that embraces fi eld practicum as the central lobe in l2 teacher education research, particularly in phenomena concerning challenges encountered by pre-service teachers in the practicum. furthermore, there is little literature addressing cases of esl/ efl pre-service teachers’ diffi culties in the practicum, especially ones seen through preservice teachers’ perspective. therefore, the current study aims to present the topic of challenges experienced by pre-service teachers in the fi eld practicum. rainal wempi pasaka, emi emilia, lulu laela amalia the exploration of pre-service efl teachers’ challenges in field practicum 145 literature review field practicums are undertaken to prepare student teachers to enter their professional setting (richards, 1990, p. 14; gebhard, 2009, p. 250).). it is included in the workload of teacher preparation programs, which include esl/efl teacher education programs, to gear up pre-service teachers with courses related to their respective profession. the courses, as indicated by shulman (1987, in randall & thornton, 2001), need to embed the following knowledge: (1) content knowledge referring to knowledge of english language; (2) general pedagogic knowledge, referring to knowledge of general issues encountered in teaching practice; (3) curriculum knowledge, addressing insights as to material development; (4) pedagogical-content knowledge, referring to knowledge of language acquisition and its correlation with teaching approaches, methods and techniques, (5) knowledge of learners and their characteristics, referring to insights of the signifi cance of students needs and characteristics in learning, (6) knowledge of education context, referring to knowledge of diverse teaching contexts which are under the infl uence of sociological and institutional factors, and (7) knowledge of education ends, purposes and values and the philosophical and historical issues, covering the understanding of the history of english language teaching methodology (shulman, 1987, in randall & thornton, 2001, p. 27-29; cf. ellis, 1990, p. 26). the theoretical frameworks of esl/ efl fi eld experience are partly credited to contributions of research conducted by stoynoff (1999 in gan, 2013). in this research he outlined the principles involved in conducting a tesol practicum. the principles as summarized by gan (2013) are as follows: (1) the practicum is a part of an academic program; (2) the practicum involves team work consisting of mentor teachers, supervising teacher educators, language program managers and student teachers; (3) the practicum offers two teaching components: modeling and coaching; (4) the practicum encompasses extensive observations done in organized procedures; and (5) the practicum experience is evaluated using a portfolio (stoynoff, 1999 in gan, 2013, p. 93). mentor teachers i.e. one of individuals involved in the practicum, as stated by randall & thornton (2001) have the following roles: (1) helping student teachers to develop classroom-based skills, (2) enlightening student teachers on curriculum issues, (3) helping student teachers to create teaching goals, (4) assessing student teachers’ teaching practice, (5) boosting student teachers’ confi dence, (6) motivating student teachers, (7) providing time to listen to student teachers’ problems, (8) helping student teachers to adapt to school environment, and (9) solving student teachers’ problems (randall & thornton, 2001, p. 13). it is worth noting that fi eld experience, as affi rmed by richards & crookes (1998) offers pre-service teachers a window of opportunity to (1) gain teaching experience in the classroom, (2) put theories in the practice, (3) observe teaching practice of mentor teachers, (4) expand views on teaching techniques, (5) develop self-awareness of personal teaching style, (6) sharpen lesson design skill, (7) develop material selection ability, (8) build awareness of present teaching techniques and methods (richards & crookes, 1988, p.11). furthermore, as a part of the preparation program, fi eld practicum or fi eld experience, support is devised for the professional development of student teachers. professional development, a widely discussed concept in pre-service teacher education, is the bridge to achieve a number of goals. the goals, as pennington (1990) puts forward, are as follows: (1) knowledge addressing theoretical foundation of language learning and classroom research, (2) knowledge of self and students, (3) attitudes of fl exibility and openness to change, (4) decision-making skills and communication skills, (5) analytical skills international journal of education, vol. 7 no. 2 may 2014 146 for judging different teaching situations, (6) awareness of alternative teaching approaches, (7) confi dence and skills to change teaching approach, and (8) practical experiences using different approaches (pennington, 1990, p. 150). it is indicated that the concept of professional development is interrelated with the concept of refl ective teaching in which the latter is a process to build professional development (ferraro, 2000, http://searcheric. org/digests/ed449120.html; crookes, 2003, p. 180; amep, 2006, p. 1). refl ective teaching in fi eld experience, as put forward by ferraro (2000), comprises of two aspects: (1) coaching or mentoring, referring to a means used by teacher educators to help student teachers to improve their teaching performances; and (2) peer involvement, referring to a means to build professional developing by discussing teaching practices with fellow student teachers (ferraro, 2000, http://searcheric.org/digests/ ed449120.html). a number of studies focused on fi eld practicums have shed light on the matter of preservice teacher challenges in the practicum. numrich undertook such a study, scrutinizing the experience of 26 novice esl teachers while their conducting teaching practicum. the study, which used students’ journals to gather the data, produced records that the student teachers found it hard to manage class time, give clear instructions, adopt to learners’ needs, teach grammar, evaluate learners, and give attentive focus to learners (numrich, 1996, p. 142-45). another study was carried out by çelik, investigating the concerns of 133 student teachers in fi eld experience. by employing close-ended questionnaires to collect the data, çelik (2008) noted that out of 40 possible concerns, student teachers marked that coping with the balance of attention between the practicum and individual commitments, dealing with learners’ disruptive behavior, and establishing a good rapport with their supervisor were among the most frequent concerns of pre-service teachers (çelik, 2008, p. 100-05). with a different data collection instrument gan (2013) used refl ective journals and in-depth interviews to gather data on the diffi culties encountered by 16 student teachers conducting fi eld experience. in this study of the fi eld practicum challenges related to the sustainability of teaching approaches, classroom management, and language barrier (gan, 2013, p. 98-102) were recorded. methodology the current study adopted an exploratory design. the design was preferred as it scrutinizes a phenomenon, which “has not been studied in detail before (dörnyei, 2007, p. 308; fraenkel, wallen & hyun, 2012, p. 459). furthermore, the current study preferred qualitative methodology due to the fact that the methodology can work with subjective data and (dörnyei, 2007, p. 38) and yield indepth insight of a phenomenon (creswell, 2012, p. 206; fraenkel, wallen & hyun, 2012, p. 436-37). the present study was guided by phenomenological approach, a scientifi c approach used to examine subjective experience (englander, 2009, p. 15; see also lester, 1999, p. 1; guest, macqueen, & namey, 2011, p. 13). in regard to this; semistructured in-depth interviews were solely as the data collection instrument. the interviews were conducted with six pre-service teachers of a teacher preparation program. the eligible pre-service teachers were ones who had conducted a fi eld practicum. the reason for choosing six participants was in relation with dörnyei’s suggestion that six participant may be enough as initial samples for an interview study (dörnyei, 2007, p. 127). after gathering data from the initial samples, it was found that the data gathered had reached saturation, meaning that the data was suffi cient to answer questions the study sought to answer. this further suggests that there was not need to add more participants (see dörnyei, 2007, p. 127). the interviews were in the form of a one-on-one interview, meaning that the rainal wempi pasaka, emi emilia, lulu laela amalia the exploration of pre-service efl teachers’ challenges in field practicum 147 interview was conducted with one participant at a time. participants were asked about their perception of the practicum, challenges experienced in the practicum, possible causes of the challenges, and strategies to overcome the challenges. all inquiries were made to allow the participant to describe and elaborate on their individual experience and perception of the experience. after the participant had granted approval to record the interview, each interview was then audio-taped. all but one interview was conducted in english. one interview was carried out using indonesian to fulfi ll the request of the participant in which the participant felt that she could not fully express her comments if the interview were to be conducted in english. all the interviews were then transcribed verbatim, while the interview using indonesian was later translated into english. during transcribing the interviews and later on analyzing and interpreting the data, pseudonym names were used to preserve participant’s anonymity (orb, eishenahuer, & wynaden, 200, p. 95). the participants were referred to as dwi, aila, edi, dian, ario, and satria. each participant was asked to clarify his or her comments if an entity of a remark was not clear. this procedure of member checking was done in order to improve the accuracy of the data (stenson, 2004, p. 68) after all interviews had been transcribed, the data was arranged by category (emilia, 2007, p. 84; creswell, 2012, p. 473). this step was followed by using a thematic analysis to discover themes in the transcriptions. the method was selected based on a justifi cation that it “reports experiences, meanings and reality of participants” (braun & clarke, 2006, p. 9). the themes emerged were then condensed (emilia, 2007, p. 84). data presentation and discussion challenges related to lesson planning of six pre-service teachers, four of them (dwi, aila, edi, and dian) alluded to the idea that designing a lesson is a daunting activity. they seemed to note that evaluating learning materials was overwhelming in which they indicated that it was hard to select materials that best fi tted students’ learning behavior and students’ needs. an instance was described by dwi: “most of the students couldn’t understand the text [that i assumed was appropriate for them]” this particular phenomenon seems to point to a fl aw in the preparation courses in the preparation program in preparing pre-service teachers with knowledge to suitably pick learning materials (katz & snow, 2009, p. 67). that is, little experience in selecting and evaluating materials was gained when taking the courses. the similar case is documented in numrich’s study in which material evaluation was among the diffi culties encountered by student teachers in fi eld experience (numrich, 1996, p. 142-43). a student teacher’s (dian) responses indicated that the diffi culty in preparing a lesson, was to do with her inability to adapt to diverse learners’ needs. more often than not, she found it hard to ask her students to write a single paragraph throughout the fi eld practicum. this case shows a fl aw of courses in the preparation program to address the issue of material adaptation (see katz & snow, 2009, p. 72). student teachers who experienced diffi culty in lesson planning noted that they turned to fellow pre-service teachers for advice on the problem. this supports the idea that good rapport among student teachers has a benefi cial effect when one (student teacher) faces a problem (crookes, 2003, p. 175). in addition, student teachers when faced with a problem concerning lesson design, consulted their mentor teachers. both instances show that the concept of refl ective teaching was adopted in solving the problem related to lesson planning. this may indicate that student teachers are on their way to build professional expertise (ferraro, 2000, http://searcheric.org/ digests/ed449120.html). international journal of education, vol. 7 no. 2 may 2014 148 challenges related to classroom management much effort was made by pre-service teachers to try to establish good classroom management. that is, there were times when student teachers needed to put a lot of energy in dealing with disruptive behavior – such behavior that could sideline the lesson. student teachers particularly noted that unnecessary noises were the main problem in running a lesson. such a case was recounted by dian who commented, “it was hard to deal with the noises the students made”. this seems to suggest that the participants might not have suffi cient experience in dealing with disruptive behavior. in other words, the teacher preparation program has failed in preparing student teachers with knowledge on classroom management (see shulman, 1987, in randall & thorton, 2001, p. 27-29). this case is similar to that described by gan (2013) in which he claimed that little has been done to provide practical experience to assist in dealing with students with disruptive behavior (gan, 2013, p. 104). with regard to the aforementioned case, four pre-service teachers (dwi, edi, dian, and ario) shared similar accounts about the learners’ misbehavior being intertwined with their motivation to learn. they commented that a number of students did not show enthusiasm in learning english. the case presented here may indicate that the pre-service teachers might have developed the knowledge of students, which is one of the goals of professional development (pennington, 1990, p. 150). furthermore, a student teacher (dwi) identifi ed learners’ poor opinion of english might have infl uenced the abovementioned view. dwi noted that some of the students believed that english was diffi cult to learn. this enhances the view that “language learning is one of the most face threatening school subjects because of the pressure of having to operate using a rather limited language code” (dörnyei, 2001, p. 40). in addition, two student teachers (dian and satria) commented that poor learner-learner relationship was among the causes of learners’ misbehavior. the torn attachment among students is illustrated in the form of some learners were unwilling to work with particular classmates. this fact is further related to the ability of pre-service teachers to create cohesiveness in the class. that is, it is possible that pre-service teachers are not aware of what makes a group cohesive to create cohesive groups (see dörnyei, 2001, p. 101-102; see also murray & christison, 2001; p. 191). in addition, all student teachers noted that they had to teach in a class whose learners’ level of english competencies varied. implied in their comments, they noted that this was, by some means, related to decision-making of the placement school. this is relevant to the brown’s view that the placement of students with multiple language profi ciency is “a byproduct of institutional placement procedures and budgetary limits” (brown, 2001, p. 19798). moreover, two pre-service teachers (dian and edi) commented that the problem in running a lesson was associated with their anxiety to impose rules. of particular interest is dian who, in a hypothetical situation, noted, “if only i was stricter, the students might show disciplined-behavior”. this case might show that the practicum was colored with insecurity of pre-service teachers in establishing a code of conduct in the classroom. this, thus, seems to oppose the suggestion that it is important to build strong personal quality in teaching (brookfi eld, 1990, as cited in crookes, 2003, p. 166). furthermore, this might indicate that mentor teachers of both pre-service teachers might not know their roles in the practicum, one of which is to boost pre-service teachers’ confi dence (see randall & thornton, 2001, p. 13). yet again, this raises the issue of mentor teachers’ formal training concerning their roles in the practicum (see yang, 2001, p. 101; cf. malderez, 2009, p. 263-64). two student teachers (dwi and ario) further noted that one of their weaknesses in the practicum was regarding knowledge of english language. both pre-service teachers rainal wempi pasaka, emi emilia, lulu laela amalia the exploration of pre-service efl teachers’ challenges in field practicum 149 seemed to point out that knowledge barrier had impeded them to run a lesson. this particular phenomenon is possibly on the other side of what teacher preparation programs need to consider in their courses (see stoynoff, 1999; richards, 2010 in gan, 2013, p. 10102). despite the signifi cance of incorporating content knowledge in the courses, this case may indicate the failure of teacher preparation programs to fi ll in the gaps in student teachers’ knowledge of english. not only did student teachers have to deal with students’ unnecessary noises, but they also encountered problems in managing class time. five student teachers (dwi, aila, dian, ario, and satria) experienced the disagreement of time management. that is, at times they had to fi nd their lesson set back from original plan and further fl y away from intended plan. regarding this, literature on esl/efl teacher education has identifi ed that the discrepancy of time allotment in lesson plan and in actual teaching practice is a common problem faced by new teachers (e.g. brown, 2001, p. 153). however, it is worth noting that such circumstances might have occurred owing to the fact that pre-service teachers did not recognize the importance of having a backup plan (harmer, 1998, p. 12124). that being said, courses in the preparation program might not help student teachers to recognize the components of a good lesson, which include the component of unexpected circumstances in teaching practice (see numrich, 1996, p. 146; brown, 2001, p. 19596). in spite of some issues found in classroom management, pre-service teachers used an array of strategies to overcome the challenges. one of the tactics was establishing a good rapport with learners. this is illustrated in dwi’s case in which he was not bothered with students’ misconduct since he had a good relationship with the students. he affi rmed that his students would feel sorry once they started to show disruptive behavior. he further claimed that this was due to the fact that he knew all students names. this case is relevant to the suggestion of crookes that knowing all students names can help student teachers to deal with learners with misbehavior (crookes, 2003, p. 163). another strategy employed to deal with disruptive behavior was engaging students with persistent misbehavior in conversation about their misconduct. of a particular interest is aila who commented: “when i scolded one of the students he was, like, disappointed at me so i just talked with him in person. after that, we had a good relationship again and he never made any trouble at class anymore.” (aila) the above-mentioned experience is an instance of aila’s awareness to build a good rapport so that she can “solve the problems of uncooperative classes” (harmer, 1998, p. 130). furthermore, there were numerous indications in the data of where student teachers need to improve their individual qualities. such phenomenon in comments by by fi ve student teachers (dwi, aila, ario, dian, and satria). they pointed out that using clear and loud voice was a necessity; with some of the pre-service teachers acknowledging that this was one of their weaknesses. as brown (2000) affi rmed, it is essential for teachers to have clear voice as it can help them to deal with problems created by disruptive students (brown, 2000, p. 194). it is worth pointing out that two student teachers (aila and dwi) provided the same account that it is important to build and demonstrate nonverbal communication. this is distinct in dwi’s narrative, commenting that using nonverbal cues e.g. hand gestures came in handy when giving a lecture. it is important to note here that pre-service teachers develop awareness to express nonverbal language so that their students could learn better (brown, 2000, p. 195). in addition, poise may help in coping with unexpected circumstances in the class, particularly conditions that affect class time management. as evident in the satria’s international journal of education, vol. 7 no. 2 may 2014 150 account, poise helped him to overcome unexpected circumstances: i could manage them quite well and i didn’t get panic easily, you know, when, for example some unexpected moments came up i didn’t get very panic, “what should i do?” but i could adapt with the conditions. (satria) it is apparent that being controlled and calm when encountering such unexpected circumstances could help student teachers to overcome and perhaps, triumph over the challenges (brown, 2001, p. 196). on a different note, this might show that satria’s teacher preparation program has helped him to formulate a strategy when occasions to be in charge in the classroom come (pennington, 1990, p. 150). challenges related to communication breakdown establishing good communication amongst individuals in the fi eld experience can prove to be a valuable asset. however there were times when pre-service teachers found it diffi cult to interact with school staff, which includes mentor teachers. relating to this, two student teachers (dwi and dian) noted that their mentor teachers seemed to neglect their responsibilities in the practicum. dwi, in particular, commented: i just felt that i wasn’t guided at that time. she just gave freedom so much, huge freedom. (dwi) the aforementioned case indicates that dwi’s mentor teacher might not know the roles of a mentor teacher in fi eld experience. likewise, dian implied that more feedback and guidance from her mentor teacher would be appreciated: she simply nodded… she infrequently gave comments on the content of the lesson. (dian) both above-mentioned cases seem to point out that several mentor teachers possibly did not know their roles and responsibilities in the practicum. furthermore, this may indicate that there was little, if any, formal communication established to inform mentor teachers as to their roles and responsibilities in the practicum (see randall & thornton, 2001, p. 13). another problem encountered by the pre-service teachers in the fi eld experience was the torn attachment with school management staff. this issue was experienced by satria, who took a dim view of school management staff’s action. the student teacher recounted that he, along with other pre-service teachers in his placement school, were asked, “to do some tasks that we were really not supposed to do”. satria further commented that the staff might have violated a trust by leaking information to third party e.g. student teachers. this phenomenon underlies the issue of poor communication between teacher preparation programs and placement in schools that, in this case, resulted in school staff not knowing the description of their workloads in fi eld experience. this case is also identifi ed in yang’s study in which lack of communication established between both aforementioned institutions was the root of problems experienced by some student teachers (yang, 2011, p. 99). such poor communication could pose problems to professional expertise (elmajdob, 2004, in malderez, 2008, p. 261) in regard to the issues mentioned above, pre-service teachers noted when such a problem appeared, they would turn to fellow student teachers for advice. this may highlight the accomplishment of preparation programs to build practical communication skills of pre-service teachers (see tomas, farrelly, & haslam, 2008, p. 663). this case is further relevant with the fi ndings from gan’s study, where setting up a discussion about the problems with peer student teachers could ease problems concerning interpersonal communication by (gan, 2013, p. 100). conclusions from the discussion above, it is indicated that pre-service teachers were rainal wempi pasaka, emi emilia, lulu laela amalia the exploration of pre-service efl teachers’ challenges in field practicum 151 struggling with preparing a lesson, running a lesson, and interacting with placement school staff. pre-service teachers reported that they found it hard to select and evaluate learning materials. additionally, they encountered problems posed in classroom management in which student teachers perceived students’ disruptive behavior e.g. unnecessary noises and unexpected circumstances as the major diffi culties in running a lesson. additionally the pre-service teachers noted that establishing a good rapport with a member of the school staff, including mentor teachers, was diffi cult. it is worth noting that the challenges experienced related to the fl aw of courses in the preparation program to fully gear up preservice teachers before they enter the respective profession. some problems persisting in this aspect were inability to adapt to learners’ needs, inadequate english profi ciency and lack of confi dence in establishing rules. it is further identifi ed that poor cohesiveness among learners was among the source of the challenges. in addition, signifi cant difference of english competence of learners and blurry line of schools staff’ members’ roles and responsibilities, both of which are to do with placement schools’ decision-makings, were another root for the problem. despite facing a number of problems in the practicum, the pre-service teachers, at times, put up efforts to overcome the challenges. student teachers recounted that having a good relationship with fellow student teachers and mentor teachers was a valuable asset to overcome the challenges related to lesson planning. pre-service teachers also acknowledged that building a good relationship with learners, using various activities in a lesson, and building individual qualities are the strategies they used to solve the problem related to classroom management. moreover, student teachers sought for advice from peer student teachers when they experienced poor communication with members of the school staff. consequently some suggestions that can be drawn are as follows: (1) teacher preparation programs need to provide pre-service teachers with vast theoretical foundations on evaluating materials and practical experience in managing a class; (2) teacher preparation programs need to focus on improving english competence of student teachers and boosting self-confi dence of student teachers; (3) teacher preparation programs are endorsed to build a good formal relationship with placement schools, in which the preparation programs should inform the latter institution as to the roles and responsibilities of school staff’s members in the practicum. references amep. 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[online]. available at: http:// r o . e c u . e d u . a u / c g i / v i e w c o n t e n t . cgi?article=1547&context=ajte. retrieved october 28, 2013. 89 ahmad bukhori muslim, sundanese language survival among indonesian diaspora families sundanese language survival among indonesian diaspora families in melbourne, australia ahmad bukhori muslim indonesia university of education abukhupi@gmail.com abstract most migrant families living anywhere in the world, are concerned with maintaining their ethnic language, in order to sustain a sense of belonging to the country of their origin and enable extended family harmony. this study explores the survival of sundanese language among eight indonesian families of west java origin (sundanese speakers) living permanently in melbourne, australia. most of these families migrated to australia in the 1950s as colombo plan scholars and unskilled labourers. semi-structured interviews and home observations showed that, despite believing in the importance of sundanese language in their diasporic life, speaking sundanese is the only practice that most of the participating parents, can do to maintain their language, alongside bahasa indonesia and english, to show they belong to the sundanese culture. however, sundanese language levels of politeness limit its use among their australia-born second generation, making this ethnic language unlikely to survive. the young people only understand and copy a few routine words of greetings and short instructions. the study also suggests that the parents needed to be accommodative in order to maintain the sundanese language by combining it with english and bahasa indonesia. key words: sundanese language maintenance, indonesian diaspora, parental advice and values like other local ethnic groups of indonesia, a lot of sundanese people migrate to various overseas countries, including australia. the history of modern migration of the indonesian diaspora to australia started in the 1950s, including current the sundanese people who came to melbourne as early as colombo plan scholars (museum victoria, 2015). having lived in melbourne permanently for decades, they still strongly consider themselves sundanese-indonesian who do not want to lose their cultural identity. they have strong motivation to communicate and socialize this cultural identity, particularly in their ethnic language, to their younger generation who are mostly were born in australian. geographically a close neighbouring country to australia, indonesia is most often considered ‘psychologically far’. most australians have unfortunately limited knowledge about indonesia, other than bali. introduction historically most sundanese people have lived in the western part of java island, long before the independence of indonesia. they share the western part of this small but highly densely populated island, which is also the hub of indonesia, with other local ethnic groups such as the javanese, madurese, balinese, and malay. in the cities of west java province, most sundanese speak sundanese language in their daily activities at home, schools, government offices, and they therefore may identify themselves more to being sundanese than to being indonesian. in most cases, sundanese people and other local indonesian ethnicities usually identify themselves to being indonesian more strongly only when they are overseas. they want to show their indonesian heritage when living in other countries such as the united states or australia as experienced by the participating sundanese families in this study. 90 international journal of education, vol. 8 no. 2 may 2015 due to their larger numbers, migrants from countries much further away than indonesia such as vietnam, india, china, bangladesh, sri lanka and even bosnia are more wellknown among australians than indonesians. evidence of this limited knowledge or engagement is provision of australian public services in languages other than english, including various ethnic languages such as arabic, thai, chinese, vietnamese, indian, german, greek, and swahili. very rarely does this public service include bahasa indonesia, the national language of australia’s closest neighbour. overcoming the psychological barrier requires promotion of the indonesian language and culture to the public of australia. due to limited indonesian government promotion of indonesia overseas, the engagement of indonesian communities in australia can effectively take the lead. often times, people to people diplomacy has stronger effect than that of government to government. this initiative for cultural promotion has been taken by some indonesian communities in melbourne, australia, including sundanese people who have concern for promoting indonesian language and culture, particularly that of sundanese. they have established an organization called paguyuban pasundan (the association of sundanese) in melbourne and organize various sundanese cultural activities like kabayan and angklung (bamboo-made traditional sudanese music instrument) performances. at the family level, these diasporic sundanese people, particularly among the couples who are both of sundanese origin, sundanese language is used when communicating with their children as they want to maintain their local ethnic language. they believe that this ethnic language is an effective medium to communicate family values of respect and giving of parental advice that they want to pass down to the younger generation to maintain family harmony. unfortunately, most of their children were born and grew up in australia, and their children’s extensive exposure to english impedes maintenance. despite the negative response of their children, some parents keep using the language in their daily routines. this effort is not always as successful as they expect. this issue of sundanese language maintenance and what it means for the participating families is the main topic of this study. this research centres on two questions. firstly, ‘how is sundanese language used among indonesian diaspora families of west java origin?’ secondly, ‘what does this use, if any, mean for their linguistic and cultural identification with indonesia?’ these two questions have been researched through semi-structured interviews and observations in homes and at cultural events over a five year period. method this research is a qualitative ethnographic case study. eight families, represented by four fathers and four mothers, took part in the study. most of them are australian permanent residents who hold indonesian passports, living in the greater melbourne area. only one participant, married to an australian, has taken australian citizenship. six of the parents are sundanese couples, another couple are indonesian but non-sundanese , and the other has an australian husband. most of the participating parents come from bandung, the capital city of west java. a few of them are from other cities in the province such as bogor, tasikmalaya and sukabumi. the participants’ length of stay in australia ranges from 11 to 40 years. some families are young (the eldest child being 13 years old) others are old (the eldest child being 29 years old). most of their children were born in australia and only a few of them were indonesia-born. children mostly have taken australian passports for more educational and social benefits. a few of 91 ahmad bukhori muslim, sundanese language survival among indonesian diaspora families the participants of older families have even australian-born grandchildren. data for this study has been generated from semi-structured interviews, informal talks and participant-observations at homes, community centres, and cultural events over a five year period. each interview took 30-45 minutes. the interview guide can be found in appendix 1. observations at homes and various cultural events were conducted for more than four years; before, during and after the interviews. the results of interviews and observations were then compiled on the basis of emerging themes and analysed by relevant theories of language maintenance and investment as part of cultural identification. participation in this study was voluntary. all participants were asked to complete consent forms prior to their participation. interviews were conducted at their convenience. they were allowed to withdraw from this study anytime at any stages of study. they were also allowed to select information that they considered to be off record. finally, all names used in this study are pseudonyms. more details about participants can be found in appendix 2. literature review ethnic language maintenance as cultural identification the concern for communicating cultural identity is often strong among members of ethnic minority groups as part of their culture maintenance. as studies have shown, ethnic identity socialization has been a concern among immigrant communities such as those in the united states, canada, and australia (simon, 1995; phinney, 1990, 1992, 1996; french, seidman, allen & aber, 2006), including indonesian families in melbourne (mulyana, 1995; zulfikar, 2011). a study by umaña-taylor, bhanot & shin (2006) which involved a large number of adolescents from various ethnic backgrounds in the us (asian indian, chinese, filipino, vietnamese, and salvadoran) showed that familial ethnic socialization (fes) supports exploration, commitment, and belonging to ethnic identity. the mother’s family obligation expectations provide positive family identification and ethnic culture learning opportunities that may encourage children’s ethnic identity development (su & costigan, 2009). for ethnic minority adolescents, ethnic identity is an important aspect of self-concept which is salient during their adolescence (phinney, 1992; french, seidman, allen & aber, 2006). this ethnic identity has proven to be a critical facet of adolescents’ developmental experiences, as it relates to their psychological functioning, supports self-esteem and self-concepts, and promotes cultural adjustment (french, seidman, allen & aber, 2006; phinney, 1990, 1992, 1996; umañataylor, diversi, & fine, 2002; lee, 2003, 2006; phinney, cantu, & kurtz, 1997; tsai, ying, & lee, 2001). in the context of australia, each minority ethnic group may have a different focus in socializing their cultural values. speaking the ethnic language is the first cultural practice that members of ethnic minority want to maintain (clyne, 2005; willoughby, 2006). rosenthal & hrynevich (1985) found that language, religion, social activities, maintenance of cultural traditions, and family life are considered important among italian and greek young people. in studying the youth of minority groups of south asian origins (india, pakistan and bangladesh), ghuman (2001) found that his participants expressed sympathetic attitudes to the retention of core traditional values such as religion, language and primacy of family over individual orientation. a similar association between heritage language maintenance and family relations is also identified by howie and tannenbaum (2002) in their study of chinese immigrant children in australia. likewise, sudanese adolescent refugees in brisbane, australia experienced acculturative stress due to their lack of english proficiency and conflicting cultural 92 international journal of education, vol. 8 no. 2 may 2015 rules (poppitt & frey, 2007). among south east asians, parents might focus more on socializing their children to strong family support and sense of group identity, and respect for the authority of teachers and parents (tam & lee, 2010; elliot & phuongmai, 2008; rajadurai, 2010). another aspect of parental cultural practices is religion. this aspect is particularly considered important among religion-oriented societies like indonesia, including their youth (nilan et al., 2011; nilan, 2008). the provision of support and active involvement in various religious practices contributes to the development of youth who often show enthusiasm for community service (youniss, mclellan & yates, 1999; ream & savinwilliams, 2006). however, effectiveness of parental religious socialization is determined by the quality of youth relationship with their parents (dudley, 1999). in general, religious parents tend to have religious children. additionally, gender is an important factor of religious socialization. in most cases, females are the keepers of home and of the faith. mothers have a greater influence in religious socialization than fathers (nelson, 1980; archer, 1989; guilamo-ramos, 2009). of these cultural aspects, however, ethnic language maintenance is the most important aspect that most migrant families want to instill in their younger generation (phinney, 1992, 1995; clyne, 2005; willoughby, 2006; moua & lambourn, 2010) which this study focuses. speech levels in sundanese unlike english or bahasa indonesia, sundanese language has great distinctions with various levels of politeness, depending on the people spoken to, shown by vocabulary choice; lemes pisan (very polite), lemes (polite), panengah (rather polite) and kasar (crude/earthy) (wessing, 1974; anderson, 1997). the first two levels; lemes pisan and lemes are usually uttered by people of lower level to those of higher levels such as the poor to the rich, common people to royal family members, or children to parents and elderly people. for example, the lemes pisan/lemes words for eating is ‘tuang’, and for going is ‘angkat’. if a child asks his/her parents, s/he should say, bade angkat kamana? (where are you going?). in this sentence, politeness is shown by two words: bade and angkat. people of low position in a government office or company like employees or janitors may say this to his/her employer, bapak atos tuang? (have you eaten (breakfast/lunch), sir?). again, in this sentence, politeness is evidenced in the use of two words; atos and tuang. this first two levels of politeness is also used by strangers or people who are not intimate with each other. the second two levels (panengah/ kasar) are used by people of similar levels of position, among intimate individuals, or by people of higher to lower in position. take for instance, the panengah/kasar words for eating is ‘dahar’ whereas ‘indit’ is for going. so, a father/mother may ask his/her child, rek indit kamana maneh? (where are you going?). similarly, people of high position in a government office or company may say this to his/her employees, maneh geus dahar? (have you eaten?). in the first sentence, panengah/kasar level is represented by the words rek and indit. meanwhile, the crude or earthy words in the second sentence are represented by the words maneh, geus, and dahar. maneh is the crude address for the second person whereas the polite word for this address is anjeun. native speakers of sundanese have built-in instinct in understanding this level of politeness and use them accordingly in their daily conversation. violation of these levels of politeness may lead to offense. people of high rank or elderly may find panengah or kasar words offensive when people address them with these words. they will understand if the speakers are non-native sundanese but still feel surprised or shocked upon hearing such impolite words for the first time. native 93 ahmad bukhori muslim, sundanese language survival among indonesian diaspora families speakers of sundanese who cannot use these levels of politeness properly will be considered rude, uneducated or impolite. for this reason, many sundanese people today, especially the youth and young parents in urban indonesian areas, prefer to switch to bahasa indonesia when communicating with their children’s peers, fearing that they utter improper words or expressions when using sundanese to people of specific ranks or positions. consequently, as ewing claims (2014), this makes the sundanese language, like other local ethnic languages in indonesia, more endangered of facing extinction. investment for ethnic language maintenance most ethnic minority parents find the maintenance of their ethnic language very beneficial for their cultural identification. they believe that speaking the language, for instance, enables them to communicate parental advice and other family values to their young people and connect them with extended family in their home country, thus, making better family harmony. studies by various scholars also show that this ethnic language maintenance is a means of cultural identification which is an essential life objective among diaspora families (phinney, 1990, 1992, 1996; barett, 2005; guardado & becker, 2014). it is a means of reviving the threatened and endangered languages (fishman, 1997) like the sundanese language which is the concern of the participating families in this study. considering it paramount importance in their diasporic life, families of this minority ethnic group have invested time and energy to maintain their ethnic language as their cultural identity (clyne, 2005; norton, 2008; ndhlovu, 2010; mu, 2014). in the case of the chinese community in australia, for example, they have established a chinese language school so that their younger generation can regain the ethnic language more effectively (mu, 2014). in a slightly different way, (not establishing a formal language school like the chinese), the african community in australia organized a community centre activity to enhance the use of their ethnic language (ndhlovu, 2010). other communities such as the greeks have built a language school in community centres or sports halls or hospitals in which they socialize their cultural values to their australian-born young people (rosenthal & hrynevich, 1985). parental ethnic socialization processes may take various forms. they include speaking a native language, maintaining religious practices, celebrating religious holidays, learning traditional dances and music, teaching behavioural goals and ethnic history, values, norms, and attitudes related to ethnic heritage, promoting ethnic pride, participation in cultural events, preparing traditional food, wearing traditional clothes, strengthening family ties, and marriage preparation (bagley, bolitho, & bertrand, 2001; moua & lamborn, 2010). based on these types of investment in cultural identification, it is interesting to identify what and how the participating parents in this study have invested to maintain their sundanese ethnic language and culture. findings this study identifies some findings which are divided into sundanese language use, its perceived benefits among the participants, and investment by participating parents to communicate, promote and maintain this ethnic language for their cultural identification. sundanese language use the use of sundanese language among parents is intensive enough. parents, especially those of sundanese couples, speak sundanese when greeting, having short talks, giving simple instruction and advice, showing anger, joking, making food and drink, and telling childhood stories to their children. 94 international journal of education, vol. 8 no. 2 may 2015 parents use sundanese language both inside and outside of home. for this reason, children experience intensive listening to sundanese language, especially at home. one participant, ace, said; i manage to always speak sundanese with my wife and also children at home or outside. usually, i use sundanese for greetings and short instructions, such as kadieu! (come here!) or aya naon? (what happens?). they usually understand my instruction but answered in english but that’s ok (male, 60s). another female participant, siti, said; my two children and i have been living in melbourne for 11 years. my husband has been here for more than 25 years. to cure our longing for bandung, our home town, i always speak sundanese to my husband and two children. i also often make sundanese foods at home such as siomay (steamed vegetables stuffed with meat) and karedok (salad made of raw vegetables). i believe this will help us remember bandung. the use of this ethnic language is less intensive among parents who are a sundanese and non-sundanese couple or sundanese and australian couple. for the first couple, sundanese is mixed with bahasa indonesia whereas for the second couple, sundanese is mixed with both bahasa indonesia and english. another female participant, yarsi, said; i am fortunate that my australian husband loves bandung and sundanese language. he even considers bandung his second home town, after melbourne. he always wants to spend holidays in indonesia, especially bandung. but i can’t always speak sundanese to him. i have to mix it with bahasa indonesia and of course english. despite this intensive listening, however, due to extensive exposure to english, most of the children only understand the routine things their parents say to them, but respond in english. in most families, only the eldest children have a better understanding of sundanese, but they still answer their parents in english. juarsa said that his eldest daughter has better sundanese language speaking skill than her two younger siblings. similarly, ace also claims that compared to her two younger siblings, his eldest daughter has better speaking skill in sundanese. besides, she is also a jaipong (traditional sundanese dance) dancer who often performs at various cultural events around melbourne. due to intensive listening to their parents speaking sundanese for a lengthy period of time, a few children copy their parents’ sundanese routine words or expressions. a few routine words copied by children include greetings such as kumaha damang? (how are you?), muhun (yes), naon? (what?), kamana (where are you going?), ari maneh! (how dare you!), rek kamana maneh euy? (where are you going?) kamana wae? (where have you been?). one participant said; i always ask, rek kamana maneh euy? (where are you going?) to my three children whenever they want to leave home. because i always ask this question for years, they understand my question but unfortunately always respond in english. one day, when i was ready to go out, my second son, standing on the doorway, asked, rek kamana maneh euy? i was shocked at first because this form of question is considered impolite when speaking to parents. it is only used by parents to their children. but then i understand that my son may not know how to use this expression. i just smiled to myself (laughter) (ace, 60s). experiencing a similar improper use of sundanese, another male participant, commented, when we feel irritated by our children, my wife and i often say, ari maneh (how come/ how dare you do it!). after a long time, our children seemed to understand what we meant when saying this sundanese expression. they usually change their attitudes after hearing this expression. one day, my eldest daughter 95 ahmad bukhori muslim, sundanese language survival among indonesian diaspora families who might feel irritated said ari maneh to me. i was surprised in the beginning because it is considered impolite for a child to say this to parents. but then i understood that she may not understand how to use it (smile) (juarsa, 50s). so, in general, the use of sundanese language is intensive, especially among sundanese couples. meanwhile, nonsundanese couples modify this ethnic language with english and bahasa indonesia. meanwhile the children respond to this effort to maintain language less positively. perceived benefits parents believe that maintenance of sundanese language and culture gives them some benefits. due to their limited english, they can give short instructions, parental advice and jokes more expressively in sundanese. one female participant believes that she can communicate parental advice to her children more emotionally in sundanese. my english is not really good. i find it difficult to give advice to my children in english. so, i always tell my children to do this and not to do that in sundanese. it is more relieving to communicate my values in sundanese (siti, 40s). with limited understanding of sundanese, their children can also communicate with their grandparents and other extended family during regular holidays to indonesia. this understanding and use of sundanese in turn add to their family connection or harmony. when i speak sundanese to my children, i don’t care if they understand or not. i just want to maintain this language of my parents and grandparents. i am happy if they can understand and speak it. that is the best (laughter). i want them to know that their parents are both sundanese (ace, 60s). in addition, due to intensive use of sundanese, living permanently overseas, parents feel less alienated from their cultural roots. they feel more sundanese than indonesian at home and only feel more indonesian when they interact with their neighbours and other australians in the public sphere. another participant, asep, a retired australian national radio broadcaster confirms; although my wife and i have been living in melbourne for more than 30 years, our two children were both born in bandung. so, i always feel it important to speak sundanese to my wife and children. we can share jokes more freely in sundanese. i also use sundanese to socialize family values of politeness and respect for parents. i feel i still live in bandung or somewhere (asep, 70s). the last perceived benefit of sundanese use is the socialization of religious teaching. a few parents believe there is an indirect relationship between sundanese language and religion, in this case, islam. based on their childhood experience of learning islam in west java cities, parents believe that sundanese language use can attract their children to learn the teaching of their religion. for this reason, one parent sent his three children to study at two islamic schools in bandung. he said, i believe that sundanese culture has close relationship with my religion, islam. i want my children to learn islam through sundanese. to give them a real experience of learning sundanese and islam together, i sent my three young adult children to study at two islamic schools in bandung. my first and third children went to an islamic public school, and my second son went to an islamic boarding school. they learnt islam and sundanese language there for one year (ace, 60s). ace believes that this relatively lengthy experience of living in bandung can provide his three children with a relevant and strong basis of knowledge of islam and sundanese language, two identities that he wants his three children to hold firmly while living permanently in australia. 96 international journal of education, vol. 8 no. 2 may 2015 investment for maintenance having realized the importance of sundanese language and culture maintenance for family harmony and cultural identification, the participating families have invested their time and energy to communicate sundanese values to their young people. the investments or efforts take several forms, as indicated below. the first investment that parents have made is having regular holidays to their hometowns in west java. during this annual or every-other year holiday, some parents took their children to visit villages to introduce them to more original sundanese culture. they believe that big cities in west java like bandung have become multicultural in which sundanese culture may have been contaminated by other local indonesian cultures such as javanese or minang. the use of sundanese in urban areas, for example, has been replaced by bahasa indonesia which is considered an effective intercultural means of communication. one participant confirms, during holidays in indonesia, i sometimes take my children to visit villages in west java. i believe that bandung is a big city; the sundanese culture in bandung is not pure anymore. it is not as original as in tasikmalaya or cianjur (cicih, 50s). the second investment is sending children to study/live in west java for a certain period of time. one parent sent his three teen children to study and live in bandung for one year. as he wants his children to learn not only sundanese culture but also religious teaching, he sent his two children to an islamic school and another son to an islamic boarding school. another parent did not send his daughter for this length of time but only one month, every school holiday in australia, usually in december every year. one participant confirmed, when my three children are in secondary college, i sent all of them to study in bandung for one year. my first daughter and third son went to an islamic school. they stayed with their uncle who lives near the school. my second son studied at an islamic boarding school. i didn’t worry leaving them there because they have uncles and aunts in bandung. for their health, i entrust it to one of their uncles who is a doctor. i believe that they can learn a lot of things from this one year study and live (ace, 60s). another parent said that he actually wanted to send his two children to study in bandung for a certain period of time, but cancelled his decision due to security and wellbeing reasons. another parent whose partner is not sundanese did not send his three children to study in indonesia because they went to an islamic school in melbourne, from primary school to secondary college. he and his wife believe that their children have enough religious teaching at this school. another investment is installing sundanese cultural artefacts at home. the artefacts include food and drink, clothes, and musical instruments. almost all parents always cook sundanese food for their children, especially during special occasions. they prepare siomay (steamed vegetable with meat), baso tahu (tofu and meat bowl) and es cendol (ice flour drops) during religious celebrations of idul fitri and idul adha. male members of the family also wear bendo (cap) and batik shirts whereas females wear kabaya (female batik dress) when attending wedding parties or other cultural events. one parent has a set of angklung (bamboo musical instruments) in his living room. another parent has a kacapi (sundanese guitar) which he sometimes plays during his spare time with the family. one of the women has several sets of sundanese wedding clothing that she lends to people who need them for cultural events. one male participant commented, i have a set of angklung at home. although i don’t play it, my children know that it is a sundanese musical instrument. i also sometimes make sundanese food and wear batik for cultural celebrations (juarsa, 50s). 97 ahmad bukhori muslim, sundanese language survival among indonesian diaspora families finally, to endorse their cultural identity more intensively, some parents join paguyuban pasundan (the association of sundanese) in melbourne. this association strives to promote sundanese language and culture, as part of indonesian culture, to the australian public, particularly in melbourne. paguyuban pasundan regularly joins cultural events held by the government of australia in melbourne. representing the indonesian consulate general in melbourne, they perform rampak kendang (traditional sundanese drums) during the annual mumba festival in melbourne and pako festival in geelong victoria. to promote sundanese culture more intensively, in 2015, paguyuban pasundan organized two big cultural events. the first event was called kabayan in love. kabayan is a popular cultural figure among sundanese people. the story talks about the migration of kabayan from a small west java village to melbourne, in search of his lover, iteung who has moved to australia. the second event, which was the sequel of the first one, was called kabayan gets married. as the title suggests, it describes the marriage of kabayan with his lover. the focus of this event was to introduce the sundanese wedding process which is a combination of religious and cultural rituals. the two events were considered a big success. one female participant confirmed her active participation in paguyuban pasundan activities, although my husband and i don’t speak sundanese to our children at home, we love sundanese language and culture. we always take part in paguyuban pasundan programs such as monthly meetings and cultural events. my husband played the main character in kabayan in love and kabayan gets married. my eldest son and i also perform some sundanese songs (ines, 30s). the various findings above show that each participating parent, in their own capacity, has shown their own investment for maintaining the sundanese language and culture that they love as part their cultural identification. they have made various efforts to socialize the sundanese language and culture to their australia-born children. results and discussion living overseas permanently, most participating parents realize the importance of their sundanese language maintenance for their cultural identification. they believe that they have to invest time and energy to communicate and socialize this ethnic language and culture to their children as part of their cultural identity (phinney, 1990; clyne, 2005; norton, 2008; ndhlovu, 2010; mu, 2014). the routine use of sundanese language also enables parents to give advice and communicate family values more expressively, adding to their family harmony (barett, 2008; guardado & becker, 2014). in addition to parental respect, another family value that participating parents want to instil through the use of sundanese language is religion, in this case, islam. based on what they have learnt during childhood back in indonesia, parents use sundanese language as a means to teach religious values such as respect for the elderly and taking care of them when they are old. this finding supports the previous studies by nilan (2008) and nilan, donaldson, and howson (2009) who suggest that religion is considered an important aspect in the life of most indonesians, including the participating parents in this study. various factors influence this sundanese ethnic language maintenance by participating parents. they include ethnically homogenous marriage, education, and passion for sundanese language and culture. sundanese couples tend to have more intensive use of sundanese than nonsundanese couples. more educated parents tend to show stronger commitment to their ethnic language maintenance. they believe that, as an ethnic minority, they share similar rights to show their cultural identity as other ethnic minority groups in australia. moreover, a few participants, being less 98 international journal of education, vol. 8 no. 2 may 2015 educated and working in non-professional jobs, show strong passion for maintaining sundanese language and culture. they involve themselves in various cultural activities, promoting sundanese and other local indonesian culture to the australian public. supporting norton (2008), for them, investment for language maintenance comes from the heart, not logic or academic discourse. however, this effort for maintenance does not always run smoothly and effectively. the investment participating parents have made in using sundanese language for daily routines is contested by their children’s unawareness and greater inclination to english language. as the results of the interviews reveal, most children do not really take heed of the use of sundanese language that their parents have socialized enthusiastically. it seems that the culture of current settlement, which is the australian culture, has stronger influence on the children’s sense of belonging and that they are more inclined to speak english than the sundanese language. barrett (2005) argues that peers provide a strong influence on the sense of belonging and feeling of national groups. strongly influenced by their australian peers, the second generation of the study participants seem to be more inclined to the use of english than sundanese or even the indonesian language. despite their children’s ignorance, parents’ continuous effort to use bahasa indonesia in daily routines seems to bring about little success. some children understand greetings and short instructions in sundanese but respond to their parents in english. the greetings that parents often utter to their children include aya naon euy? (what happens?), naon eta? (what’s that?), cageur maneh? (are you ok?), rek ngopi? (you want coffee?), geus dahar? (have you eaten?). parents still feel happy with their children’s limited understanding of sundanese. this is considered better than nothing or losing it at all (moua & lamborn, 2010; clyne, 2005). in line with the finding of the previous study, for most ethnic minority groups in australia, willoughby (2006) found that speaking the ethnic language is the least effort young people made in maintaining cultural and language identity. it is interesting that, having heard greetings and short instructions from their parents repeatedly for a lengthy period of time, a few children copied their parents’ greetings or expressions but without realizing the correct level of politeness. for example, one child who often heard the expression kamana maneh euy? (where are you going?) from his father every time he wanted to leave the house, one day parroted back this expression to his father on the door-way when the father wanted to go out. another father reported that his daughter said ari maneh? (how come! or how dare you do it!) to him when she felt disturbed or annoyed. at first, both parents felt shocked upon hearing their children’s copying of these phrases because they are considered impolite to be expressed by children to parents. this kasar (crude/ earthy) speech level is acceptably used by higher authority to lower one, such as by parents to their children, not the other way around (wessing, 1974; anderson, 1997). however, these two parents also realized that, due to limited knowledge of politeness levels and the influence of more egalitarian english, their children may not understand how to use these expressions properly. another interesting issue of ethnic language maintenance is that the older the families, the stronger the maintenance of sundanese. this may be due to low english language fluency by older family members who usually work as blue collar workers. in contrast, younger families who work more professionally have better english skills, thus, causing them switch to english more easily and to lose their sundanese language. one reason for the limited use of sundanese by families, especially among the 99 ahmad bukhori muslim, sundanese language survival among indonesian diaspora families young ones, is that this ethnic language has levels of politeness. this politeness is often considered a barrier to the use of sundanese language among young families who have better english skills than the old ones. if care is not taken, continuous avoidance of sundanese language among young families and children will lead to the extinction of this ethnic language (fishman, 1997; clyne, 2005; ewing, 2014), which will be a great loss for the rich linguistic diversity of indonesia. interviews also showed that in most families, the eldest child tends to have better skill in sundanese language than the younger ones. most parents acknowledge that their first born children have relatively better sundanese knowledge than their younger siblings. first born children tend to have better listening skills of sundanese than their younger siblings. this means that young families (when they have their first child) have more idealism and enthusiasm to socialize and maintain their ethnic language of sundanese. time changes their idealism into pragmatism so that they become more realistic in using sundanese language with their younger children. in addition, younger children also have less peer influence so that parental influence is stronger. regardless of these changes, the above-mentioned efforts made by parents in socializing sundanese language in their families show evidence of strong investment for language and culture maintenance (phinney, 1990; clyne, 2005; norton, 2008; ndhlovu, 2010; mu, 2014) among most parents of sundanese diaspora families in melbourne. in relation to gender in cultural identification, previous studies support the idea that females as the keepers of home, faith and culture. (nelson, 1980; archer, 1989; guilamo-ramos, 2009). this study also shows that gender seems to have an important issue in ethnic language and culture maintenance. some parents focus on their daughters to socialize and promote sundanese language and culture. during my observations, i found one female child who speaks sundanese fairly fluently, whereas most male children only understand the language. a daughter of one of the participants is also a jaipong (sundanese dance) dancer who often performs in various cultural events and festivals. when she got married, she had to take time out from her dancing performance activities due to her pregnancy. during the kabayan gets married event in mid-2015, her father requested that she perform again for the first time, after a long break, due to her delivering two children. again, in this case, her father had more concern than his daughter for the maintenance of sundanese language and culture. conclusions this study produces with several conclusions. first, despite parents’ high interests in ethnic language maintenance, the use of sundanese language is limited. parents, (especially where both are sundanese,) work very hard to persistently introduce the use of sundanese language to their children to socialize parental values and religious teachings. unfortunately, this effort of maintenance is almost ignored by children who contest it with english. consequently, they only understand a few sundanese expressions spoken by their parents and they respond in english. as a result of continuous efforts, some children copy a few parental routine greetings, without realizing the different level of politeness. a few children responded to their parents in coarse sundanese greetings which surprised them. appreciating their children’s willingness to copy routine expressions, parents were still happy with their children’s limited use of sundanese. next, most parents consider sundanese language and culture important as a means of association with their heritage and their cultural values of parental respect, advice, and childhood memories. they have made various efforts to maintain sundanese 100 international journal of education, vol. 8 no. 2 may 2015 language and culture in their children’s lives. parents’ investment for maintenance include regular holidays to their country of origin, sending children to study in indonesia, promotion of sundanese culture at home and at cultural events, particularly through paguyuban pasundan. in terms of gender, females seem to be consistently strong cultural carriers. references anderson, e. k. 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(2011). young indonesianmuslims in australia: identity, family and the ummah. doctoral dissertation, faculty of education, monash university, australia. gamawan fauzi, the contribution of direct elections for local leaders to the corruption in indonesia 103 the contribution of direct elections for local leaders to the corruption in indonesia: lessons learned from indonesian democratic system gamawan fauzi institut pemerintahan dalam negeri (ipdn) abstract the paper discusses direct elections of local government leaders that have contributed to the corruption in indonesia and focuses on the quality of electoral process. this study aimed at identifying the contribution of direct elections of local leaders on corrupt practices in indonesia. it applied a quantitative research method and involved 85 provincial, district and city areas as samples in the indonesian islands of java, sumatra, sulawesi, kalimantan, nusa tenggara, maluku and papua. the study proves that direct local elections have significant effects on corruption committed by the heads of district government. both process and quality of direct local elections has jointly demonstrated a meaningful and significant effect on the corruption by local leaders. thus, the better quality and process will immediately lower the corruption rate. in contrast, the lower quality and process will contribute to a higher corruption rate. partially, the influence of the local election process is more powerful than the quality of direct local elections, since direct local election process requires the government to spend a vast amount of funding on the preparation, implementation, validation and the inauguration of the elect local government leaders. this study only involved 85 areas that have organized direct local elections. a further study should be expanded to more sample areas in order to collect more data that can complete the current research findings. keywords: direct local elections, corruption, local government leaders, district, city. of 1965, act no. 5 of 1974, and act no. 22 of 1999. article 18 paragraph (7) of the 1945 constitution stipulates that democratic local elections can be organized through local parliament and the candidates are elected directly by the people. the shift from local elections represented by local parliament to direct elections shows a paradigm change of representative democracy into participatory democracy. of course, this change has been made by considering various factors to accelerate direct local elections and to improve indonesian democratic system. furthermore, this system could be the most democratic way for local people to elect their own leaders. the main actor in the direct local elections is local people. in addition, the involvement of political parties and community is very important in the nomination of the candidates. the candidate nomination in introduction the fi rst direct elections were held in june of 2005, as stipulated by the law no. 32 of 2004 on regional government. in the past, based on law no. 22 year 1999 on regional government and law no. 5 of 1974, local elections were carried out through local parliament (dprd). shift from local elections through local parliament to direct elections was in line with the reform spirit of indonesian people. article 18 paragraph (4) states that the local elections are held democratically. since the declaration of its independence, indonesia has changed the election systems in accordance with the local government laws. direct local elections were fi rstly stipulated by the law no. 32 of 2004, while previous elections systems were based on law no. 1 of 1945, act no. 22 of 1948, law no. 1 of 1957, presidential decree no. 6 of 1959, act no. 18 international journal of education, vol. 7 no. 2 may 2014 104 direct elections is done in two ways: nomination by a political party or coalition of political parties and the nomination of an independent candidate by the general public. the cost of the direct local elections is not comparable with income earned by local leaders. based on presidential decree no. 68 of 2001 on the benefi ts title share of certain state offi cials, a provincial government earns an allowance of rp. 5,400,000. while the basic salary is rp. 3,000,000. meanwhile the regent or mayor salary is rp. 2,100,000 and the allowance is rp. 3,780,000. therefore the total income of a provincial governor is rp. 8,400,000 while the monthly income of a regent or mayor is rp. 5,880,000. most district leaders who have spent a lot more money and fi nancial support in any decision-making are often considered those who had supported the nomination. the local government heads morally feel indebted to their campaign supporting teams and supporters. in result, they place their supporters in some high public positions and allow them to submit project proposals or ask for social aids. data collected by the ministry of home affairs show that as of december 2013 there were 319 local leaders and deputy local heads of government lodged legal issues and have been suspected, accused of, and convicted in various criminal cases, including corruption. there were 283 corruption cases involving heads and deputy heads of local government. based on the various phenomena and the empirical facts, it is necessary to conduct this research. the research aims at (1) identifying the contribution of the quality of the direct elections of regional heads to the corruption in indonesia, (2) identifying the direct contribution of the local election process to the corruption in indonesia, and (3) identifying the contribution of the quality and process of the direct elections of regional heads to the corruption in indonesia. based on the identifi cation of the research problem, the following research questions are asked: 1. how does the quality of direct local elections have effects on corrupt practices by the heads of local government in indonesia? 2. how does the process of direct local elections have effects on corrupt practices by the heads of local government in indonesia? 3. how does the quality and process of direct local elections have effects on corrupt practices by the heads of local government in indonesia? finally, this study is expected to provide theoretical and practical benefi ts for those who are interested in direct local elections and corruption issues in indonesia. the results of this study are expected to be useful to the development of the government science, especially to the development of concepts and theories related to local elections and corruption. and the research fi ndings are expected to help authorities reformulate direct local elections and prevent corrupt practices. methodology method the method used in this study is a quantitative research method. according to effendy (2010:30), “quantitative research method is a research method that makes the theory a framework of the overall study”. the phenomenon that occurs will be tested with the statistical procedures between the theory and the empirical reality of each variable, to generalize the existence and relation between the effects of quality variable (x1) and the direct elections of regional leaders (x2) on the corruption committed by the local leaders in indonesian (y). this study was to test the hypothesis, explain the causal relationships between variables to predict and obtain facts from existing phenomenon, conduct investigations and seek factual information, and then draw conclusions from the study sample. instrument used in collecting data and information was questionnaire. data were then were tabulated and analyzed with path analysis to test the research hypothesis. furthermore, this study was based on the following frame of thinking. gamawan fauzi, the contribution of direct elections for local leaders to the corruption in indonesia 105 corruption (y) 1. bribery 2. extortion 3. nepotism ʃ quality of diret local elections (x1) 1. definition 2. acceptance 3. trust 4. responsibility 5. hope the process of direct elections for district leaders (x2) 1. preparation 2. implementation 3. acknowledment & inaguration figure 2 frame of thinking population and sample since june 2005, there have been 528 direct local elections in indonesia: 33 provinces, 402 districts, and 93 cities. to collect data, 16 subjects were voluntarily invited to provide information. the subjects or respondents who were taken in this study are those who know the implementation of direct local elections, fi nancial management, permission management, personnel management, and managerial activities. they are the head of district government, deputy head of district government, the local house speaker, local government secretary, chief of finance bureau (dppkad), head of district personnel offi ce (bkd), head of the district public work offi ce or the forest service or other relevant persons in charge of district offi ces, head of political offi ce, provincial, district and city electoral commissioners, and provincial, district and city electoral supervisors. in terms of area sampling, table 2 shows that every region is represented by one province, eleven districts and three cities, and the area samples were randomly selected. table 1 list of research subjects no subjects total 1. head of district 1 2. vice head of district 1 3. local house speaker 3 4. local government secretary 1 5. head of dppkad/head of bureau/head of finance offi ce 1 6. head of employment offi ce 1 7. head of public work offi ce/ forestry offi ce/others 1 8. head of unitary nation and politics offi ce 1 9. commissioners of electoral commission in province/district/ municipality 3 10. member of election watch offi ce in province/district/ municipality 3 total 16 tabel 2 research samples no regions province district city 1. sumatera aceh toba samosir, asahan, simelue, kampar, siak, musi rawas, ogan ilir, tanjabtim, bungo, lampung selatan, tulang bawang barat. pekanbaru, sabang, pematangsiantar 2. jawa jawa timur sragen, semarang, demak, pekalongan, karanganyar, ngawi, sampang, madiun, malang, nganjuk, ponorogo magelang, malang, semarang 3. kalimantan kalimantan timur kutai kartanegara, berau, nunukan, bulungan, kubu raya, banjar, tanah bumbu, murung raya, barito utara, hulu sungai utara, kotabaru banjarmasin, samarinda, bontang 4. sulawesi sulawesi tenggara sigi, donggala, konawe kolaka kendari, wakatobi 5. bali, nusa tenggara, maluku & papua papua badung, timor tengah selatan, kupang, sorong, merauke, jayawijaya, tolikara, intan jaya, lombok barat, lombok tengah, dompu sorong, kupang, jayapura. international journal of education, vol. 7 no. 2 may 2014 106 theoretical framework the concept of democracy academic discourse on democracy was launched by held (2004:3) who states that “ democracy gives legitimacy to the emission of modern life: law, legislation and politics appear valid when all that is ‘democratic’. in reality this is not always the case”. further development of democracy is increasingly needed as a system of administration and state around the world. according to kelsen (1955: 1), “it is basically a democratic government by the people and for the people”. a society is in a democratic order that have interactions when all members of the society are always oriented to increase human dignity. this is in line with the natural human tendency which always requires equality, freedom, and independence from any form of coercive force. at the community level, the relationship between individual members of the community and among various organizations should be guided by the spirit of equality and togetherness without discrimination against socioeconomic status, national origin, primordial ties, and any reason. all it should take place within a legal order to realize the rules of law and justice in society. meanwhile at the level of the relationship between state and society, there should be a balance that allows people to have bargaining power in order to be able to limit and control those who are in charge of public authority. general elections in almost all countries in the world adopt two models, namely, the multi member constituency (electoral district has a lot of representatives or proportional representation system or a proportional system and the single member constituency (one of the representatives of the constituency/district system). kristiadi (1995) further elaborated that the electoral system means more comprehensive than the general elections do. it has the following scope. firstly, it is related to the electoral laws and the election system (electoral system). election laws contain normative values regarding how to divide power into institutions in accordance with the proportional representation of political support, as refl ected in the election results. secondly, the process of election (electoral system) is a mechanism that involves the management of elections, candidate registration, voter registration, campaign procedures, vote counting, and others. direct local elections decentralization and regional autonomy are two concepts that are often used interchangeably to mean more or less the same in practical sense. but in theoretical discourse, both are distinguished for analytical purposes. the concept of decentralization is very often discussed in the context of the implementation of the state as one of the principles of government. in the state administration system that adheres to the principle of vertical dispersal of power, decentralization of authority requires local governments to subordinate in the form of submission. the application of this principle has resulted in a regional governance model that calls for autonomy in its implementation. in this system, central government shares the power with local governments. in particular, rondinelli (1990) elaborated decentralization into four subconcepts: (1) deconcentration, (2) delegation , (3) devolution , and (4) bureaucratization or privatization (a variant of the nongovernment institutions). that is the concept of decentralization that can be used in all four of these meanings: in the sense of administration (deconcentration) , in the political sense (devolution) or in the form of delegation of certain powers and functions including the transfer of function to the private sector (privatization) and a reduction in the function and role of bureaucracy at central and provincial levels . the quality of direct local elections is a variable of this study and ndraha (2005: 85) contended that “it consists of understanding, acceptance, trust, responsibility, and hope”. gamawan fauzi, the contribution of direct elections for local leaders to the corruption in indonesia 107 this variable is considered appropriate to look at the quality of services provided by the government, and simultaneously distinguishes between the nature of government services and private sector services. the government services are money consuming and not profi table in terms of fi nancing (not income generating). meanwhile, trust is the expectation that people will show in the form of a reasonable behavior, honesty and cooperation from other community members, based on the common values that normally apply. 3. promise accountability 5. responsibility 1. option 4. social control govern government 2. free suffrage 6.trust figure 1 relationship between the promise and trust source: taliziduhu ndraha (2003: 106) in the context of public services, trust is the public’s expectations of other people who are in the government bureaucracy. to provide services in the village administration, for instance, this expectation is the public’s expectations of government agencies that exist in the village, to get a quality service. direct election process of district government leaders democracy can be defi ned as the involvement of the people in electing their leaders. democracy can also be interpreted as placing power in the hands of the people. however, giving a large portion of the power is risky. ihsan (2009 : 66 ) said that “the power contains various consequences so that it should be decided by the people through the medium of democratization in the form of elections of the president, vice president or heads of the local government”. meanwhile logeman (pide, 1999) argued that political decentralization is considered to improve and strengthen the accountability, capability, and responsibility in the local community as well as the growth and development of democracy in government with the political participation of the people. thus, decentralization is essentially a vehicle for the creation of community participation and the formation of political leadership, both at local and national levels. at the local level, the community can participate in political planning decision making. people participate in state government by using a particular channel, namely legislative branches by considering administrative boundaries that have been set. corruption among local government leaders corruption in indonesia has been existing for a very long time or since the royal periods. it is regarded as an extraordinary crime. fuady (2004: 22) classifi ed it as a type of white collar crime or tie crime. in contrast to conventional crimes involving street perpetrators (street crime, blue collar crime, blue jeans crime), white collar criminals are people who are respected community members and are usually highly educated. andreae (hamzah, 2005: 4) explained that the word corruption is etymologically derived from the latin word “corruptio or corruptus”, and previously derived from an older latin word, corrumpere. from the latin, it came to many european languages, such as corruption, corrupt (british english); corruption (french); corruptie (dutch). and the dutch inherited it to indonesian language, korupsi. international journal of education, vol. 7 no. 2 may 2014 108 corruption can take the form of individual and collective practices. corruption is understood as any of the payment of bribes/ kickbacks to service personnel (civil servant) and simple theft of public funds, the economy expanded at a suspicious and practical politics in the business community, politicians, and the bureaucracy for the sake of their material enrichment or greed. in many cases, criminal acts that can be categorized into corruption are: (a) bribery or kickbacks, gratuities, baksheesh, sweeteners, pay off, speed and grease money; (b) embezzlement is the theft of public resources by public offi cials, other forms of misappropriation of public funds; (c) fraud or deception that includes economic dishonesty; (d) extortion or blackmail money or other resource extraction by force, or the threat of violence; and (e) favoritism that abuses power abuse as consequences of the privatization of the resource distribution and evil deviation. the term corruption is often also applied to offi cials who commit the embezzlement of public funds, where they mismanage public funds for personal interests. in addition, according to alatas (1986), they assign their relatives, friends of government offi cials regardless of their skills and abilities in certain positions and this practice has negative effect on the welfare of the community. generally, this is nepotism. alatas (1986:12) maintained that there are three types of phenomena covered in terms of corruption: bribery, racketeering (extortion) and nepotism. while danil (2011:15) stated that there are four main types of corruption: bribery, extortion, embezzlement and nepotism. therefore, a country’s criminal law on corruption which does not cover the case in terms of those four practices can be considered incomplete and imperfect, so it should be amended. furthermore, pope (2007: 6) said that “corruption is the abuse of power for personal gain”. the term is still completely taboo in the professional and political environment. results and discussion direct local elections have been an effort to strengthen local systems and to strengthen local autonomy as a democratic process in order to: (1) reduce the arrogance of local parliament through the claims as the sole representation of the institution, because the direct elections of regional government heads will be positioned well as a representation of the local community; (2) limit the political infl uence of the confi guration of the head of the regional parliament, because the public accountability of the head region is not only determined by the council, but also by the local community; (3) ensure the creation of more local government legitimacy, so that local governments become more effective; and (4) reduce the practice of money politics in the election process and the process of reporting accountability by regional government heads (ramses, 2003). in the implementation of direct local elections, there are the following stages. 1. preparatory stage, which includes (a) notice to the council and the regional offi ce of the electoral commission regarding the expiration of the local government leader’s tenure; (b) planning of the election implementation, which include establishing procedures and schedule of elections; (c) establishment of supervisory committee, sub-district electoral committee (ppk), polling committee (pps), and head of polling station/committee (kpps); and (d) the notifi cation and registration of observers. 2. implementation stage, which includes (a) fi nal decision on voters’ list , which includes : transfer of p4b, updated voter’s list, announcement of temporary voters’ list, the announcement of the fi nal voters list; (b) the nomination, which includes: the proposed political party/coalition of political parties that gained 15 per cent parliamentary seats of total votes, the candidate pairs proposed by political parties, political parties nomination / enrolment, enrolment period of seven days gamawan fauzi, the contribution of direct elections for local leaders to the corruption in indonesia 109 from the published examination by the late seven days, the completion of candidate document in seven days, seven of days repeated examination, announcement of legitimate candidate pairs no longer than seven days after completion of the examination and, drawing of candidate’s electoral numbers (one day); (c) procurement and distribution of logistics, which includes: checking the voting booth damages and procurement of new voting booths, procurement of ballot boxes and the checks on damages, ink, piercing tools, pads, stationery, fi lm template reproduction, ballots printing, certifi cates, forms printing, and distribution of logistics; (d) campaign for 14 days; d) cooling off period for three days; (e) voting day; (f) the vote counting ; (g) announcement of winning candidate pairs who obtain the most votes ; and (h) the organization of the second round. 3. endorsement and inauguration stage, which includes more detailed arrangements. in this stage, ministry of home affairs, electoral commission, and other government bodies are required to make technical policies and apply further regulations. considering the conceptual understanding of the empirical government conditions, the corruptors can be seen as selfi sh, aggressive and greedy as they try to get what they want. aside from the nature of human being, the corruption in indonesia is consistent and fi rm regardless to prevailing value system and norms. in fact, there is a confl ict of interest between individual and public interests, and individual freedom wants to obtain something, while limiting the government’s interests and desires of the individuals. conclusions based on the research results, effects of direct elections for local leaders can be summarized as follows. firstly, the quality of direct local elections has had a signifi cant and meaningful effect on corruption committed by the heads of provincial, district and city government. thus, the better quality of the local elections will directly lower the corruption rate in an area. on the contrary, the poor quality of direct local elections will result in a higher corruption rate. robust quality of local elections is directly supported by the commission’s sensitivity to public complaints and expectations, good quality services provided for the community, public trust in the electoral commission, the commission responsibility, and community expectation of well organized direct elections. secondly, the process of direct local elections has had a signifi cant and meaningful effect on corruption by the local government leaders. thus, the better local election process will immediately lower the corruption rate among the heads of the local government. on the contrary, the worse process of direct local election will negatively contribute to higher corruption rate. the strength of the local election process is directly supported by direct election preparations, as well as the ratifi cation of electoral results, and the inauguration of elect local government leaders. finally, the process and quality of direct local elections has jointly demonstrated a meaningful and signifi cant impact on the corruption by local leaders. thus, the better quality and process will immediately lower the corruption rate. in contrast, the lower quality and process will contribute to a higher corruption rate. partially, the infl uence of the local election process is more powerful than the quality of direct local elections, since direct local election process requires the government to spend a vast amount of funding on the preparation, implementation, validation and the inauguration of the elect local government leaders. recommendations based on the research fi ndings, academic and practical recommendations are presented. academically, research on the effects of international journal of education, vol. 7 no. 2 may 2014 110 direct local elections on corruption rate has been rarely done. it is therefore necessary to conduct similar studies to develop a model of direct local elections. this study only involved 85 areas that have organized direct local elections. a further study should be expanded to more sample areas in order to collect more data that can complete the current research fi ndings. in practice, the corruption rate can be reduced by improving the quality and process of the direct local elections. it is recommended that the election process be well organized in the individual stages of preparation, implementation, validation, and inauguration. in this case, process improvement includes: (1) amendment of direct election law, (2) increased scrutiny process, (3) more community participation and involvement. in addition, the corrupt practices by the heads of local government can be prevented at every stage of the direct local elections. the prevention can also be done by changing the direct local elections into the parliamentary elections. finally, another way that can be taken to reduce corruption rate is to create a new model of direct elections for regional leaders in accordance with their respective conditions. for urban areas with high levels of education and well-established economy, local leaders can be elected directly. as for rural areas, with lower educational level and poor economy, local elections are conducted through local parliament. references alatas, s.h. (1986). sosiologi korupsi: sebuah penjelajahan dengan data kontemporer. jakarta: lp3es, lembaga penelitian, pendidikan dan penerangan, ekonomi dan sosial. danil, e. (2011). korupsi: konsep, tindak pidana, dan pemberantasannya. jakarta: rajawali press. effendy, k. (2010). “memadukan metode kuantitatif – kualitatif”. bandung : indra prahasta. fuady, m. (2004). bisnis kotor: anatomi kejahatan kerah putih. jakarta: citra aditya bakti. held, d. (1995). “democarcy and the global order, from the modern state to cosmopolitan governance. polity press. hamzah, a. (2005). pemberantasan korupsi: hukum pidana nasional dan internasional. jakarta: raja grafi ndo persada. ihsan, b. (2009). etika dan logika berpolitik. wacana kritis atas etika politik, kekuasaan, dan demokrasi. bandung: rosda. kelsen, h. (1955). foundations of democracy. ethics : an international journal of social, political, and legal philosophy volume 66, issue 1, part 2. chicago: university of chicago press. kristiadi, j. (1995). sistem pemilihan umum dan representasi politik. bandoro, b. (ed). refl eksi setengah abad kemerdekaan indonesia. jakarta: csis. ndraha, t. (2003). kybernology (ilmu pemerintahan baru) jilid 2. jakarta : pt. rineka cipta. pide, a.m. (1999). otonomi daerah dan kepala daerah. memasuki abad xxi. jakarta: gaya media pratama. pope, j. (2007). confronting corruption: the elements of a national integrity system. germany: transparency international. ramses, a. (2003). pemilihan kepala daerah secara langsung dan perlunya revisi terbatas undang-undang nomor 22 tahun 1999; dalam jurnal ilmu pemerintahan. edisi 19 tahun 2003, mipi, jakarta. dwipayana. rondinelli, d.a. (1990). decentralizing urban development programs: a framework for analyzing policy. washington dc: offi ce of housing and urban programs of the us agency for international development. international journal of education vol. 10 no. 1, august 2017, pp. 67-72 ©2017 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v10i1.8080 67 the effect of learning with abductive-deductive strategy on high school students’ reasoning ability ali shodikin mathematics education, indonesia university of education aliandr4@gmail.com first draft received: 24 july 2016 final proof received: 20 august 2017 abstract the purpose of this research is to investigate the effect of learning with abductive-deductive strategy on the achievement of mathematical reasoning abilities of high school students. it employed the experimental pretest-posttest with non-randomized control group design to the eleventh grade students of one high school in pati, central java, indonesia. data were collected in the form of early mathematical ability categories (ema) and overall. the results showed that the achievement of mathematical reasoning abilities that students acquire through learning with abductive-deductive strategy was better than that of the students who received were taught with expository learning. in more detail, only students in the medium category of ema showed better achievement in mathematical reasoning abilities. meanwhile, students of the upper and lower categories had the same achievements in their reasoning abilities. based on the findings of the research, it is expected that teachers can encourage students to apply abduction and deduction strategy in order to achieve in mathematical reasoning abilities. keywords: abductive-deductive strategy; mathematical reasoning, early mathematical ability. to cite this paper (in apa style): shodikin, a. (2017). the effect of learning with abductive-deductive strategy on high school students’ reasoning ability. international journal of education, 10(1), 67-72. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v10i1.8080 introduction mathematical reasoning ability is the main characteristic that cannot be separated from the activities of studying and developing or solving mathematical problems (ansjar & sembiring, 2000). in fact, the implementation of learning that emphasizes the existence of reasoning is very recommended (nctm, 2000). however, many studies show that the reasoning ability of students in indonesia is still low (rahayu, 2013). although reasoning ability is needed in mastering and solving mathematical problems (wahyudin, 1999), this ability is often overlooked in learning (nizar, 2007). therefore, in learning mathematics, mathematical reasoning ability should be given special attention. reports of the results of other studies support the arguments. reasoning ability is a part of higher order mathematical thinking abilities (sumarmo, 2013). however, studies conducted by henningsen & stein (1997), mullis et al. (2000), suryadi (2005), and murni (2013) show that learning mathematics is generally not focused on developing higher order mathematical thinking abilities. students more frequently solve problems from the textbook and get less non-routine problems that can train these higher order mathematical thinking abilities. thus, efforts to develop mathematics learning oriented to the development of higher order thinking abilities are needed. based on a preliminary analysis of reasoning ability, it is necessary to develop a learning that can improve the understanding of essential concepts. the general framework in solving a problem in mathematics is the ability to identify the given facts (data) and formulate what is asked in the problem (final target). determining the final target is based on data provided, and it is necessary to elaborate the ability to apply the essential concepts that are relevant with the given data to obtain intermediate target before finding the answer to the final target. not a few problems in mathematics can be more easily solved by adding a condition (intermediate target) that is based on a relevant concept to arrive at the final target in question. the general framework as described above has been developed in the research of kusnandi (2008) on learning with abductive-deductive strategy (psad). abductive is a mathematical thinking skill (reasoning) that cannot fully answer a problem, but it is a process of offering a reason as the basis for a specific action (aliseda, 2007). this general framework was originally developed to develop the proving ability of students who just begin learning about proof. the results showed that students who learn with abductive-deductive strategy have better proving ability than students who learn with conventional learning. possible application of this strategy has been reviewed as well by sun et al. mailto:aliandr4@gmail.com shodikin, a. the effect of learning with abductive-deductive strategy on high school students’ reasoning ability 68 (2005) for the problem of reasoning and problem solving ability. the possibility of applying this framework to the wide range of problems (mathematical literacy) for students in secondary schools has also been studied theoretically (shodikin, 2013), but not at the practical level. herein, the present study attempts to find out whether abductivedeductive strategy has effects on high school students’ reasoning ability. based on the notion of learning with abductive-deductive strategy, in this study a more operational learning syntax of abductive-deductive strategy is developed as shown in figure 1. figure 1. schematic of learning with abductive-deductive strategy the stages of learning with abductive-deductive strategy above are described in more detail in table 1. table 1. the syntax of learning with abductive-deductive strategy phase teacher behavior phase 1 orientation of problem • teacher discusses the problem of learning objectives • teachers describe various important logistics needs • teachers motivate students to be directly involved in learning activities • teachers provide apperception phase 2 organization of learning • teachers help students to define and organize the tasks of learning and information related to the problem phase 3 analysis and process evaluation • analyze and evaluate the teacher directs students to find their own solutions from information already possessed by students • teachers encourage students to do transactive reasoning as to criticize, explain, clarify, justify and elaborate a proposed idea, either initiated by students and teachers • teachers assist students in planning and preparing materials for presentations and discussion • teachers help students to reflect on the investigation process and other processes used in solving problems phase 4 generalization of the findings • teachers help generalize the findings obtained phase 5 discussion of strategies to more problems • teachers assist students in finding more strategies for the problems • teachers provide training and evaluation to be involved in transactive discussion, students’ early mathematics ability (ema) plays a very important role, by which the idea that appears to develop gradually so as to build a comprehensive mathematical concept of information is obtained. students’ ema are divided into three categories: upper, middle, and lower levels. this grouping is used to see if there is mutual effect between the learning done and students’ early mathematics ability and reasoning abilities. besides that, the effects of learning in each category of early mathematical ability can be explained. based on the background and formulation of the problem described above, this study aims to investigate the effect of learning with abductivedeductive strategy on the achievement of high school students’ mathematical reasoning abilities. methodology the method applied in this study was the experimental with pretest-posttest with nonrandomized control group design. with this design, subjects initially performed pretest, and then treated with a form of learning with abductive-deductive strategy and subsequently performed post-test to orientation of problem organize learning generalize the findings discussion of strategies to more problems analyze and evaluate process key process d e d u c ti v e p r o c e ss a b d u c ti v e p r o c e ss international journal of education vol. 10 no. 1, august 2017, pp. 67-72 ©2017 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v10i1.8080 69 measure their mathematical reasoning abilities in the topic of polynomial. this design was chosen according to the purpose of the research, namely to show the effect of the application of learning with abductive-deductive strategy on the achievement of students’ mathematical reasoning ability. the research design is presented in figure 2. experimental class o x1 o pretest treatment posttest control class o x o pretest expository posttest figure 2. research design the study was conducted at one high school in pati, central java, indonesia, in the academic year of 2013/2014. the samples consisted of two classes that have the same early mathematical abilities out of the eight classes available with purposive sampling, each totaling to 34 students. the grouping of students by the category early mathematical ability was done based on the average scores of two daily tests: mid semester test and end-of-semester test. the weights of these values were 20%, 30%, and 50 %, respectively. findings the selection of the class used as the research sample, in addition to being based on early mathematical abilities was also based on the initial reasoning abilities shown by the pretest scores, both overall and by ema category. the findings revealed that the students who learned with abductive-deductive strategy and those with expository method showed no differences in early mathematical ability and reasoning ability, both as a whole and by category of ema (upper, middle, lower). the achievement of mathematical reasoning ability was determined based on the posttest scores. details of the achievement are provided in figure 3. figure 3. achievement score bar chart reasoning ability figure 3 shows that the students who learned with abductive-deductive strategy (experimental class) had the overall average score of achievement of mathematical reasoning abilities greater than the students who received the expository learning (control class). judging from ema category, the students with upper level ema had the greatest average score of achievement of mathematical reasoning ability. to find out which students achieved better reasoning ability, mean difference test was conducted. before the mean difference test was carried out, the normality test and homogeneity tests were undertaken. then, t-test was used for normally distributed and homogeneous data, while for non-normally distributed data mann-whitney u non-parametric test was employed. the results of mean difference test are presented in table 3. table 3 test results mean difference of post-test scores in mathematical reasoning ability ema comparison of average (e:c) t mannwhitney u sig. (2 tailed) sig. (1 tailed) ho upper 30.00 : 30.00 0.000 1.000 0.500 accepted middle 25.81 : 15.88 130.5 0.006 0.003 rejected lower 13.67 : 12.83 0.166 0.871 0.435 accepted overall 24.53 : 17.00 304.5 0.001 0.000 rejected 30 30 25.81 15.88 13.67 12.83 24.53 17 experimental control upper middle under overall shodikin, a. the effect of learning with abductive-deductive strategy on high school students’ reasoning ability 70 ho: the average achievement of reasoning ability of the experimental class was lower or equal to that of the control class in terms of ema (upper, middle, lower) as well as overall. table 3 shows that the mathematical reasoning ability of the students who learned with abductive-deductive strategy (experimental class) was better than that of the students who used expository learning (control class). seen more detail in terms of ema categories, only the mathematical reasoning ability of students whose ema at the middle category and learning with abductive-deductive strategy that was better than that of the students used expository learning. however, for students of the upper and lower categories of ema who learned with abductive-deductive strategy (experimental class), the achievement of mathematical reasoning ability was lower or equal to that of the students who employed expository learning (control class). based on the average achievement, the experimental class students in the upper and lower categories of ema gained an average score that was greater than the average score of the control class. hence, it can be concluded that the achievement of mathematical reasoning ability of the students learning with abductivedeductive strategy (experimental class) was equal to that of the students who used the expository learning (control class). discussion specifically, the indicators of mathematical reasoning ability in this research are focused on three skills, namely: (1) making logical conclusions; (2) estimating answers and solution processes; and (3) using patterns and relationships to analyze mathematical situations. it has been shown that the students who learned with abductive-deductive strategy and expository learning had no difference in their early mathematical ability, both as a whole and in terms of each category of early mathematical ability/ema (upper, middle, lower). this finding is understandable because both classes were not subjected to different learning methods. the achievement of mathematical reasoning ability of the students learning with abductivedeductive strategy was better than that of the students who used expository learning. these results are consistent with the hypothesis proposed previously and showed that indeed the phases of learning with abductive-deductive strategy support and facilitate the improvement of students’ reasoning ability. the results are also in line with those of mayadiana’s (2011) which show that students who learned with mathematical process thinking had reasoning ability (inductive and deductive) better than that of the students taught with conventional learning. although the research was conducted to students with different levels of early mathematical ability and using inductive approach, the similarity to learning with abductive-deductive strategy lies in the emphasis on mathematical thinking process. the average achievement score (post-test) on the reasoning ability of students learning with abductive-deductive strategy was 24.53 of the ideal 40. from this finding, it can be concluded that the reasoning ability of the students learning with abductive-deductive is still less than optimal. the reason for this is related to adjustments in thought that are relatively difficult for students. in fact, thinking hard is vital in constructing knowledge in the view of constructivism-based learning (ormrod, 2008). another reason is the test used in this study was relatively difficult. it was revealed during the interviews that the test items in this study were more difficult than the normal questions given by the teacher prior to the study. the test results also indicate that the questions used were in the “most difficult” category. it is clear then that higher order mathematical thinking ability (reasoning) is not easy to achieve. however, it is undeniable that the students learning with abductive-deductive strategy demonstrate better achievement than the students taught with expository learning. this finding indicates that if abductivedeductive strategy is consistently applied, it is possible to increase students’ reasoning ability optimally. reviewed in more detail by categories of ema, only students in the middle category show learning with abductive-deductive strategy had better achievement of mathematical reasoning ability than students who were taught with expository learning. meanwhile, experimental class students in the upper and lower ema categories had the same achievement same ability. this suggests that learning with abductive-deductive strategy has facilitated students with middle category of ema to improve mathematical reasoning ability. on the other hand, the students with upper category of ema had similar results in their reasoning ability, possibly because the students have great motivation and are able to accept the learning materials, so despite the lack of supporting learning method they were still able to obtain good results. the fact that the increase in the reasoning ability of the students learning with abductive-deductive strategy was not greater than that of the students with expository learning does not mean that the former students did not improve or facilitated, but with both of learning strategies have increased the students’ ability. similarly, the students with lower category of ema did not optimally improve their reasoning ability through learning with abductive-deductive strategy and expository learning because the students with have low motivation. based on these arguments, in general learning with abductive-deductive strategy has been able to facilitate the achievement of better reasoning ability. the following arguments reinforce the notion that learning with abductive-deductive strategy has been able to facilitate the achievement of mathematical reasoning ability of students better than expository learning. for indicator (1), making logical conclusions, learning with abductive-deductive strategy facilitates the phase of generalizing the findings obtained. learning activities encourage students to generalize the findings obtained from the problems or the data. the activities also familiarize and help students in understanding the problems or data so as to be able to make conclusions from a logical statement. this international journal of education vol. 10 no. 1, august 2017, pp. 67-72 ©2017 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v10i1.8080 71 argument is in accordance with the opinion of vygotsky (john & thornton, 1993) who said that the process of improving the understanding and reasoning of students occurs as a result of learning. in other words, the phase of generalizing the findings obtained in learning with abductive-deductive strategy has been able to facilitate the indicator of making logical conclusions. meanwhile, in expository learning, students have fewer opportunities to do such activities. the second indicator of estimating answers and solutions in learning with abductive-deductive strategy greatly facilitates the analysis and evaluation phase. in this phase, the teacher first directs students to find their own solutions of the information that has been gained by the students. the teacher then encourages students to do transactive reasoning as to criticize, explain, clarify, justify and elaborate a proposed idea, either initiated by the students or teacher. next, the teacher assists students in planning and preparing materials for presentations and discussions. the teacher then helps students to reflect on the investigation process and other processes used in solving the problem to give students the ability to estimate answers and solution. compared to expository learning, in which the teacher presents the material through lecture or reading materials from a textbook or instructional material, students cannot optimally develop the ability to estimate answers and solution processes. this is supported by the learning theories expressed by piaget, where knowledge is not passively received. mathematical knowledge is constructed by the children themselves; should not be given. students should become active seekers and processors of information, not a passive recipient (schunk, 1986; davis & murrell, 1994). in other words, students are given the opportunity to learn independently and connect the concepts that have been previously obtained and become involved in meaningful learning. the opportunity to explain ideas is also one of the factors supporting the increase in students’ reasoning ability (baig & halai, 2006). this is the advantage of learning with abductive-deductive strategy compared to expository learning. the third indicator of using patterns and relationships to analyze mathematical situations in learning with abductive-deductive strategy facilitates in discussion of strategies to be applied to more problems. students’ activities in finding strategies to the problems require students to see patterns and relationships between a problem and another problem. students will construct new mathematical knowledge through reflection on actions undertaken both physically and mentally. they make observations to find patterns and relationships, and form generalizations and abstractions (dienes, 1969). the investigation of the objects, comparison and analysis of the similarity or non-similarity (pattern) will enhance students’ reasoning ability (christon & papageorgion, 2006). therefore, this phase is very helpful in familiarizing students to use patterns and relationships to analyze mathematical situations. the more advantages that learning with abductive-deductive strategy have than expository learning in facilitating the development of students’ mathematical reasoning ability as described above reinforce that learning with abductive-deductive strategy is better than expository learning in the achievement and improvement of students’ reasoning abilities. conclusion based on the research findings and discussion, it can be concluded that the in general the achievements of mathematical reasoning ability of the students learning with abductive-deductive strategy was better than those with expository learning. in terms of ema category, only students in the middle category showed better achievements of mathematical reasoning ability. meanwhile, students in the upper and lower categories demonstrated similar achievements of mathematical reasoning ability. teachers are recommended to use learning with abductive-deductive strategy with learning materials that possess abductive-deductive characteristics to improve mathematical reasoning ability. further research needs to be done for the development of learning with abductive-deductive strategy for other materials in accordance with the characteristics of abductive-deductive strategy, such linear program, logarithmic, and trigonometric. the research should also be extended to the level vocational schools and junior high schools. research on the improvement of other mathematical abilities using learning with abductive-deductive strategy can also be done. for comparison, it is also necessary to do research on the comparison of the strategy to the inductive, deductive, inductive-deductive or other strategies. references aliseda, a. (2007). abductive reasoning: challenges ahead. theoria, 60, 261-270. ansjar, m., & sembiring. (2000). hakikat pembelajaran mipa dan kiat pembelajaran matematika di perguruan tinggi. jakarta: directorate general of higher education department. baig, s. & halai, a. (2006). learning mathematical rules with reasoning. eurasia journal of mathematics, science and technology education, 2, 15-39. chiston, c. & papageorgiau, e. (2006). a framework of mathematics inductive reasoning. journal learning and instruction. cyprus. elsevier, ltd. 17. dienes, z.p. (1969). mathematics in the primary school. london: macmillan and co ltd. davis, t. m. & murrell, p. (1994). turning teaching into learning: the role of student responsibility in the collegiate experience. (report no.edo-he 93-8). washington, dc: george washington university, school of education and human development. (eric document reproduction service no. ed 372 702). henningsen, m., & stein, m.k. (1997). mathematical tasks and student cognition: classroom-based factors that support and inhibit high-level mathematical thinking and reasoning. journal shodikin, a. the effect of learning with abductive-deductive strategy on high school students’ reasoning ability 72 for research in mathematics education, 28, 524-549. john, g.a., & thornton, c.a. (1993). vygotsky revisited: nurturing young children’s understanding of number. focus on learning problems in mathematics, 15, 18-28. kusnandi (2008). pembelajaran matematika dengan strategi abduktif-deduktif untuk menumbuhkembangkan kemampuan membuktikan pada mahasiswa. (unpublished dissertation). indonesia university of education, bandung. mayadiana, d. (2011). mengembangkan kemampuan penalaran dan pemecahan masalah kreatif matematis mahasiswa calon guru sd melalui pembelajaran dengan pendekatan induktif. (unpublished dissertation). indonesia university of education, bandung. mullis, i., martin, m.o., ruddock, g.j., o’sullivan, c.y., & preuschoff, c. (2000). timms 1999: international mathematics report. boston: the international study boston college. murni, a. (2013). peningkatan kemampuan pemecahan masalah dan representasi matematis siswa smp melalui pembelajaran metakognitif berbasis soft skill. (unpublished dissertation). indonesia university of education, bandung. national council of teachers of mathematics (nctm). (2000). principles and standards for school mathematics. usa: nctm. nizar, a. (2007). kontribusi matematika dalam membangun daya nalar dan komunikasi siswa. jurnal pendidikan inovatif. 2 (2), 74-80. ormrod, e.j. (2008). psikologi pendidikan. jakarta: erlangga. rahayu, s. (2013). kemampuan pemahaman dan penalaran matematis dalam pembelajaran inkuiri terbimbing dengan penguatan elearning berbasis aplikasi moodle. (unpublished thesis). indonesia university of education, bandung. schuck,d.h. (1986). verbalization and children’s selfregulated learning. contemporary education pshycology, 11, 347-369. shodikin, a. (2013). abductive-deductive strategy: how to apply it in improving student mathematics literacy in junior high school?. international seminar on mathematics, science, and computer science education. bandung. october 19, 2013. sumarmo, u. (2013). kumpulan makalah: berpikir dan disposisi matematik serta pembelajarannya. bandung: indonesia university of education. sun, z., finnie, g. & weber, k. (2005). abductive case based reasoning. international journal of intelligent systems. 20(9), 957-983. suryadi, d. (2005). penggunaan pendekatan pembelajaran tidak langsung serta pendekatan gabungan langsung dan tidak langsung dalam rangka meningkatkan kemampuan berpikir matematik tingkat tinggi siswa sltp. (unpublished dissertation). indonesia university of education, bandung. wahyudin. (1999). kemampuan guru matematika, calon guru matematika, dan siswa dalam mata pelajaran matematika. (unpublshed dissertation). ikip bandung. 146 international journal of education, vol. 8 no. 2 may 2015 comprehensive guidance and counseling for gifted children through the application of milgram’s model in acceleration-inclusion setting yuyus suherman yuyus@upi.edu indonesia university of education sunaryo kartadinata sunaryo@upi.edu indonesia university of education syamsu yusuf indonesia university of education zaenal alimin alimin@upi.edu indonesia university of education abstract acceleration program is claimed to be designated for gifted children. however, the implementation of the program is still considered sporadic and exclusive. this study aims at developping a comprehensive guidance and councelling for gifted child using molgram’s model in accelerationinclusion setting. the research question is “ how does the development of a comprehensive guidance and counseling for gifted children through milgram’s model in acceleration-inclusion setting is applicable and affective?. this research applies a mixed method as its design which utilizes research and development as the umbrella. this research applies the mix method in three phases. the first phase, a preliminary study which produces a hypothetic models. finding shows that comprehensive guidance and councelling for gifted children in acceleration-inclusion setting (the model) be constructed based on home, school, community and non-gifted, mildly gifted, moderately gifted, and profoundly gifted profile, general critical thinking, specific creativity talent, general intelligence, specific intellectual ability, and assessing, planning, implementation, evaluation as well as on integrated guidance and councelling context.the second stage is the validation of conceptual and empirically, which generates operating models to test its effectiveness in the third stage. keywords: comprehensive guidance and councelling, gifted child, milgram’s model, acceleration-inclusion, applicable, mix method introduction the comprehensive guidance and counseling has been developed since 1960s. in late 1980s, american counseling association (aca) and the american school counseling association (asca) create new section worked for analyzing and promoting comprehensive guidance and counseling. the idea was still growing until 2000s, where each school is expected to apply comprehensive guidance and counseling. success was introduced in iowa (1998) to mobilize children, family, teacher and society. all aspects participated in assessing needs, analyzing the best choice, developing, performing and evaluating. this process 147 yuyus suherman, comprehensive guidance and counseling for gifted children supports the improvement of education quality for all (unesco,2014). since education for all is not essentially targeted for all aspects, this process became important. to re-enhance the education for all commitment, and as a correction towards the exclusive special education as well as the lack of divergent from general education, a movement towards inclusive education were made. unfortunately, the implementation of this movement in indonesia still lack of expectation. misconceptions, loss contexts, and error in strategy may happen in some occasions: exclusivity of gifted children, for instance. naturally, gifted children belong to general class, but since some schools provide accelerated class, these students are categorized as exclusive. based on preliminary research, the implementation of acceleration class in elementary level is varied. they mostly applied private class method, 20-25 students with 135140 in iq level. some other schools invented innovation. al-mabrur elementary schools, for instance, develop accelerated-inclusive method designed for involving students intensively with service diversification on behalf of faster competence (kartadinata, 2011). al-mabrur elementary schools acceleration-inclusion categorized as unique and attracts many perceptions since acceleration and inclusion itself have different philosophy. both can be combined in order to gain the best needs of children (smith, 2006). in terms of child needs, accelerationinclusion must not be seen as confusion. in contrast, it is considered as the missing link. to be stated as reasonable, understanding the missing link between acceleration and inclusion is important. the acceptance of special education for gifted children is needed, but the implementation of acceleration class is incorrectly done. some argue that joining gifted children with general classes would make them bored. in fact, the learning process is the main problem. when the learning process is poor in quality, any kind of students would be easily bored. thus, the acceleration process should be restarted to the origin form in order to optimize the potential. the characteristic of comprehensive guidance and counseling serving all kind of students is relevant with education dynamics and understanding of cultural background. this is balancing the public service which by padersen (kartadinata, 2010) is called inclusion culture. this culture is brought in service accommodated the development of children from various background and ability. it demands guidance and counseling to facilitate students with divergent service. divergence related with experience preparation for the development of students and context of inclusion education which give new perspective about human and education principal. talking about experience preparation, milgram models have perspective with comprehensive guidance and counseling philosophy. milgram models are conceptual framework organizing giftedness as a benefit for teacher, counselor, and parent. milgram models define giftedness as multidimensional. it is designed to compare variety of giftedness and to emphasize giftedness happened in different level. meanwhile, structure of giftedness models is related with milgram’s definition of giftedness, divided into four types, four levels and two other aspects. four types of giftedness are divided into two different categories: one is related to the intelligence aspects (general intellectual ability and specific intellectual ability) and the other category is related to innovative thinking aspects (general original/creative thinking and specific creative talent). first, general intellectual ability or overall general intelligence refers to abstract thinking ability and problem solving ability. second, specific intellectual ability refers to understandable intellectual ability in certain area, such as mathematics, foreign language, music or science. 148 international journal of education, vol. 8 no. 2 may 2015 third type, the general original/ creative thinking is a problem solving process which creates unusual and high quality solution. creative thinker produces imaginative, clever, elegant and unexpected ideas. creative child is different not only because of the ideas, but also their point of view. they see things differently and think out of the box. they create unique/ imaginative solutions. the last type, specific creative talent refers to the ability of specific creative talent. this original thinking ability is applied to specific range and manifested in original product. besides, the four ability levels are profoundly gifted, moderately gifted, mildly gifted and non-gifted. with these categorizations, the giftedness behavior can be found in mild, moderate, and profound level. these three levels were designed hierarchy. two other aspects are related with learning environment and individual differences. milgram models reflect the comprehension of gifted child needs by mentioning school setting, house, and society which affect and are affected by giftedness. milgram models is getting more interested because it reflects comprehension toward the giftedness as multidimensional phenomenon emphasizing in the different levels of giftedness and the influenced three settings. by this model, different level of gifted child would get different achievement. adjustment and strategy in handling gifted child is different due to the unique profile of each child. thus, developing comprehensive guidance and counseling through milgram models help teacher, counselor, and parent in understanding the need of gifted child. some researches with ccomprehensive guidance and counseling based has given reinforcement. kartadinata papers (19961999) recommended ccomprehensive guidance and counseling as an effective model and improved the quality of guidance and counseling at schools. this models can be apllied in any level of education. it has been presented through seminars, workshops and trainings since 1998. comprehensive guidance and counseling has been implemented in almabrur elementary schools with integrated guidance and counseling terminology. it is executed by form teacher and facilitated by counselor (kartadinata,2011). unfortunately, this model still needs development since it has not been socialized on a national scale. many things can be examined since acceleratin-inclusion setting and how guidance and counseling is applied in almabrur elementary schools is seen as an innovation and towards inclusive education. this research aimed to the development of comprehensive guidance and counseling for gifted child in acceleration-inclusion setting. research problem such as : how is the development of applicable and effective comprehensive guidance and counseling formulation for gifted child through milgram models in acceleration-inclusion setting in elementary level? for getting an answer, the data is explored through research questions: (1) what is the applicable ccomprehensive guidance and counseling operational formulation for gifted child through milgram models in acceleration-inclusion setting in elementary level? (2) how effective is the formulation of comprehensive guidance and counseling through milgram models in acceleration-inclusion setting toward gifted child success for all in al-mabrur elementary schools? method this research uses mixed method research design with research and development approach (creswell, 2010). it is done in three phases referring to borg and gall’s procedure, applied by innovation unit and paul hamlyn foundation through learning future the engaging schools innovation (putra, 2011). first phase, preliminary study, includes literature and acceleration class field study, accelerationinclusion at elementary level. second phase 149 yuyus suherman, comprehensive guidance and counseling for gifted children is model development and validation for revision and development hypothetical model through theoretical conceptual validation as well as empirical contextual which involved experts and practitioners. content validation has been done by qualified guidance and counseling experts using delphi technique. meanwhile, empirical practitioner validation has been done through focus group discussion. revision in hypothetical model is used for the next step. feedbacks are used for the basis in revision to convert hypothetical model as operational model. the third phase is the model application. the implementation and effectiveness of this model is tested through pre-experimental design (one-group pretest-posttest design). the result of the test was used as the basis for revision operational model. extended empirical model test is conducted over all elementary degrees in al-mabrur elementary schools, leading to continual revision as turning the operational model of ccomprehensive guidance and counseling for gifted child applicable and tested in terms of efficiency through milgram models in acceleration-inclusion setting. research subject and setting the present study is conducted in elementary schools which organize accelerated, inclusive, and acceleratedinclusive class in bandung region. the first research subject is schools with inclusive, accelerated and accelerated-inclusive class. second and third research subject is accelerated-inclusive class in al-mabrur elementary schools. data collectiona and research instrument developing. the qualitative data is collected from appropiate data source in order to answer the research question. the researcher serves as the main instrument of the research. according to miles & huberman (1992), qualitative approach employs naturalistic enquiry which places the researcher as the instrument. the data is collected through interview, observation and documentation study. field note format is also utilize in this research. meanwhile, the quantitative data is related to success4 all. results and discussion referring to the steps of developing research and development models, three main activities are conducted: (1) preliminary study, (2) development and validation of hypothetical model, and (3) empirical test of the model and model socialization/ dissemination. findings of the preliminary study three main data were gained from the preliminary study, i.e. a) comprehensive guidance and counseling, b) milgram models, and c) education for gifted children and its practice in the settings of inclusive class, acceleration class, and accelerationinclusion class. comprehensive guidance and counseling is derived from the analysis of iowa’s comprehensive counseling and guidance program development guide (state of iowa department of education, 2001). milgram models is derived from the analysis of counseling gifted and talented children, a guide for teacher, counselors, and parents (milgram,1991). model for gifted children education and its practice is derived from the analysis of handbook of giftedness in children: psycho-educational theory, research & best practices (pfeiffer,2008), accelerating the learning of all students, cultivating culture, change in schools, classrooms, and individuals (finnan, & swanson,2000), handbook of inclusive education for educators, administrators, and planners (ouri & abraham,2004) and pembelajaran akselerasi dalam seting inklusi, model pembelajaran akselerasi sd al-mabrur (kartadinata,2011). the practical information is collected through document analysis, interview, and observation at 150 international journal of education, vol. 8 no. 2 may 2015 inclusion, acceleration, and accelerationinclusion class of an elementary school at bandung region. based on the synthesis of the preliminary study, a hypothetical model design of comprehensive guidance and counseling for gifted children using the milgram model in the acceleration-inclusion setting is formulated to include: foundation, delivery system, management, and accountability. the milgram model provides a diversified nuance by helping teachers, counselors, and parents to understand the needs of gifted children based on their unique profiles. based on the theoretical-conceptualrational validation and empirical-practicalcontextual validation, an important point is found which could assure that the comprehensive guidance and counseling model for gifted children through the milgram models in the acceleration-inclusion setting is applicable. based on the validation from three experts with doctorate qualifications in guidance and counseling, there are two dimensions that needed to be considered; the structure and content of the model. those two components are deemed sufficient and operational to be restrictively tested. based on the empirical-practical-contextual test conducted by the counselor practitioners, the following operational model is constructed: assessing success4 all conceptual model vision: to build high quality school climate for the success success4 all, through partnership among school, home, and community. mission: to facilitate all children in mastering academic, personal-social, and job competencies based on normative standard of life and on religious values, including (1) implementation of education that develops the potentials of multiple intelligence, scientific perceptions, piousness and religious values, and that promotes a culture of tolerance, democracy, and awareness, towards a whole, competitive, and high quality education. (2) development and organization of accelerated learning which is relevant with the inclusive principles, supported by a professional education service system and management. (3) preparing all children to be productive citizens by ensuring that all children are equipped with the competencies to be successful, along with parents and society. (4) research and development to increase the internal quality of school and education development. figure. 01. comprehensive guidance and counseling for gifted children through the milgram model in the accelerated-inclusive setting (adapted from: milgram, (1991), state of iowa department of education (2001)) 151 yuyus suherman, comprehensive guidance and counseling for gifted children beliefs & goal parameters comprehensive guidance and counseling is built on the foundation of belief that gifted children was able to participate in this program. it is designed to ensure that all children could benefit from it. it is consistent with the idea of counselor as the leader in success4 all, by promoting effective learning, through the partnership of school, home, and community in an inclusive culture. the inclusive culture is realized in form of experiences for all children with the diversified program. milgram model is believed to provide a relevant perspective, both from the philosophy of comprehensive guidance and counseling and from the inclusive culture. the milgram model is a conceptual framework to organize talents and gifts into four categories, four levels, and two other aspects. the four categories included the two categories related with the intelligence aspects and the two categories related with the original thinking aspects. the four levels of gifts included profoundly gifted, moderately gifted, mildly gifted and non-gifted. the other two aspects related with the learning environment and individual differences. acceleration-inclusion is believed as the perfect setting for guidance and counseling. acceleration-inclusion is an innovation,as a missing link in the perspective towards inclusive education. the inclusion philosophy is in fact underlying the concept of inclusive education. in the context of inclusive education, acceleration is a must, because it is essentially the satisfaction of needs of gifted children, and a form of diversified program. the challenge is how to enable students to study higher, with varied materials. the inclusion setting provides valuable experience for the children to live in an inclusive society. comprehensive guidance and counseling is meant to serve and provide direction in developing an effective guidance and counseling program. goal parameter describes what children should know and do, as a result of their involvement in the comprehensive guidance and counseling program. comprehensive guidance and counseling is conducted individually and in groups. this is based on the rationale that the group target is essentially the same, the individual as part of the group. comprehensive guidance and counseling uses the group situation as a media that allows the individual to actively participate and share experience, which are necessary to prevent problems. indicators of quality the national standard provides structure for implementing goals related with the competencies of students, especially at the level of elementary school. its goal is an extension of the vision and missions, focusing on the result the students will get when they finish school. the service part on the national standard of indonesia association of guidance and counseling (abkin) serves as the goal of school’s guidance and counseling program, which are the development of academic, career, personal and social aspects of children. in the context of al-mabrur elementary schools, it means the success of achieving optimal academic achievement and the success of behavior/potentials (non-academic success). planning the process involves planning of the program, building foundation, designing the delivery system, implementing the program, and developing the program based on the result of evaluation. children and parents should believe in the continuity of the program, regardless of the changes in staffs, levels, or administrators. gifted children learn in a quicker pace than other children and cannot be expected to wait for the others to catch up to them. children might have great benefit from accelerated program. the key is ensuring the most suitable placement. gifted 152 international journal of education, vol. 8 no. 2 may 2015 children are able to pass through a part of the curriculum faster than other children. they do this individually or in a small group. gifted children move through the curriculum in a quicker pace and with deeper, more complex, and more abstract content than the regular level students. facilitating this will need preassessment, curriculum differentiation, and consistent on-going assessment. implementation in staff development, the classroom teacher is engaged in the development of professional educators for gifted children. the training suitable for high-ability/highpotential children, which is strategy and curriculum modification, will benefit all children in the class. the development topic includes: (1) program development: conducting need assessment, writing up philosophy, designing identification process, selecting services, and building an action plan; (2) identification of characteristics and needs: gifted children characteristics, identification of gifted children and their social and emotional needs; (3) instructional strategies: content, process, product. in the context of al-mabrur, it is conducted through teachers meeting and various seminary activities and workshops, both internal and external. in support and technical assistance, it is to provide curricular experiences for children. there must be a continuity of the program for children. the support and technical services include: (a) administration/school board, colleague to colleague, teacher to others. the strategies of bibliotherapy, biography, and journal writing might be conducted with double aims. these strategies can be used as a means to measure the curriculum of gifted children program, and they can also, structurally, provide context for gifted children to discuss their emotions, thoughts, and ideas. teacher provides helps so the children focus on open activities, and encourage students not to take safe (not taking unnecessary risk) approach. teacher can encourage children to accept the reality of most situations in life which do not have one correct answer. this standard will be used by gifted children to rate themselves and others in their journey to success4 all. the next step is to develop a beneficial relationship and develop friendship. teacher designs lesson units that focus on several key topics. the use of computer needs to be maximized in the guidance and counseling process. children are under heavy influence of parents’ expectations. thus, the school needs to cooperate with parents to identify every special gift/talent a child has. this process requires a personal meeting between the school and parents. the parents of a gifted child have a lot of information regarding the child. this information might help in finding certain things about the gifted child. teachers, parents, and counselors need to be partners in guiding the development of gifted children. they may work as a team collaborating to help gifted children to realize their potentials. this synergy is related with each party’s ability to be open in receiving experiences, sensitivity, intensity, gift/talent and ideas from the others. this synergy is related with the situation in which the combined effect of several components is more influential than the effect of each component. by meeting parents individually, or in groups, the counselor can serve as a catalyst in bringing about the synergy. meeting with parents is a formal meeting between teachers or counselor with parents of gifted children. the goal of this meeting is to share information useful for every effort to help gifted children in realizing their gift optimally. in such meeting, parents and teacher or counselor may share information concerning the child’s gifts/talents, interests, and needs. the important decisions that will affect the gifted child’s life are made at two places, at home and at school. the exchange of information in this meeting can result in a wiser decision. 153 yuyus suherman, comprehensive guidance and counseling for gifted children evaluation evaluation produces a written document that can be accessed by teachers, administrators, school board members, parents, or anyone interested in the program. the necessary changes should be made and then evaluated in the next cycle. reevaluating identified students is necessary to decide whether or not further placement in this program is appropriate. equivalence assessment aims to provide the most suitable placement in education. it is integrated to the entire school curriculum to bring a higher quality for the entire program. program audit will provide evidence concerning the accordance of the school program to the national model of school guidance and counseling program provided by the abkin. the main goal of information gathering is to serve as manual for following up the program and to realize the expected results for future students. both parent and children have to be sure that there will be continuous program disregarding the changes of staff, level or administrator. gifted children learn much faster than the other children and are not expected to wait for the other (rogers, 2002a s stated in milgram,1991). children can take great advantages from subject acceleration. the key is appropriate placement of classes and curriculum. three main components for delivery system are learning management, learning process and curriculum modification. parents and society is a valuable aspect in the concept of success4 all. they build relationship and share with other parents at school. in finding mentor for gifted child, they can make use of the parents networking. parent resource and society will be useful for children who conduct independent study. parents can provide a reference library about gifted children. each parent may contribute by submitting books or copied journals for the other parents and teachers. parents’ contribution in the education for gifted children can be a positive significant strength (dettman & colangelo, 1980 as stated in milgram,1991). for specific purposes, parents and society role have not been optimally organized. al-mabrur elementary schools has variety of parents and society resources to support success4 all concept. the variation of social-economic and education background can contribute to the main objective. there are some occasions where parents, teacher and counselor can share experiences: the beginning of school year, mid-year and end-year progress report presentation, extracurricular activity, religious ceremony, and the 5th year graduation. renzuli (milgram,1991) stated that although the children were not identified as gifted earlier, the behavior may appear in the late stages: teenager and adult. the schools, families and societies can contribute to the actualization of giftedness through effective guiding, counseling, and education pattern. the giftedness can be identified not only from the outstanding academic intellectual, but also from creative thinking, leadership, musical art, visual art, etc. gifted children are defined based on the giftedness philosophy and concept. the concept is related to who the gifted children are, what the special needs are, and how the needs can be fulfilled. the philosophy and the concept of giftedness will influence the education system including guidance and counseling development of gifted children. the schools are responsible to provide education which relevant to fulfill the needs of all children and to develop their competence. in comprehensive guidance and counseling program for gifted children, they can be accommodated to create ideas through divergent and convergent reasoning combination. therefore, comprehensive guidance and counseling program for gifted child should include complete individual and development through individual and group activity. the schools have to conduct comprehensive program to identify gifted 154 international journal of education, vol. 8 no. 2 may 2015 children in every degree. generally, five to ten percent of the schools’ population is identified as gifted/high-ability/high potential students. it is identified from their advance and different way of learning. counselors’ main role is to organize and conduct schools’ counseling program through effective and well-organize learning process for group activity. the counselors design individual planning component through education development and carrier plan. the counselors provide responsive service through individual, small group consultation and recommendation. another important aspect is the learning environment: house, school and society. milgram models are relevant to answer the challenges. understanding about giftedness level and category and the three settings which influence giftedness (counselor, teacher, parent and society) can be beneficial in comprehensive guidance and counseling for gifted children. the understanding leads to the needs of adjusting gifted children comprehensive guidance and counseling strategy and facilitates specific planning based on the unique potential profile. according to the model, gifted children with various ability levels are expected to reach different achievement. milgram’s point is relevant with the current believe that the ultimate manifestations of giftedness is creativity. therefore, the main focus of gifted children education needs is in the development of creativity. class and subject teacher are also responsible for the execution of guidance and counseling for gifted children. every parties involved the gifted children’s education have knowledge of their needs. unfortunately, the needs are seldom fulfilled. because guidance and counseling focus on children with traditional “problem”, gifted children are not set to be the main priority in the schools’ guidance and counseling. based on a survey over 200 parents with gifted child, there is only 9% get guidance and counseling service (van tassel-baska,1986). counselors, class and subject teachers, and parents have the same important role in providing guidance and counseling for gifted children. each of them can take part because of the same objective: helping gifted children making wise decision. conclusions the nature of comprehensive guidance and counseling is proactive, emphasizing the balance between individual and group activity. this makes comprehensive guidance and counseling models relevant with gifted children guidance and counseling needs. this model requires the counselor to pay attention to all children, to work with the parent, teachers, administrator and stake holders. in actualizing comprehensive guidance and counseling, inclusive culture is needed. this culture is reflected in the service which facilitates all children through diversification of the program. the two main points is embedded in acceleration-inclusion which involve the children intensively for faster knowledge comprehension and skills mastery. acceleration-inclusion setting is seen as the solution to the problem for gifted children education. historically, the children have already been in regular setting and the needs have not been facilitated. in acceleration-inclusion concept, the children needs can be facilitated without separating the from the natural environment. based on conceptual and empirical validation, in the second phase, the system involves expert and practitioners. after revision, the whole comprehensive guidance and counseling conducted using milgram’s model can meet all the requirement (operational model), in order to be applied and tested in the third phase. the development of hypothetic and conceptual and contextual validation resulted in two recommendation; (a) comprehensive guidance and counseling for gifted children through milgram model (operational mode), 155 yuyus suherman, comprehensive guidance and counseling for gifted children should be immediately tested in order to generate applicable model, (b) it is important to test the effectiveness of the developed and conceptually and empirically validated model through both limited and broad aspects in relation to the application and context of success4 all. their lessons are different because they learn in different level. all children will learn to develop their personal potential. this process will challenge the children intelligence. every children are unique, they have rights to develop their potential. the gifted children education practice and program can beneficial. references basca, j.v.t. (2006). effective curriculum and instructional models for talented students. giftedchild quarterly, 30(4), 164-169. creswell, j.w. (2010). research design, pendekatan kualitatif, kuantitatif, dan mixed, alih bahasa achmad fawaid, yogyakarta: pustaka pelajar. finnan, c & swanson, j.d. (2000). accererating the learning of all students, cultivating culture, change in schools, classrooms, and individuals, colorado: westview press. heller, k.a. et.al. (2000). international handbook of giftedness and talent, 2nd edition, amsterdam :elsevier science, ltd. kartadinata, s (2011). pembelajaran akselerasi dalam seting inklusi, model pembelajaran akselerasi di sd almabrur, bandung: al mabrur. milgram,r.m.(1991). counseling gifted and talented children, a guide for teachers, counselors,and parents, norwood, nj: ablex publishing corporation. miles, m. b & huberman, a.m. (1992). analisis data kualitatif. alih bahasa tjetjep rohendi rohidi, jakarta: ui press. ouri, m & abraham, g. eds. (2004). handbook of inclusive education for educators, administrators, and planners, new delhi: sage publications pfeiffer, s.i. (2008). handbook of giftedness in children: psycho-educational theory, research & best practices. florida: springer. putra, n. (2011) research & development, penelitian dan pengembangan: suatu pengantar, jakarta: raja grafindo persada. state of iowa departement of education, (2001). iowa comprehensive counseling and guidance program development guide, des moines: iowa center for occupational resources. smith. (2006). including the gifted and talented, making inclusion work for more gifted and able learner. london: routledge. unesco. (2001). open file on inclusive education, support materials for managers and administrators. france: unesco international journal of education vol. 10 no. 2, february 2018, pp. 130-136 ©2018 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: http://dx.doi.org/ 130 exploring instruction’s impacts on a student’s grammatical errors in internet-mediated communication ni’mal fuyudloturrohmaniyyah universitas pendidikan indonesia, indonesia nimalfuyudlotur04@gmail.com first draft received: 30 may 2017 accepted: 12 dec 2017 final proof received: 22 feb 2018 abstract since its appearance in second language acquisition (sla) by selinker in 1972, massive studies of interlanguage have been carried out in numerous efl/esl classrooms as it is worth researching to gain plausible factors which either facilitate the tl learning or making it suffers. therefore, this study tries to see the impact of english course instruction toward a student’s interlanguage. the data are grammatical errors made by the student during internet-mediated texting which are later on analyzed qualitatively. the result shows that structurally all the errors caused by direct translation from the student’s native language, indonesian, to english. this phenomenon seems to be predictable as during the instruction the student is provided barely with english sentences which differ from indonesian structure. therefore, it is expected that the teachers as well as the institution redesign the content of learning to expose students to english which might be different from indonesian yet will be very crucial to establish satisfying communicative competence. keywords: interlanguage; grammatical errors; instruction to cite this paper (in apa style): fuyudloturrohmaniyyah, n. (2018). exploring instruction’s impacts on a student’s grammatical errors in internet-mediated communication. international journal of education, 10(2), 130-136. doi: http://dx.doi.org/ introduction the emergence of communication-oriented language teaching methodology has been apprehended by educators and scholars. consequently, instruction has to address a range of l2 skills simultaneously, all of which are requisite in communication (hinkel, 2006). language learners are expected to be able to produce language in either written or oral form as a means of communication within or beyond the classroom. this is so because in a more global era, they are demanded to be able to convey messages with global society, either through traditional communication (face-to-face communication) or mediatedcommunication (through phones, emails, or socialmedia). mediated communication is a process by which a message or communication is transmitted via some means (pavlik & mcintosh, 2004); in this case, one of internet-based messengers is bbm (blackberry messenger). it is interesting to investigate this case in terms of its relevance to the nature of language as a means of communication. additionally, a basic goal of english language teaching is that students will apply outside the classroom what they have learnt inside the classroom (james in harmer, 2007). positioning communicative competence as the learning goal entails an approach which brings linguistic skills and communicative abilities into close association (moghadam & adel, 2011). this kind of approach has been put into practice by esl educators and in efl classrooms throughout the world, including indonesia. so, it is hoped that students are able to communicate in the target language both with other language learners and even its native speakers as the message is formed accurately. communicative competence also becomes the primary goal of an english course in bandung. two third of the whole session of each meeting in this course is invested to drill students’ speaking skill, and a third of the time is used to build their linguistic competence through grammar class. one of the students is chosen as the respondent for this study as he shows no hesitation to speak in english, and even his interlanguage is detected, which sometimes raises unclear message delivery. hence, this study tries to describe this phenomenon by referring to the instruction he gets in the english course he attends from which he experiences more english than at school. this is so because he learns english at school mailto:nimalfuyudlotur04@gmail.com fuyudloturrohmaniyyah exploring instruction’s impacts on a student’s grammatical errors in internet-mediated communication 131 for only 90 minutes a week, while his english learning time in the course is nine hours a week. numerous studies have been conducted to investigate the phenomenon of interlanguage in students’ second language learning. fauziati (2011) conducted research to determine grammatical errors made by 30 secondary school students in four free compositions. the finding shows that that the learners made a significant number of grammatical errors, which could be classified. however, as the study also investigated the classroom activities, it was concluded that some classroom events were believed to have contribution to the error destabilization, since these classroom activities could be seen as language learning or language acquisition opportunities. another research report written by wang (2011) attempted to review many theories and research reports in respect to the role of second language classroom on the interlanguage fossilization. it was concluded that at least there are three major sources of constraints on classroom learning: input (from teacher talk, teaching materials and peer talk), teaching strategies (teaching objective, teaching procedures), and practice opportunities. also, it is proposed that the quantity and quality of language input are very important. in language teaching, we have to guarantee the amount of target language input to make sure that learners can attain a proficiency of target language. at the same time, we have to lay emphasis on the quantity of language input as well. looking at these two research reports, the present study tries to combine both of the previous studies and contribute new perspective into the existing studies. this study is guided by the following research questions: 1. how is the english course instruction provided to the student? 2. what kinds of grammatical errors are committed by the student in internet-mediated communication? by conducting this study, two major advantages are aimed to be obtained. firstly, the study will enrich the literature on student’s systematic interlanguage errors in having communication in english. secondly, the determined students’ errors may show possible negative factors coming from the instruction can hopefully make the student more aware of them and avoid making the same errors. therefore, it is hoped that this study will give contribution to the policies, at least in the institution where the participant regularly learns english, regarding learning activities that will maximize students’ english language skills development. lastly, suggestions for the improvement of the learning experiences provided in the english course are elaborated in the later section. literature review classroom instruction and interlanguage input indeed plays a significant role in both native language and second language development as it provides information required to produce the language being learnt. the existence of input is necessary along with other facilitating conditions such as feedback, aptitude, motivation, and instruction (see figure 1). (saville-troike, 2006, p. 17). classroom instruction serves as one of input sources of the target language for language learners. “when input is understood and there is enough of it, the necessary grammar is automatically provided” (saville-troike, 2006, p. 45). the amount of meaningful input is of crucial importance in the acquisition process (de bot, lowie, & verspoor, 2005). on the other hand, when the input is not sufficient and or it is not well perceived, improper learner’s language utterances are inevitable. this condition is what larry selinker (1972) classified as interlanguage (il). interlanguage (il) is “a provisional state where the target language has not fully acquired yet by the language learners. it refers to the intermediate states of a learner’s language as it moves toward the target language” (saville-troike, 2006, p.40). therefore, il is characterized by the appearance of inappropriate utterances which result from learners’ lack of the target language knowledge. similarly, il is considered as a separate linguistic system meaning that it is thought to be distinct from both the learner‘s native language as well as the target language. il is prominently characterized by the existence of errors (fauziati, 2011). il does not need to be seen solely as negative matter, but rather it can be seen as “creative process, driven by inner forces in interaction with the environmental factors, and influenced both by l1 and international journal of education vol. 10 no. 2, february 2018, pp. 130-136 ©2018 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: http://dx.doi.org/ 132 by input from the target language” (saville-troike, 2006, p.41). the result of an amount of second language research along with the language teachers’ experiences indicates that classroom instruction yields a significant difference both in the speed and success with which students proceed through interlanguage stages of development (brown, 2001). another positive response toward the relationship between classroom instruction and interlanguage has been elaborated that there is a wide conviction among second language researchers and instructors that second language instruction will help learners progress more rapidly through developmental stages, and it can destabilize interlanguage grammars that have fossilized (ellis, 1999, in wang, 2011). all in all, classroom instruction in which input and exposure of the target language are provided clearly contributes to learners’ language development before reaching fully acquisition the target language. yet, there are some criteria are suggested in aiding the input to be more optimally studied. the input is not available for processing unless learners actually notice it (saville-troike, 2006). input should be noticed by learners (nation, 1996). the degree of noticing or awareness can be influenced through the frequency of encounter with target language items, perceptual saliency of the items, instructional strategies that can direct learner attention, readiness to notice particular items, and the nature of activity the learner is engaged in (schimdt, 1990, in saville-troike, 2006). as the input holds paramount role in second language acquisition, this study seeks to describe classroom instruction in an english course comprising input from teacher talk, teaching materials and peer talk, teaching strategies (teaching procedures), and practice opportunities (wang, 2011). as well, this study aims at comparing classroom instruction on grammatical errors committed by the student in internet-mediated communication. internet-mediated communication one’s language ability can be recognized from one’s speaking and writing. what people talk and write stems from the knowledge they have read and listened, and classroom instruction may be one of the knowledge sources. through this study, language ability, specifically grammatical knowledge, of the respondent is trying to be revealed by analyzing his language in internet-mediated communication. in general, mediated communication refers to “a way of communication via some means” (pavlik & mcintosh, 2004, p. 5). mediated-communication is beneficial for efl learners to master their language skills as well as their social interaction skills (chun, 1994, in rezaee and ahmadzadeh, 2012). later, this term is specified regarding specific means applied. one of the most well-known terms is computermediated communication. the term internet-mediated communication proposed in this study is adopted from hiltz and turoff (1978, in in rezaee and ahmadzadeh, 2012) who coined the term of computer-mediated communication (cmc). it is communication that takes place between human beings via the instrumentality of computers (herring, 1996, cited in cárdenas-claros & isharyanti, 2009). yet, nowadays communication is not necessarily mediated by computer but instead by cell phone. so it is not relevant if cmc is used in this study. as a result, adapting definition of cmc we can infer that internetmediated communication requires internet connection to deliver the message to the receiver. therefore, by analyzing data from mediatedcommunication we can get the information related to one’s language skill including second language skill in a more natural setting compared to paper-based test which barely cater the real ability of student. specifically, it can determine the development of his/her acquisition of the second language which mainly characterized by the appearance of errors from which what students need to improve can be better determined. methodology research design as the research is intended to describe the implementation of curriculum at schools, thus, qualitative descriptive approach corresponds well to the objective of this research. descriptive study is used to describe condition, phenomenon, event, activity, and so on in which the result will be explained in the form of report (fraenkel, wallen, & hyun, 2012). specifically, this research aims to explore the impact of communicative approach-based instruction employed by an english course on student’ interlanguage in internet-mediated communication. the site and respondent an english course in bandung was chosen as the site of this study due to the uniqueness of the program offered there. when other courses provide comfortable seats and noiseless classroom atmosphere, this course obliges the students to be actively engaged in conversation both in pairs and in groups as well. it expects the students to be able to use english as a means of communication, yet, without neglecting the importance of grammar. accordingly, conversation sessions and grammar class become the main focus of the program. each student attends the course for three days in a week and each meeting lasts for three hours. the learning time is broken down into three activities: practicing the dialogue in pairs, grammar class, and group discussion. the respondent of this study was a male second grade student of one of vocational high schools in bandung who also attended the english course chosen as the site of this present study. he was selected for his active participation to learn english both in the course and outside the class. another fuyudloturrohmaniyyah exploring instruction’s impacts on a student’s grammatical errors in internet-mediated communication 133 consideration was his willingness to be interviewed from which the data of his speaking skill will be analyzed. instrumentation earlier, it has been mentioned that this study is similar to computer-mediated communication (cmc) concept,, but the only difference relies on the means used. cmc is considered as one of data collection techniques. it is a text-based medium that may amplify opportunities for students to pay attention to linguistic form as well as providing a less stressful environment for second language practice and production (mackey and gass, 2005). specifically, the data were gathered through individual chatting in bbm (blackberry messenger) which serves as empirical data from which student’s grammatical errors were investigated. besides, respondent interview was also included to depict the information of how the instruction is established in the course he attends. procedure in general this study comprises three steps, which are selecting the participant, collecting data, and analyzing the data. to get the respondent for this research, the researcher came to one of vocational high schools in bandung in which some of the students attended the english course under investigation. then, when having light conversation with some of students there, one student seemed to be standing out and attentive compared to other students. he responded to every english question posed bravely, even though his english was not really good. also, he had access to bbm and was willing to have conversation in that communication medium with the researcher. to collect the data, the researcher undertook two interviews. the first interview was conducted to get the picture of the instruction the respondent experienced. the second one is an individual online interview facilitated by bbm (blackberry messenger) from which the respondent’s utterances would be gathered to be later on analyzed. data analysis the analysis was carried out through three steps: data reduction through coding, checking hypotheses and theories, and description (malik & hamied, 2016). in data reduction, the respondent’s utterances were classified as free of grammatical errors or grammatical errors. the grammatical errors were confirmed by relevant theories and supporting research report. then, all of them were described qualitatively in the findings section. findings and discussion within this part, the answers to research questions number one and two will be presented along with supporting theories proposed by experts, respectively. additionally, in the following part, there is discussion sub heading in which critical discussion in respect to the subject being investigated is presented. how is the english course instruction provided to the student? according to the information given by the respondent, the lesson is divided up into three activities: practicing the dialogue in pairs, grammar class, and group discussion. each activity is discussed below along with description of the instruction, including teacher talk, teaching materials and peer talk, teaching strategies (teaching procedures), and practice opportunities (wang, 2011). in the first activity, students are given time, more or less an hour, to read the dialogue provided. they need to go out of the class and seek a partner with whom they are going to rehearse the dialogue. then, they take turn to be the first and the second speaker (who acts as the first speaker in the first reading will be the second speaker in the second reading, and vice versa). after that, each of them memorizes all the dialogue on their own. this activity is categorized as imitative speaking as the student practices “an intonation contour” (brown, 2001, p. 272). yet, it is crystal clear that the teacher does not involve much in the activity. at the moment, the teacher lets the student to produce english sentences, makes sure that everyone is participating, and provides assistance when students ask him to demonstrate how to pronounce certain words they do not know how to. however, this activity is very accommodating peer talk as well as giving students practice opportunity to produce the language. from the activity at least two benefits are noticed. firstly, it enables students to speak english even those whose english vocabulary and grammar mastery are limited. another benefit is that through reading dialogue activity new information can be drawn upon such as vocabularies, grammatical patterns, and language expressions. in a word, this activity provides input of the target language. later, in the second hour, every student goes back to his/her seat to get grammar class. what makes it interesting is that the teacher teaches grammar based on students’ needs. students are asked what topic they want to learn by voting among the topics listed, what is wanted by most students is what will be discussed. this grammar class will focus on single case of linguistic aspects such as articles, noun phrases, or a certain tenses. this second activity is as the same as learning in the regular english classrooms at school. in the beginning of the session the teachers present the formulas and explanation of a certain topic. later, students are asked to make their own sentences under the guidelines formulas given previously. after that, a few of students’ work is discussed whether it is accomplished satisfactorily or it needs some corrections. contrary to the first activity, this one requires so much teacher talk time as he/she becomes the international journal of education vol. 10 no. 2, february 2018, pp. 130-136 ©2018 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: http://dx.doi.org/ 134 information source who provide knowledge demanded by students. she/he also disseminates copied notes of the topic being discussed. consequently, it violates time for peer talk as this traditional approach puts students as passive recipients of the lecture-recitation (posner, 1992). finally, in the last hour, the students together with students from other classes come out from the classes. in the open space yard students are required to make groups consisting of five or six students with at least one student from a higher level of the members of the group, called as the guide. then, for an hour they have to maintain conversation with all members discussing whatever they like. when this activity takes place, the teachers stay closely to them to make sure that everyone is participated in the discussion. also, they serve as helpers when students have no idea in expressing their messages and or when they do not know certain vocabularies. in this activity the teacher serves five roles out of six proposed by harmer (2001, 2007) that will be facilitating students to develop: as controller, the teacher is in charge of the class and leads the activities; as prompter, the teacher helps and encourages students to work creatively not patronizing; as participant, the teacher joins student’s activities, such as in a discussion and role play; as resource, means teachers being helpful and available for students; and as tutor, the teacher helps and guides students in a more intimate relationship, for example staying briefly with a particular small group or individual. what kinds of grammatical errors are committed by the student? out of thirty four messages, fifteen of them are considered as non-english utterances as follows: 1. i have your job miss. *i have done your task, miss. 2. about english voice with sir rio. *about having english conversation with mister rio. 3. okey miss, when you will come to student police place? *okey, miss. when will you come to the student police place? 4. i think only me being miss you, hehehe *i think it is only me who is missing you, hehehe. 5. do you didn’t want to come? *don’t you want to come? 6. oalah hahaha, maybe not disturb, please give me your time. *oalah hahaha, maybe not be disturbing, please give me your time. 7. if you have so much time don’t forget to give me or give us take english learn, okay. (structure) *if you have free time, don’t forget to give me or give us english lesson, okay. 8. hello, i’m sorry miss, i seldom touch my phone. *hello, i’m sorry miss, i seldom keep the phone in my hand. 9. yeah, when i have phone and on the data (internet), yeah, i think, i am always play my phone and that’s make me not focus with my study. * yeah, when i have phone with me and the data (internet) is available, yeah, i think, i always play my phone and that makes me not focus with my study. 10. oh, insya allah miss, my schedule is friday. * oh, insya allah miss, my schedule is on friday. 11. maybe tomorrow i shall take picture about that. * maybe tomorrow i shall take picture of it. 12. i must permission first to head master. *i must ask for the permission first from the head master. 13. can you look the picture? *can you see the picture? 14. do you look my job from my teacher, about english? *do you see my task from my teacher, english task? 15. i am sorry miss, i have find my job in my bag. * i am sorry miss, i have found my task in my bag. the rest of them are well-formed utterances, including expressions of greeting (hello, good night miss), apologizing (i’m sorry, miss), agreement (okay, please, miss), and certainty (yes of course). also, the respondent is able to produce free error sentences which have the same pattern as his native language such as ‘i remember that’, ‘yeah we can learn english together’, and ‘i must go to my course’. all the well-constructed sentences allow the structure appropriate in both languages (saville-troike, 2006), in this case indonesian and english. when we produce l1/ nl structure and it is applicable in tl it is called positive transfer (saville-troike, 2006; de bot, lowie, & verspoor, 2005). this positive attitude is indeed helpful for the students, yet the students should be also exposed to other structures which are essential or at least used more frequent in daily conversation. there is a possibility that the respondent’s interlanguage is influenced by the instruction provided in the english course. earlier, it is found that he tend to produce english by implementing indonesian structure which is his native language. moreover, mostly what he learns at the course also presents english expressions that correspond to indonesian structure. some of the examples include: target language: “okey miss, when you will come to student police place?” native language: “okey, bu. kapan ibu akan datang ke tempat polisi siswa?” and target language: “do you didn’t want to come?” fuyudloturrohmaniyyah exploring instruction’s impacts on a student’s grammatical errors in internet-mediated communication 135 native language: “apa kamu tidak mau untuk datang?” the committed errors are explicable as development of target language involves progression undergone through a dynamic interlanguage system (savilletroike, 2006). also, il is conceived as the product of interaction between two linguistic systems, the nl and the tl (gass & selinker, 1994 in fauziati, 2011). in regard to the instruction which is mostly realized in a natural setting, this phenomenon is predictable. a learner in a naturalistic setting will most probably attend more to meaning and real communication rather than form (lightbown & spada, 1989). it may not be difficult for the learner to acquire a high degree of fluency, but a high degree of accuracy in the l2 may be possible only if the learner also focuses her attention on forms (de bot, lowie, and verspoor, 2005). it is also revealed that the student is provided with grammar class in each meeting, but still his grammar is not quite good. another possibility comes from the materials. it is found that the dialogues are somehow not contextual in the target language setting even in the native language setting. thus, it will be hard for students to produce sentences they have never been exposed to. discussion the role of instruction is undoubtedly paramount as it serves as input which aids second language acquisition. although language input is essential for acquisition, input alone is insufficient (gass & selinker, 2001, in ertürk, 2009), another necessity for successful acquisition to occur is interaction (ellis, 1994, long, 1983, swain, 1985, in zainil, 2013). social interaction facilitates second language acquisition because of its contribution to the accessibility of input for mental processing (savilletroike, 2006). learning with exposure to naturalistic input is still essential to the development of l2 competence (wang, 2011). in addition, interactions are important because learners can improve their language through interaction as they listen to their teachers, and they can use all they have learned for communication. this kind of activity is seen as promoting their language development which will lead to comprehensible output (swain & lapkin, 1995, in zainil, 2013). the question then, what kind of input should be provided?. the input should be abundance in number and it should be high quality. the more input is seen and listened, the more english is acquired, noticed, or learnt (harmer, 2007). input should be noticed by learners (nation, 1996), since it is not available for processing unless learners actually notice it (savilletroike, 2006). but, if the input noticed is not qualified, it will be difficult to expect students to have good second language acquisition. conclusions the quantity and quality of language input provided in the instruction are very important to be put in balance. to overcome student’s interlanguage there are, at least, two things to be considered comprising teacher roles and materials. previously it is found that the teacher is more active during grammar class, it is suggested that he/she should be active when students are having conversation. at first, the teacher may let students articulate the conversation as they want but at the same time acts as an assessor who offers feedback on the students’ performance. in the second time, he/she can provide them native voice speaker pronouncing some difficult words (according to his/her observation and assessment) and practice them all together. besides, the teacher and the institution should work together to provide more contextual material by giving the reality-based illustration or pictures on which certain language expressions should be used instead by giving a list of separated expressions. therefore, communicative competence is expected to be easier to achieve. references brown, h. d. (2001). teaching by principles: an interactive approach to language pedagogy. new york: longman. cárdenas-claros, m. s., & isharyanti, n. (2009). code switching and code mixing in internet chatting: between ‘yes’, ‘ya’, and ‘si’ a case study. jalt call journal, 5(3), 67–78. de bot, k., wander lowie, & marjolijn verspoor. (2005). second language acquisition: an advance resource book. new york: routledge. ertürk, n. o. (2013). effects of visually enhanced input, input processing and pushed output on grammar teaching. porta linguarium, 20, 153167. fauziati, e. (2011). interlanguage and error fossilization: a study of indonesian students learning english as a foreign language. indonesian journal of applied linguistics, i(1), 23-38. fraenkel, j. r., wallen, n. e., & hyun, h. h. (2012). how to design and evaluate research in education. (8th ed.). new york: mcgraw-hill. harmer, j. (2001). the practice of english language teaching (3rd ed.). cambridge: pearson longman. harmer, j. (2007). the practice of english language teaching (4th ed.). cambridge: pearson longman. hinkel, e. (2006). current perspectives on teaching the four skills. tesol quarterly, 40(1), 109131. lightbown, p.m. & spada, n. (1994). an innovative program for primary esl in quebec. tesol quarterly, 28, 563–579. mackey, a., & gass, s. m. (2005). second language research: methodology and design. new international journal of education vol. 10 no. 2, february 2018, pp. 130-136 ©2018 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: http://dx.doi.org/ 136 jersey: lawrence erlbaum associates, inc., publishersis malik, r. s., & hamied, f. a. (2016). research methods: a guide for first time researchers. bandung: upi press. moghadam, j. n., & adel, s. m. r. (2011). the importance of whole language approach in teaching english to intermediate iranian efl learners. theory and practice in language studies, 1(11), 1643-1654. nation, p. (1996). the four strands of a language course. tesol in context, 6(2), 7-12. pavlik, j., & mcintosh, s. (2004). converging media: an introduction to mass communication. boston: pearson. posner, g. j. (1992). analyzing the curriculum. new york: mcgraw-hill, inc. putra, k. a. (2014). the implication of curriculum renewal on elt in indonesia. parole, 4(1), 6375. rezaee, a. a., & ahmadzadeh, s. (2012). integrating computer mediated with face-to-face communication and efl learners‟ vocabulary improvement. journal of language teaching and research, 3(3), 346-352. saville-troike, m. (2006). introducing second language acquisition. cambridge: cambridge university press. selinker, l. (1972). interlanguage. international review of applied linguistics in language teaching, 10, 209-241. wang, j. (2011). impacts of second language classroom instruction on il fossilization. journal of cambridge studies, 6(1), 57-75. zainil, y. (2013). input-output interplay in indonesian efl classrooms: a conversational analytical study. academic journal of interdisciplinary studies, 2(3), 497-507. international journal of education vol. 10 no. 1, august 2017, pp. 20-26 ©2017 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v10i1.7648 20 language beliefs among adult learners: individual differences aiza johari*, siti huzaimah sahari, affidah morni & amelia alfred tom universiti teknologi mara, sarawak branch, malaysia *aiza@sarawak.uitm.edu.my first draft received: 31 july 2017 final proof received: 27 august 2017 abstract to develop the quality of language learning and utilise learning opportunities in and out of a classroom, it is vital to understand individual's beliefs in language learning. white (2008) affirmed that an individual’s belief plays a key role in the learning process and language acquisition, especially the beliefs the learners have about themselves, language and language learning, and about the settings in which they contribute as language learners and users. this study identifies the english language learning beliefs of adult learners (between 45-50 years of age) in a local university in sarawak. questionnaire was the instrument to collect the data, and the data were analysed using spss version 21. the study showed that these adult learners have various levels of language beliefs. the results obtained can be used to enhance the teaching and learning of english language where language instructors can learn more about their learners and the learners’ language beliefs can further enhance learning process in the classroom. keywords: language beliefs; individual differences; adult learners. to cite this paper (in apa style): johari, a., sahari, s. h., morni, a., & tom, a. a. (2017). language beliefs among adult learners: individual differences. international journal of education, 10 (1), 20-25. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v10i1.7648 introduction many people may find learning a foreign or second language to be challenging and daunting, and this scenario exists among malaysian learners of english language. in malaysia, english plays a role as the second language in which english language is taught in school education system because english is significant in the students’ daily lives and future career. smith and strong (2009) mentioned that at present, world english being an international language is of increasing importance in international communication, business, media and pop culture as well as in research journals and in such field like the civil aviation. many malaysians often speak english in business, government offices, workplace, higher learning institutions and public places such as the banks, billing counters and even markets. as a result, though english is not the official language, it has become crucial for malaysians to be able to communicate in english, whether at an average or mastery level. however, hariati and lee (2011) affirmed that many educators grumble on the declining levels of english performance and proficiency among students in schools and universities. to add, zuraidah (2007) observed that many english learners tend to exhibit reluctance and seem hesitant to speak out unless it is absolutely necessary. consequently, many english learners in malaysia perceive english learning as challenging, even before they step into the classroom. due to such belief, they struggle to master the language. to make the matter worse, some lack motivation, thus affecting their efforts to commit. moreover, chew and chui (2012) pointed out that taking into account of the learner’s role in the learning process might be uncommon in malaysia, unlike the western countries which place more importance on the significant roles of the learners in the learning process. in order to achieve their goals in learning languages, learners need to have positive beliefs, motivation and self-confidence. fazilatfar et al. (2015) considered beliefs as cognitive entities that guide humans to behave in a community. they are crucial factors that lead most human behavior. hence, woolfolk (2006) affirmed that the learners’ beliefs and attributions do give a significant impact to the learners’ drive to learn any language. in addition, kalaja and barcelos (2003) defined language belief as a particular area of an individual’s learner difference which may influence the acquisition of foreign or second language learning, mainly their learning experiences. notably, white (2008) affirmed that beliefs play a significant role in the learning process and “in terms of language learning, the domains of beliefs which are acknowledged as relevant are the beliefs learners hold about themselves, about language and language learning, and about the contexts in which they mailto:*aiza@sarawak.uitm.edu.my johari, a., sahari, s. h., morni, a., & tom, a. a. language beliefs among adult learners: individual differences levels 21 participate as language learners and language users” (p.121). horwitz (1988), the first researcher who conducted a detailed research into beliefs in language learning, has developed the beliefs about language learning inventory (balli) to access language learners’ beliefs about language learning. she perceived that such beliefs are influencing language learners’ expectations, motivation, and commitment to language learning. ellis (2008) further asserted that learners’ beliefs are present when they have recognised several attributes of language learning and language learning ability such as knowledge of the target language, strategies, goals and cultural influences. therefore, it is significant for educators to understand their learners’ beliefs as what the learners bring into the classroom may influence their actions and affect how they learn in the classroom. if language educators acknowledge these various beliefs, the teaching techniques can be improved to suit the existing learners’ beliefs. hence, they provide more effective teaching and learning process. moreover, talebinejad and nekauei (2013) observed that over the last three decades, there has been a change in second language acquisition from teaching methods to learner characteristics, in which much of the responsibility for success in language learning depends highly on the effort of individual learners. accordingly, english language education has also been emphasised of greater importance in adult education (smith and strong, 2009). adult language learners may devise various language learning perspectives and objectives. merritt (2013) mentioned that many adults, in fits of frustration, will claim that adults are simply poor at languages as children have more porous minds, better memories, and adaptability. nevertheless, merritt further reported that linguistic researchers have found that this claim to be a myth where under controlled conditions, adults can be better at language learning. to add, smith and strong (2009) affirmed that most adult learners are goal -oriented and often direct their learning to fulfil particular needs (to advance their studies, progress their career ladder, follow business opportunities, assist children with homework, or simply to be successful users of the language) in which adults can usually communicate effectively in their first language and may code switch between several other languages. robinson (2005) also discovered that adult learners have greater cognitive and linguistic capabilities, and conceptual complexity than younger learners. as a consequence, it is interesting to investigate whether adult learners have different language beliefs that may influence the way they learn and master english language or other foreign languages. as recommended by smith and strong (2013) innovative teaching in an adult classroom can integrate stimulating and enjoyable tasks in providing elements of engagement, collaboration, investigation, and critical analysis of content, context, culture, and structures. in addressing individual differences in adults’ english learning, adult second language learning traditionally involves individual differences such as aptitude, motivation, learning strategies, learning styles, meta-linguistic awareness, and personality traits (e.g., extraversion), as well as a range of other social and affective variables (ehrman, leaver & oxford, 2003). consequently, adult learners generally embrace a wide range of variables: age, gender, intelligence, personality, learning style and previous learning experience, in which also include their own individual beliefs, attitudes, expectations, motivations and strategies (hurd, 2006). as a result, educators need to be aware of these variables and provide authentic language activities that can cater to these variables, in which a learner is likely to react, respond and reflect differently to the learning materials. research purpose and research questions the purpose of this study is to investigate language learners’ beliefs specifically on english or foreign language learning among a group of adult learners in one of the local universities in sarawak. to investigate the learners’ beliefs, the items in the questionnaires have been categorised into five major scopes: foreign language aptitude (items 1 to 9), difficulty of language learning (items 10 to 15), nature of language learning (items 16 to 22), learning and communication strategies (items 23 to 31), and motivations and expectations (items 32 to 39). the research questions are: 1. what are the beliefs of esl adult learners on foreign language aptitude? 2. what are the beliefs of esl adult learners on the level of difficulty in esl learning? 3. what are the beliefs of esl adult learners on the nature of esl learning? 4. what are the beliefs of esl adult learners on the learning and communication strategies? 5. what are the beliefs of esl adult learners on motivations and expectations in esl learning? research methodology the respondents of this study comprised sixteen adult esl learners (aged 45-50 years old) who did their part time studies in the respective university. they are working adults who represented the urban and rural areas in sarawak. this was a quantitative study and the questionnaire was adapted from horwitz’s balli (1988) and vilbulphol (2004). notably, slight changes were made to suit the context of the present study. there are 39 items in the survey form and the items are to be answered on a five-point likert-type scale, with options from strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree to strongly disagree. the data collected were then analysed using spss 21 and presented in tabular forms, in accordance to mean scores and highest frequencies (percentages). international journal of education vol. 10 no. 1, august 2017, pp. 20-26 ©2017 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v10i1.7648 22 analysis and discussion firstly, the demographic data of the respondents are presented. most of the respondents are males (only three females among the sixteen respondents) and many of them are in the early fifties. in terms of ethnic population, majority are malays (56%) while the rests are iban, bidayuh, kedayan and melanau. their spm english paper grades are on the average level in which many of them scored between grade 3 to grade 6. table 1: language beliefs (foreign language learning/ aptitude) items mean std. deviation highest frequencies 1. it is easier for children than adults to learn a foreign language 4.00 1.095 a 56% / s.a 31% 2. some people have a special ability in learning foreign languages such as english 4.44 .629 s.a 50% / a 44% 3. malaysians are good at learning foreign languages. 3.88 .806 n / a 38% 4. it is easier for someone who already speaks a foreign language to learn another one. 3.56 .629 a 56% 5. people who are good at mathematics or science are not good at learning foreign languages. 2.69 1.250 n 38% / s.d 25% 6. i have a special ability in learning foreign languages. 3.56 .629 n 50% / a 44% 7. women are better than men in learning foreign languages. 2.88 1.025 n 38% / a 31% 8. people who speak more than one language are intelligent. 3.88 .885 a 44% 9. everybody can learn to speak a foreign language. 3.87 .619 a 63% *s.astrongly agree; a-agree; nneutral; ddisagree; s.dstrongly disagree table 1.0 shows the issue of the learner’s potential to be successful in learning a language with regards to their beliefs to foreign language learning or aptitude. majority of the respondents agreed and strongly agreed that age can affect a learner’s proficiency to learn a language and this result is congruent to the common claim made by most adults in merritt’s study (2012) in which adults are believed to be simply poor at language compared to children who seem to have better language learning capabilities. besides, some of the respondents also admitted that they possessed special ability to learn foreign language (44% agreed). this is a positive note as they seemed to be able to utilize their learning capabilities to master a language. some of the noteworthy findings are 44% agreed that people who are bilingual are considered as intelligent while more than half of the respondents acknowledged that everyone can speak a foreign language if given the opportunity. table 2: language beliefs (level of difficulty in esl learning) items mean std. deviation highest frequencies 10. some languages are easier to learn than others 3.94 .574 a 69% 11. i believe that i will learn to speak english well. 4.19 .544 a 69% 12. in learning english, it is easier to speak up than to understand what people say. 3.44 .964 a 56% 13. in learning english, reading is easier than speaking and listening. 3.63 .957 a 56% 14. in learning english, writing is easier than speaking and listening. 3.37 .957 a 50% 15. people whose first language use a different alphabet system than english will find it difficult to learn english. 3.56 .892 a 56% *s.astrongly agree; a-agree; nneutral; ddisagree; s.dstrongly disagree all the items in table 2 show the learner’s beliefs in relation to the level of difficulty in esl learning. it is interesting to note that most of the items reported the mean scores of 3.5 and above (‘agreement’ with the percentages between 50% to 70%). it is perceived that the respondents agreed that some languages are easier to learn than the others. they seemed to be positive about it as they believed that they can learn to speak english well. such positive beliefs can affect their motivation and confidence in learning process and this is supported by dornyei (2005) who stated that beliefs could be useful for practical reasons in which educators can help to develop these beliefs to enhance learning. on a lesser note, these admissions of finding reading and writing skills less difficult than the other skills (speaking and listening) might also indicate that some respondents lacked confidence of speaking in english or any other foreign languages and thus, they might feel shy or face difficulties in communicating in other languages besides their own mother tongue. the ability to obtain and master all four language skills is a merit if one desires to be an effective english speaker. on another note, adult johari, a., sahari, s. h., morni, a., & tom, a. a. language beliefs among adult learners: individual differences levels 23 learners usually have diverse variables when it comes to learning english which include individual beliefs, attitudes, expectations, motivations and strategies (hurd, 2006). thus, if the respondents obtain certain degree of positive beliefs in learning english language, they are able to overcome their individual differences to adapt to the given language activities and complete the tasks effectively. educators on the other hand, need to adjust their language lessons and activities to suit the needs of their learners, both in terms of the syllabus and learner differences. table 3: language beliefs (nature of language learning) items mean std. deviation highest frequencies 16. it is necessary to know the customs, the cultures, and the lifestyles of english speaking people (such as british, americans or australians) in order to speak english correctly and appropriately in a particular context. 3.31 1.014 n / a 31% 17. it is best to learn english in an english-speaking country such as england, united states or australia. 3.88 .957 a 63% 18. learning vocabulary is an important part of learning english. 4.31 .479 a 69% / s.a. 31 19. learning grammar is an important part of learning english. 4.31 .479 a 69% / s.a. 31 20. learning how to translate directly from bahasa malaysia is an important part of learning english. 3.75 .775 a 56% 21. learning english is different from learning other academic subjects. 3.56 .892 a 56% 22. learning english involves a lot of memorization. 3.25 1.000 a 50% *s.astrongly agree; a-agree; nneutral; ddisagree; s.dstrongly disagree the next set of beliefs in table 3 is associated with the nature of language learning. the first apparent finding is that 63% of the respondents believed that it is better to learn english from the english-speaking natives in the english spoken countries. moreover, more than half of the respondents optimistically admitted that learning grammar and vocabulary is fundamental in learning the english language, as well as the idea of translating from malaysia’s official language, bahasa malaysia to english. to add, half of the respondents agreed that memorization is required in learning to speakenglish. this belief stems from the fact that these respondents, who are also adult learners, are probably ‘old-timers’ who might have frequently been exposed to memorization or drilling teaching and learning kind of method when they were in school learning english. memorization could include sets of grammar rules and vocabularies which they had to memorize to be tested later. furthermore, adult learners need to understand the nature and structure of the language; as they learn to use the language itself, where effective instruction will incorporate direct instruction in the aspects of vocabulary, grammar, and syntax as these relate to specific topic areas and task types (burt, peyton, & schaetzel, 2008; kruidenier, 2002; larsen-freeman, 2003) in centre of applied linguistics (2015). table 4: language beliefs (learning and communication strategies items mean std. deviation highest frequencies 23. it is important to speak english with correct pronunciation. 3.69 .793 a 69% 24. we shouldn’t say anything in english until we can say it correctly. 3.44 1.209 a 44% / d 38% 25. i enjoy practising english with the foreigners i meet. 3.81 .655 a 56% 26. it is okay. to guess, if we don’t know a word in english. 3.27 1.062 a 44% 27. in learning english, it is important to practise a lot. 4.31 .602 a 56% 28. i feel timid (shy) speaking english with other people. 3.19 1.276 d 44% 29. if beginner students are permitted to make errors in english, it will be difficult for them to speak correctly later. 2.75 .931 n 50% 30. in learning english, it is important to practise with audio materials (cds, mp3s and etc.) 3.94 .772 a 63% 31. in learning english, it is important to practise by listening to tv, internet or radio programmes in english frequently 4.06 .680 a 56% *s.astrongly agree; a-agree; nneutral; ddisagree; s.dstrongly disagree table 4 reveals the responses of language beliefs in association to the learning and communication strategies. the results for this section seem to illustrate a mixture of positive and negative beliefs. a few of the positive outlooks are many of the international journal of education vol. 10 no. 1, august 2017, pp. 20-26 ©2017 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v10i1.7648 24 respondents agreed that correct pronunciation is vital. they also acknowledged the significance of constant practice and repetition, and recognized the effectiveness of using a wide range of audio materials, mass media and the internet so that they will become proficient english speakers. on the contrary, though many agreed that it is important to speak with excellent pronunciation, 44% still agreed that they should not say anything in english until they can say it correctly. besides that, some respondents exhibited shyness to speak english (36% of agreement and strong agreement) while 44% disagreed. generally, these results indicate that many respondents agreed that appropriate communicative activities are useful in enhancing their communication strategies: learning correct pronunciation, using authentic materials (audio, printed or online) and continuous practicing. centre for applied linguistics (2015) also suggested that adult learners prefer authentic communication tasks and use communication strategies because they can acquire meaningful interaction and natural communication. table 5: language beliefs (motivation and expectations in esl learning) items mean std. deviation highest frequencies 32. malaysians feel that it is very important to learn english. 4.06 .854 a / s.a 50% 33. i would like to learn english so that i can get to know people who speak english better (such as americans, british or australians). 3.75 .775 a 56% 34. if i can use english well, i will have better opportunities for a good job. 4.19 .750 a 44% / s.a 38% 35. i want to be able to speak english well. 4.06 .574 a 69% 36. i would like to have friends from other countries. 3.80 .833 a 44% 37. i want to learn english well because it can help me access information from around the world. 4.13 .619 a 63% 38. english is important for higher education level, especially diploma and graduate studies. 4.19 .544 a 69% 39. learning english will help me communicate with people from other countries because english is an international language. 4.25 .577 a 63% *s.astrongly agree; a-agree; nneutral; ddisagree; s.dstrongly disagree the final set of items for language beliefs in relation to motivation and expectations revealed more positive responses as compared to the rests of the items. it is believed that the respondents were sufficiently motivated to acknowledge the significance of being good users of english language (most of the respondents agreed that english provides more opportunities for better careers, great access to information from all around the world, vital role for tertiary education and good communication with foreigners). many adult learners are motivated to learn languages, especially if the activities involve communicative tasks such as solving problems or completing tasks that enables them to handle real-life tasks successfully (condelli, wrigley, & yoon, 2009; miller, 2010; peyton, moore, & young, 2010; wiggins & mctighe, 2005). to add, they also agreed that communicating in english will enable them to expand their circle of friends and networking. hence, with such positive responses, the respondents can improve their english proficiency and increase their confidence and motivation to learn the language. these results are parallel to the observations made by smith and strong (2009) who pointed out that most adult learners are goal-oriented and often direct their learning to fulfil specific needs. conclusions and recommendations learners’ language beliefs have been regularly studied over the years in the area of education. these beliefs can actually affect one’s drive and confidence to make an effort in learning a foreign language. the findings from the balli survey imply that these respondents who are adult learners possess both positive and negative beliefs, and the beliefs are at various levels. notably, the inclination towards positive beliefs is seen to be stronger than the negative ones, especially the beliefs regarding foreign language learning / aptitude and, motivations and expectations in esl learning. perhaps, most adult learners are more target-driven and have obtained more experiences in which they are able to distinguish what they want to achieve in lives, as compared to the younger learners. despite their individual differences, most adult learners are likely to be able to plan their own learning to suit their personal needs and preferences. in general, to improve the proficiency of the language learners, educators can plan and set up strategies which support learners of all age levels, who lack confidence and are weak in the language, to change their beliefs into more positive outcomes. besides, to ensure a successful adult teaching and learning process, educators should be alert of what adult learners are expecting from their language lessons and what learning behaviours that they might bring into the classrooms. with such johari, a., sahari, s. h., morni, a., & tom, a. a. language beliefs among adult learners: individual differences levels 25 awareness, the educators can improve the way they teach language as to avoid impeding the adult learners’ various learning beliefs, experiences and individualities. furthermore, in tackling adult learners, the educators need to accept the reality that adult learners can learn a new language. schleppegrell (1987) stated that the adult learners’ self directness, life experiences, independence as learners, and motivations to learn should provide them with the advantages to learn as the ability to learn a language is not seen to decline with age. references brown, h.d. 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(2007). willing learners yet unwilling speakers in esl classrooms. malaysian journal of university education, 3, 57. international journal of education vol. 9 no. 2, februari 2017, pp. 149-156 ©2017 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v9i2.5479 149 intertextuality and the hedging system of the filipino engineering students: practices and pedagogy susana melon-galvez bulacan state university susanamelongalvez@yahoo.com first draft received: 11 november 2016 final proof received: 21 february 2017 abstract communicators must have a „pact‟; right idea, equals the „right words‟. although text is taken wholly to get to the meaning, every word contributes to the message sent for a powerful effect to the receiver. for language to work, participants must therefore be in full control of the words to be used. how these words are framed or intertextualized brings the hedging system of the esp students. to achieve precision in esp writing is not simply done by stringing words. to effectively communicate, there are underlying principles to apply to improve constant human interaction. in order to maintain such relationship in the technical world, each participant must not totally eradicate the „feeling‟ to get across to the meaning. the study aimed at finding out the use of hedges and the effects of task types caused by framing of ideas and whether these hedges were significant to filipino esp writers. common practices were identified as well as some pedagogical implications in the writing of technical discourses. using introspection and contextual analysis, the researcher was able to analyze hedges varying from words, phrases, to clauses. the researcher found nonsensicality in intextualizing esp texts and had no bearing on the hedging system of the esp writers. keywords: hedges; hedging system; intertextuality; filipino second language esp writers to cite this paper (in apa style): melon-galvez, s. (2017). intertextuality and the hedging system of the filipino engineering students: practices and pedagogy. international journal of education, 9(2), 149-156 doi: dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v9i2.5479 introduction writing is an arduous process which begins when an individual sits down to write. what makes it more alienating has something to do with the multiple decisions one has to make in a matter of minutes: the mechanics of writing; the content to include; the logic and the relevance of the ideas; the audience to write for; the purpose of writing; the selection, sequence and structure of writing; the words to use; the tone and voice; the academic conventions to follow; the organization and transition between paragraphs; the coping with elements in writing; the choice of words; the spelling, the punctuation marks; and the format of the document. besides the above mentioned problems, there are fears the individual considers when starting to grasp with thoughts; the anxiety on the expectations from self and others, the fear of being stuck or inability to persevere, and the helplessness and the disempowerment of failing to succeed due to lack of practice and experience (bedenhorst, 2011). discourse related difficulties add up to the burden; the context in which the individual is writing, the social conditions, the power issues such as gender or race affecting perception of authority, and the intertextuality s/he applies in writing. this framing system includes the ability to draw meanings from multiple texts both present and absent, the identity one shapes, the presentation of evidences needed for the text, the positioning of the text in the paragraph (as novice/authority or distant third person, close personal „i‟), and the discursive issues which need to be negotiated, whether knowledge or assessment (badenhorst, 2011). writing is part of a complex network of social practices conducted within different academic discourses. it is one of the foundations of academic engagement. such is a skill students must acquire to succeed. students need to write to learn, to take notes, and to study. they also need to write to think, to process their ideas and to integrate new ones. they need to write because this is how they are assessed. those who lack this ability find themselves struggling on the margins and losing confidence to complete their program requirements. those who are able to write „well‟ find their path through academia is less burdensome and more enjoyable. yet, academic writing is seldom explicitly taught (olivas & li, 2006). academic writing requires an understanding of shifting and competing discourse requirements, how the „self‟ is bound up in writing, how authority is constructed, how language is shaped and shapes, how some ways of writing are privileged and others not, and what is valued in this context. the paper unpacks ways in which the requirements of academic writing can be made more explicit. writing becomes the mechanism for the transmission of subject knowledge, rather than something that is integral to the writer developing expertise in that area. essential in academic writing is the knowledge on framing texts and the on how ideas are put together which bring about one‟s hedging system. hedging system distances or gets near communicators. absence of hedges does not warrant understanding of the text. the presence of this linguistic phenomenon can indicate a proposition as an opinion rather than a fact. the author reduces the http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v9i2.5479 melon-galvez, intertextuality and the hedging system of the filipino engineering students: practices and pedagogy 150 strength of what he is writing (nivales, 2011) or shows certainty if not doubt toward his statement. using hedges, a writer gives a certain space for readers to judge the truth value of the assertion or put an amount of confidence on the claim. to myles (2002), vague language (with hedging system) has several possible pragmatic functions: to mark politeness to indicate solidarity with one‟s interlocutor, to soften a statement, to indicate uncertainty about the propositional content of an utterance, or to diminish the impact of the statement. lack of familiarity to making propositions vague can cause difficulties for second language learners to perform writing tasks. in his study, hedge is considered to make discourses vague, evasive, and polite, causing equivocation. such phenomenon marks intersubjectivity having a primarily interpersonal function. a face-saving strategy makes utterances less assertive by decreasing their exactness. aquino (2014) analyzed hedges in campus journalistic articles written by high school students and found that editorial issues are the mostly hedged and modal auxiliary verbs are found the most in those articles. nivales (2011) conducted research on hedging in research papers written by novice college student-writers. her research discovered that hedges were used mostly in the introduction and conclusion sections of the papers. research on hedges in speech has also been conducted, such as one by neary-sundquist (2013). meanwhile, this paper discusses the intertextuality and the hedging system used particularly on the writing techniques in an esp class of engineering students. in other words, the type of writing analyzed is technical writing. in addition, the research does not focus so much on certain weaknesses like common grammatical, structural and syntactic errors made in writing tasks but on how discourses were framed and were linked to join in the conversation. the study was prompted due to the author‟s experiences in an esl writing class. the researcher had encountered problems on how discourses were intertextualized, specifically in the writing of technical discourses. discussion of this research is focused on the hedges used and on how ideas are framed by the college of engineering (coe) writers. the researcher dealt with the two distinct types of intertextuality: iterability and presupposition. iterability is the capability of a text to be reiterated and repeated in various contexts explicitly seen in texts, as opposed to presupposition, which refers to assumptions a text makes or assumptions made without being specifically stated or explained within a text. presupposition or otherwise known „common sense‟ is applied when an obvious discourse is understood by a vast majority of the audience. the latter implies several facts giving the reader a chance to assume. details can be added or removed to give readers more or less creative license to imagine the facts presented for further belief. because the assumptions made by different readers can be drastically different from one another, it is important that the framework the author provides is sufficient to keep the assumptions that are crucial to the story itself constant between readers. the researcher observed the insignificance of framing in esp writing since technical students‟ discourses needed no iterability and presupposition. intertextuality in discourses in creative writing was different in technical writing. esp framing did not call for „mood setting‟ and did not initiate guessing. language used in esp writing were precise and distinct in all the techniques; definition, mechanism, process, and partition or classification, even with visuals or graphics. this paper is not about esp intertextuality or framing itself since the researcher believes that no text stands alone. the research focused on how like a web related ideas were put together written in variety of ways. without a frame, a writer is simply making a statement said throughout the history. one‟s frame is the author‟s way of looking at a statement to explain an idea. the frame allows one to establish the argument in a novel way. a frame is the section in an academic paper in which a perspective that has already been accepted by a specific discourse community is presented in order to blatantly explain to the reader the point of view from which the rest of the essay will be analyzed. intertextuality framing, known as intertextuality, is the shaping of a text's meaning by another text without the use of quotation marks. this device creates interrelationship between texts and generates related understanding in separate works. this discourse strategy is done when an author borrows and transforms a prior text and uses referencing for his own translated text. these references are made to influence the reader and add layers of depth to a text, based on the readers‟ prior knowledge and understanding. intertextuality is not always intentional and can be utilized inadvertently. intertextual figures can be separated into three types: obligatory, optional and accidental (fitzsimmons, 2013). while obligatory intertextuality deliberately invokes a comparison and link between two (or more) texts, obligatory intertextuality relies on the reading and understanding of a prior hypotext before the comprehension of the hypertext can be achieved. optional intertextuality on the other hand has a less vital impact on the significance of the hypertext. it is possible that the connection will slightly shift the understanding of the text to multiple texts of a single phrase or no connection at all. the intent of the writer when using optional intertextuality is to pay homage to the „original‟ writers or to reward those who have read the hypotext. however, the reading of this hypotext is not necessary to the understanding of the hypertext. accidental intertextuality is when readers often connect a text with another text, cultural practice or a personal experience, without there being any tangible anchorpoint within the original text. the writer has no intention of making an intertextual reference and it is completely upon the reader‟s own prior knowledge that these connections are made (wöhrle, as cited in fritzsimmons, 2013). kristeva in 1966 coined the word intertextuality which means combining past writing into original or new pieces of text. all texts are necessarily related to prior texts through a network of links, writers make use of what has previously been written and thus some degree of borrowing is inevitable. this generally occurs within a specific discourse community, such as the esp community. intertextuality is often a purposeful use of other's work without proper citation which is often mistaken for plagiarism. while intertextuality is a small excerpt of a hypotext that assists in the understanding of the new melon-galvez, intertextuality and the hedging system of the filipino engineering students: practices and pedagogy 151 hypertext, plagiarism is the use of closely imitated language and thoughts of another author without authorization. framing is using a part of another text and changing its meaning by placing it in a different context. this is done by using other‟s ideas to create or enhance their own new ideas, not simply plagiarizing them. intertextuality is based on the 'creation of new ideas', while plagiarism is often found in projects based on research to confirm one‟s ideas (pecoraria & shaw, 2012). hedging and framing yu (2009) categorizes hedges into quantificational approximators, performative shields, modal shields, pragmatic-marker hedges, and other syntactic and discoursal hedging strategies. the study revealed the relevance of textual context, the cognitive effect, the degree of vagueness or commitment, and the state of success of the communication in bringing about appeal for persuasion. „smallwords‟, the microsignals (signaling a softening of the message) and the macrosignals (indicating the degree of vagueness or commitment). it was argued in the study that there was no significant difference among the epistemic modals. although there is relationship between the type of task learners perform and the type of language they produce and a number of convincing empirical evidence that different tasks do indeed elicit different kinds of language from learners, there was no difference between the two signals because both have the same effect of softening the message. they attribute this result to the different discourse modes required by the two types of tasks. the shared information task constitutes a descriptive discourse mode, while the split information task is basically persuasive. it is possible to select tasks in order to elicit particular language structures (hesselgreen as cited in yu, 2009). frame allows the reader to see a topic from a particular angle. because of the established framework, the reader will logically understand the progression of the writer‟s argument because the writer has legitimized his or her claim by citing an accepted theory (framework). when one uses an academic concept already has been accepted by the discourse community as a frame, this frame "forces you to offer both a definition and description of the principle around which one argument develops" (greene, 2001, p. 147). the frame does however allow the writer to focus the reader‟s attention in one specific direction. the framing concept that one chooses to use has already been accepted by the community and thus a part of their intertextual matrix. a well-developed frame is the doorway into an academic conversation. if one guides the members of a specific discourse through a paper using an idea that the community already holds as true, the new argument is more likely to gain acceptance from the audience as they understand where it is coming from (burke quoted in greene, 2001). as ideas are framed, hedging system occurs. numerous studies revealed the implicative presence of hedges. salager-meyer (1998) these phenomena are tools either for „backgrounding‟ or for „foregrounding‟. the words „very‟ and „extremely‟ for example, were more or less visible in giving „foregrounded‟ hypothesis while „seem‟ and „tend‟ were verbs used to decrease definiteness or were used to compromise. salager-meyer (1993) discussed the relevant connection between hedges and its purpose. another study of salager-meyer (1997) revealed the importance of using precise statement or proposition to measure one‟s confidence or lack of confidence. another significant study to discuss is hyland (1996a). in his study, he highlighted verb hedges which he considered „speech acts‟: „appear‟, „seem‟, „suggest‟, „indicate‟, „assume‟, and „believe‟. vartalla (1999) was also focused on verbs classified as: „verbs of assertion‟ like „strong‟ and „weak‟ used to express neutrality, connotation, opinion or certainty; „useful verb features‟ like „believe‟, „think‟, and „estimate‟ used to express recommendation; and „appear‟, „seem‟, „suggest‟ as „speculative verbs‟. also, hyland (1996b) in his study established facts deliberately and straightforwardly used expressions „will‟, „would‟, „could‟, „may‟, and „might‟. such modal verbs in his study were used in expressing an attitude of uncertainty and unproven status of hypothesis widely identified as means of hedging in academic writing. in similar study, „would‟, „should‟, „can‟, and „may‟ known as „conditionals‟ were used to conceal and to perform „passive transformational tasks‟. results of several studies will be presented to have a clear picture of hedges classification. in his most recent research, hyland (2015) classified „epistemic modalities‟ into five (5) central classes; modal auxiliaries, main verbs, adverbs, adjectives, and nouns. a total of 80 different lexical items, characterized by tentativeness and possibility were observed. „may‟ for auxiliary, „argue‟ and „believe‟ for verbs, „possibly‟ and „perhaps‟ for adverbs, „potential‟ and „probable‟ for adjectives, „hypothesis‟ and „idea‟ and „notion‟ for nouns, were the concurrent items. other items (in the same order of groupings) were; „might‟ and „could‟, „claim‟ and suggest‟ and „hypothesis‟, „appear‟ and „propose‟, „seem‟ and „tend‟, „presumably‟ and „probably‟ and „hypothetical‟, and „potential‟ and „presumptive‟. methodology there were five distinctive techniques in technical writing used by the respondents: definition, mechanism, process, and partition and classification. it should be understood that all these were types of reports. learning to write technically was necessary to help students determine how details were arranged in the best way one could to communicate his ideas. a piece of writing of any length usually employs a combination of two or three of these styles of writing. students were taught first to prepare the details for each writing technique. for definition. respondents must be familiar with the formal and informal definition. while informal definition (the most preferred type of definition) consists of one or more synonymous expressions substituted for the common terms used, formal definition (or amplified definition) has three parts; the term (the word to be defined), the „genus‟ (the group of class where the word belongs), and the „differentia‟ (the distinctive characteristics of the term). definition can also be done by comparing/differentiating the subject with another, or through analogy. a definer faces problem as to where the definitions are to be placed in his writing; in a special section in the introduction (when the term are of critical importance melon-galvez, intertextuality and the hedging system of the filipino engineering students: practices and pedagogy 152 in understanding the discourses), or in the text itself (when there are too many terms to be defined). for mechanism. the respondents must be familiar with the assembly of the movable parts having one part fixed with respect to a frame of reference and designed to produce an effect. the respondents may give in detail the definition of a machine first, then the function/s, the principle governing its operation, physical description, the principal parts and the subparts, and how the entire mechanism works. for process. respondents must be familiar with the simple presentation of the series of stages or steps of actions taken. unlike description of mechanism which uses spatial or logical order, processes are based on the time of occurrence evident with the use of transitional devices. process descriptions are either: directional or instructional (when instructions are addressed to the doer or agent of action marked by imperative sentences and the use of 2 nd person point of viewe.g. lay outing or cooking); or informational (when declarative sentences are used, when sentences are addressed to the reader, written in the active voice, and using the third person point of viewe.g. computer data processing or newspaper publishing). main steps are discussed first followed by the substeps. for partition and classification. it must be clear to the respondents that the two techniques are related but different in writing. while partition is the act of dividing a unit into its components, classification does a logical division. partition deals with one unit unlike classification which always deals with two or more units. for partitioning, species is defined first than the guiding principle/s (one by one) as the basis for the writing technique then name all the parts and subparts without overlapping. to do classification, there are two subjects presented. for the initial step, present the subject and the bases for partition, identify if not define, discuss the various bases for another partitioning (the significance or the purpose of the division) then the subdivisions in the best order of presentation then present the analysis using outlines and visuals to give the best explanation. the participants the study participants were from the college of engineering of bulacan state university, philippines, specifically second year general engineering students enrolled in the esp class. respondents were grouped as to the project each would like to work. samples from the population from different groups became the basis of the study. from the 234 technical outputs, data were gathered. using purposive sampling, the researcher selected random samples of the four techniques in writing. the researcher discussed the above techniques to the second year general engineering students. respondents were grouped as to the major they wish to take in third year; mechatronics, industrial, civil, mechanical, electronics, and electrical. after the groupings, each had a brainstorming exercise on the project for their feasibility studies. each group was asked to bring the picture of the project they would wish to discuss the following day. each group of four members had the same picture each. the researcher assigned each a picture with a for the one member to work on definition, b for mechanism, c for process, and d for partition and classification. each was also asked to bring readings of their project for referencing. after giving random assignment, respondents did the writing. respondents were asked to write one to two paragraphs depending on the individual speed in organizing ideas. results and findings table 1. for definition type of definition hedges placement framing (1) informal similarities, both, difference, and, (first, second, but, lastly, then enumerating the characteristics) beginning which (2) informal similar (2), different, difference, and second sentence that (3) informal similar, and, like (2), also beginning that (2), which (4) informal formal defined as, and (enumerating same qualities), beginning conclusion if clauses, that (3) (5) informal a.k.a. (another name), like, both, and, or, such as beginning that (6) formal in comparison, both, in contrast (more), or (2) beginning that (3) (7) formal on the other hand, both (more) beginning that (3), because (8) informal like, unlike, and beginning that (9) informal also similar (comparing features of two subjects) beginning because, that (2) (10) formal also (enumerating features of the same subject) beginning that (3), because (2), if, when (11) informal not just/but also – and (many more features), unlike beginning when (12) informal similarities and differences, but (for distinct features), unlike beginning and etc., that (13) formal more-than, unlike, while, on the other hand, not like, similarities, both, and also both, or beginning that (2) (14) informal (etymology), compared to beginning that (15) informal compared, (2), not the same with beginning which (2), that, when (16) formal as, but, also (called), similarity beginning that (4), when (2), because (2) (17) informal also (called), also, and, unlike, (etymology) then, after that (enumerating features) beginning so that, that (3) (18) informal also (be called), also (used), in addition, instead of (for another feature) beginning & body that (19) formal and beginning that (20) informal also, while-similarities, both, and (same feature) beginning that (2) international journal of education vol. 9 no. 2, februari 2017, pp. 149-156 ©2017 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v9i2.5479 153 table 1 reveals how students framed definition as a writing technique. although most students are familiar with formal and informal definitions, there was difficulty in substituting the term with another word (genus). most preferred informal definitions by describing the subject (features), giving the functions, or directly enumerating the parts of the subject instead of amplifying it mostly done at the beginning of the paragraph. as to the type of hedges, there were the predominant uses of noun hedges (e.g. similar, similarity/ies, different, difference/s, a.k.a. -for etymology), pronoun hedge (both), adverbial hedges (e.g. for comparison-as, also, like, unlike, not the same with more-than; and time expressionsfirst, second, third, after, then, after that), and conjunctive hedges (e.g. and, or, while, but, not just/but also); all used to show the transition of ideas within a paragraph. very dominant in the intertextualizing process is the use of restrictive clauses „that‟ and the nonrestrictive „which‟. a restrictive clause is one that limits -or restricts --the identity of the subject in some way. such restricts when the author intends to single out the subject (in this study, being defined). however, „which‟, a nonrestrictive element, should take the place of „that‟ telling an interesting or an incidental thing far from defining the subject. there are, however, instances of combining the two clauses which provide both limiting and nonlimiting information about a subject in a paragraph. most people probably use that and which interchangeably. in most instances, this doesn't cause undue confusion. but, in formal business or technical communications (for example, contracts, tenders or technical specifications), such ambiguities can give rise to serious legal and financial problems. such pedantic attitude to the difference between that and which may be very necessary for business or technical writing. two other types of hedge were used in technical discourses; because and when. in standard english, the word “because” can be used two ways. one of them is to introduce a clause as subordinating conjunction while the other is to team up with “of” to form what‟s called a compound preposition. in the case of the respondents, „because clauses‟ were used for convenience. maybe the causal factor is so obvious as to need no elaboration, or the speaker is distracted or giddy and eager to save effort and move on, or maybe the construction appeals for undefined aesthetic or social reasons. „when clauses‟ however, were considered "temporal" time-related prepositions function as the complement. what was surprising about the phenomenon was that, such nonprogressive verb form was not used for activities of short duration but an interruption for description for definition. table 2. for mechanism transition hedges emphasis/effect (1) parts – function – features (parts) is composed, used as, is consists of, approximately, in the first floor, in the second floor, composition, function & benefit (2) formal definition – function – parts process to reduce, with the primary parts, to test/ a way of testing definition and parts, & process informal definition (functions), parts – features to/may improve, provides, requires manpower, to properly work, should be put, mainly consists of functions informal definition (features) parts – features (of the parts) – process can perform by; is designed; to facilitate; is facilitated; first, second, third (functions); to do; is produced features & process informal definition & parts (features) is divided into different parts, can scan and print, can be used, to have a copy, will be used, can create, are used, to make parts &features informal definition (functions) – parts – functions (of the parts), features (of each parts) be considered, must be used, first (to enumerate the features), are primarily used, to access, are implemented, which includes, which is, should be sufficient to prevent, have to be used carefully, is used to make, to attain functions, parts & features informal definition (functions) – parts features (of each part) enables, to be informed and to be guided, basically warns, could possibly happen, would be responsible, another important parts, play a vital role, connect every single part, resulting to efficient flow of the mechanism function, parts & features (for the whole mechanism) informal definition – (features of the project) – parts – features (of the parts) can be constructed, are extremely important parts, include the following, has advantages and disadvantages, is unique in appearance features informal definition – (parts) – features (of the parts) is consists of, are connected, are used, has also, is connected, to be powered, that flow through, is accepted, when these are met, now supplies power to features informal definition (features) – parts – functions (of the parts) is designed for, is uniquely assembled, is composed of, to help, that will effectively and efficiently help, will aid in detecting, is connected to, is located, are interconnected, to suffice, to detect, to alarm features informal definition (by comparison) functions – parts features (of the parts) are inevitable, due to this, will be of great help, as a, to help, gives a warning, to start, plays, that detects, is also, connects to the other parts, connects to be fixed, not to be removed, all in all, will not function without the other features, parts & features of parts (in relation to the whole mechanism) formal definition (functions) – parts – features (of the part) – more parts (toward the whole system) that can consist, has different uses, when it is connected, when you start, can produce, will now be charging, with this, has connector on it, in making this mechanism, are the principal parts, that make up functions, parts, & features (toward the whole system) enables, to access, is capable of, uses, to account, are melon-galvez, intertextuality and the hedging system of the filipino engineering students: practices and pedagogy 154 informal definition (features) – parts features (of the parts) authorized, that handles, are settled, at the end, is presented, that has, has specific parts, that is capable, is read, an owner authentication, that is, that specializes, that is secured features & parts informal definition (features toward the whole system) – parts – (features of the parts) to turn into, allows, to charge, to listen, consists of, as a whole, in order to install, that fits, must be mounted, onto the handle bars, that is included, protects, due to, takes, requires, should be placed, converts, that can be used, to charge features, parts & features features – informal definition – functions features that captures, uses, to enable, can be used, of transforming, into electrical energy, that can be stored, used to power, can provide, to operate features, definition, functions & features informal definition (parts) functions – comparisons made up of, makes, is made up of, serves, would be one of the, that would make, more productive functions (comparison) informal definition (parts) – features – functions is made up of, becomes, to support, weighs about, can run and walk, when is not activated, can be used as, that supports, to sit, use to create, to produce, to help parts, features & functions formal definition – features – parts process that sorts, separates, is located, that will be operated, that actually separates, will be brought, to begin the process, will sense features & parts informal definition (parts) – informal definition (another name) – functions is consists, are connected, can be used, to sense, will be cancelled, are used, to assure, will be able to withstand, to give parts & functions formal definition – parts – functions (of each parts) – features (of each parts) that can navigate through, for the machine to function are the following parts, are responsible, can navigate, cannot serve, controls functions, parts, & functions & features why respondents failed to frame correctly mechanism as a technique in esp writing were because of: their lack of knowledge of the relationship between the two (mistake proofing) and because respondents were unaware of the transitional devices to be used to mean effect or to the the rhetorical functions in academic writing. mistake proofing is the use of any automatic device or method that either makes it impossible for an error to occur or makes the error immediately obvious once it has occurred. this occurred in the study when respondents considered transitional devices used a minor error early in the process which caused major problems later in the process or when such consequence became a product of „mistaken identity‟. table 3. for process process description voice point of view transition hedges informational active 3 rd has developed – features – parts – features (of parts) before, then, informational active 3 rd is the development – processes first, second, third, after, directional/ instructional passive 1 st processes first, second, third, fourth, lastly informational active 3 rd subject features – processes since (time), planning (first step), the second step, , this (3 rd process), all these (referring to all the processes) directional/ instructional passive 1 st parts – feature (2 methods) – processes (two methods discussed) first , after (the second method) informational active 3 rd – 1 st subject (feature) – processes parts – features first, next, and then, when clause (time) informational active 1 st subject (compared) processes first, then, next, lastly directional/ instructional passive 1 st subject (feature) – processes first, second, third, fourth, lastly informational active 3 rd subject (feature) processes first, then, next, lastly informational active 3 rd subject (features) none directional/ instructional passive 1 st processes first step, second, third, then informational active 3 rd subject (formal definition) – features processes subparts basic steps: (enumerated with v-ing; creating, ensuring, receiving), (generally include) informational active 3 rd subject (features) processes solder (first step), next, before inserting, place (the next step), arm (next step), hook (next step), once removed directional/ instructional passive 1 st subject (function) – feature – process – parts (in the first process) processes first, when clause, then, after that, lastly informational active 3 rd subject (function) processes first, next, lastly, and then, and lastly informational active 3 rd subject (features) go, to adjust informational active 3 rd subject (features) – parts – processes after (placing), now informational active 3 rd subject (background – the finding (first step), then, also melon-galvez, intertextuality and the hedging system of the filipino engineering students: practices and pedagogy 155 problem), processes directional/ instructional passive 1 st subject (function) processes first, next, after v-ing, now informational active 1 st subject with its 3 main parts – processes starting (referring to the first step), cleaning (second), stopping (third), after, when clause informational active 3 rd processes first, second, third, then, after, lastly table 3 indicates the respondents‟ familiarity with the simple presentation of the series or stages. processes were based on the time of occurrences evident with the used of hedges to mean time when the actions were taken. what seemed a problem for the respondents was framing the process description; half resorted to instructional (how-to essay) giving readers directions on how to do something generally written in the passive voice and the point of view was 1 st person, while the other half opted for informational (explanation essay) telling readers how something was developed generally written in the active voice and with 3 rd person point of view. what was surprising on the teacher was the framing of transition. some respondents started with the subject descriptions before moving toward the processes. this was because the researcher found the respondents‟ lack of knowledge on the description of time elements. academic writers used „fix time‟ over „chronological time‟. fix time transitional devices indicate specific time like the ones used by the respondents. chronological time which were neglected to apply in writing as the term suggests is a description of time sequence of the order in which events unfold in time. first, secondly, then, next, after, before, after that, lastly, and „when clauses‟ to mean before and after, were part of the respondents‟ hedging system for description of process. main steps were enumerated but no one had substeps in writing. table 4. for partition and classification partition classification definition division principle subject definition subdivision analysis explain ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ ☻ very significant as the result shows the respondents‟ definition of the species followed by the division of either the main parts if not the subparts. in some cases, respondents missed to include the guiding principle/s (one by one) as the basis for such division/s if not in another case overlapping with one another. what surprised the teacher was the manner of framing the ideas for this type of writing technique. there was no overlapping in the two tasks because it was noticed that when the partitioning was done, the other half was missed to be included and vice versa, and when classification (the second part of the task) was done, there was the absence of partitioning in the whole text. the intertextuality of the respondents written outputs were seen as a metadiscourse. hyland (2015) considers this discourse analysis as the organization of the writer‟s stance either in its content or the reader‟s perspective. one reason thought of by the researcher for writer‟s scare to do initial divisions or further subdivisions is the scare to explain across languages. using a second language to further writing hindered the respondents to extend discourses. the paper concludes after the discussion of the techniques in writing. with the instructional strategies employed, the researcher hoped to facilitate learning and enhance the academic writing skills among esl students specifically on the techniques in technical writing. conclusions in the philippines, most tertiary students are less experienced in writing especially in writing in different discipline. writing to high school teachers is synonymous to teaching and learning grammar. knowledge on grammar rules is not enough to withstand challenges in writing. in addition, several rounds of negative experiences with writing teachers have led to complete withdrawal from effort to improve. their engagements in learning were influenced to a great extent, positively or negatively, by their professors‟ attitudes toward them, and their melon-galvez, intertextuality and the hedging system of the filipino engineering students: practices and pedagogy 156 interactions with professors motivated them to work harder or made them give up. except for their own effort to learn, professors were the most influential factor for these students‟ learning (leki, 2001). there may be some responsive professors to the needs of the students in writing and these supportive attitudes have a psychological impact on study participants. professors‟ attitudes enhance or deter students‟ confidence and effort to learn. their perceptions of their professors as supporters lead them to work harder. professors‟ duty is to help students learn what they do not know, not to find out students‟ weaknesses and blame them for the weaknesses. a good learning environment is one where all students are treated equally and get equal attention, but it seems that there are not many classrooms in higher education measuring up to this standard. professors play a great role in students‟ learning, especially esl students‟ learning. strategies employed in an esl class are the most influential factor for esl students‟ enthusiasm in learning. teaching approaches and teachers‟ attitudes toward their students show how they view them, and this in turn influences students‟ learning behaviors. professors‟ positive attitude may boost their enthusiasm for learning and confidence in themselves. to esp writers, framing texts to join conversation becomes a lot easier since references provide information students need. although in english academic writing, there were specific formats writers should follow to adhere, writing becomes precise and direct disregarding individual hedging system. intertextualizing of ideas was convenient due to lack of unnecessary expressions. with the absence of iterability and presuppositions, rewording eliminated long frustrating moments in writing esp texts. references aquino, a. b. (2014). hedges in campus journalistic articles. e-international scientific research journal 6(4), 1-52. bardovi-harlig, k. (2000). tense and aspect in second language acquisition: form, meaning, and use. oxford: blackwell. bedenhorst, c. (2011). academic writing: the key to student retention? the morning watch, 38(3-4). http://www.mun.ca/faculty/mwatch/current.htm fitzsimmons, j. (2013). romantic and contemporary poetry: readings. retrieved from cquniversity e-courses, litr19049 romantic and contemporary poetry http://moodle.cqu.edu.au greene, s. (2001). argument as conversation: the role of inquiry in writing a researched argument. in wendy bishop and pavel zemliansky (eds.) the subject is research (pp. 145-164). portsmouth, nh: boynton/cook hyland, k. (1996a). talking to the academy: forms of hedging in science research articles. written communication 13, (2): 251-281. 10.1177/0741088396013002004 hyland, k. (1996b). writing without conviction? hedging in science research articles. applied linguistics, 17(4), 433-454. doi: 10.019/applin/17.4.433. hyland, k. (2015). metadiscourse. in tracy, k. (ed.) international encyclopedia of language and social interaction. oxford: wiley-blackwell. doi: 10.1002/9781118611463/wbielsi003 leki, l. (2001). material, educational, and ideological challenges of teaching efl writing at the turn of the century. international journal of english studies, 1(2), 197-209. myles, j. (2002). second language writing and research: the writing process and error analysis in student texts. tesl-ej, 6(2), 1-20. nivales, m. (2011). hedging in college research papers: implications for language instruction.asian efl journal. professional teaching articles – cebu issue (52), 35-45. neary-sundquist, c. (2013). the use of hedges in the speech of esl learners. estudios de lingüística inglesa aplicada elia, 13, 149-174. http://dx.doi.org/10.12795/elia.2013.i13.05 olivas, m., & li, c. (2006). understanding stressors of international students in higher education: what college counselors and personnel need to know. journal of instructional psychology, 33, 217-222. pecoraria, d. & shaw, p. (2012). types of student intertextuality and faculty attitudes. journal of second language writing, 21(2), 149–164. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jslw.2012.03.006 salager-meyer f. (1993) imprecision and vagueness (hedging) in today‟s medical discourse: courtesy, coyness or necessity?. the especialist, 14(1), 1-15. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0889-4906(97)00008-2 salager-meyer, f. (1997). i think that perhaps you should: a study of hedges in written scientific discourse. applied linguistics. esp journal. pergamon. salager-meyer, f. (1998). language is not a physical object: francise salager-meyer responds to peter crompton‟s “hedging in academic writing: some theoretical concepts.” english for specific purposes, 17(3), 295-302. vartalla, t. (1999). remarks on the communicative functions of hedging in popular scientific and specialist research articles on medicine. english for specific purposes, 18(2), 177-200. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0889-4906(98)00007-6 yu, s. (2009). the pragmatic development of hedging in efl learners. (unpublished doctoral dissertation). retrieved from http://dspace.cityu.edu.hk/handle/2031/5731 http://www.mun.ca/faculty/mwatch/current.htm http://moodle.cqu.edu.au/ dasim budimansyah, lili solihat, dadang sundawa, susan fitriasari the development of ‘aidda’ socialization model to stop violence against children 131 the development of ‘aidda’ socialization model (awareness, interest, desire, decision and action) to stop violence against children in rongga district, bandung region dasim budimansyah e-mail: budimansyah@upi.edu lili solihat dadang sundawa susan fitriasari indonesia university of education abstract methodologically, this research employed research and development methods to implementation of the aidda model as an effective legal socialization. it was conducted in five villages involving rt/ rw leaders, chiefs of village, and heads of households who were residents within the pos pemberdayaan keluarga (posdaya) rongga district, bandung region. research findings show that society in rongga district held similar perspectives of the rights and obligations of children and parents, with prior knowledge related to nurturing social awareness. aidda in law socialization is achieved through two phases comprising of direct legal obligations for civilization and indirect through legal socialization. the socialization on violence against children was considered across the geographical location of the research site by provision of a form, which collaborated with the aidda method, hence resulting in households with high legal awareness. the presentation of aidda model was organized in accordance to the materials, methods, media/ source and awareness-value based evaluation. the values on both direct and indirect law socialization were emphasized on awareness of values on respective societies with the assistance of law experts. in this sense, there was a significant positive effect of 38% on the development on aidda model in legal socialization towards the quality of socialization in reshaping the society’s law awareness. keyword: violence against children, socialization model, aidda (awareness, interest, desire, decision, action) indonesian 1945 constitution, in section 28b, subsection 2 which states: “all children have the right to life, growth and to reach maturity, along with the right for protection from violence and discrimination”. within ensuing legislation in 1999, section 39 relating to human rights, subsection 8, there is an explanation that the protection, development and fulfi llment of human rights is the responsibility of the government as well as the society. several legislation decrees made by the government ratify various introduction children are not small-sized adults. children are young individuals with their own characteristics. in other words, children cannot be considered the same as adults. however, parents frequently fail to understand their children’s desires and ambitions thus they sometimes intimidate their children. the outcome is that the child’s psychology is affected, resulting in the child growing up apathetic. a mandate to provide protection for children is explicitly stated within the international journal of education, vol. 7 no. 2 may 2014 132 conventions, including the children’s right convention (crc) which was ratifi ed through the presidential decree in section 36 in 1990. the convention against cruelty and other violent forms of punishment, inhumanity or human-pride degradation – known as ‘cat’ was ratifi ed in legislation, section number 5 in 1998; an agreement regarding economic, social and cultural rights – known as icescr was ratifi ed in legislation in 2005, section 12. however, strong commitment has not accompanied the implementation of such legislation and instruments. the child protection commission, an independent state institution, was established in response to legislation section 23 in 2002. the legislation explicitly stated in subsection 74, that the commission be formed to strengthen the effectiveness of child protection. children are to be protected in activities which ensure their rights to be alive, grow, mature and optimally participate in within human society, along with protection from violence and discrimination. however, the increase in negligence and violence against children and their rights in indonesia in 2011 shows that the state, government, family and parents had failed in fulfi lling their obligation and responsibility to provide protection, fulfi llment of the legislation and respect of children’s rights. the failure is not only visable in the increase of children’s rights violations but also in the transformation of violence into sadism. according to data collected by the indonesian statistic center (2006: 24), nationally, in 2006, 2.81 million cases of violence towards children occurred with 2.29 million child victims recorded. many cases both in urban and rural areas were recorded as being instigated by disobedience. in these cases violence often took place within a family setting, where the perpetrator is one of those who should have been responsible for child protection. these being: mothers, fathers, grandfathers, grandmothers, siblings or other relatives. violence against children was also be committed by teachers either at schools or at pesantren. according to the statistic center (2006: 25), the percentages of perpetrators were as follows: parents 61.4%, neighbors 6.7%, other family members 3.8% and teachers 3%. this alarming reality of such a high number of children’s rights violations within household settings necessitates urgent socialization of human rights legislation. legal socialization is aimed at socializing the law, to the society, in order to reshape the community into a more law-aware society. hence another model, beside the formal legal approach, is needed. a model is needed to facilitate the re-shaping of responsive law socialization and bring about noteworthy change. a model developed by shoenfi eld (1987) is the ‘aidda’ model. ‘aidda’ is an acronym for awareness, interest, desire, decision, action (hafi ed, 2000: 211). through this model, with focus on human rights, it is expected that the society will gain knowledge, comprehension and awareness about children’s rights and actively work towards their protection. this model was utilized to socialize child protection laws in the rongga district, bandung region. accordingly the research considered the problem of: “how to increase society’s comprehension about children’s rights and nurture society’s awareness on the urgency of child protection within household setting”. more specifi cally the research considered the problem with focus on the following questions: 1. how does socio-economic background infl uence actions of violence towards children? 2. what are the rights and obligations of children, fathers and mothers within households? 3. what is the general description/ understanding of preventive actions regarding violence towards children in the community? 4. what impact does the implementation of the aidda socialization model have dasim budimansyah, lili solihat, dadang sundawa, susan fitriasari the development of ‘aidda’ socialization model to stop violence against children 133 in stopping violence towards children in rongga district, bandung region? 5. how is the effect of aidda socialization model in increasing society’s awareness? law socialization a. definition and forms of socialization socialization can be categorized as a communication process. relatively similar to the defi nition of communication itself, this is a process where an individual (communicator) conveys particular symbols, usually in the form of verbal symbols to affect the communicant’s behavior. in the end, socialization can also be understood as an effort to infl uence another. an institution, group or individual can conduct socialization. in socialization many factors should be considered and in the case of child protection, consideration and socialization is needed urgently. legal socialization can be either direct or indirect. direct legal socialization is where the tutor/ instructor has a face-to-face meeting with the society, where s/he can have a dialogue by lecturing, discussion, meeting, conference, demonstration, simulation and so forth. indirect legal socialization is conducted where there is no face-to-face interaction with the audience. instead, the socialization is done through media such as radio, television, cassette, video, reading materials, fi lm and other media. generally institutional socialization utilizes a model. socialization of legal products can be done through several socialization models. models can include those introduced by experts, such as the innovation of the diffusion model from rogers (1983) which was then developed into the aidda model by shoenfi eld (1987), the social marketing model by kotler (1989), the communication planning model by middleton (1980), model by assifi and french (1982) and also the social mobilization model by mckee (1992). despite some of the models being based on sociological approach (rogers) and marketing (kotler), basically the substance of all models are the steps to be taken in the sharing of ideas through communication planning. consequently, there are some arguments suggesting that the approach in sharing development ideas is a socialization management study. the aidda model which has been used in socializing ideas and concepts in agriculture, health, industry and public relations, is essentially a socialization process starting with a communicator arousing awareness of the audience to a problem. this is followed by the attempt to arouse the audience’s desire. a client, who shows desire, attention and interest towards an idea, needs then to be further encouraged to make a decision to eventually result in an action. 1. literature review on violence towards children abuse is a word that can be understood as violence, cruelty, torture or mistreatment. in the social work dictionary, (barker, 1978:1) defi nes the term ‘abuse’ as “an inappropriate behavior that results harm or danger physically, psychologically or fi nancially, both experienced by individuals and groups”. this defi nition emphasizes the word abuse as an act which is inappropriate causing physical, psychological or fi nancial harm either being experienced by an individual or a group. violence can be committed by an individual, group, or the state (either by the government or the system), by relatives or by strangers. it can be instigated as form of personal problem solving, a form of group manipulation, or the effect of hatred towards other ethnicities and religions and so on. meanwhile, according to the legislation on child protection section 13, what is meant by violence towards children is “discrimination, physical or sexual exploitation, abandonment, cruelty, violence, torture, unfairness and mistreatment”. thus, it is fair to say that violence towards children is enacted by adults/ older children who use their authority towards powerless children, who should have international journal of education, vol. 7 no. 2 may 2014 134 been their responsibility, causing suffering, disabilities or death. the federal child abuse prevention & treatment act (capta) (2004) describes “ violence to children to include: (a) all forms of treatment by a parent or caregiver causing death, physical injury and serious emotional, sexual abuse or exploitation: or (b) any form of behavior that causes a very dangerous risk”. 2. literature review on legal awareness to formulate an understanding of legal awareness is a diffi cult thing; this is due to legal awareness being a subject related to one’s mentality or one’s affective process. legal awareness is an interdependency of mentality and morality which relies on human ego. legal awareness is an awareness of values within human mentality about existing law or expected law (soekanto, 1982; salman, 1989). hence we can differentiate what’s lawful and lawless, what is allowed and what is not allowed (scholten, 1986). thus, legal awareness is living that ascribing value to a social law with knowledge, understanding, realization, devotion and obedience towards the law. henceforth, the indicators of law awareness are as follow: (a) knowledge of law (law awareness) is an “awareness of the very fact that a certain type of behavior is regulated by law” (kutchinsky, 1973: 134), it can be understood as one’s knowledge about particular acts being governed by written law. (b) comprehension about the law (law acquaintance) is “the amount of information a person has about the content matter of certain normative regulation” (kutchinksy, 1973: 134) which can be understood as amount of information one has of the content of a law. (c) attitude towards the law (legal attitude) is “a disposition to accept some legal norm or precept because it deserves respect as valid piece of law…, and a tendency to accept the legal norm or precept because it is appreciated as advantageous or useful…” (podgorecki, 1973: 83) which can be understood as a tendency to accept the law due to respect and advantage being obtained by obeying it. a legal attitude will involve social choice towards laws determining which are suitable with their inner values, thus the law is being accepted based on the respect bestowed upon it. (d) the pattern of behavior responding to the law (legal behavior) is a “legally desired behavior” (dror, 1968: 54). this can be understood as the most essential part in law awareness given that the effi ciency of law implementation within a society can be determined. when the legal-awareness indicators have been fulfi lled, the level of legal awareness is categorized as high. the level of a society’s legal awareness will have an infl uence on the level of devotion and obedience towards the law. each member in a society basically possesses legal awareness, yet the quality of such awareness differs from one another. the level of legal awareness can be divided into four levels as follows (djahiri, 1985: 24): (a) anonymous awareness, an awareness which is not based on clear foundation or orientation. this type of awareness is the lowest amongst the others. (b) heteronomous awareness, an awareness which is based on varying or changing foundational beliefs and orientation/ motivation. this type of awareness is not ideal given its fl exibility. (c) sosionomous awareness, an awareness which is based on the mainstream value of the society. (d) autonomous awareness, an awareness based on a concept or awareness emerging from within oneself. referring to the four levels, autonomous awareness is the highest level of awareness amongst others. this type of awareness is level needed to be held by the society. efforts to dasim budimansyah, lili solihat, dadang sundawa, susan fitriasari the development of ‘aidda’ socialization model to stop violence against children 135 nurture such autonomous awareness in society through formal and non-formal education are important. civic education is being developed through formal education and in non-formal education, either via interpersonal, group or mass-media socialization. these two paths are synergic in citizenship education or education for citizenship to produce good citizens who are law literate. method this research employed research and development (r&d) methods as developed by borg & gall (1989: 772) and collaborated with the experience provided by sukmadinata (2007: 184-189). the three main steps of r&d proposed by borg &gall were used in conducting this research. these steps being: (1) introduction (2) model development (3) model experiment. this research was undertaken in rongga district which consists of fi ve kelurahan (term for the divisions of a village) namely: sukamanah, cicadas, bojong, bojongsalam and cinengah. the socialization was delivered to the village governors, rt/rw leaders (sub divisions of a kelurahan), chief of village, head of district and heads of households who were grouped within an organization named posdaya. in addition, the researcher also involved a legal-sociology student from the civic education department fpis (faculty of social science education). data collection techniques used in this research comprised of: (1) observation (2) document study; (3) interview and (4) questionnaires. the qualitative data analysis was expressed in non-numerical form (attribute). the quantitative analysis was done for the data collected through questionnaires to describe the effect of aidda socialization model application on society’s legal awareness level. result and discussion 1. comprehension towards socio-economic background most of those who studied in the socialization research thought that there were several factors contributing to actions of violence towards children within the family setting. data collected showed that violence towards children was driven by the combination of several factors and each factor may contribute to the occurrence of different cases. socio-economic factors were identifi ed as the most infl uential. poverty was shown in the critical tendency-analysis to shape society’s awareness of the law. 2. preventive steps in preventing the occurrence of violence towards children to prevent and stop violence towards children several approaches were needed. these included: a. ‘individual approach’ undertaken by nurturing spiritual/religious knowledge. this was applicable given the understanding that individual’s possessing an adequate amount of knowledge on religion will have stronger resistance when faced into situations encouraging violence. b. ‘social approach’ comprising of socialparticipation in reporting and being aware of every violent act, especially human traffi cking. c. ‘medical approach’ through provision of good physical or mental health services and treatment; simultaneously providing socialization to the parents on how to nurture a child well. d. ‘legal approach’ consisting of activities undertaken by the government, exercising responsibility to continuously follow-up and respond to every report of crimes and to handle each crime in accordance to the law. international journal of education, vol. 7 no. 2 may 2014 136 3. conceptual model of aidda in law socialization a. materials the materials used in legal socialization of child protection laws and consequences of violence towards children, were delivered descriptively, with narrative and also persuasively. there was a tendency that rigid and dogmatic deliveries would the cause social confusion and hinder understanding of materials. in the aidda model, the materials were modifi ed to suit social conditions and backgrounds where the education level was heterogeneous. therefore an important consideration for the researcher was to determine the language, suitability to comprehension level, analysis of indicating factors as well as sentence simplifi cation. attention was give to ensure the given materials would not only be understood but also be rebroadcasted by those involved in the socialization activities to others within his/ her society. the delivery of materials used in implementation of the aidda model in law socialization is illustrated in figure 1. b. method law socialization can be undertaken using two methods, namely indirect and direct law socialization. the indirect law socialization is a type of law socialization which is done indirectly where the content is delivered through media such as banners, leafl et and posters are used instead of through face-to-face interaction. such indirect socialization was done by the distribution of antiviolence-towards-children stickers to the society as well as the distribution of books and the placement of banners in several strategic places. the second method is direct law socialization, where the socialization activity can be through face-to-face interaction, by lecturing, interactive dialogue, demonstration, watching movie, quiz, door prize and spontaneous entertainment given by the audience/committee. c. media/ source the media in this law socialization through aidda model were used within the two methods adopted. in the indirect socialization, several media such as stickers, leafl ets, posters, banner, picture and photographs were used. in the direct socialization, power point slides, short-length video/ movie and projector were used. the content responded to the documents ratifying the policy on violence towards children which comprised of: legislation section 23, 2002 on child protection; legislation section 3, 1997 on children’s court, materials on violence towards children issue for the implementation of aidda model t r a n s f e r subjects psychological perspective legal perspective sociological-legal perspective socializer socializee needs analysis figure 1 the process of material development in aidda model (source: developed by researcher, 2013) dasim budimansyah, lili solihat, dadang sundawa, susan fitriasari the development of ‘aidda’ socialization model to stop violence against children 137 legislation of republic of indonesia section 39, 1999 on human rights and regional law of bandung, section 10, 2012 regarding child protection. d. evaluation legal socialization is a process. evaluation is urgently needed regarding several aspects of the process namely: (1) program evaluation, to what extent was the program implemented in accordance to the plan and fulfi llment of objectives; (2) management evaluation, to what extent had the process run, were there any obstacles or was the program run as planned. in evaluation it is essential to record both challenging and supporting factors in executing the program. the fi ndings of the evaluation will provide insight for implementation in both ongoing programs and future programs. 4. the effect of aidda socialization model in enhancing social awareness the descriptive-statistical analysis using spss 20, tested the hypothesis of “legal socialization focused on the development of aidda (awareness, interest, desire, decision and action) model, improves the quality of socialization in reshaping society’s legal awareness”. this was done by correlation and regression determining tests. the result of the correlation test between the implementation of the aidda model and the quality of socialization in reshaping society’s legal awareness is visible. the data analysis results are shown in table 1. the correlation table above used pearson product moment, which shows the depiction of correlation values between the variables being 0,617 which indicates a fair correlation between x and y variable. in terms of its signifi cance, the value of 0.001 was obtained for x and y which was less than 0.05 resulting the acceptance of h0 and the refusal of ha. it was proven that the x variable had a signifi cant positive correlation on y variable. table 1. correlation between variables x y x pearson correlation 1 ,617 ** sig. (2-tailed) ,000 n 67 67 y pearson correlation ,617 ** 1 sig. (2-tailed) ,000 n 67 67 **. correlation is signifi cant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed). the guidance given by sugiyono in interpreting the correlation coeffi cient is as follows: table 2 interpretation of correlation coefficien coeffi cient interval correlation level 0,00 -0,199 very low 0,20 – 0,399 low 0,40 – 0,599 fair 0,60 – 0,799 strong 0,80 – 1,000 very strong source : sugiyono (2011: 242) referring to the interpretation proposed by sugiyono, having obtained the coeffi cient correlation 0. 617, the level of relationship is categorized as strong, since it falls under the interval of 0,60 – 0,799. therefore, there was strong correlation between x variable (the development of aidda model in legal socialization) with y variable (society’s legal awareness). additionally, the result from regression test is shown in table 3. table 3 regression value model r r square adjusted r square std. error of the estimate 1 ,617a ,380 ,371 2,550 a. predictors: (constant), x international journal of education, vol. 7 no. 2 may 2014 138 referring to table 3, the r square value shows that 38% (0,380 x 100%) from “y variable”. this can described as the change within “x variable”. thus, there was a signifi cant positive effect of aidda model development in legal socialization to the reshaping of society’s level of legal awareness. descriptively depicted, the y variable was infl uenced by x variable by 38%. however, the other 62% was infl uenced by other extraneous factors. 1. comprehension of socio-economic factor as the factor contributing to violence towards children referring to the research fi ndings, it is fair to say that after participating in aidda model legal socialization, the society developed openness and acquired more knowledge on children’s rights within a family and knowledge of the basic concept of violence towards children within the family setting. basically the society of rongga district came to comprehend the need for child protection from physically or emotionally damaging acts, molestation, abandonment, commercial or other types of exploitation which cause either real or potential damage to health, life, growth or maturity committed within a responsibility-relation contexts. this was after socialization of the child protection legislation section 13 which defi nes violence towards children as “discrimination, physical or sexual exploitation, abandonment, cruelty, violence, torture, unfairness and other mistreatments”. such comprehension suggested that they were familiar with the elements or indicators of violence towards children within family setting, including: (1) violence which ranges from physical violence, verbal violence or threat; (2) children being victimized and the parents dominantly play the role as perpetrator; (3) violence harming children physically or psychologically. (4) violence happening within household settings. this aligns with understandings stated by the federal child abuse prevention & treatment act (capta) (2004): “violence to children includes: (a) all forms of treatment of a parent or caregiver that causes death, physical injury and serious emotional, sexual abuse or exploitation: or (b) any form of behavior that causes a dangerous risk”. generally those involved in the research activities acquired new knowledge regarding forms of violence in household settings, which not only comprises physical abuse such as hitting but also psychological abuse such the use of harsh words, insult or embarrassment. additionally, violence can also infl uenced by economic challenges such as family abandonment where a husband does not provide fi nancial support to his wife. violence can also be in forms of sexual abuse where someone forces another to engage in a sexual act. it is fair to say then that the acquired knowledge and comprehension developed legal awareness within the respective community. implementation of the aidda model is important given the current development of society where the execution of law is not ideal. the cases of legal deviation often times are caused by ignorance towards the law. hence the target set by the researcher to develop legal awareness has the great potential to shape a society to be aware, intellectual and dynamically responsive to the law. 2. awareness of the urgency for continuous legal socialization to socialize law to the society the participants of the socialization research and development became aware that a continuous legal socialization is important. some of the people suggested the reimplementation of law-aware-family program (kadarkum) as a means of law education for the society. legal socialization, as stated by legal department of republic of indonesia (1998: 1-5), is an effort to increase society’s legal awareness by delivering and explaining the law to the society within an dasim budimansyah, lili solihat, dadang sundawa, susan fitriasari the development of ‘aidda’ socialization model to stop violence against children 139 informal atmosphere in order for the society to be aware of their rights, obligations and power, thus the legal awareness needs nurtured. awareness comprises not only of recognition of the law but also to comprehension and devotion to obey the rule. the process of distribution and socialization to develop ideas, including legal product socialization, can use several models that have been proposed by experts such as the diffusion model, which is an innovation from rogers (1983) and was further developed into communication-planning model by middleton (1980) which is considered most suitable to socialize developmental ideas such as legal socialization. there are seven steps done in this model namely: (1) problem diagnoses; (2) audience analysis; (3) statement of objectives; (4) media selection; (5) message design; (6) media production and distribution; (7) evaluation. an effective legal socialization includes the following techniques: a. persuasion. convincing the audience, so as they become persuaded and give their attention and interest to the topic socialized. b. education. patiently guiding the audience to reach socialization objectives. c. communication. communicating and creating a supporting atmosphere to facilitate a friendly, open and two-way communication. d. accommodative. accommodating and providing solutions about legal problems in society with simple comprehensible language to the audience. the close relationship between the aidda model development in legal socialization had a correlation coeffi cient of 0.617, thus implying the correlation to be strong given the respective value falls under 0.60 – 0.799 interval (sugiyono, 2010). it is fair to say, then, that there is a strong relationship between x variable (aidda model development in legal socialization) and y variable (society’s legal awareness). by descriptive statistical analysis, the hypothesis tested was “if the legal socialization is focused on the development of aidda method (awareness, desire, decision and action), then the quality of socialization in reshaping society’s legal awareness will improve”. the results of the analysis was that there was a positive signifi cant effect of 38% on aidda model development in legal awareness towards socialization quality in reshaping society’s legal awareness. however, the other 62% was infl uenced by other extraneous factors. the problem of social legal awareness, actually relates to the factors of whether or not a particular legal rule is well known, understood, obeyed and appreciated (soekanto, 1983: 122 and salman, 1985: 17). consequently, the effort to improve social legal awareness is done through the direction of knowledge, understanding, appreciation and social-behavioral patterns working towards a positive end result. change of human behaviour is achieved through education. efforts to improve a society’s legal awareness via informing and explaining legal rules to the society in a non-formal setting in order for the society to know and understand what their rights, obligations and powers create legal awareness where knowing, understanding, realizing and obeying law occurs. the process of education in the improvement of legal awareness should be an integral part of family education process. this is due to a family being the basic reference for every individual, thus the effort to improve legal awareness is done by a participative cooperative and friendly effort, starting from the nucleus of a family, either biologically or sociologically. the participative cooperative and friendly effort is done through the establishment of kadarkum (legally-aware family) which is the target of continuous legal socialization and guidance. in kadarkum, a group/family, is encouraged to improve their legal awareness, in holding open meetings, called international journal of education, vol. 7 no. 2 may 2014 140 temusadarhukum. this has been proposed and outlined in government decrees (departemen kehakiman ri, 1998: 5). through kadarkum, it is hoped that the legal socialization can be executed quickly and effectively. the existence of kadarkuum makes the society no longer feel that they are merely an object in a law development process but also they are directly involved. kadarkum promotes lifelong learning within the task of citizenship education. kadarkum is intended to gather people who, driven by their own free will, attempt to keep on learning and improving their legal awareness. this learning activity is done in forms of an activity called “temusadarhukum”. this may include application of several techniques namely: a. problem solving of an urgent problem (critical incident), by ‘sharing’ within the kadarkum context. members’ share daily experiences or problem. this sharing is geared towards the evoking of attention/ affection from other group members. it is used to lead a discussion and to enhance skills in analyzing, assessing and solving the problems faced. b. simulation is a reconstruction of reallife situation brought as part of learning activity. simulation is done to gather new information and to enhance members’ legal awareness towards the problem faced and to encourage them to solve such a problem. c. discussion (tebaktepat) is a competition held amongst the members who answering the questions given by the instructor. this meeting is led by an instructor assigned by the members of the kadarkum. the instructor should be able to lead the discussion, create a warm atmosphere of friendliness, togetherness and with interesting language supported by jokes, providing equal chance for the member to express their responses, questions and to summarize the topic after listening to the explanation given by the instructor. kadarkum as a part of citizenship education can be included in society’s legal awareness education, contributing to being good citizens who possess civic competence especially in terms of law literacy. kadarkum activities reshape social knowledge, attitude and legal behavior as part of civic competence development which is developed in citizenship education comprising civic knowledge and civic disposition (branson, 1999: 8 – 25). through kadarkum, civic knowledge on the existence of various citizen behaviors governed by law and understanding the law is developed. civic skills are related to the ability to critically see a legal issue and its implementation as well as the ability to participate in obeying the rules. civic disposition is related to the value, attitude and commitment towards the implementation and establishment of law. the education of legal awareness in a society through kadarkum is citizenship education as suggested by cogan (1999: 5).“ … the more inclusive term encompasses both these in-school experiences as well as out-of-school or non formal/informal learning which takes place in the family, the religious organization, community organizations, the media etc., which help to shape the totality of the citizen”. many people infer that the halt of effective citizenship education in the ordebaru (new order) era is not due to the ineffectiveness of the program yet the halt is due to the factor of how and when the program is implemented. for example p4 training (the bp7 was dismissed), kelompencapir (by currently communication and information ministry), kadarkum and desasadarhukum (judicial ministry). often times, the halt is related to the implementation which was teemed with indoctrination to protect the status quo of the ruling regime, thus the society was only made an object burdened by various obligations for the state. in addition, the halt was due to the absence of a sense-ofbelonging possessed by the society towards the program, the program was top-down instead dasim budimansyah, lili solihat, dadang sundawa, susan fitriasari the development of ‘aidda’ socialization model to stop violence against children 141 of bottom-up. furthermore, the self-regulated learning in the society was very low in the process of life-long education which means that society’s independency was still very low, the dependency to the government was very high in life-long education (especially in economic development) and in the end this dependency caused the halt when the government no longer provided material and immaterial support. hence, a change in the pattern of legal socialization in kadarkum as part of paradigm shift of citizenship education in this globalization era is needed. firstly, the system of legal education should be responsive towards the rapid change locally, nationally, internationally. this demands a fundamental change in social life in terms of more freedom in life, a more democratic life which is based on faith and obedience to god based on the principles of law and fairness, appreciating humanity which is cultural and possessing good morals (wahab, 2006: 80). in order to come to such goal, a shift in paradigm of legal education, including kadarkum is needed. the past legal education put an unhealthy proportion on moral value and put the society only as a subject instead of subjects being only obliged to possess certain moral value and they were not given suffi cient guidance towards issues in structure, process and legal institution. the direct effect of such a situation is that the moral value one has acquired is not integrated within one’s mentality as how a result of a learned behavior will be. hence the paradigm in legal education should be shifted by balancing the process development and law institutions along with all its attributes. secondly, seen from law establishment in indonesia, the effectiveness of law in indonesia depends on the implementation of a fair law. the implementation itself is infl uenced by various factors namely: (1) the law itself; (2) the mentality and characters of the law enforcer; (3) supporting facilities and media; (4) legal awareness and legal obedience of the society; (5) law tradition. each factor supports one another as a component to support law effectiveness. society’s legal awareness and legal obedience should be accompanied by the law materials which refl ect the values believed by the society as well as being supported by the mentality of the law enforcer who should be able to implement the rule and protect the society, the existence of supporting facilities and media as well as the establishment of a fair law tradition. referring to the fi ve mentioned factors, society’s legal awareness is a starting point to control the effectiveness of the law implementation, given that the society’s legal awareness values the existing law and processes of law enforcement. such legal awareness will be strengthened through means which allow the society to learn about law and refl ect on the effectiveness of law implementation by the society and the enforcer. this activity is facilitated by kadarkum activity with its main agenda, temusadar hokum and critical incident or sharing. as the label ‘sharing’ suggests, the pattern of the activity should be suitable to its meaning, the activity focuses more on how the society and law enforcer share their thoughts and feeling about the importance of law, the clarity of law content and the most important one is how the law is implemented and enforced as well as facilities and media supporting it. thus, government’s indoctrination is no longer be expected to be given to the society to obey the existing law, instead, it should be focusing more on how to accommodate society’s aspiration as well as government’s aspiration in implementing and enforcing law. thirdly, since legal awareness is values on law which lives within society, legal socialization should use value-education approach. that way, the legal socialization or kadarkum will not only comprise of the socialization of law materials but also internalize the law value within and eventually legal awareness will emerge from within themselves or as labeled as autonomous awareness. international journal of education, vol. 7 no. 2 may 2014 142 distinguishable from wynne (1997), in wolter’s perspective (1998), self regulated learning is one’s ability to effectively manage his own learning experience using different means to fulfi ll optimum learning outcomes. meanwhile, according to frank & robert (1988), self regulation is one’s ability to monitor her/his comprehension, to select the strategy of information process which is adequate. self regulated learning comprises of three steps namely pre, whilst and post learning task. self-regulated learning always heads towards several ends. there are three goals within self-regulated learning: the fi rst step is the selection or formulation of learning objectives which is determined by: 1) expectation on self-competence and the output obtained from task fulfi llment; 2) affective factors such as needs, motivation and values; 3). the willingness in self-conception as depicted in individually-formulated lifegoal into temporary goals and the behaviors (markus and wurf, 1989). referring to the various previouslyelaborated ideas, there are two special characteristics in identifying and recognizing self-regulated learning. the two characteristics are: firstly, the society is assumed to possess self-awareness on the potential they have and to utilize it in managing themselves fulfi lling the optimum learning outcome. secondly, the society possesses self-orientation towards a feedback cycle during the teaching/ learning process. in such a feedback cycle, the society monitors the degree of effectiveness of a learning method and strategy along with the responses given to achieve learning outcomes through continuously modifi ed means. selfregulated learning facilitates implementation of the concept of andragogy from knowless (1977) and arif (1990) who utilize the assumption that a society of adults possessing a strong self-concept, accumulation of experience, learning readiness, time perspective and learning orientation. once the society has put self-regulated learning into practice, kadarkum activity, a new order government’s top-down program, life-long learning will continuously be established by the society. the society thinks that kadarkum is theirs and its existence is very benefi cial thus regardless of the existence of stimulus from the current government, the activity will last with all its changes and adaptations. conclusion socio-economic factors were identifi ed as the most infl uential factor in causing violence towards children. this is evident in the critical tendency analysis where the dominant factors were poverty and inadequate legal-enforcement socialization in nurturing social awareness. at the completion of implementation activities, understanding of violence towards children in the rongga district’s was noted as physical or emotional mistreatment, sexual abuse, abandonment or commercial and other kinds of exploitation which cause real or potential damage on children’s health, life, growth and pride, acts which often are committed within the relationships with responsibility to the children. legal socialization was undertaken by researchers who utilized various materials, methods, resources/media and assessment tools. the two methods used were direct and indirect, based on the aidda model. this was aided by basic learning materials on legal socialization regarding violence towards children. at the conclusion of activities a social assessment was undertaken with a questionnaire and guided interview. the fi nding from this assessment was that that there was signifi cant positive effect with 38.0% increase in the communities’ legal awareness, achieved through implementation of the aidda model. consequently, legal socialization through kadarkum to improve legal awareness should be established as an important tool by the government within decrees dasim budimansyah, lili solihat, dadang sundawa, susan fitriasari the development of ‘aidda’ socialization model to stop violence against children 143 for reimplementation. the socialization of law products through socialization process should be executed with attention to good coordination and integration. the society should also be supporting the law establishment program, especially regarding woman’s rights in household settings, taking an active role in legal socialization on antidomestic abuse, preventing abusive crimes, providing protection and aid for victims of abuse and also assist in seeking protection from the responsible institutions. references borg, w. r., and gall, m.d., (1989). educational research: an introduction (5th ed). new york: longman. davison, r. m., martinsons, m. g., and kock n. 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(1992). bunga rampai hukum pidana. bandung: citra aditya bakti. peraturan daerah walikota bandung nomor 10 tahun 2012 tentang penyelenggaraan perlindungan anak. poerwandari, k. (2004). mengungkap selubung kekerasan. bandung: kepustakaan ejainsani. sakidjo, a., and poernomo, b., (1990). hukum pidana, dasar aturan umum hukum pidana kodifi kasi, jakarta: ghalia indonesia. santoso, t. (2002). teori-teori kekerasan. jakarta: ghalia indonesia. santrock. (2007). life-span development. london. schaffmeister, d., keijzer, n. and sutorius, e., (1995), hukum pidana, yogyakarta: liberti. the federal capta. (2004). child abuse prevention and treatment act. [online]. available on: /http//www. thefederalcapta.com. undang-undang dasar negara kesatuan republik indonesia tahun 1945 undang-undang no. 39 tahun 1999 tentang hak asasi manusia undang-undangnomor 23 tahun 2002 tentangperlindungan anak. undang-undangnomor 3 tahun 1997 tentang pengadilan anak. wilson. (2000). pengujian hipotesis dalam gaya pengasuhan orang tua (tesis). univeritaspadjajaran bandung. international journal of education vol. 10 no. 2, february 2018, pp. 95-100 ©2018 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: http://dx.doi.org/ 95 developing al-quran instruction model through 3a (ajari aku al-quran or please teach me al-quran) to improve students’ ability in reading al-quran at bandung islamic university alhamuddin1, fahmi fatwa rosyadi satria hamdani2, dikdik tandika3, rabiatul adwiyah4 1faculty of tarbiyah and teaching training, 2faculty of syariah, 34faculty of economics and business, universitas islam bandung, indonesia alhamuddinpalembang@gmail.com first draft received: 24 oct 2017 accepted: 02 jan 2018 final proof received: 22 feb 2018 abstract this research has the intention to develop the model of quran learning which is creative and innovative to increase students’ ability in reading the quran. this method is applied by the use of puzzle game, iqro bar, and monopoly game, so that the students can recognize the quran letters well and correctly. this research applied the research and development approach. the trial was done to all students in every faculty at unisba. the number of the students who participated in this research was 519. the sample was selected on the basis of students’ abilities in reading the quran, especially the students who were in group e. the result of the research shows that the application of 3a learning media for the group that does not know quran letters well significantly helped them recognize the hijaiyyah letters easily. the process of learning was designed actively, creatively, effectively, innovatively, fun, and with student-centered approach. based on the result, the researchers recommended do the further study as part of the design’s development and improvement of learning quran through 3a media. keywords: learning quran, learning media, 3a learning media to cite this paper (in apa style): alhamuddin, hamdani f.f.r.s., tandika, d., & adwiyah, r. (2018). developing al-quran instruction model through 3a (ajari aku al-quran or please teach me al-quran) to improve students’ ability in reading al-quran at bandung islamic university. international journal of education, 10(2), 95-100. doi: http://dx.doi.org/ introduction education in people’s life is very important. without education, people cannot develop themselves. education is a part of efforts to help human being gain meaningful life in order to achieve individual happiness or the happiness with their environment. the above description shows that education is a process or the effort that is done because people think it is necessary for them in order to make them better (hamdani, 2016). all the goals of education, whether it is general education or religious education, always focus on the attitude of students from the intellectual, emotional, and spiritual aspects. the process of education which only focuses on intellectual maturity and avoids spiritual and emotional maturity will produce smart people with less morality, intolerance, less solidarity, and lack of humanity. our country currently is heading towards the development of science and technology that causes social and economic gaps and rapid society development. the constitution number 12 year 2012 regarding higher education defines education as a process that is done with plan, and it is done because people think it is necessary to implement in order to create learning conditions and processes that can help students to develop their potential to have spiritual strength, self-control, personality, intelligence, good attitudes, and the skills that are valuable for themselves, the society, and the country. in the context of islamic education, it is important to teach good moralities based on the quran to students. in order to be able to do that, it is necessary for students to develop themselves gradually and systematically. muslims are now living in the century in which technologies developed by europeans and americans have expanded over the world. this case has led moslems to forget that they have quran as their holy book that has given a wide and deep influence to human’s soul. quran is the reference for muslims and it guides human beings in their lives. based on both functions, quran deserves to get special attention. recently, the condition is significantly worrying. quran is getting increasingly left by muslims. rarely is it heard recited in the mosque or individually. it also happens because most parents tend to separate the religious education of their children mailto:alhamuddinpalembang@gmail.com alhamuddin, hamdani f.f.r.s., tandika, d., & adwiyah, r. developing al-quran instruction model through 3a (ajari aku al-quran or please teach me al-quran) 96 from the worldly education. this is obviously a big mistake according to islam. it is because islam has a principle that states the present life is strongly related to the hereafter. according this principle, what causes our present life to be happy is the same as what causes our life in the hereafter happy. hence, religious and worldly education should not be totally separated. this also applies to the education at the university level. in the university context, it is the lecturers who have an obligation to educate their students to be the people who are useful for their country and especially for their religions from the time they get admitted to the university to their graduation. unisba or islamic university of bandung is one of the universities in bandung which establishes itself as an islamic university. this is why religious education becomes paramount in the university. more particularly, the university pays special attention to the students’ ability in reading quran, because as mention above quran is the guidance for muslims and the source of knowledge as well. thus, students who study at islamic university of bandung (unisba) are obliged to have quran reading test to determine the group of religious studies classes in each study program of their faculties. based on the data acquired from lsipk (research center) unisba, there were 1511 students who were not able to read quran. these students were then grouped into c, d, and e groups, which also show their grades. to find out the details, we can see figure 1 below. figure 1. unisba’s students who were identified to be unable to read quran at each faculty (source: lsipk unisba, 2016) the data above reveal that there were many unisba’s students who were not able to read quran well and correctly. this case becomes the greatest motivation for the researchers to motivate students through creative activities by developing the 3a method in order to create iqra group university students who have the love for quran. at the first step of this research, a test to the students who got e grade was conducted. the next step, similar test was conducted to the students who got c and d, respectively. based on the above explanation, it becomes necessary order to educate the undergraduate students according to islamic guidance, the quran. in this case, the word ‘educate’ means educating the university students. one of the materials in religious education is to develop the skill of quran reading. reading quran must be done very carefully. the letters and words must be pronounced correctly according to the makhraj and tajwid because they have to do with their meanings. this is why, the teaching and learning of quran requires the most suitable media to help the students able to read the quran well and correctly based on the regulations. some experts such as dale (1946), kemp (1975), schram and porter (1982), heinich, molenda, and russel (1996), susilana & riyana (2009), and drewniany & jewler (2014), stated that the media are the sources of creativities to send messages. the media are also used as communication tools in both hardware and software for the needs of learning. the media which are usually used for the needs of learning consist of two elements. the two elements are: tool element which is used and message element which will be sent by the use of the tool element. both elements must be applied continually. this way will make the learning process applicable and the message can be delivered and received easily by the students. 26 56 18 170 145 100 360 310 112 214 tarbiyah & teacher training syariah dakwah law math and science medical economics and business communication psychology engineering students' reading ability international journal of education vol. 10 no. 2, february 2018, pp. 95-100 ©2018 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: http://dx.doi.org/ 97 research on the application of certain media in teaching quran has been conducted by previous researchers. nurhakim, saepudin, & alhamuddin (2017), for instance, applied the cordoba method in improving students’ reading ability of quran at the fifth grade of state elementary school 2 sudimampir bandung barat in academic year 2016/2017. the results of the research indicated that the implementation of cordobana method were able to significantly improve elementary school students' ability in reading quran. similarly, syarifuddin (2014) developed methods to help children improve their ability in reading qur’an and increase their love for the qur’an. akkila & naser (2017) introduced an intelligent tutoring system for teaching reciting “tajweed”. the system was evaluated by reciting teachers and students, and the results were auspicious. mssraty & faryadi (2012) addressed the current problem faced by teachers in teaching quran recitation in malaysian primary schools by using multimediabased interactive learning method. this method helps to increase students’ skills, attitude, motivation, grade, and knowledge, while learning how to recite the quran. meanwhile, a study was also carried out by tsaury et al. (2016) on the teaching and learning of qur’an to senior citizens. however, similar research at the level of higher education has not been found in the literature. subhan (2012) conducted a study on the teaching and learning of qur’an at a university, but did not specifically discuss any method or media to teach the qur’an. certainly, undergraduate students who are mostly teenagers and young adults have different interests compared to the younger students. hence, a different method and media are needed. one of the media considered appropriate to teaching the reading of quran to undergraduate students is 3a method (ajari aku al quran/please teach me quran). the learning media has not been implemented and researched in the context university. this reason makes the researchers interested in creating and applying the 3a as an innovative and enjoyable learning media to teach quran learning. by implementing this media, the researchers expect the learning atmosphere will be more interesting and more effective. method this research was conducted using research and development approach. research and development is a method that can be employed to develop a book, module, learning method, evaluation instrument, curriculum model, learning approach, evaluation, supervision, staff training, and others. borg and gall (1989, p. 782) defined this research method as “a process of using and validating education products.” the product which comes from this research is the 3a media of quran learning (ajari aku al quran/please teach me quran). this research was done at islamic university of bandung (unisba) by using the sample taken from groups c and d. group c consisted of the students with the category of being able to read quran but not knowing hijaiyyah letters well enough. group d consisted of the students with the category of being unable to read quran. the techniques of data collection in this research were done by applying documentation study, interview, and tests. the data then were analyzed by using the qualitative and quantitative approaches. the qualitative data were finalized by applying an interactive model, while the quantitative data were analyzed by conducting t-test. the t-test was conducted in order to find out the difference of students’ ability before and after they were treated by the 3a quran learning media. results and discussion after finding out about the lack of concern and abilities of unisba’s students in reading quran well and correctly, and the large number of them who could not read quran, the researchers developed learning media that would be suitable for the students. 3a was developed from the use of organic trash, such as some coffee packs, newspapers, and other trashes. the media is designed to make students learn the materials actively (studentcentered), and can continue the materials independently and continually. the first step in 3a learning is saying hijaiyyah letters in bahdadiyah manner. after the students are able to recognize and say the letters well and correctly, the next step is to group and review the letters that are occasionally exchanged, such as the first group: ن ي بت ث , the second group ف ع غ م هـ, third group ج ح خ fourth group س ش, ط ظ ص ض , and fifth group و ز د ذ ر . figures 2 and 3 illustrate the 3a puzzles. figure 2: 3a learning media alhamuddin, hamdani f.f.r.s., tandika, d., & adwiyah, r. developing al-quran instruction model through 3a (ajari aku al-quran or please teach me al-quran) 98 figure 3: 3a learning media for the learning media, the researchers used some materials which are commonly found in students’ environment, such as puzzle, dice, and card. the whole learning media will be packaged well and simply in order to make students feel interested in learning quran and have an impression that reading and leaning quran is fun. besides that, the learning media which are used will not be separated from what is going to be delivered to students. what this method wants to deliver is basic knowledge of quran in the form of hijaiah, the arabian words that are taken from quran, the pieces of verses, and short letters from quran.by using the 3a method, they could say all hijaiyah letters but they couldn’t pronounce them well and correctly. but students haven’t known how to differentiate the harokat when they read quran based on its rules. if they have known these rules, they can read the quran fluently. once the learning media was developed, the next step was to see the effectiveness of its implementation. first, the participating students were introduced to the materials and 3a. the students were also motivated to be more concerned with and love quran better by reading it well and correctly. this introduction and motivation was conducted by using the rainbow bar media and iqro bar. after that, a demo was given. the demo was conducted by showing how to say and pronounce hijaiyah letters in 3a media properly and correctly through tajwid reading. the aim is to make the students know the difference among tajwid forms in hijaiyah letters. by knowing this, it is hoped that the students will be able to read the quran better and pronounce what they read correctly. after carrying out the demo and the training of reading hijaiyah letters, the team of researchers explained how to read quran well and correctly. during this stage, the students could pay attention well to the material delivering. at the beginning, students’ comprehension on reading the harokat and tajwid was not good enough. this finding was acquired during the question-answer session. but, after the materials were given through the a3, students’ comprehension was getting better. they could explain correctly the meanings of harokat and tajwid on hijaiyah letters and how to read quran well and correctly. the learning media could also raise students’ enthusiasm toward the 3a itself and the learning of quran reading as a whole. the method employed in the use of the 3a media could also develop students’ comprehension and love for the quran. one of the end goals of the implementation of this learning media is to create students or indonesian people in general who can remember the content of quran and comprehend it (hafiz quran) or qori qoriah. by doing this, it is hoped that unisba can produce the graduates who have “3m” characters, namely those who understand well the values of islam through the reading of quran properly and correctly. to be more assured of the effectiveness of the 3a learning media in improving students’ abilities in reading quran, some statistical tests were conducted. the result of the statistical tests shows that there learning media had a significant influence on developing students’ quran reading ability in groups c and d. this can be proved by looking at the data analysis presented in table 1. table 1: pre-test and post-test average scores table 1 shows students’ average scores on quran reading before and after being given special treatment by using the 3a media. before the students were given the special treatment, their quran reading average score was 64.6. after they were trained with the 3a media, their average score in quran reading rose to 80.4. table 2: t-test result paired differences t df sig. (2tailed) mean std. deviation std. error mean 95% confidence interval of the difference lower upper pair 1 pretest posttest 15.81 9.51 1.58 19.02 12.59 9.97 35 .000 table 2 indicates that t-score was -9.975 at the sig value of 0.000. since the sig. value < 0.05, it can 6 5 4 3 2 1 ب ف ا ج ط و ن ع ل ح ظ ز ي غ ك خ ص د ت م ق س ض ذ ث هـ ء ش ر mean n std. deviation std. error mean pretest 64.67 36 11.69 1.95 posttest 80.47 36 9.06 1.51 international journal of education vol. 10 no. 2, february 2018, pp. 95-100 ©2018 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: http://dx.doi.org/ 99 be concluded that ho was rejected. it means that the average scores of students’ ability in reading the quran before and after the learning activity were different. this result made the researchers come into conclusion that the ability of students’ quran reading before and after the treatment was significantly influenced by the application of the 3a media. the finding above attests to the argument of sudjana (2005) on the benefits of using appropriate media, namely: (1) the learning which is being given will be more interesting for the students so that it can grow their learning motivation; (2) teaching methods will be more varied, not only verbal communication delivered by the teacher. these varieties will make the students feel interested and the teacher can save their energy, especially for the teacher who has long teaching time during the day; (3) the teaching materials will be more meaningful so that it can be easily understood by the students. it obviously will help the students master the goal of learning better; and (4) the students will get involved more to the learning activities. they are not only listening to what their teacher say, but they are also doing other learning activities such as observing, doing, demonstrating, and others. appropriate use of media has been also proven to help students at various levels improve their abilities in reading quran (akbar, 2013; akkila & nasser, 2017; mssraty, t., & faryadi, 2012; sariki, 2012) in addition, strauss and frost (1999) mentioned nine factors that must be considered in selecting the media. those nine factors are: (1) the problems that are faced by the institution; (2) the adjustment of the media to the learning materials; (3) learning characteristics; (4) teacher’s attitude and skills; (5) learning goal; (6) the relationship in learning process; (7) leaning location; (8) learning time; (9) the level of medium richness. the 3a learning media has taken these factors into consideration, thus explaining the success of the media in helping improve the students’ quran reading ability. besides that, nurhakim (2017) mentioned the internal and external factors will influence the learning. the internal factor is students’ motivation and the external factor is the teacher. in this case, teacher has important roles to make the learning process in the classroom successful (alhamuddin & bukhori, 2016). it means the teacher must be creative in developing the learning media that are used in order to make the learning process conduct successfully. the 3a media, hence, will successfully help students in achieving the learning objectives if the teacher is creative in using and further developing the media. based on the findings above, the process of learning al-quran by using creative and innovative media has become a necessity and an obligation. alhamuddin (2016) stated that the substance of education basically is on the reflection of actual problems which are faced in people’s social real life. the process of students’ education or learning experiences should be in the forms of activities that mainly focus on the cooperation of all parties involved. conclusions based on the findings and discussions above, it can be concluded that the learning of quran by using the 3a media had a significant influence on developing students’ quran reading ability in groups c and d. the interesting and innovative use of the media can help the students recognize easily hijaiyyah letters well and correctly. the next researchers are hoped to do the research comprehensively in order to develop this model significantly. referring the descriptions above, the writer proposed the following ways to develop the love of unisba’s students for reading qur’an as development agent (mujaddid): (1) involving the institutions that are related to islamic study foundation and personal development of unisba to give extended training for the students in order to develop their understanding and concern in reading qur’an well and correctly; (2) involving the institutions or student units of unisba and faculties to give further training to the students of unisba in order to develop their understanding on the importance of reading qur’an well and correctly for the development of competence quality, so that they can be graduates with the “3m” characteristics; (3) conducting a reading qur’an training with the coordination from the faculties and study programs in the university continuously. this program is hoped to be able to minimize the number of students who do not pass the pesantren program every year. it is finally suggested the next researchers do further investigation related to this topic more deeply and comprehensively. references akbar, g. (2013) metode pembelajaran al-quran melalui media online. indonesian jurnal on networking and security (ijns), 2(1), 6568. akkila, a. n., & naser, s. s. a. (2017). teaching the right letter pronunciation in reciting the holy quran using intelligent tutoring system. international journal of advanced research and development, 2(1), 64-68. alhamuddin, a., & bukhori, b. (2016). the effect of multiple intelligence-based instructions on critical thinking of full day islamic elementary schools students. ta'dib, 21(1), 31-40. alhamuddin, a. (2016). kurikulum pendidikan tinggi keagamaan islam: mutu dan relevansi. almurabbi: jurnal studi kependidikan dan keislaman, 3(1), 1-15. dale, e. (1946) audiovisual-method in teaching. new york: the dryden press. drewniany, b.l., & jewler, a. (2014) creative strategy in advertising. wadsworth: cengange learning. hamdani, f.f.r.s. (2016). penerapan model contextual teaching and learning (ctl) dalam pembelajaran ilmu falak. almurabbi, 3(21), 55-69. heinich, r., molenda, m., and russel, j.d. (1996) instructional technology for teaching and learning: designed instruction, integrating alhamuddin, hamdani f.f.r.s., tandika, d., & adwiyah, r. developing al-quran instruction model through 3a (ajari aku al-quran or please teach me al-quran) 100 computers, and using media. upper saddle river, nj.: merril prentice hall. kemp, j.o.e. (1975) planning and producing audiovisual materials. new york: crowell harper and row publisher. mssraty, t., & faryadi, q. (2012). teaching the quranic recitation with harakatt: a multimedia-based interactive learning method. international journal of scientific & engineering research, 3(8), 1-4. nurhakim, h. q. a., saepudin, a., & alhamuddin, a. (2017). the effectiveness of cordobana methods in improving students’ reading ability of quran at the fifth grade of state elementary school 2 sudimampir bandung barat in academic year 2016/2017. prosiding pendidikan agama islam spesia universitas islam bandung. 76-80. sarikin. (2012). peningkatan kemampuan membaca al-quran dengan metode cooperative learning mencari pasangan. jurnal ilmu tarbiyah “at-tajdid”, 1(1), 7187. schram, w.l., & porter, w.e. (1982). men, women, messages, and media: understanding human communication. new york: harper and row publisher. subhan. (2014) pembelajaran al-quran di universitas riau. jurnal potensia, 13, 219234. susilana, r., & riyana, c. (2009) media pembelajaran: hakikat, pengembangan, pemanfaatan, dan penilaian. bandung: cv. wacana prima. syarifuddin, a. (2004). mendidik anak membaca, menulis, dan mencintai al-quran. jakarta: gema insani. tsaury, a.m., et al. (2016). laporan pkm berbasis masjid “pengajian usia senja sebagai wujud pendidikan seumur hidup untuk mengatasi kesulitan membaca al-quran pada ibu-ibu pengajian di desa jagabaya kecamatan cimaung kabupaten bandung barat”. jakarta: diktis kemenag ri. international journal of education vol. 9 no. 2, februari 2017, pp. 82-88 ©2017 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v9i2.5461 82 introducing education based on human rights in higher education: examples from a language subject maría martínez lirola university of alicante, spain and research fellow, department of linguistics and modern languages, university of south africa (unisa) maria.lirola@ua.es first draft received: 24 july 2016 final proof received: 20 february 2017 abstract despite the progress that has been carried out in different areas of society in recent years, human rights are still violated in various ways in different parts of the world. this article chooses an educational proposal based on human rights in order to assert their importance through various practical activities carried out in higher education, particularly in a compulsory subject of the degree in english studies in a spanish university. the purpose of the chosen activities is that students reflect on human rights so that they can improve their critical awareness and their commitment in defending them. this educational proposal combines the development of the different skills requested in a language subject (listening, speaking, reading, writing and interaction), the acquisition of values and the importance of human rights. the proposed activities contribute to students’ progress as active, critical, ethical and committed citizens, who are able to become aware of the different ways in which human rights are violated. moreover, they are able to provide coherent responses based on the approach that has been followed in the teaching-learning process. therefore, it is concluded that the educational approach presented in this article is suitable for students to be sensitized, to develop social awareness, and to acquire different skills. keywords: human rights; language teaching; didactics; higher education; english studies. to cite this paper (in apa style): lirola, m. m. (2017). introducing education based on human rights in higher education: examples from a language subject. indonesian journal of education, 9(2), 82-88. doi: dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v9i2.5461 introduction the twenty first century society highlights globalization and the fact of being in contact with other people through social networks. consequently, cultural approaches take place, and it is also possible to be aware of unfair social situations that take place in different parts of the world, although there are many advances taking place in social life. this article presents some activities framed on education based on human rights (ebhr) because this pedagogical perspective places the human being in the centre of its interventions and help people be aware of the importance of human rights (hhrr); in this sense, each human is considered the protagonist of her/his personal and social development, at the same time that she/he is the holder, owner and promoter of her/his rights (agencia de naciones unidas para los refugiados de palestina, 2014, p. 8). human rights are normally defined as those rights that are inherent in our nature; we cannot live as human beings without them (naciones unidas, 2004). the universal declaration of human rights takes into account ideals of coexistence that make it be considered one of the best works of the history of humanity (mestre chust, 2007). it is necessary to keep in mind that human rights are not respected in many places; therefore, it is important to continue working to make them visible and a reality for many human beings. in fact, ebhr contributes to improve communication in a foreign language classroom if students develop the different skills (listening, speaking, reading, writing and interaction) in order to improve their level of english, following lopes cristovão (2015, p. 411): “first, the starting point of a didactic intervention should be based on a communicative situation with a clear objective to be achieved and a purposeful prompt for text production”. therefore, this educational proposal combines that students develop the said skills with teaching the importance of human rights and of education based on values. in addition, this perspective contributes so that students advance as global citizens in such a way that they can be aware of the different social realities that take place at local and global levels, and they assume a commitment in order to improve society. we believe that every learning experience has its origin in a social environment (antón, 2010). consequently, it is important to maximize that students are active, critical and committed in the teaching-learning process (barahona et al., 2013); they are educated to be global citizens. moreover, this pedagogical proposal promotes values and the importance of peace for a better society, following page (2008, p. 3): the universal declaration of human rights recognizes peace education in article 26: “education shall be directed […] to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. it shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship […] and shall further the activities of the united nations for the maintenance of peace. http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v9i2.5461 mailto:maria.lirola@ua.es http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v9i2.5461 lirola, m.m. introducing education based on human rights in higher education: examples from a language subject 83 education for global citizenship implies that students acquire competences and values that favour the exercise of hhrr, which implies responsibility in the construction of a better world and active participation both inside and outside the classroom (united nations, 2006). the pedagogy based on human rights is not normally a priority in higher education. this is not surprising since hhrr are a topic that is not quite visible among the main discourses, such as the one highlighted by the media. in this sense, it is important to highlight that the classroom is a space where we can observe how society works, following fernández martínez (2011, p. ix): “the classroom offers tangible ways of interpreting contemporary culture; it is an excellent forum for teaching discourse analysis and for making students aware that there is a complex world there to be analysed.” the classroom can be used as a space where human rights are visible, although it is not very frequently that they are present (goodhart and mihr, 2011; porter and offord, 2006). for this reason, their claim is essential so that societies advance with justice, equality in rights, peace, among others (goh et al., 2012), in words of gready and vanhenhole (2014, p. 12): a human rights framing is attractive to social justice advocates because it speaks of entitlement, not charity; provides a language in which transnational discussions can take place; and brings to bear an international legal framework with claims to universal acceptance that outstrip other normative frameworks. the main objective of this article is to offer some activities framed on ebhr in a spanish language classroom in order to make visible the said pedagogical perspective in higher education. another objective of this article is that students reflect on human rights in order to improve their critical awareness and their commitment in their defence. ebhr offers students opportunities to reflect and deepen in the different ways in which hhrr are violated. it also proposes that students are more ethical and critical in order to be able to contribute to look after human rights. after this introduction, this article is organised in the following way: the next section offers the literature review and the main principles of ebhr. next, section 3 refers to the context of the research, the participants and the methodology that was used. section 4 offers some practical examples of activities used in the language classroom related to human rights. section 5 consists on the discussion and finally, the paper finishes with some conclusions. literature review the ebhr gives importance to the universal declaration of human rights because one of its main concerns is that the said rights are known and respected; this framework also pays attention to social problems such as war, gender discrimination, and environmental problems, among others. consequently, ebhr considers essential freedom of thought and expression so that students can be active participants in the teaching-learning process and can advance as active citizenship (al-nakib, 2012; covell, 2013; tibbits, 2005). the universal declaration of human rights, which was signed after the atrocities of the second world war, recognizes that human rights are the base for freedom, justice and peace. these imply that they are inherent to the dignity of all human beings irrespective of their race, sex, religion, social class, place of residence, ideology, etc. hhrr are expressed as civil, social, and economic rights, and it is necessary to ensure that they are accomplished and respected through the various laws that governments prepare for this purpose. human rights are a set of guarantees and freedoms that states must respect and enforce, and that all people have because of being human (barbeito and caireta, 2009). these authors (2009, p. 11) indicated that human rights have three key features: a) universal: they are valid for all people of the world, without any exception; b) inalienable: they cannot be denied, suspended, or withdrawn; and c) indivisible: they cannot be separated or ranked and they are all related and have the same value. the fact that these rights are universal highlights their value in the fight for equality and nondiscrimination. in fact, this approach gives a special attention to the most marginalized and vulnerable groups in society; it also highlights the active participation of all persons in the respect of hhrr and in building a more just, equitable and democratic society. as osler and starkey (2010, p. 43) make clear: the universal declaration of human rights (udhr) presents a vision of a peaceful world; the outcome of a struggle by humanity to implement justice. it offers an emancipatory manifesto, a set of shared principles for living together and an agenda for action developed in response to the repressive totalitarian ideologies of the midtwentieth century. the realisation of this vision of justice and peace is a utopian project. opting for a human rights approach allows to establish an interdisciplinary connection based on contents that takes into consideration social problems that are present in near and far environments. consequently, students develop a critical vision that enables them to be aware of how human rights are not respected; this awareness must imply that students commit in their defense in order to make real their progress as responsible, active, and engaged citizens. magendzo (2015, p. 48) pointed out that ebhr began with social and popular education movements. following the united nations fund for children (2008), this model is based on the idea that education officially enjoys the status of human right since the universal declaration of human rights was adopted in 1948. therefore, this approach can be considered transformer because it is aimed at creating an active society in which each person is empowered and able to demand respect for their rights (acebal monfort et al., 2011; magendzo and donoso, 1999). there is research that focuses on human rights in general or regarding hhrr from a sociological or political perspective (holder and reidy, 2013; kadragiz, 2006; marchetti & tocci, 2011; risse et al., lirola, m.m. introducing education based on human rights in higher education: examples from a language subject 84 2013; steiner et al., 2007). other studies join hhrr with migration (blake and husain, 2003; dembour and kelly, 2011; estévez, 2012; rubio-marín, 2014). there are also publications linking human rights to education, which is an area of special interest for this paper (bajaj, 2003, 2011; caicedo, 2014; covell, 2013; osler and starkey, 2010; pani et al., 2005; simon and pleschová, 2013; tomasevski, 2006). in this sense, it is understood that ebdh highlights that students are active in the educational process and society so that students’ capacities get stronger and they become active in social relations (caicedo, 2014). taking into account the indications of the united nations (2004), education based on human rights shares giving a core value to the principles present in the declaration of rights such as equality and dignity; it is accepted the universality, indivisibility and interdependence of human rights. this educational framework is based on documents such as the universal declaration of human rights or the convention on the rights of the child; it also establishes relationships between human rights and individual responsibilities of the state. in addition, hhrr are understood as an evolving process to help understand human needs and the role of citizens and the state in their respect. education must be understood as an element that contributes to the development of the human being and to the development of society. in fact, education must contribute to promote fundamental freedoms and respect for human rights. this educational approach is also a tool for social transformation that involves empowering people by giving children and adults the opportunity of being aware of the importance of their rights (pani et al., 2005). human rights can be considered a common ground between different trends in education such as development education, conflict resolution, peace education, multicultural education or global education. i concur with the statement of tibbits (2008, p. 99): “human rights education is an international movement to promote awareness about the rights accorded by the universal declaration of human rights (udhr) and related human rights conventions, and the procedures that exist for the redress of violations of these rights”. thus, education based on human rights can teach many skills that help students to defend human rights such as to be open to other cultures, to appreciate the value of freedom, to respect differences and dignity, to contribute to the prevention of conflicts and to resolve them by non-violent means, among other issues. methods the context of this article is higher education, i.e., the activities that presented in the following section were put into practice in the core subject english language v in the degree english studies (grado en estudios ingleses) at the a university in spain. the end of this subject is that students acquire an advanced level of english by developing the different skills. the subject is taught 4 hours a week and each hour is devoted to work with different skills: academic writing (the main cohesive devices and the main formal and functional aspects of the main text types are explored); revision of the main grammatical aspects that level c1 requests (inversion, passive voice, reported speech, etc.); oral skills are paid special attention and that is why one hour is used every week for students to present a cooperative oral presentation and another hour is used in the participation in a debate on the same topic that the oral presentation so that students can develop their critical thinking and talk about global issues. the participants of this research were the 125 students registered in the subject english language v during the academic year 2014-2015. the majority were women (85%) and 15% were men. most of the students were 21 years old and they have studied english as a compulsory subject in the first and second year of the degree, which means that they got level b1 in the first year and level b2 in the second year. most of the students wanted to work as primary or secondary school english teachers, but there were also students who wanted to work as translators or interpreters in spain or abroad. as regards methodology, due to the high number of students registered in the subject, the teacher, who is also the person is charge or doing this study, i.e., this is practitioner research, decided to use a cooperative methodology in order to be in contact with group coordinators in order to supervise students’ learning process easier. students were asked at the beginning of the academic year to organise themselves in groups of 5 or 6 people; they could work cooperatively during the whole semester in the different activities they were asked to do. due to the limitations of space in this paper, i am just going to offer a detailed description of some of the activities that students had to do during the semester framed in the pedagogical proposal of ebhr (see section 4). they have been chosen for their appropriateness to develop social awareness at the same time that they work with the five skills. the choice of this type of methodology entails that students are the protagonists in the teachinglearning process, while the teacher assumes a role of facilitator or guide. the fact that the methodology is cooperative promotes interaction as the basis for developing the proposed activities effectively. in essence, the acquisition of different types of skills takes place. therefore, the methodology proposed contribute to establish a relationship between what is taught in classrooms and the demands of society because students develop critical thinking, work in groups, integrate different skills, broaden their perspective, etc. findings cooperative activities that promote human rights in order to implement a framework based on human rights, necessary the use of appropriate materials is necessary, i.e., materials must inform and raise awareness, facilitate dialogue and debate so that students can express freely; in addition, materials should be helpful and facilitate students to be able to offer positive responses to meet global challenges. it is not usual that textbooks have sections devoted exclusively to human rights. in this sense, it is desirable that teachers design their own materials using authentic texts and of course the universal declaration of human rights in order to work in a lirola, m.m. introducing education based on human rights in higher education: examples from a language subject 85 rights-based approach effectively, as the activities described below show. activity 1: working on racial diversity the teacher selects different multimodal texts of advertising in which people of different races are represented in order to help students think about the situation and the social reality of people living in other continents and whose cultures are different from the students. students have to write down the main cultural differences observed between the people that appear on the texts and their own culture. in this way students deepen into the construction of identity and different cultures (coates, 2012; martínez lirola, 2013; ortiz et al., 2005), following brooks and hebert (2006, p. 297): much of what audiences know and care about is based on the images, symbols, and narratives in radio, television, film, music, and other media. how individuals construct their social identities, how they come to understand what it means to be male, female, black, white, asian, latino, native americaneven rural or urban-is shaped by commodified texts produced by media for audiences that are increasingly segmented by the social constructions of race and gender. media, in short, are central to what ultimately come to represent our social realities. once students have written the ideas, they share what they thought after seeing the texts. next, the class is divided into five groups and each group is assigned a continent. the different people who make up the groups have to think of five advantages and five disadvantages of belonging to the continent that has been assigned and think of possible solutions to improve the disadvantages. then, each group shares its list and the teacher writes down the ideas on the blackboard. after that the groups have to choose one nationality within the continent allotted and think about different stereotypes associated with nationality. after that, a person of another group comes at the center of the class and he/she puts a sticker on the forehead with the name of the nationality by another group; the person at the center does not know what nationality it is written on the sticker. once this is done, people from different groups begin to say stereotypes or positive aspects that are related with that nationality until the person at the center guess which one it is. at the end of the session, the teacher encourages a debate that discussed what of these stereotypes may be true and if people tend to learn more stereotypes or the positive aspects of certain nationalities. activity 2: deepening into human rights after the preparatory activity where some stereotypes have been made visible, the purpose of the next one is to deepen on human rights in order to emphasize their importance in today's society and to deepen on how they relate to intercultural competence. the teacher asks students how many human rights they know; they are asked to appoint at least one, and students need to share if they think that to talk about human rights is a current topic. all these questions are answered in groups and then a spokesperson is appointed in order to synthesize all the ideas discussed in groups in front of the whole class. after answering these questions the teacher refers to some human rights, such as the following, and asks students if, in their opinion, these rights are respected or further work is needed to be done so that they are respected: article 1: all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. they are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood. article 2: 1. everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. 2. furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty. article 4: no one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms. article 5: no one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. article 28: everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this declaration can be fully realized. then, the teacher asks the students in what continent/s there are more violations of human rights and the reasons they can think of for these violations to take place. in fact, students have to discuss how these rights are not respected (rights denied by gender, race, religion, sexual orientation, etc.), talk about countries where human rights have improved recently, etc. students are also asked to think of organizations that work for the defense of human rights and of human rights activists and defenders of peace; they also have to reflect on what human rights violations are the ones that bother them most and the reasons for that. in addition, students have to prepare a list of vocabulary known and unknown related to human rights; in this way, they expand their vocabulary related to this semantic field; they are also asked to prepare a glossary related to this issue. we consider that it is important that students link the global reality with the local one; in this sense, after this first part of the activity that is more general, students are invited to reflect on how it is necessary to improve human rights in their local reality. the teacher asked the following questions to the groups and calls for a different person to be the leader of the group and write down the main ideas discussed in lirola, m.m. introducing education based on human rights in higher education: examples from a language subject 86 groups. afterwards, these ideas can be shared with the rest of the class:  do you know situations in your local reality in which human rights are violated by not accepting cultural differences?  what happens in your context when a violation of human rights takes place?  are there places in this community where people can participate actively in the protection of human rights violations or prevent them up to a certain extend? after conducting the discussion, the teacher distributes magazines, newspapers, markers, glue and scissors for students to prepare in various groups different murals related to the importance of multiculturalism and the respect of human rights so that society can advance. the murals are used to decorate the classroom. in this way, multimodal materials made by the students themselves are employed, giving space for creativity in the higher education classroom. discussion the activities outlined in the previous section aim that students deepen on human rights, learn more about them, and are able to think of situations where they are violated and of actions that could be taken to defend and respect them. moreover, students learn vocabulary and conversational skills based on practical activities that promote human rights. in this way, the language classroom takes into consideration teaching values at the same time that students work with the different skills that they have to develop in the foreign language, i.e., listening, speaking, reading, writing and interaction. we are, therefore, in front of an educational proposal that helps to break with prejudices and stereotypes and to emphasize the defense of human rights and peace. consequently, it highlights the development of attitudes that help promote respect and tolerance for diversity at the same time that students are aware of the individual and collective rights. one of the purposes of ebdh in the subject english language v is to make students recognize the importance that human rights have in their lives, in their families’ lives and in society; another purpose is to make students aware of how the respect for hhrr varies in different parts of the world. human rights are not something to be learned by heart but their teaching should be done through practical activities that are contextualized as those presented in this article. in this sense, our educational proposal provides opportunities for students to reflect on how human rights are violated so that they can provide solutions to ensure them. they are offered controversial situations so they have to develop critical thinking and to reflect and offer solutions integrating different competences (magendzo, 2015). after the ideas presented in the preceding paragraph, it is clear that opting for ebdh offers students opportunities to reflect on the various problems that society has at the present time and promotes working with the principles of critical pedagogy (magendzo and toledo, 2015). hhrr should be taught in all the subjects in the curriculum or through concrete activities such as those presented in this article. therefore, this approach is committed to enhance participatory knowledge in the teachinglearning process, which involves that students learn in a dynamic way and based on dialogue leading to respect different opinions and deep reflection in which the rights of others are recognized (bárcena and melich, 2000). this entails the development of critical thinking, which is essential for the students to recognize that they are active and critical citizens in the twenty-first century and in building a better world for all people who inhabit it. in addition, it is highlighted that students have a global vision of the world, which should start from their daily reality and have as axis on human rights. the fact that the first activity pays special attention to racial diversity linked to human rights carries with it an invitation for students to respect cultural diversity and see it as an opportunity for cultural enrichment. this involves making progress in building an increasingly democratic society in which the peaceful coexistence of all people regardless of their race, sex or any other difference is encouraged. this activity aims to end the ethnocentrism that is present on many occasions when people have not gone deep enough or do not know other cultural or racial realities. the second activity encourages students to work with the declaration of human rights and respond to the specific questions raised in order to have more knowledge about hhrr and to have more tools and arguments to defend and argue about the importance of these rights so that societies can advance in rights and in respect for differences. activities one and two are intended to make students reflect about the close relationship between not respecting differences among people, especially the cultural ones and the violation of human rights. it is emphasized that racial segregation often carries rejection not only of the color of the skin but also of different cultural aspects related to certain races, countries or continents. knowing human rights helps the students to have a globalist vision of reality and to be more open to realities different from their own. the fact of designing activities that deepen in the defense of human rights highlights that the subject is not only focused on learning the foreign language but it shows that english language v is also designed to help students be committed to a broader approach that makes them aware of hhrr and of different social realities. in fact, this teaching proposal tries to make connections between what is taught in the classroom and what happens in society. in this sense, students can see that they improve their english at the same time that they acquire more social consciousness. when doing the activities presented in the previous section, students improve in various skills because all the activities take into account that they are framed in a foreign language classroom, which involves the development of written and spoken communication. the activities are designed to help students improve their english while working on a rights-based approach that involves the awareness of social problems and the acquisition of social skills such as active listening, respect for diversity of opinions, communication, among others. therefore, lirola, m.m. introducing education based on human rights in higher education: examples from a language subject 87 this pedagogical approach highlights social awareness and openness to know other social realities and how human rights are not respected or not in different parts of world. students develop their skills at the same time that they reflect on the social issue under study in different ways: reading the declaration of human rights, writing about what they are asked taking into account ebdh, talking with their classmates, listening to different opinions and sharing in front of the whole class, among others. conclusions basing education on human rights is fundamental to build fair and egalitarian societies. however, in general, we lack educational proposals based on ebdh in higher education. hence, the learning model presented in this paper is a proposal to enhance that students learn not only english but also acquire competences to discuss on the importance of human rights; students are invited to broaden their perspective and to realize that one can learn english while deepening on critical thinking. moreover, it is highlighted the importance of ensuring respect for human rights while learning english. ebhr emphasizes that all human beings have the same dignity and that relationships must be based on respect for diversity, justice and equality, among others. consequently, all forms of discrimination and violence are rejected in order to advance in the development of a peaceful, egalitarian, and respectful society that respects diversity. furthermore, this approach enables students to protect and respect rights by being aware of their importance. this educational approach helps build a global ethic where an explicit commitment to peaceful conflict resolution and fair negotiation is present. in addition, this approach contributes to the development of democratic capacities and to promote the comprehensive development of students by promoting critical reflection that helps them go beyond content acquisition. ebhr is an educational proposal that gives great importance to the fact that students learn by doing, i.e., they work with different skills during the whole teaching-learning process, which is a key idea in an active learning model as the one proposed. framing pedagogy on an approach based on human rights enhances global awareness. in addition, it contributes to building a better world if students actively engage and capture the essence of each of the activities. it is necessary to put into practice more educational proposals based on human rights in order to help students of all educational levels to be enriched with what this approach offers. in a sense, they can become aware of the importance of human rights so that societies can advance and human beings are treated with respect and dignity. in short, the ebdh is a pedagogical and political strategy that contributes to the development of active citizenship and to the creation of a real democracy. references acebal monfort, l. 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(2006). human rights obligations in education: the 4-a scheme. the netherlands: wolf legal publishers. united nations (2004). abc: teaching human rights: practical activities for primary and secondary school. new york: united nations. united nations (2006). plan de acción. programa mundial para la educación en derechos humanos. new york: unesco. https://doi.org/10.1080/14675980500133465 international journal of education vol. 9 no. 2, februari 2017, pp. 139-148 ©2017 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v9i2.5478 139 the effectiveness of implementing information and communication technology on student academic services (a case study in bandung institute of technology for the 2015-2016 period) dedi supriadi¹ udin syaefudin sa’ud² faculty member of telkom university¹, faculty member of indonesia university of education¹ dedi@ypt.or.id¹, usaud@upi.edu² first draft received: 25 december 2016 final proof received: 22 february 2017 abstract the implementation of information and communication technology (ict) in higher education institutions plays an important role in realizing the competitive advantage, especially in the realization of the three pillars of higher education. in order for the implementation of ict in higher education institutions to be effective, adequate support from infrastructure, human resources, and leader and organizational commitment is needed. the research focuses on and aims to describe the effectiveness of ict implementation in student academic services, covering ict policies and programs, ict implementation strategies, ict implementation, and the effectiveness of ict implementation in student academic services. in addition, it attempts to formulate a hypothetical model of ict implementation in student academic services. the research adopted the analytical-descriptive method through qualitative approach. data were collected through interviews, observations, and documentary analysis. afterwards, the data were analyzed through data reduction, data display, inference drawing, and verification. the research took place in bandung institute of technology. the findings show that: the ict policies and programs are based on the implementation of the three pillars of higher education (education, research, and community service); the strategies give emphasis on coordination patterns; ict implementation in academic services is realized through e-learning (online, blended learning, video conference), academic information system, and digital library; the effectiveness of the ict implementation is analyzed based on the realization of the program at the level of unit (decision-focused approach), performance achievement (goal-oriented approach), and student satisfaction (user-oriented approach) in terms of tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy. it is recommended that ict implementation in academic services should be able to realize the competitive advantage of the implementation of the three pillars of higher education, which is in accordance with the institution’s vision, missions, and strategic goals, supported by the availability of infrastructure, human resources, funds, managerial and organizational commitment, and periodical evaluation and monitoring. keywords: effectiveness; ict; academic services to cite this paper (in apa style): supriadi, d. & sa’ud, u. s. (2017). the effectiveness of implementing information and communication technology on student academic services (a case study in bandung institute of technology for the 20152016 period). international journal of education, 9(2), 139-148. doi: dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v9i2.5478 introduction ict has been proven to create value advantages for a higher education institution to compete with other higher education institutions (talebian, mohammadi, rezvanfar, 2014; vajargah, jahani, & azadmanesh, 2010). in addition, the role of ict in the administration of education is to improve service quality to the whole academic communities, ultimately students. through ict, various forms of services can be given easily, such as information, administrative affairs, instructional/academic services, and other types of services. this so is considering the fact that the demands of higher education nowadays is not only limited to creating high quality graduates in terms of the academic achievements. higher education should also be able to prove its quality in the aspects of institutional accountability, transparency, and effectiveness. the society and interested parties desire transparency from the management of higher education in terms of any information related to the interest of the society, both the academic and administrative information. academic information can take the forms of academic calendar, new student registration, student data, student academic activities, scholarships, study programs, and other relevant information. meanwhile, institutional information is commonly related to university’s identity, such as: vision and missions of the university, graduate profiles, related policies, organizational structure, and other relevant information. the law number 12 of 2012 regarding higher education, article 56, paragraph 4, states that “higher education institutions are obliged to provide data and information of the administration of higher education and to ensure their truth and precision.” further analysis of the law makes it clear that the government desires the administrators of higher education to manage their institution by prioritizing correct and actual information for the society as a form of its responsibility for the organization of education. one http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v9i2.5478 mailto:dedi@ypt.or.id mailto:usaud@upi.edu http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v9i2.5478 supriadi & sa’ud, the effectiveness of implementing information and communication technology on student academic services 140 of the efforts of realizing this is by using ict devices to support the educational activities. higher education is an institution whose one of the main functions is to provide educational services to the society to prepare quality and useful human resources in the future. in its process, higher education always requires sophisticated and up-todate information sources. developing ict in higher education is naturally necessary. the primary activity in higher education, in accordance to its function as the administrator of education, is in the form of academic service. in the implementation of academic services, ict is needed in order to meet the goals of the services. ict use in relation to student academic affairs can take the forms of: 1) academic information; student admission, faculty/school and study program information, scholarships, student registration, student selection process, and student outcomes; 2) academic services: counseling services, contract system, learning outcomes reports, advisory, and student feedback; and 3) academic infrastructure: e-library, e-book, e-journal, e-mail, and e-learning services. the same also applies in the academic services in bandung institute of technology (indonesian, and henceforth, itb). itb is one of the higher education institutions that implement ict to support the academic services provided to students, lecturers, and staffs and to ensure that academic services can be implemented in all working units. itb, as one of the excellent state universities in indonesia, has used ict in all fields, including academic field. this implementation can be seen in the development of ict-based academic information system. one of the realizations can be observed in the available infrastructure there. the use of ict in itb in helping realize academic services is done by building backbone networks that can reach all locations of itb, starting from the central library, to sasana budaya ganesha (cultural convention), research and industrial affiliation institution (indonesian, lapi), taman sari rectorate building, surapati scientific research building, and boscha observatory in lembang. itb has also built external networks that enable the university to maintain relationships with the external parties through both telecommunication and satellite networks, internet connection, indonesian internet exchange, and research and education network, such as asian internet interconnection initiative (ai3) and trans-eurasia information network (tein), which connect itb to two greatest education networks in the world, namely geant in europe and abilene in the united states. furthermore, itb is connected to the inherent network connecting the university to more than 500 universities in indonesia. the implementation of ict in supporting the administration of education and services for the whole academic community members should be supported by the policies, programs, and activities, whose implementation can be measured through the determination of strategic goals. policy is the fundamental guideline for an institution, as a form of strategic effort in realizing its vision, missions, and goals. in the 2016-2020 strategic planning of itb, there a number of institutional strategic goals related to academic services, in which ict use becomes one of the primary elements, namely: 1) the development of management system and sop; 2) performance system management; 3) the development of institutional monitoring and evaluation of international accreditation (international accreditation office); 4) the improvement of e-learning management; 5) the improvement of supporting units for international programs; and 6) the strengthening and development of information system. in order for higher education/university, as one of education institutions, to be accountable and of good quality, it is required to provide quality academic services. universities as service industries should begin considering the importance of customer services more maturely, because it is increasingly realized that student services and satisfaction is a vital aspect in surviving the competition. academic satisfaction becomes very important, for it will make students loyal to the institutions, willing to promote the institution to others, and it will increase the interest of the society in continuing their education in the institution, increase the institution’s bargaining position, and increase its image. meanwhile, for a university, student satisfaction with the academic services that they get becomes an important aspect that needs to be prioritized, considering students are the primary customers of higher education. students are directly related in all stages of education in universities, starting from the input mechanism/stage through selection process in both academic and nonacademic activities to the output mechanisms. academic services are directly related to students’ activities. hence, universities should try to understand students’ needs and perceptions. students’ satisfaction is shown by their loyalty to their university and their story to others about the satisfactory academic services of the university. it certainly is a positive thing that gives added values to the university. students who are satisfied with the services of a university will continue their education in the same university. in addition, they will promote the good services to future students, thereby increasing the number of students attending the university. the quality of a service is dynamic and continues to develop in order to meet students’ expectation. students’ expectations also develop in line with the demands of the market and the development of employment, thereby necessitating continuous improvement. the changes and development in students’ demands should be heeded to and facilitated through various supporting programs and facilities. ict implementation in itb is still limited to student services. this limitation is not in line with the concept of ict in schools as put forward by tondeur et al. (2008) that ict should be implemented in the whole aspects of a school. however, research especially in the classroom context is still limited. the existing research is a follow-up action of the research on practical ict integration at all levels, which is rarely done by focusing on the services. similar concern is expressed by lai and haleem (2002, p. 101) that “information technology is changing the way the society functions. internet is the biggest revolution in human society. the impact of it can be felt in all economic and social activities in every conceivable manner.” supriadi & sa’ud, the effectiveness of implementing information and communication technology on student academic services 141 results of observations reveal that student service management using ict has not been integrated into the organizational management system. one of the important aspects related to the integration is leader’s policies as the foundation to build efficient structure in the organizational functions. the lack of focus on one service model integrated with ict in the policy has caused changes in the practice of ict to be seen as something common, without further evaluation for the efficiency and effectiveness of the ict-based service model. saleem and higuschi (2014) stated that the better policy in ict use in education will affect the quality of education. the better policy in ict management is one that integrates the policy of technology, innovation, and educational policies. in practice, ictrelated policies in itb have not been well integrated with the policies on technology (technology used), innovation (innovative technology and system developed compared to the previous system and connected to service performance), and educational policy. the policies in the use of ict have not been directed towards encouraging sustainable mobility in student services. this is not in line with wiegmans et al.’s (2003) suggestion that policy affects the continuity of ict system. regarding ict policy in education system, jordan (2011) explained that policy broadens the possibility of ict to be used in order to prepare students with a certain amount of knowledge and skills and to bring about changes in teaching and learning. in a macro view, ict policy encourages the growth of economy and social development, as argued by vandeyar (2013, p. 249) that “the policy places an obligation on education to use educational technology to deliver on expectations of quality education for economic growth and social development.” in the context of educational institution management, policy is used as an instrument to solve problems of inefficiency and ineffectiveness of institutional management, including the teaching and learning. ict policy in itb has not been made the basis for the operating system of ict. this is not in accordance with austin and hunter’s suggestion (2013) that ict will function optimally with the preparedness of policy as the framework and solid electronic system. their suggestion shows the strategic position of policy to support efficiency and effectiveness in ict use in education. according to o’brien (2006) in a book titled information technology association of america, ict is a study, design, development, implementation, support of information system management based on computer, especially software and hardware, applications. most current research on e-management focused on the issues of efficiency and effectiveness of system and accountability, such as one conducted by markauskaite (2003) and nair (2014). diaz and tozina (2015) more specifically focused on e-learning assessment system by formulating a grounded theory. the previous research prompted the researchers to conduct research on the implementation of e-management at itb. in addition to focusing on efficiency and effectiveness, the present research will produce a model that can be used for ict e-management at the scope of engineering education along with its unique characteristics. the present research puts forward issues in the practices of ict related to the ethics formulated by okaibedieke et al. (2014). this research is a follow-up of the research done by wirtz and daizer (2016), which revealed that e-governance has become the main topic in both academic and practical research, which is expected to produce a body of knowledge in e-governance. they recommended quantitative research. meanwhile, the present research adopted the qualitative method, considering the novelty that is intended to be revealed, both in terms of its epistemology and ontology, as a consequence of the limited studies on the conceptual and practical research on e-governance. considering the use of ict in higher education explained above, the researchers would like to study in more depth the effectiveness of ict implementation in academic services at bandung institute of technology (itb). literature review ict in education in today’s globalization era, ict devices such as computers, netbooks, i-pads, and the like are ubiquitous in the society of various levels. the devices are no longer secondary goods, but they have become primary goods to support daily life activities. the condition is created by the increasing needs of the society for information day and day. the era of ict, which has become the ultimate pillar of social and institutional life, becomes even more undeniable. furthermore, ict has penetrated into various aspects of life, from culture, politic, social, economy, to education. technology is a catalyst of change; in other words, it makes changes become revolutionary, rapid, and intensive (suryadi, 2006). in education and science, revolution is currently happening and it has double dimensions, namely connecting the incredibly modern research to the power of information and science that can be quickly and easily accessed through information and communication technology. suryadi (2006) asserted that the revolution in the combination of internet-computer-world wide web has shaped new generations, with new values, new socialization styles, new cultures, and even new economy. for higher education institutions or universities, ict has become necessary to support educational processes. ict plays an important role in increasing the competitive advantage of a university. the use of information technology is highly needed to increase the efficiency and productivity and the management of a higher education institution. the integration of internet into teaching is still limited. the increasing needs for learning sources have not been balanced by improvement in teaching infrastructure, both in terms of its quantity and quality. the internet in teaching has not been used optimally to help improve the quality of students. an increase in the quantity of students that can potentially degrade the quality of teaching has not been of much concern. this lack of attention can be seen in the provision of internet technology to anticipate the increasing number of students that is still limited. supriadi & sa’ud, the effectiveness of implementing information and communication technology on student academic services 142 the use of ict has not been systematically and holistically integrated in each function of organizational management of education in higher education. only a small number of higher education institutions have optimized the function of ict holistically, namely as learning management system (lms). as the main vehicle in the teaching and learning process, this system consists of a group of software designed for regulations at the individual, classroom, and institutional levels. the main character of lms is its users are teachers and students, and both should be connected to the internet using this application. the use of ict and its various devices (internetpenj) has no longer embodied into complementary goods only, but it has become a kind of primary need that penetrates into every job sector. amarulloh (2016) said that one of the most developing technologies is the web-based technology that is often called internet. this technology has been used in various fields, such as business, government institutions, health, education, and many more. this prevalence of internet is proven by the results of a survey undertaken by the indonesian internet service providers association (indonesian, apjii) in 2014, which reported that there were around 13 employment sectors in indonesia which used internet, starting from trades and services, education, government, to entertainment. trades and services ranked the first and second in the survey, respectively, while education was ranked the third with a percentage of 8.3%. figure 1. the use of internet in various employment sectors figure 1 shows that the use of ict nowadays in the form of internet has become inseparable from various educational activities in higher education institutions, especially in terms of provision, delivery, and dissemination of information to the stakeholders of education. higher education, in the framework of organizational theory, is an element of the society that is ever changing in line with the development of the environment in which the higher education exists, such as society’s needs, government policy, and globalization. hence, a good adaptive ability is needed by the education institutions by making the necessary organizational adjustment and dynamization in order to survive and adapt to the changes well. quality academic services and their effectiveness conceptually, quality is a dynamic condition that pertains to products, services, humans, processes, and the environment that meets or exceeds expectations. quality is something dynamic, something that keeps moving; when it moves forward, it can be said that there is improvement in the quality; when it moves backward, it can be said that the quality decreases. avianti (2005) said that quality can mean superiority or excellence, namely exceeding the prevalent general standards. something can be said to have quality if there is a match between the desired requirements of an object or service and the intention of the person who desires them. meanwhile, academic services can mean a series of activities in the process of meeting students’ academic needs routinely and continuously (moenir, 1995). meanwhile, service quality is to what extent the service provided by an institution is in line with the needs and expectations of the customers (sviokla, 2002). the argument makes it clear that quality services mean the extent to which reality is far from or close to customer expectation, which in this case, students’ expectation of the services they get from their institution. thus, quality is a holistic description and characteristic of an object or service that shows the ability to satisfy the expected or implied needs. service is a part of the functions of organizational management involving customers. the customers of higher education are students, graduate users, students’ parents, and other interested community members. the services are given in the form of service products to meet customers’ needs. in assessing service quality, according to parasuraman (2009), there are at least five primary dimensions supriadi & sa’ud, the effectiveness of implementing information and communication technology on student academic services 143 related to student academic service quality, namely: tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy. academic service quality becomes the most important thing to be paid attention to and improved in higher education. service quality is always dynamic and develops in order to meet student satisfaction. sufiyyah’s research (2011) has found that the quality of academic services had an effect on student satisfaction. the academic services received by students in the forms of curriculum, lectures, materials presented, and evaluation as well as supervision will cause students to give their trust to the institution, so that continuous efforts are required from the institution. student satisfaction also develops in order to meet the demands of the market and the development of employment, so that continuous improvement is required. these changes and developments should be taken into account and facilitated through the supporting programs and infrastructure. the use of ict in higher education with its various forms and purposes has changed the working paradigm of the institution into one that is more effective, faster, and accurate. in academic services, for instance, web-based technological devices have changed the conventional patterns of course credit contract, advisory, grade information, and the like. the impacts of these changes for the institution can certainly be seen in the quality performance of the institution, while the impacts on students are apparent in the satisfaction with the academic services the students get. according to armin (2011), the use of ict requires the ability to manage it resources effectively, so that efficient and excellent business processes can be created in meeting the vision of an organization. the use of ict in higher education should be effective and successful in order to give benefits to students. to measure the effectiveness of an activity, it is important to first define what effectiveness is, as it means differently for each person, depending on the theoretical framework used. according to ravianto in masruri (2014), effectiveness is how well a job is done, to what extent the output resulted from one’s work meets the expectation. this means that when a job can be completed according to the plan, in terms of timing, budget, and quality, then it can be said to be effective. in addition, emerson in handayaningrat (1990) defined effectiveness is the result of measuring the achievement of the predetermined goals. effectiveness should become a great concern, as it has great effects on many people’s interest. another definition is given by pasalong (2007), in which effectiveness is defined as follow: effectiveness basically originates from the word effect, used as a term in a causal relationship. it can be regarded as one of the causes of other variables; effectiveness means the previously determined goals have been met; in other words, targets are met because of the activities. hence, it can be concluded that effectiveness is an action that entails the occurrence of a desired effect or cause and stresses results or effects in the meeting of certain goals. the research results of aulianto (2010) demonstrate that the implementation of web-based academic information system, containing study-plan forms, student learning outcomes, course schedules, academic transcripts, instructional evaluation, can be accessed online, thereby making it easy for students to access the information. the system is simultaneously a fast feedback tool. in this research, it is also explained that the implementation of webbased academic information system has a significant influence on academic service quality. method this research adopted the qualitative approach with analytical-descriptive method at bandung institute of technology (itb). it was designed to find about ict implementation at itb in an attempt of improving the quality of student academic services. itb has been selected as the focus of the study, considering this university is one of the best universities in indonesia. the researchers in this regard would like to further explore the mechanisms of ict implementation, starting from planning, implementation, to evaluation. in addition, other aspects to be explored are related to information sources, the tools used, information/data sources as input, and indicators of the effectiveness of ict use in academic services. the research began with identifying the case, limiting the system and analysis unit for investigation. in each case, the researchers selected events or activities to observe, the people to be interviewed, and the documents to read. non-probability and snowball sampling is more suitable for this research. when research questions do not focus on frequency or amount/number; instead, they are intended to find answers in qualitative problems, then non-probability sampling is more appropriate. in obtaining detailed information, the researchers employed the continuous adjustment or focusing of the sample, namely selecting sample in line with the direction of the research’s focus. analysis the effectiveness of ict implementation in student academic services the success of a university in meeting the needs and desires of its users, especially students, can be measured through the effectiveness of the implementation of its policies and programs. students are the raw input of education who have the right to be served and catered to for their needs in an attempt of developing their potentials to be capable, skilled, independent, and competitive individuals in the society. academic services become one of the important elements for a higher education institution/university to be able to increase its credibility and trust from the society. the review of the effectiveness of the implementation of academic services in bandung institute of technology (indonesian, and henceforth, itb) emphasizes three approaches, namely decisionfocused approach, goal-oriented approach, and useroriented approach (stecher & davis, 1987). the three approaches are selected on the basis of the consideration that effectiveness is a series of interrelated processes. the findings regarding the effectiveness of academic services in the perspective of decisionfocused approach show a harmony in the working programs formulated at the level of working units. the working programs formulated at the working units supriadi & sa’ud, the effectiveness of implementing information and communication technology on student academic services 144 have been in line with the policy at the executive level. basically, the essence of this approach is to see the extent to which the policies of bandung institute of technology (itb) can be elaborated through the working programs whose success can be measured quantitatively and qualitatively. the use of ict in academic services at itb as summarized in the policy of the management and organization stresses two priority programs, namely improvement of e-learning institutional management and strengthening and development of dashboard information management system, which in its implementation is elaborated and executed by the working unit that has the authority to implement the program based on its duties and functions, namely: directorate for information system technology that is responsible for the success of the integration of information system and dashboard; and directorate for education that is responsible for the development of e-learning, online lectures, video conference, blended learning, introduction to information technology, and indonesian open and integrated online learning, and other academic support systems, such as digital library. the development of academic information system for the interest of academic administration is jointly organized by directorate for information technology system and directorate for education. directorate for information technology system as the supporting unit provides information system infrastructure and directorate for education manages the facilities independently. the appropriateness of the working program shows synergy of planning system in itb. what is desired by the top leaders is understood and realized well by leaders at the unit levels, so that the vision of itb can be achieved, namely to be an excellent, dignified, independent, world-class university, leading in changes and able to improve the welfare of indonesia and the world. ict use programs in itb are also in line with the strategic objectives of higher education at the national level, where in the regulation of the minister of research, technology, and higher education number 13 of 2015, it is stated that one of the objectives is to improve the quality of instruction and student affairs and to improve the quality of science and technology institutions and higher education. the synergy of certain working programs has some merits for the institution in building a shared commitment, mustering the maximum ability of each unit, increasing coordination and communication, increasing cooperation, and building shared responsibility so that the output and outcome will be better and eventually will increase organizational capacity. figure 2. effectiveness from decision-focused approach the formulation of working programs established by the working units at itb describes the outcomes that can be perceived by the academic community members of itb, namely excellence in educational services and in learning through classes/lectures that can reach not only the areas of itb (ganesha-jatinangor campuses), but also the partner universities, both domestic and international ones. the outcomes of working programs are also observable in the excellent strategic research of itb (excellence in research) that can be proven by a large number of citations and intellectual rights owned by itb compared to those of other universities in indonesia. in addition, the use of ict in realizing excellence in research is realized by itb through its participation in the international research community through web of science (wos), which makes it easy for the university to analyze writers’ citation indices, research trends in various topics, citation and writers’ information, institutional profiles, comparison to other universities, and improvement in research productivity. meanwhile, the effectiveness of ict implementation at itb from the goal-oriented approach can be said to have not been fully effective. the goal-oriented approach is an approach in assessing the effectiveness of the achievement or success of the implementation of a program. a program is said to be effective if the results meet the expected targets, and this is usually stated in the form supriadi & sa’ud, the effectiveness of implementing information and communication technology on student academic services 145 of quality or quantity indicators. ict use programs at itb are intended for classes in the forms of elearning, covering online class, blended learning, video conferencing, introduction to technology information, and indonesian open and integrated online learning. out of these programs, only blended learning and online classes have met the predetermined targets. the failure of a number of ict-use programs to meet the targets is caused by several factors, such as management commitment, capability of human resources as managers and users, policies, and infrastructure. as in the case of the use of video conference, the problem is caused by the policy. the policy on the use of video conference has not been made the priority program at itb in realizing competitive advantage, although the infrastructure of each faculty permits the implementation of the instructional model. the use of video conference up to this day is mostly for management meeting and thesis defense or final examination. this can be understood considering the fact that using video conference requires support from adequate infrastructure, not only provided by itb, but also provided massively for users, namely students who also require adequate infrastructure, besides support from the platform of application used. in order to use the facility of video conference technology massively, application platform supported by stable internet connection is required, such as google hangout, skype, tango, and similar applications. according to toro and joshi (2012), formulating a policy is a complicated matter. there are many aspects to be considered, among others: “content/digital resources, capacity building, monitoring and evaluation framework, ict for education management, implementation plans, financial allocations, political and administrative support, community demand for ict, and staff development and training program” (p. 22). supporting infrastructure also plays an important role in ensuring the success of the implementation of e-learning, especially in the program of introduction to information technology. introduction to information technology is a program to equip new students with the basic knowledge of science and technology and to build their scientific attitudes. the implementation of introduction to information technology uses the facilities of itb computer laboratories (comlabs) for the needs of computation, internet access, and class assignment. the intensity of comlabs use affects a decline in the quality of the infrastructure (pc client, internet, multimedia devices, etc.) and requires adequate funds for maintenance cost, component replacement, and program/software licensing. the more components replaced and the more licensed programs used, the higher the required funds. the less than optimal achievements of programs are subsequently found in the indonesian open and integrated online learning. this is an lms-program intended for academic community members outside itb by providing a number of integrated courses to a number of universities in indonesia. the program has not been fully realized because of the obstacles with the course content and materials. itb along with quality assurance of indonesian higher education attempts to prioritize service quality in order for the course content and materials presented in the indonesian integrated and open online learning to meet the standard quality. the effectiveness of a university cannot be sufficiently measured from its performance achievements and the indicators attached to the bureaucracy, but it should also be seen from the indicators of its service users, such as students’ satisfaction and trust. the core values of education are on the quality learning. this is well understood by itb, and the university always attempts to improve the learning quality though various innovations, such as using ict as learning tools in optimally accelerating students’ learning achievements. the use of e-learning in the courses at itb is an implementation of itb 2013 curriculum that emphasizes learner-centered education. through this curriculum, students are required to be more proactive in seeking for and exploring various ideas and sharing their knowledge with the whole academic members of itb. the effectiveness of ict implementation in academic services can also be measured from the outcomes perceived by students in the form of service satisfaction. student satisfaction with the existing university’s services can be made an effective barometer of whether a certain service is effective or not. the concept of service satisfaction in education institutions is not really different from that of product satisfaction in profit organizations in the perspective of customers or what is frequently called customer satisfaction. students are the primary customers of education who have the rights to be satisfied for their needs in an attempt of their selfdevelopment and to be served professionally. students’ responses to the academic services integrated with ict at itb have met the expectations and shown student satisfaction, in terms of tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy. the forms of academic services at itb have accommodated students’ desires and needs. for academic administration affairs, such as course contract, course results, learning outcomes (grades), advisory, and other needs, the students are provided with academic information system that can be accessed online. meanwhile, for the needs of learning sources, itb provides ganesha digital library, ejournal, online catalogues, and a number of materials in online courses and blended learning. these services can be easily accessed through the available infrastructure at itb or through digital devices, such as pc, laptops, smartphones, and other devices connected to the internet. for the handling of complaints or problems related to ict services, itb provides it helpdesk as a technical unit functioning to handle any complaints and problems with ict uses, and other needs such as program/software installation. student satisfaction with the services they get can be made an indicator of the effectiveness of a service. this means that the services provided have been in accordance with users’ expectations and desires that the services can be well-accepted. satisfaction is an individual’s feeling that is triggered after comparing reality with expectations. satisfaction with a service is identical to excellence and quality. university as an education institution that operates in the field of services stresses quality and excellence in services and attempts to make the supriadi & sa’ud, the effectiveness of implementing information and communication technology on student academic services 146 primary customers, namely students, satisfied. student satisfaction with a service should be maintained in order to maintain the existence of the university. the feeling of being satisfied with a service can be created through building a harmonious relationship between the institution and users (students), increasing users’ trust, increasing their loyalty, increasing the image of the institution (branding), and increasing the institution’s competitiveness. conclusions effective student academic services are those provided to students in line with the academic needs of students/users of a university. to give effective services, the implementation of information and communication technology (ict) is needed. for ict implementation to be effective, ict use should be in accordance with students’ academic needs. several ict uses for universities are the use of ict as learning tools, the use of ict as management tools, and the use of ict as business intelligence, which are universities’ efforts in realizing transparency, quality, effectiveness, and efficiency. ict implementation in student academic services will be effective if there is support from ict policies and programs. the policies stipulated by an organization in general are written in the master plan development and strategic plans. strategic plans are the guidelines for the organization to make its policies in the five-year medium term. the components included in strategic plans generally are: policies, programs, activities, goals, objectives, and achievement indicators. in formulating a policy, the main consideration taken into account by an organization is concerned with the vision and missions. subsequently, once policies and programs are stipulated, ict implementation strategies are formulated. the strategic planning becomes the task of the top management and is the key factor for an organization in directing its mission and goals. the importance of strategies lies in the fact that they are the most basic framework that will bring the organization to the ability to adapt with the everchanging environment. with strategies, the whole elements and resources of an organization can be driven towards the meeting of the goals. in addition, the activities done can be more effective and efficient. ict implementation strategies that are able to support quality student academic services are translated as the organization’s efforts in implementing its policies and programs and realizing the pre-determined targets. there are three general strategies involving ict elements, namely: 1) developing a good order in the management and performance systems; 2) developing institutional system and management that supports international programs in line with the recent needs; and 3) realizing a complete information system that can support the programs of education, research, and community service. based on the selected strategies, ict implementation should consider the following aspects: 1) ict infrastructure in student academic services; 2) the forms of ict use in student academic services; and 3) the obstacles in ict implementation in student academic services. ict implementation will always encounter certain obstacles, depending on the level on which they appear. at the technical level, the common obstacles are related to troubleshooting, software use, program, platform, and network connection. the obstacles found at the management level are different. at this level, the obstacles are more complex in nature, as they pertain to order of works, communication, human resources, leadership, commitment, authority and power, and coordination among the existing units. handling these obstacles requires structured and systematic solutions from the organization leaders. the effectiveness of ict implementation in student academic services can be assessed from the implementation of policies at the level of unit (decision-focused approach), the effectiveness of performance achievements (goal-oriented approach), and the effectiveness in the perspective of students as users (user-oriented approach), using five aspects to measure, namely tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy. these show the level of satisfaction with the existing academic services. the execution of jobs at the working unit is essentially the elaboration of policies and programs at the level of institution as stipulated by the top management to accommodate changes at the external order that require adjustment in the organization internally. the policies at the level of institution should be able to be elaborated technically and operationally into a number of activities whose success is measurable, according to the functions of the related working unit. therefore, the synergy between a program elaborated at the level of working unit and the policy at the level of institution becomes the determining factor of the effectiveness of an institution’s performance; in other words, the program at the working unit level should be in line with the program formulated at the level of institution. the model of development of the effectiveness of ict implementation in academic services is a systemic model that synergizes the whole components of an institution in order to realize competitive advantage, both at the national and international levels, especially in quality and excellent academic management and academic services. implications higher education institutions play a key role in society development and the improvement of the competitiveness of a nation through the activities of education, research, and community service, popularly called the tri dharma or three pillars of higher education. the implementation of the three pillars of higher education should be supported by policies oriented towards excellence and competitiveness so that the products resulted from both the educational and research processes can be acknowledged by the global academic community. this recognition of the values established by higher education is not inseparable from the management capacity in empowering the whole components, which in the process requires support from ict in order to be more productive in reaching the goal of creating the competitive advantage. the use of ict to support various activities of a university is a logical consequence of the increasingly high demands and the increasingly complex employment, especially if supriadi & sa’ud, the effectiveness of implementing information and communication technology on student academic services 147 the university has a vision and mission of improving its roles and contribution in the development of global society through the realization of a world class university. the use of ict for the sake of business intelligence has implications for the decision quality and strategic policies stipulated by the university. ict enables integration of various information systems in the administration of a university that makes it easy for the leaders to gain the necessary information and stipulate policies in accordance with the present situations. meanwhile, in the management process, the existence of ict can accelerate and make more effective the administration and service processes for the stakeholders and shareholders. ict in academic services is intended to realize the excellence in learning by combining various learning concepts which are interactive and innovative, reaching people from all levels and classes regardless of the spatial and temporal boundaries, and cultivating the knowledge-sharing culture among academic communities internally and with other universities in the world. the implementation of ict to support academic services is to realize quality service and meet the aspects of excellence in service that satisfies the desires of its users, especially students. ict implementation in higher education for any needs requires support from the policies and programs, infrastructure, human resources, and commitment of the whole academic community members in order to realize e-literacy culture that supports the development of knowledge products which are beneficial for the academic community and society in general. the findings of research on the effectiveness of ict implementation in student academic services also have implications for the strengthening of the science of educational administration, especially in understanding the concept and management of ict in the educational management at the scope of higher education academic services. references amarulloh. 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(2016). a meta-analysis of empirical e-government research and its future research implications. international review of administrative sciences, 0(0), 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1046/j.00174815.2003.00231.x https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.09.199 anwar sutoyo, human dimension in the perspective of the holy quran 71 human dimension in the perspective of the holy quran anwar sutoyo faculty of education science state university of semarang abstract the understanding of human nature is very important for human resource development, because that understanding will be a starting point in establishing development objectives, development strategies, method selection, and the types of media used. the main problem that has arisen so far is that the understanding of human nature is only based on the results of quantitative research, without considering the information from the essence of the supreme creator of human (revelation), and consequently there are missing elements which limit the development of human resources. these studies only discuss things relating to physical, psychological, and social aspects; while important things such as the human creation process and its purpose, humanity’s status before god, its potential and its development have not received enough attention. to find answers to the above shortcomings, qualitative research utilizing document study techniques of quranic main verses relating to humanity was conducted. it was conducted using maudhu’i interpretation, namely by studying verses which are related to humanity through the understanding of the interpreters of the quran. it was revealed that humans do not exist by themselves. there is a creator that is god the almighty. the purpose of human creation is to worship him till the end of his life. humans cannot determine the result of their own efforts because their lives partly still depend on god’s permission. human life is not only here and now, but there will be a life hereafter, where humans will receive the rewards of what they do during their life in the world. some characteristics which differentiate humans from other creatures were also found. from the beginning of their creation they are equipped with “faith”; there is the mind which allows man to be able to distinguish between right and wrong, and the conscience that enables humans to know the things beyond the sensory. keywords: human, natural tendency, conscience, quran, maudhu’i interpretation. to fully know the nature of themselves, because they are the only creatures whose creation includes the “divine spirit”. therefore, it is suggested that the only way to know humans well is by referring to the divine revelation. this research aims to discover the human dimension in the perspective of quran. the fi ndings are expected to be the true and solid foundation for the development of human resources which are suitable to the will of the creator, so that humans who are developed can develop well and safe in the world and in the hereafter. in this paper, the human dimension in the quran is meant to be the description or understanding of humans from qur’an point introduction various discussions about humanity have been conducted by many people. however, the discussion from the “quran” perspective as a holy book which is a collection of the revelations from god is still needed very much, because the written revelation in scripture contains complete and accurate information about various things which are related to humanity, including prosperity, the consequences of actions, and the hereafter (judgment day). apart from that, m. quraish shihab (2000: 227) explains that in the effort to understand the essence of themselves, humans are able to know only a little. they are not able international journal of education, vol. 7 no. 2 may 2014 72 of view i.e. the point of view of the holy scripture of muslims which is believed to be an original scripture from the supreme creator of humans from the fi rst day to the last day. the book originated from the supreme life and death giver of humans, the supreme bounty giver, the supreme determinant of success and the perfection of human reproduction. he is the one who creates the heavens and earth which become humans’ dwelling and source of sustenance. the human dimension in the perspective of quran in this paper includes not only the physical and spiritual aspects, but also the creation of humans, the raw material of human creation, the purpose of creation, existing potentials in humans, calamity which befalls humans, human mortality, and human life after death. all views are based on the quran and the prophet muhammad’s explanation. the prophet muhammad’s explanation is commonly known as the hadith of the prophet. quran perspective is different from a philosophical perspective. the philosophical perspective is based on the results of the thinking of speculative philosophers. this perspective is also different from the psychological perspective, which views humans from a psychological side. in addition, the perspective of the quran is also different from the biological perspective. the biological perspective views humans only from their physical side. according to m. quraish shihab (2002, xi: 165-66), a few things that cause differences in the science owned by humans with knowledge of god are: 1. in the case of knowledge, god knows all things, while humans are not able to approach the knowledge of god. human knowledge is only a small drop in his ocean of knowledge. 2. clarity of human’s knowledge may not achieve the clarity of the science of god. allah’s knowledge is not the result of something. but something is a result of the knowledge of allah. human science is produced from the existence of something. when associated with humans, allah is the cause of human existence, whereas human existence becomes the cause of the existence of knowledge about humans. 3. allah’s science does not change with the change of object that he knows, and therefore there is no coincidence besides allah, because he has knowledge of what is going to happen and when it will happen. 4. allah is able to have knowledge without tools, whereas human science is achieved by senses, mind, and his heart, and all of them are preceded by ignorance (qs, 16: 78) m. quraish shihab (2000: 278-9) shows the three words used in the quran for “human”, i.e. (1) basyar (بشر ), (2) the words are composed of letters alif, nun, and sin, a kind of insan ( ) ins ,(انسن ) nas ,(انس or (ناس unas, and (3) bani adam and zuriyah adam ( the three terms are explained .(ذرّية ا د م below: 1. the use of the term “basyar”(بشر) is used in (a) things relating to the physical aspects of the visible (such as skin, hair, general physical shape) that are not different between one man with another, (b) in some cases it is used to describe the psychological aspects such as requirements, the limits of the ability to see the things unseen), learning activities (receiving only science taught by allah), and the stages of human development towards reaching maturity. in other words basyar terms describe similarities that exist in all human beings, both in physical and psychological aspects. 2. the word ”insan” (انسا ن) according to ibn manzhur (2002, i: 231) derives from the word “insiyan”. it means man (small), whereas according to m. quraish shihab (2000: 280) the term insan is drawn from the word “uns” which means moderate, harmonious, and visible. the word insan is used in the qur’an to (a) refer to a anwar sutoyo, human dimension in the perspective of the holy quran 73 human with all its totality, i.e. its body and soul. the difference between one human and another is due to physical differences and intelligence levels (b) describes the differences in the aspects of spirituality, faith, and character. in other words, the word insan is also used to refer to human beings as a whole but also describes the difference between men with others. 3. the word “dzuriyyah” ( according to ( ذرية ibn manzhur (1996, v: 42) relates to descent. dzuriyyah also relates to something that is derived from parents. when the word dzuriyyah is related to adam it means that humans are descendants of adam, and carry traits of their grandparent adam. from this information it also appears that all humans in this universe come from the same parents that are the prophets adam and eve. from here it also appears that there are innate traits inherited which are more or less the same as those inherited from generation to generation through the process of marriage since the period of prophet adam until now. the human presence does not exist by itself, but was created. humanity was initiated or created by allah swt. allah creates humans with all of their apparatus, and also their livelihoods and time of mortality. in the quran it is found that the raw material of creation of humans is from soil, soil extract, nutfah, weak water extract (extract semen). the question that arises then is which humans are created from soil, soil extract, and nutfah. from the search for meaning contained within the verses that talk about humans being created from the “soil” (thiin) (quran, 38 : 7174, 17 : 61, 3 : 59, , 7 : 12) it can be understood that the human referred to in the verse is adam. adam was directly created with raw materials from the soil and not through the motherfather process. logically it seems impossible a human’s child is born without the mother and father process, but what is impossible if allah will? eve was created without a mother, maryam as is created without any father. allah said “let there be” a human, then so there be, that is adam as a human consisting of spirit and body. in quran (23 : 12-13, qs, 32 : 7-8) it is also found that humans were created from the “extract soil” (sulalatin min thiin) and of the essence of the land then becomes “semen”. ibn kathir (iii: 411) explains the term “min sulalatin min tiin” as one of the characteristics of water in which there is quintessence. al qurtubi (in cd holy koran) explains the term “sulalatin min tin” as having the characteristics of water that contains something which is produced from something. hamka (2001, xviii: 17-18 , and xxi: 163) interprets the term “sulalatin min tin” as a water fi lter of soil which contains iron, egg white substance, a variety of vitamins and calories absorbed by plants that eventually enter the human body through food or drink. in terms of medicine, harun yahya (2003: 37) explains that an extract of semen is sperm. this sperm has the ability to fertilize, though many people suspected that semen as a whole fertilizes the egg. further it is explained that a man is capable of emitting 200-300 million sperm cells, but only 1,000 can reach the egg cell. from these numbers only one lucky cell can fertilize it. this means that humans originated from a small part of semen. based on the opinions of commentators and the experts in the fi eld of medicine as presented above, it can be understood that the inclusion of an extract of the soil into the human body until it becomes semen can be summarized below: 1. soil extract is absorbed by all plants that grow on the earth. 2. the plants produce leaves, fl owers, and fruits that eventually are eaten by humans in the form of rice, vegetables, fruits, beverages and so on. these form the the quintessence of the soil in the human body. the plants are also eaten by animals that eventually enter the human body when people eat animal meat. and in the end, international journal of education, vol. 7 no. 2 may 2014 74 the quintessence of soil which is eaten by animals also enters the human body. 3. most of the quintessence of soil that enters the human body becomes the quintessence of semen (sperm) which is called “sperm”. this sperm has the ability to fertilize, not the semen overall. in addition to the “soil”, “soil extract”, it is also found in the quran (quran, 75: 3640, 16: 4-5, 36: 77-78, 53: 45-47, 78: 2-3, 70: 38-39) that humans are also created from the ”seminal” (germ). ibn kathir interprets the phrase “mimma ya’lamun” is “seminal” refers to the word of allah “min maa-in mahin” and “min maa-in dafi q” which means water seminal (cd holy koran). while the word “nutfatin amsyaj” (mingled seminal) in the quran surah al insan (76), verse 2 as above by harun yahya (2003: 37) is interpreted as a mixture of a variety of different essences including: fructose, fosforilkolin, ergotionin, ascorbic acid, dinucleotide, prostaglandins, citric acid, cholesterol, phospholipids, fi brinolysin, kisdir, phosphoric acid, hyaluronidase and sperm cells. while ibn kathir (2000, iv: 875) interprets it as a mixture of water from both men and women during a sexual intercourse. from the above explanation it can be understood that (a) the fi rst man adam was created from the soil without going through the process of fertilization from father and mother, and is equipped with the other element “spirit created by allah”, (b) the human descendants of adam and eve were created by allah with the raw material of starch weak water (sulalatin min ma-in mahin”) (quran, 32 : 7-6) that is an extract of semen (sperm cells) from a man who mixed with the egg cell (from a woman) and was also equipped with “spirit created by him”. (c) there are things made of raw materials involved in human creation that is not (yet) found as defi nite statements in the quran and are not easily explained by human reason. these are the raw materials of creation of eve (adam’s wife) and ‘isa son of maryam (prophet ‘isa a.s.). eve was created from a man named adam (qs, 4: 1) without going through the womb of a woman, while the opposite ‘isa was born by a woman without male fertilization. most commentators explain that with this incident allah intends to show his power. humans are creatures of allah who are most perfect. the question that arises is the extent to which the perfection of the creation is because of man? m. quraish shihab (2002 , vii : 123) in interpreting the surah al-hijr (15) verses 28-29 about the word “sawwaituhu” explains that the term sawwaituhu is taken from the word sawaa which means that each part can function as it is planned. alqurtubi (cd holy koran) interprets the word “sawwahu” as meaning “he perfected it” and this explains the intention contained in the expression a perfect creation and shape (sawwatu khalqahu wa shuratahu). departing from the verses of quran and the understanding of the commentators above, it is understood the term perfected the creation – before allah breathed his spirit – in the process of the creation of man was perfect in the creation of physical potential and the potential of the nafs that it includes potential heart (qalb), reasoning (al’aql), and the potential of the soul (nafs). while the potential of faith has been given by allah since man is still in the form of “candidates” (sperm or egg cells) (qs : 172). a further question that arises is the extent to which physical aspects are perfect before allah breathed his spirit into the creature (man) of his creation? harun yahya (2003: 71) describes the perfection of the creation of man from aspects of the biology in the two sides, namely (1) the process of creation, and (2) the quality of the creation. humans came out of the womb to get in the tomb not only for fun, but there is purpose to their creation. there is also purpose behind the creation of each human organ. there is a command to be executed, there are prohibitions that must be shunned, and there are rules that must be obeyed by humans, and in turn their responsibilities will be requested. behind the commands and prohibitions there is wisdom anwar sutoyo, human dimension in the perspective of the holy quran 75 or benefi t from an action and the secret behind something established by allah, which is not always quickly known by humans (quran, 3: 185, 4: 78, 21: 35). the purpose of allah in creating humans on surah al-baqarah (2) verse 30 is to make the human being as “caliph of allah on earth”. the question that arises is what is meant by the word “caliph of allah on earth”? m. quraish shihab, (2000, 1: 140) in interpreting the word caliph in the above verse explains that the word “caliph” originally meant that which replaces or that which comes after anyone who came before. on this basis, there is man who understood the word caliph here as meaning one who replaces allah in enforcing his will and applying his provisions. but this does not mean allah is not capable, or man has the position of god. no! allah intends with the appointment to examine man and give him respect. so the essence of the purpose of the creation of man is allah wants to give the task to the man as a caliph of allah on earth, which is carrying out the mandate suitable with the guidance of allah and his prophets in the expertise fi eld and/or authority suitable with what allah gave him. it was also found that the purpose of god creating man was so that man could worship him (quran, 51: 56-58). m. quraish shihab, (2003, 13: 356-57) in interpreting the word “liya’buduun” in the verse above explains that does not mean that they may worship, or that god is worshipped. explanation is seen as impossible because god does not need anything. from this it can be understood that the purpose of man’s creation was not for god, but for the man himself. so when the verse said that humans worship, then worship benefi ts humans who do not do it for god, but for man himself. in relation to the purpose of the creation of man as “caliph” as informed in the surah al-baqarah (2) verse 30, there are a number of rules in the forms of “command” and “prohibitions” that must be obeyed when the human is executing his duties as the caliph. execution of duties (mandate) in accordance with the rules of allah was considered as worship. from these two verses it can be understood that the purpose of man’s creation is so that man can execute the mandate as a caliph of allah on earth and simultaneously worship (dedicate) to him. concerning human habitation and source of livelihood, based on some verses of the quran (quran, 2: 30, 7: 19, 7 : 10), it can be understood that (1) the human habitation for a while is on earth. it is said for a while because the eternal is in the hereafter, (2) so people can live on this earth peacefully, allah made this universe conducive to human life, and (3) so people can manage this earth as a good source of livelihood, allah gives the potential in the form of physical, logical reasoning and knowledge to humans in order for them to be able to manage nature as well as possible. great holy is allah who has created man with all its potential, provides homes, and provides the necessary things in life, as well as providing infrastructure to explore and exploit it. although allah has provided nature and infrastructure to process it, it is not enough if humans do not get the permission of allah (allah’s mercy). therefore, in an effort to meet their needs, men should always pray to expect the mercy of allah swt. there are some people who are deliberately given excesses by allah swt in certain areas but little or nothing in other areas, so humans need each other to meet their needs and to help each other (quran,43 : 2), man is destined by allah to be interdependent (quran, 43 : 32 related to 96 : 2). allah gives livelihood to anyone he wants, each according to their effort and benefi t (quran, 42 : 19-20), whether they ask or not, if allah views it is needed by humans, then allah gives (quran, 14 : 34), as allah created man equipped with hearing, vision, and heart as well as intellect; though humans do not ask for it but allah gave it to them (quran, 16 : 78). allah provides livelihood for international journal of education, vol. 7 no. 2 may 2014 76 humans, both for adults and children,s through interaction with the same humans, animals, and nature (m. quraish shihab, 2001, iv : 333). allah gives assurance to those who are pious, livelihood such as material, health, peace, safety, long life of direction which is not guessed (m. quraish shihab (2003, 14 :297). based on some verses of the quran and the hadith of the prophet of allah it is found some warnings of allah swt for humans in relation to treasure, (a) the wealth of the world tends to be fun so humans are greedy for it, (b) the wealth of the world can make a respectable person, but it can also drive the owner to be humiliated, (c) the life of this world is only temporary and it may disappear in a split second, (d) the life of this world sometimes just likes joking and playing around, (e) treasure sometimes makes heavy their owners in executing the commands of allah, (f) essentially the treasure has no value before allah, (g) men who are desired goodness by allah he is zuhud to treasure, (h) the wealth of the world can sometimes destroy one’s religion, and (i) it is necessary to pay attention to allah’s guidance in collecting and spending treasure. the characteristics of humans are different from the creatures of animals and plants. based on the verses of the quran and statements of the prophet of allah, some “distinctive nature” (characteristics) that distinguish humans from other creatures have been found. first: man created by allah consists of two elements which cannot be separated from one another, namely the physical elements and the divine spirit (intellectual and spiritual) (quran, 38: 7). m. quraish shihab (2002, vii: 122) in interpreting the quran surah shad (38) verses 71-72 explains that the “spirit created by allah” is not found in demons, genie, and animals. this spiritual element enables humans to be more capable of recognizing allah swt, to be faithful, virtuous, and sensitive. physical is the biological aspects which form the spiritual container. this spiritual element is not contained in the creature types of genie, demons, and animals. second, humans, since the origin of their creation, are equipped with a “religious natural tendency” that recognizes the oneness of allah and desires to submit to him (quran, 30 : 30). m. quraish shihab (2002, xi: 5354) basing on the opinion of al–biqa’i in interpreting the surah ar-rum (30): explains, that every human is created on the basis of faith in allah; it is different from animals and plants. this can be proved, as children appear to have a temperament that is straight and the ease to follow clear instructions, are different from adults although it is also recognized that their ability to follow guidance is not the same. with this potential humans can fi nd it easy to understand the commands of allah, and their majesty of character is a mirror of the natural tendency of islam. the ease of humans in accepting and executing this truth can be seen in everyday life. if someone displays truth or goodness, he will do it easily and without a trembling heart. but when he does something negative, normal humans would feel embarrassed or at least reluctant to do it. this is different from animals that are not shy when having sexual intercourse in front of a crowd. all of this is because of the religious nature in humans. third, humans created by allah are equipped with a mind, which allows them to be capable of distinguishing between right and wrong, between useful and useless. his mind allows him to be creative and to invent new things. the houses that are inhabited by humans, the clothes that humans wear, vehicles that humans drive, foods that are processed by humans evolve and change over time. this is different from the animals that live and grow only based on instincts, so the home of animals from the beginning until now has not changed. it is recognized that animals also have an intellectual mind, but their capacity is very limited when compared to human capabilities. fourth, human is created by allah. he is equipped with a feeling that allows him to anwar sutoyo, human dimension in the perspective of the holy quran 77 know hidden and subtle things. it may be that human senses do not see events that happened to other people (usually family members), but through his feelings he can know the object that he does not see. m. quraish shihab (2000, i: 99-100) views feeling as one means of knowledge, and therefore the word also means “to know”; it’s only the knowledge concerning the careful things, hidden and smooth. the feeling is also viewed as a source of faith and characters. it is sensitivity to the environment. it was found that the sharpness of one’s feelings is different from another’s, imam alghazali (2003: 46) illustrates that people in everyday life obeying the rules of allah and his prophet is likened to a “clean mirror”. in a clean mirror, the shadow of distant objects was visible clearly. imam al-ghazali’s opinion is in line with the words of the prophet of allah, “be careful you are with the believers, he does not just see with his eyes, but also with his heart”. in contrast to the common people who do sin or act immorally, this is likened to a dirty mirror. in the dirty mirror the shadow of close objects is invisible, let alone those that are far. from this analogy it can be understood that the difference between a person’s feelings and another’s is due to differences in the level of cleanliness of his heart because of differences in obedience to allah swt. fifth, the ability of humans to know some things is very limited, even humans do not know these things in full just the signs when the day of judgment comes. in the quran surah luqman (31): 34 allah swt informs human limitations as follows: verily, allah! with him (alone) is the knowledge of the hour, he sends down the rain, and knows that which is in the wombs. no person knows what he will earn tomorrow, and no person knows in what land he will die. verily, allah is allknower, allaware (of things). m. quraish shihab, 2002 (xi : 16567) based on the phrase “only on his hand” knowledge of the judgment day, explains that there are no creatures including humans no matter how high his position, who would know the coming of the judgment day. this means that after all human knowledge has advanced and the tools used also have been modernised, they will not know when judgment day will occur. however, in some cases humans are given the possibility to know, although only little. referring to the surah luqman (31): 34 above, humans have little chance to fi nd out (a) the “possibility” and when rain actually falls. therefore it is natural that to this day that meteorologists still use the term “weather forecast”. on the other hand if allah wills down rain water, humans are not able to stop a fl ood occurring, (b) a doctor may know about the growth of a fetus in the womb of its mother, but doctors do not know whether it is good or bad, its age limit and livelihood, its present and future, (c) what will be effort tomorrow and the result, humans cannot know with certainty, and (d) when and where in different parts of the earth he will die. comparison of human science compared to allah’s science is likened to a drop of sea water attached to the beak of a bird as it pecks its beak into the vast ocean. sixth, man is created by allah equipped with a conscience (fu’ad) and “qalb”, unlike animals that only come with hearing and vision. it allows the human to think of what is beyond the senses and its details. then delivered to general behaviour, they are then in turn able to produce laws that are comprehensive. the term “fu’ad” is interpreted by m. quraish shihab (2002, ix: 222) as a variety of heart, that is the union between the intellect and the power of the heart, which makes a person reluctant to fall into error and rebellion. thus it is covered in the defi nition of “af ’idah” as the potential to achieve divine inspiration and the spark of light of allah, whereas, the term “fu’ad” is understood as things realized by the owner. seventh, there is a place for people to settle before birth namely in coccyx of father (quran, 7: 172), and after birth persist on earth until the time limit determined (quran, 7 : 24), international journal of education, vol. 7 no. 2 may 2014 78 there is also a storage place before birth in the mother’s womb and after death the storage world is in a grave before heading to life in heaven or hell (quran, 6 : 98). it is recognized that some things are the same between humans and animals such as temporary shelters, the fi sh has its residence in the water, some types of animals live in the forest and some are in the ocean. humans reside on earth until the time limit determined by allah. in addition, humans will be asked what they have done before they reside in heaven or hell, whereas animals have no responsibility and no ability to reply anyway. eighth; for each (person) there are angels before and behind him. they guard him by the command of allah (quran, 13: 11). humans are not fully able to control and maintain themselves, because a few things are beyond his ability. many things people suspect are good actually prove harmful. every human must be the preserver of any annoyance that hinders the purpose of its creation. m. quraish shihab (2003 , xv: 176) in interpreting the surah at-tariq (86), verse 4 explains that the providence of allah to every person is not only limited to the provision of infrastructure and facilities of life such as air, water, sun and so on, but more than that there are sunnatullah and inayatullah. if there is a plane crash and all of the passengers die that is sunnatullah, but if there are passengers especially children who survive it is inayatullah. when a person gains inayatullah, he will be aware that the acquisition was beyond his ability, even not affordable by his knowledge. therefore the prophet of allah often prays “rabbi la takilni ila nafsi tharfata ‘ain” (god my maintainer, do not you bring me to myself even for a moment). ninth; humans are always supervised by two angels who keep records of what was done, either good or bad deeds. the records in the future will be presented to a human in judgment day in the form of charity notebook (quran, 82: 11, 18: 49). each individual will know what he ever did and forgot during life in the world (quran, 81: 14, 82: 5). from the above verses it can be understood that possibly someone hides from human view when doing an act, but what they do is not going to go unnoticed, because there are two angels who are always watching and noting his actions. he will get caught and will get a reply from allah. tenth; every human will get a reward for what he does (quran 20 : 15, 74 : 38), for individuals who fears allah and are able to control their desires, then his place is in heaven (quran, 79 : 40-41). if there is any individual who falls down to hell it is because of his own actions (quran, 6: 70). for every individual who commits sin the consequence is borne alone and cannot be charged to other individuals (quran, 6: 164). in addition to the ten common characteristics that distinguish humans from other creatures, it is also found in the quran ten human weaknesses and their solutions. however, it is strongly suspected that people have weak trait “potential”, meaning that negative potential is there but it could be more prominent in some people, but not in others, or prominent in one at some time but not prominent at other times. the difference was enabled by several factors, among others: the level of loyalty to the teachings of a religion, education, life experience, social environment, and it even could be due to the quality (allowed or forbidden) of food or beverages which are consumed every day. the ten negative characters are: 1. often neglects the teachings of religion, and are more likely to indulge in lust (quran, 7: 179) they have a heart but it is not utilized to understand allah’s guidance, he has eyes and ears, but they are not used to understand the verses of allah, either verses qauliyah or kauniyah. as a result he becomes blind of religion. to overcome this, every child should be introduced and accustomed to execute religious teachings since they are young, and parents should be a role model for their anwar sutoyo, human dimension in the perspective of the holy quran 79 children in executing religious teachings. 2. humans are weak creatures (quran, 4: 28), especially in holding his lust, and also weak against his desires (hamka, 1983, v: 23). as a result, humans often become insulted because they distribute their lust without religious guidance. to overcome this problem allah has arranged the distribution of his lust through marriage, and against lust by the worship to allah. 3. tends to be “naughty” to allah, if he is sad he tends to get closer to allah, but if he is happy he goes away from allah (quran, 10: 12). as a result he hits a vicious trap. islam teaches that a person prays in condition of sadness and freedom, and always dhikr to allah (quran, 20: 155), as well as in doing mu’amalah suitable with guidance of allah (quran, 2: 282). 4. tends to act hastily (quran, 10:11, 17: 11, 21: 37) so that he cannot distinguish between good and bad, as well as not being patient in facing exams and being angry when in trouble. in order to act calmly he should have confi dence that what happened to him must be permission of allah, and in what is permitted by allah there must exist goodness (quran, 2 : 216). 5. despair quickly and ungratefully (quran, 11: 9-11). if he fails at something, he quickly falls into despair, but he should be patient in facing adversity and humble when facing enjoyment. islam teaches its people not to be easily frustrated and to always persist (quran, 12: 87), patience and tawakal to allah. allah examines humans with strengths and weaknesses, with pain, and with a different position (quran, 21: 35). 6. tends to like to argue and make excuses, although in terms unnecessary to debate (quran, 7 : 172-73). islam teaches that to what the quran teaches should be greeted with “i hear and i obey” (quran, 4: 46), people who like to debate the quran without good reason will surely regret it in the judgment day (quran, 2 : 174). 7. in money affairs humans tend to be greedy. he is described in the quran as monkeys or dogs (quran, 2: 65, 7 : 176 ), he wanted to get as much as possible, even if could be this world is his own world (hadits. muslim, kitab zakat number 117). greedy attitude towards money is described in the quran as the behavior of “monkey” and “dog” which are always greedy. to control this nature, islam teaches humans to be humble in fi nancial affairs. islam also teaches human to realize that in every livelihood he obtains he should share with others (quran, 2: 177). 8. tends to be a miser, except for the human that is graced by allah (quran, 9 : 75-76, 4 : 128). besides intrinsically stingy, humans are stingy against themselves. it means that the essence of humans who are reluctant to spend his wealth to the way of allah, is actually reluctant to supply himself when later it is time to return to allah. to control these traits, islam teaches its fl ock to issue infaq, zakat, or charity to those who have rights every time he acquires wealth (yusuf qardawi 1993 : 34). 9. tends to be cavalier (ghurur) (quran, 31: 33), when humans have benefi ts, whether it is beauty, handsomeness, wealth, position, children, or popularity; he tends to be cavalier and arrogant (m. quraish sihihab , 2007 : 238). they forget that all of them come from allah, who can disappear at any time. in controlling this trait, islam teaches humans to realize that kindness is a gift from allah. the kindness can disappear at any time, and it can be a source of destruction for him. 10. tends to be envious and jealous (quran, 2: 57). if there are other people he does not like who receive benefi ts or successes he will wants those benefi ts for himself. therefore he often seeks to harm people whom he envies or begrudges. prophet of allah saw reminds us that envy is like a fi re scorching wood, and could harm others as well as ourselves (hadits abu daud). international journal of education, vol. 7 no. 2 may 2014 80 method this study uses a qualitative approach utilizing the documents study technique. it is in accordance with the purpose of this study to research human nature in the perspective of the quran. the document which becomes the main object of study in this research is the quran. quran was chosen as the primary source with the considerations (a) quran is a holy book which contains a collection of revelations from allah as a way of life for humans, (b) as the holy book, allah warrants the truth, not only here and now, but until the end of the day, and (c) humans are allah’s creation, allah surely knows more about human characteristics, excesses and shortages, as well as the ways to develop and to maintain them so that they are safe. considering the holy book of quran is in arabic, to understand it we need arabic language skills. yet, to understand the quran is not that simple. yusuf al-qardhawi (2000: 285) warns that, (a) although the quran is a book that is clear, easily remembered and understood; the quran was revealed in arabic. the arabic contains many possible meanings from sharih (clear, bright) and kinayah, nature, fi gure of speech, typical and ‘aam, mutlak and muqayyad, manthuq, and mafhum. there is something that needs to be understood as a cue and something as a metaphor --. (b) the ability of humans to understand the quran is different. there is a person who is only able to understand the meaning of zahir. there is person who is able to understand the deep meaning. and there is person who is not able to understand the true meaning, and (c) some verses of quran were revealed with regard to any reasons and events. if it is properly understood, it will improve the understanding, and it will help to understand the quran correctly. therefore, to gain a true and deep understanding, it is studied through tafsir books of quran (yusuf qardhawi (2000: 283) which are compiled by experts. the interpretation method which is used is the maudhu’i method. maudhu’i method (thematic) is formulated by nasruhruddin baidan (2000: 151). it discusses the verses of the quran according to the theme or title which has been set. all relating verses are compiled and then studied in depth from the various aspects associated with it, such as asbab nuzul, vocabulary, and so on. m. quraish shihab (2000: xiii) in his book “wawasan alqur’an” explains that there are two forms of maudhu’i interpretation, namely (a) presents the messages of the quran on specifi c issues summarized in one surah only, and (b) presents the messages of the quran about certain issues contained in various surah. to check the validity of data understanding about the natural tendency of human development (according to the quran), triangulation technique is used, namely triangulation on data source. triangulation is a data validity checking technique which utilizes other sources outside of the data as a comparison against the original data. in this case in addition to the translation of the quran manuscripts of department of religious affairs team also interpreted these books: (1) nazhm ad-durar fi tanasub al-ayat was suwar, by ibrahim bin umar al-biqa’i, (2) tafsir al-misbah, by m. quraish shihab, (3) tafsir fi zhilalil quran, by al-ustadz asysyahid sayyid quthb rahimahullah, (4) alasas fi tafsir, by sa’id hawwa, (5) tafsir al-azhar, by hamka, (6) book al-mu’jam almufahras li-alfadz al-qur’anil karim, by muhammad fu’ad ‘abd al-baqi, (7) book al-mu’jam al-mufahras li-alfadz alhadits an-nabawi. by a.j winsk fi nd the hadiths of the prophet contained in the book kutubus sittah, and (8) book lisanul ‘arab by imam al’alamat jamaluddin abi alfadhl muhammad bin mukarram bin mandzur (ibnu mandzur) to analyze the certain words and terms of the quran verses. result and discussion from the study of the quran and the understanding of the commentators, some anwar sutoyo, human dimension in the perspective of the holy quran 81 conclusions are found. any efforts to develop human resources should not only rely on the basic concept of human nature which is built on the basis of the results of human thought and empirical facts only. this is because the human mind is only able to know the nature of itself from several sides or dimensions only. there are other dimensions that are not able to be known for sure. the dimensions of the human spirit, livelihood, fi nding a mate, when a person will die and the cause of death can never be known for sure. neither can the methods of developing human potential even though humans have created sophisticated tools, humans are still not able to establish their own business results. the secrets of everything are in the hands of the god almighty who created man, namely in the holy book which is brought by his prophet. in other words, any effort to develop human resources should not only be based on science, but needs to be perfected by the knowledge that comes from revelation. perfecting science with revelation is considered very important, because philosophically the revelation has absolute and universal truth. the revelation truth is valid wherever and whenever, while the science truth is relative and tentative, as science truths are temporary and limited in scope. what is true at a particular time and place may not be true at another time and place. that is why human resource development which is only based on science produces incomplete/and or momentary results. humans do not exist automatically, but are created. this is in contrast to the current understanding of most scientists who almost never associate the human question with its creator, allah swt. as a result, deadlocks are often experienced in the implementation of human resources. allah swt is the creator of humans since the fi rst human to breed other humans at this time and into the future. he is the creator of the human body and spirit, as well as all aspects in it, which provides all the things needed by humans, although humans do not ask for it. humans are equipped with eyes, ears, heart, hands, and feet, therefore it is appropriate if the human thanks allah swt by worshipping and obeying his rules. allah swt created humans as the most perfect creature of his creations and the most harmonious. you can imagine how diffi cult it is if human ears are not facing down – possibly if it rains water may enter and they will be full of water and dirt; how diffi cult it is if the human nose is facing up – one could possibly get the fl u any time because there would be a lot of dirt in it. it cannot be imagined how diffi cult it would be in the rainy season if the earth was entirely fl at – possibly rainwater would be confused where to fl ow. there is nothing that happened incidentally before allah, because all is planned properly and with certainty. allah swt determines that humans’ residence is on earth. humans are equipped with various abilities to proceed and to exploit the earth so it can be used to meet their needs. from here it appears that since the beginning, humans were destined to be believing creatures and to be social creatures which need each other. from here came humans with various fi elds of expertise who carry out the mandate of allah swt on earth suitable to each fi eld of expertise. compared to other creatures humans are created far more perfectly. he is equipped with physical and spiritual abilities. his spiritual abilities allow humans to be able to recognize allah and worship him, while the physical abilities are the spiritual container, so there is a place for the spirit to settle. human since the creation process is equipped with a “faith” that allows him to easily understand allah’s command and to obey it. human is given a mind which allows him to be capable of distinguishing between right and wrong. human is given a conscience that allows him to recognize what is outside the senses. human is always guarded by two angels who guard him from the front and the rear, which allow the human to be safe from disaster and international journal of education, vol. 7 no. 2 may 2014 82 distress. human is always supervised by two angels with a charity notebook, who will report to allah so that he may return. all of that distinguishes humans from animals and other creatures that exist in this universe. subhanallah, walhamdulillahi, allahu akbar. recently, many high offi cials were sent to jail because of corruption. their education levels are high and their salaries are substantially high too. in the case that they attend to the warnings of allah swt. that: (a) the wealth of the world tends to be fun so humans are greedy to it, but they do not realize that wealth can also drive the owner to be humiliated, because in collecting and spending they justify all kinds of ways, (b) they forget that this life in the world is only temporary and it can vanish in a split second, (c) the life in this world sometimes is just as joking and playing around, (d) sometimes treasure makes heavy their owners to execute the commands of allah, (e) basically treasure is worthless before allah. if the warning of allah swt is attended to, they will survive in the world and the hereafter. references khadim al-haramain asy-syarifain, al-quran dan terjemahnya, departemen agama republik indonesia. abdusshamad, 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(cd-rom), jakarta: okur production. international journal of education vol. 10 no. 2, february 2018, pp. 141-148 ©2018 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: http://dx.doi.org/ 141 efl students’ perception of turnitin for detecting plagiarism on academic writing muhamad nova, westi haryanti utami english education department, universitas pendidikan indonesia, indonesia mohnova@student.upi.edu first draft received: 31 oct 2017 accepted: 29 dec 2017 final proof received: 5 feb 2018 abstract as one of the negative impacts of technology development, the ease access to any information on the internet creates a new problem on academic integrity, in which the students take other’s works and claim as theirs. this phenomenon is termed as plagiarism which is against the academic ethics and honesty. many universities have fought back the plagiarism cases and used plagiarism detection software as their tools in detecting plagiarism. turnitin, as one of plagiarism detection software widely used in many universities, has been claimed as effective software in detecting plagiarism. however, prior studies have also revealed its inaccuracy in dealing with plagiarism cases. reflecting from the both views of turnitin, students’ view on its utilization may bring an essential consideration on the existence of turnitin in detecting plagiarism. therefore, this study aimed to investigate the utilization of turnitin based on students’ perspective and explored their responses and perceptions toward plagiarism detected by turnitin. a case study was conducted in one classroom consisted of 20 efl students in a university in bandung, indonesia. the data were taken from self-reflection questionnaire and the result shows that many students had unexpected results due to their misunderstanding about plagiarism and turnitin system. it led to students’ unsatisfying responses toward their result of similarity percentage from turnitin. even though several benefits on writing skill improvement were found by the students, the inaccuracy result of turnitin evaluation raised their negative attitude toward its utilization as well. therefore, equal understanding between the lecturer and the students on plagiarism and turnitin system is needed. moreover, lecturer’s cross-checking, feedback on students’ academic writing, and additional change on the system configuration in detecting plagiarism are required to avoid any misconception of plagiarism. further research on different respondents or different plagiarism detection software is recommended to be conducted. keywords: academic writing; efl students; perception; plagiarism; turnitin to cite this paper (in apa style): nova, m., & utami, w. h. (2018). efl students’ perception of turnitin for detecting plagiarism on academic writing. international journal of education, 10(2), 141-148. doi: http://dx.doi.org/ introduction technological advancement brings enormous impact in all fields including in education. the influx of information technology on the internet up until now provides easy and convenient both for student and teacher in supporting learning activities. the emergence of the internet allows everyone to store any data which can be accessed freely by everyone around the world. this phenomenon actually provides teachers to promote critical thinking and independent learning for their students (ledwith & rísquez, 2008). however, this remarkable chance to learn also has negative sideeffect as well, that challenges the integrity of academic and good practices (ali, 2013). therefore, many dishonesty issues come up and vary in the educational field. a simple example of dishonesty by the students is copying other’s writing on the internet and admitting it as their own to be graded (batane, 2010) which is termed as plagiarism. as a product of academic dishonesty, plagiarism is included as the act of cheating and violating rules of research that deserves severe punishment since it is against research ethics and academic integrity (ranawella & alagaratnam, 2017; graham-matheson & starr, 2013). hence, the issue of plagiarism among students attracts attention in some universities and becomes common phenomenon recently (ali, 2013; kaner & fiedler, 2007). commonly, someone’s failure in interpreting the concept of plagiarism into practice makes them fall into plagiarized others’ work as well (bruton & childers, 2015). in western countries, a simple definition of plagiarism is given by graham-matheson & starr (2013) who stated that plagiarism is the act of taking someone’s work and claiming it as our own. thus, one who takes other works without any credit of the owner or proper citation may lead to plagiarism phenomenon. particularly, bakhtiyari et al. (2014) identified two types of plagiarism named direct plagiarizing and unconsciously plagiarizing. direct plagiarizing occurs when someone duplicating others’ work exactly as it is and claiming it as his/her work, meanwhile, unconsciously plagiarizing is affected by some factors, mailto:mohnova@student.upi.edu nova & utami efl students’ perception of turnitin for detecting plagiarism on academic writing 142 including incited ideas and concepts, many authors, accidental similarity, fixed definitions, text recycling, self-plagiarism and metadata (bakhtiyari et al., 2014). in line with unconsciously plagiarizing occurred, nisha, senthil and bushan (2015) identified four current situations when someone may fall into unconsciously plagiarizing; accidental duplication without citing the sources, failure in constructing idea, inability in taking notes and citing sources correctly, and idea duplication and combination. since it deals with academic integrity, affecting both students and university, it is very crucial to fight plagiarism where an individual student needs to be imparted from this unethical behavior and university needs to keep its integrity and its quality of products as well (batane, 2010). regardless, many efforts have to be made to deal with plagiarism not only from the teachers but also from university authorities by providing regulation and solution as responsibility in the educational field. the teachers have to make sure their students aware of the plagiarism issues by introducing the acts that categorized as plagiarism and how to avoid it by teaching them to use paraphrase, quotation marks and provide citing sources since it is necessary skill in academic writing (nisha, senthil & bhushan, 2015; jones, 2008; ledwith & rísquez, 2008). in this technology era, anti-plagiarism software is viewed as one of the solutions to fight plagiarism (ranawella & alagaratnam, 2017) which is not only a quick way to detect or even stop plagiarism and cheating, but also could be a tool for teachers to provide positive educational approach to academic honesty (ledwith & rísquez, 2008). however, there are also contradicts view that believes this kind of software could be a threat to trust issues and affects students and teachers relationship (ali, 2013), but the use of plagiarism detection software can be very useful as long as it is operated in a proper way to educate the students in avoiding plagiarism and promoting academic honesty and integrity (bensal, miraflores, & tan, 2013). therefore, the institution or university needs to regulate their criteria of plagiarism that match the mechanism of the software. one of the most popular plagiarism detection software used is turnitin. according to scaife (in goh, 2013), turnitin is used in more than 80 countries with 10 million users. generally, the mechanism of turnitin is analyzing the originality of paper submitted from electronic sources in which the database comes from text stored digitally on the internet (hamilton & richardson, 2008; bretag & carapiet, 2007). the comparison of paper on turnitin is among the previous paper submitted to this program, including the materials found on the internet, both commercial and academic database, and online journals (goh, 2013; kaner & fiedler, 2007). thus, some scholars considered turnitin as a powerful tool to help students in avoiding and minimizing plagiarism (bensal, miraflores, & tan, 2013; graham-matheson & starr, 2013; hamilton & richardson, 2008) and by showing the similarity percentage, it also improves students’ writing since their awareness of plagiarism increased (batane, 2010; crisp, 2007). on the other hand, there are also many negative views that claimed turnitin weaknesses in many ways as plagiarism detection. turnitin cannot be relied on completely as plagiarism detector since there are so many works that have not been published or submitted on the internet in form of books, journals, magazines, and conference papers that can be plagiarized (goh, 2013). turnitin can also make inaccurate reports of plagiarism since it is only showing the originality without differentiating the intentional plagiarism and similarity of wording including quotations, citations, famous names, reference pages, common phrases, figures of speech, simply coincidences and actually correctly cited references (ali, 2013; jones, 2008). one study has been conducted by oghigian, rayner, and chujo (2015) in japan and it carried out that the result of turnitin evaluation brought an inadequate detection of actual plagiarism, where it was found 99% of university students’ writings have similar matching with turnitin database, meanwhile, after setting up the configuration and eliminating false plagiarism, only 29% of these papers were categorized having actual plagiarism. thus, the unspecific configuration on the turnitin evaluation setting can result in inaccurate reports on students’ writing. consequently, it creates confusion concepts between originality and plagiarism in writing (dahl, 2007) and turns the students to be more concern in avoiding the high percentage of similarity rather than maintaining the writing in line with academic honesty (bensal, miraflores, & tan, 2013). moreover, attitudes conflict among students also rises up on this software utilization since the misuse of plagiarism detection software as a tool for detecting plagiarism and giving punishment are not in line with its original main purpose which is educating the students on how to avoid plagiarism (bensal, miraflores, & tan, 2013). as the result, a mutual distrust between the students with their lecturer was also risen up and the students may feel sensitive to the lack of trust (ali, 2013). reflecting up from the both side effects of having turnitin as a plagiarism detection software to fight plagiarism, students’ view on its utilization may bring an essential consideration on the existence of turnitin in detecting plagiarism in higher education. their view on its implementation may affect their learning attitudes and learning improvement in avoiding plagiarism. since there has no study yet on the students’ perception regarding the use of this software as plagiarism detector in indonesia, this study focuses on taking students of higher education views toward the use of turnitin for detecting plagiarism on their academic writing. methods a case study was conducted to investigate the efl university students’ responses and perception on the use of turnitin for detecting plagiarism on their academic writing. in conducting this study, one class consisting of 20 efl students in one university in bandung, indonesia was chosen to be the setting of the international journal of education vol. 10 no. 2, february 2018, pp. 141-148 ©2018 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: http://dx.doi.org/ 143 study. they were purposively chosen since they belonged to the same class. they consisted of seven male students (35%) and thirteen female students (65%). the students were the first-time turnitin users in which they did not have any previous experience on using turnitin and did not have any specific training on the use of turnitin before. they only received a simple guide on how to submit their academic writing on turnitin and how to see the result of turnitin similarity percentage evaluation. in this study, the topic of academic writing assigned was a research proposal. regarding the data collection, these students’ responses and perception were collected through a selfreflection questionnaire survey which allows the students to write their own comments and opinion on the use of turnitin for detecting plagiarism on their academic writing. the items on the questionnaire were open-ended questions in order to gather deeper answer and perceptions of every student. the questionnaire was divided into two parts. the first one was about the general information of the students which is their gender. the second part consisted of three questions related to the use of turnitin. approximate time to complete this questionnaire was about 10 minutes. this self-reflection questionnaire survey was given after receiving their result in form of similarity percentage. in the light of the procedure of conducting the study, firstly, the students were assigned to write a research proposal with the due date was two weeks. the submission through turnitin was also informed to these students when the task assigned. then, after submitting the research proposal on turnitin, the students were informed about their result of turnitin evaluation on the percentages of similarity. the students were given the full-access to look at the turnitin evaluation result, including the percentages, the part of their writing which was indicated as plagiarism, and the related sources of plagiarism indication. after viewing the results, these students’ were required to write down their comments and opinion on the result of plagiarism detection by turnitin program in a selfreflection questionnaire survey. moreover, a general perception on the usage of turnitin was also recorded through this self-reflection questionnaire survey. after collecting these students’ comments and opinions on the use of turnitin for detecting plagiarism on their academic writing, their responses and perceptions were classified into two categories, positive and negative. the data obtained was analyzed descriptively in form of narration and the interpretation of their perceptions was created and was justified with the related theory and previous studies. moreover, a narration on their responses and perceptions were displayed on findings and discussion sections. findings and discussions in line with the research objectives mentioned above, the students’ view on the utilization of turnitin as a plagiarism detection software was divided into two section; first, their responses toward the plagiarism phenomenon detected by turnitin and second, their perception on the utilization of turnitin in academic writing. responses of plagiarism and turnitin students’ responses were taken after they submitted their paper and got their paper’s similarity percentage result from turnitin. these responses focused on students’ expectation regarding the plagiarism found on their papers. basically, the students’ responses after receiving their similarity percentage from turnitin were varied; there were those who convinced that their paper’s similarity percentage was not in line with their expectation, but there were also some other students who already expected their result. some students were really assured that they did not do any activity related to plagiarism. they also did some possible ways to avoid plagiarism on their paper for example by checking to another plagiarism checker website, paraphrase the theories cited, and constructed their sentences with their own ideas. however, the result of similarity percentage from turnitin was really surprised them. they did not expect that they got quite high of similarity percentage. it occurred due to the misunderstanding concept that the overall similarity percentage was not the actual percentage of plagiarism. in line with the study conducted by ali (2013) which claimed that the percentage of similarity from turnitin did not reflect the plagiarism done by the students, and thus, in order to decide whether a paper contained plagiarism or not, it needed careful judgment from a human which examined the detail on similarity percentage. the responses of the students regarding their result were: (s.1) unexpected, because there are sentences that i write by myself but still categorized as plagiarism. (s.2) of course the result i got is not in line with my expectation. i have checked the plagiarism of my paper before on another website and it turned out that there was none indicated as plagiarism. however, when it is submitted to turnitin, the similarity percentage is high. (s.7) i am very confident that my paper has been organized well with many considerations to avoid plagiarism. therefore i do not expect the result is quite high. (s.11) it is not the same as my expectation. since i have tried to paraphrase the theories i used. furthermore, there was one student who claimed that turnitin was not detecting the plagiarism of the paper, but more of detecting the similarity from the sources on the internet only. she assumed that the overall similarity percentage could not be the one to be relied on as plagiarism detection, but could be a tool for helping in making decision. every paper should be checked thoroughly from the originality report to decide whether there was plagiarism detected or not. her comment was as follows: (s.20) the result is not in line with my expectation because turnitin actually doesn’t check the nova & utami efl students’ perception of turnitin for detecting plagiarism on academic writing 144 plagiarism, but only checks the similarity of the paper from sources on the internet. i think a paper is categorized as a plagiarism when high similarity percentage comes from only one source. the comment above supported the fact found on ali’s study (2013) that there was incomprehension of the students between the definition of plagiarism and the similarity percentage calculated from turnitin. therefore, even if a student got high similarity percentage did not always mean that they plagiarized others’. it must be checked from the detail of the percentage on originality report. thus, the decision whether someone did plagiarism or not can be done carefully and fairly. likewise, students’ dissatisfaction was worsened by the fact that turnitin system actually detected everything similar on the internet not only the content of the paper but also little things like author’s name, class’ subject, references, and common terms. as a result, many students assumed the similarity of those things was categorized as serious plagiarism by turnitin. related to the similar study conducted by bakhtiyari et al (2014), those little things were categorized as unconsciously plagiarism. as stated from their study, there were factors affected unconsciously plagiarism such as accidental similarity, fixed definitions, text recycling, self-plagiarism, many authors, and metadata. therefore, students often fell into this kind of plagiarism unintentionally. this issue was also in line with jones’ conclusion (2008) that stated turnitin was only checking the match or similarity of the paper with any sources on the internet and could not provide exact judgment whether one was plagiarizing others’ or not. therefore, it added up the confusion about the plagiarism and similarity percentage proposed by turnitin since the students’ understanding of plagiarism was limited only to the copy-pasting activity in word application. they assumed that unconsciously plagiarism detected by turnitin was not supposed to be included as a plagiarism activity. the students’ comments regarding this issue were: (s.6) i am so sure that i write my own sentences but still indicated as plagiarism. even, my name is categorized as plagiarism as well. (s.8) i submitted a similar paper from the one i submitted for another subject, but it has not been published, so i think it is not plagiarism since i write them both by myself. (s.10) i think there are some parts that are not categorized as plagiarism but still be highlighted by turnitin which resulted in the increased similarity percentage. for example common sentences like, “the purpose of this study is to find out…” (s.15) my paper’s similarity percentage is high because the references are indicated as plagiarism. (s.17) i am confused when the questionnaire i adopt from others is categorized as plagiarism yet that is the one that i need for my research. (s.19) there are several things that make me confused, for example when we adopt table from the books, it is categorized as plagiarism by turnitin. moreover, some students who dissatisfied with their quantitative result from turnitin admitted that they were lack of understanding about the plagiarism and how turnitin system worked. therefore, it might be the cause of the high percentage of similarity they got from their paper. it was related to a study conducted by bruton & childers (2015). they claimed that one’s failure in interpreting the concept of plagiarism into practice is the one that caused them to eventually fall into plagiarized others’ work. it was similar from what was happening on the participants in this study, even if it was just unconsciously plagiarism. it showed from the comment received from this study as follows: (s.4) at first, i assumed that the result was not in line with my expectation since i have rechecked before submitting it. however, after i see the originality detail, maybe i still have weakness in paraphrasing. (s.13) it is not in line with my expectation. however, i admit that there is about 3% that i forgot to paraphrase. (s.14) had i known how the turnitin system works in identifying plagiarism, i would have written my paper more carefully. but i’m okay with the result i got. on the other hand, there were those who believed that what they got as similarity percentage from turnitin was expected. they already predicted the result and it matched with their activity done during the process of writing their paper. they seemed understanding of what plagiarism means and how to avoid it during the writing process. it was similar to nisha, senthil and bushan’s classification (2015) who proposed four situations that make someone fall into plagiarism; accidental duplication without citing the sources, failure in constructing idea, inability in taking notes and citing sources correctly, and idea duplication and combination. those who were aware of these kinds of situation would have avoided them by many possible ways, including some students in this present study. these students comments received regarding this issue were: (s.10) my expectation is quite in line with the similarity percentage i got since the parts that i paraphrased are not indicated as plagiarism by turnitin. (s.12) i have tried to paraphrase the theories i used on my paper. it is shown from the result that indicated as plagiarism is only the common terms/sentences found on many papers. international journal of education vol. 10 no. 2, february 2018, pp. 141-148 ©2018 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: http://dx.doi.org/ 145 reflecting up from the students’ responses regarding plagiarism and turnitin, most of them showed the confusion between the concept of plagiarism and similarity detected by turnitin. most of them assumed that the overall similarity percentage was shown how much plagiarism detected on a paper and regarded as the final judgment of plagiarism detected on their paper. therefore many students had unexpected results which led to the unsatisfying responses of the students with their result of similarity percentage from turnitin. perceptions of turnitin in identifying the indonesian efl university students’ attitudes toward the use of turnitin as plagiarism detection software, a general perception on the turnitin utilization was also received in this study. mostly, these efl university students perceived both positive and negative perception on the use of turnitin in detecting plagiarism. on the positive side, some students mentioned that turnitin can be an effective tool for checking plagiarism on their academic writing, which is in common with graham-matheson and starr’s study (2013) and hamilton and richardson’s study (2008). specifically, in graham-matheson and starr’s study (2013), the students found that this software is useful and it help half of them to avoid plagiarism act, while in hamilton and richardson’s study (2008),the students used turnitin easily and they had a positive experience in using it as a plagiarism detector. in line with prior studies’ findings, some students on this study found the effectiveness of turnitin as a plagiarism detection tool. some students’ comments on turnitin effectiveness received on this study were: (s.2) a machine which is used to help human’s work sometimes has many weaknesses that can bring some losses for the human themselves, and in my opinion, the use of turnitin is quite effective to check the plagiarism level. (s.5) generally, on one side, using turnitin can help the lecturer in deciding on which paper is indicated having plagiarism or not. (s.10) it is quite helpful in checking students’ academic writing. moreover, obtaining skill improvement, some students also mentioned that having turnitin can enhance their skills in writing, including creativity and critical thinking. meanwhile, one student mentioned that it can be used as guidance in revising the academic writing. in line with ledwith and rísquez (2008), students’ writing and referencing skill can be enhanced with turnitin by giving the access for the students to take a look at their originality evaluation and helping them in expressing their writing. thus, some students on this study also found the benefits of turnitin in improving their writing skill, especially their creativity and critical thinking, and make it as their revision guidance in maintaining their writing. their comments on their skill improvement received can be shown as follow: (s.14) it is a great tool. the assignment will be done with high effort and make the author become more creative and respect to others’ work. (s.15) it is very helpful to have turnitin. it makes the students think critically in writing and pay more attention to their writing, not only copying and developing, but also making them read, conclude, and write on what they got from their reading. (s.19) based on my perspective, turnitin helps me to improve my writing skills so that i am not only depending on the content from book or journal that i had read, but also exploring my interpretation deeper. (s.3) it is a good application as a good guidance in revising our writing, but it does not mean that we depend mostly on the turnitin system. another student also stated that the awareness of her writing similarity was increased and two others mentioned that it makes them become more careful in writing and keeping the originality of their writing. thus, using turnitin can raise students’ awareness in their writing and it makes them become more attentive to the originality of their writing (ledwith & rísquez, 2008). the students’ comments written on self-reflection questionnaire were: (s.8) in my opinion, it is a good program and it makes us aware of the similarity on our writing. (s.17) good program, it makes me be more careful in citing the sources. (s.18) it is an excellent application so that i can pay attention more in keeping the originality of my writing. meanwhile, another student found out that turnitin can also be a tool for student’s self-assessment. using turnitin as an assessment tool was also identified in crisp’s study (2007) which revealed that turnitin was beneficial software to improve students’ written work and assessment practices. thus, turnitin serves its another essential function as an assessment tool. (s.20) it is a good tool. it can be one media for selfassessment. uniquely, one student also added that it can be used for honesty detection. as ledwith and rísquez (2008) mentioned above, anti-plagiarism software exists as a tool in promoting academic honesty and also getting the students to understand the importance of academic honesty. therefore, the utilization of this software should not only stop the plagiarism phenomenon among the students, but also raise students’ awareness on academic honesty. the students’ comment on this matter was: (s.4) it is actually a good tool to test students’ honesty. even though it has received positive perception, the negative attitudes also exist in line with its utilization. two students found that turnitin program nova & utami efl students’ perception of turnitin for detecting plagiarism on academic writing 146 made some mistakes in indicating plagiarism which leads its ineffectiveness in detecting plagiarism. these students’ views are consistent with ali’s findings (2013) which carried out that this software cannot detect accurate plagiarism and result in an inaccurate evaluation in detecting plagiarism. their comments received on this study were: (s.1) actually, it is a good application, but there are some mistakes in inputting the data of plagiarism indication. (s.6) i think it is not really effective. moreover, some students suggested the lecture needs to be wise in utilizing turnitin as one of plagiarism detector. their suggestion is similar to other scholars’ advice in having the anti-plagiarism software. some students suggested that the lecture should read and re-check on the plagiarism and similarity indicated by turnitin. a similar advice also was given by jones (2008) who mentioned that lecturer has the role in reviewing the turnitin reports in finding more accurate result on differentiating incorrect referencing and intentional plagiarism. thus, it requires manual interpretation and careful evaluation on the students’ writing conducted by the lecturer to investigate deeper plagiarism cases detected by turnitin (goh, 2013; oghigian, rayner, & chujo, 2016). then, in this study, students’ suggestions were: (s.4) re-checking is needed to be done by the lecturer to filter the part which is indicated as a plagiarism. (s.9) the most important thing is that the lecturer must also read the content of the writing. (s.11) the lecturer has to take a look at the idea of writing and re-check which part can be indicated as a false plagiarism. it makes the lecturer work twice. check it with turnitin and then check it manually. (s.16) we still need human consideration. we cannot let that machine work alone since some parts are indicated as plagiarisms, but they are not. on the other hand, some other students also suggested for feedback and regulation on dealing with plagiarism phenomenon. a similar suggestion is also given by graham-matheson and starr (2013) who stated that students’ confidence can be boosted if the lecturer gives further feedback on their writing and makes them understand on how to write the correct referencing on their writing. thus, receiving feedback can improve students’ writing skill and raising their awareness on plagiarism acts. these students’ suggestions on feedback and regulation were: (s.2) a further regulation needs to be made from either the instructors or students to response on plagiarism acts detected by turnitin. (s.8) correction and clear aspects on which action that can be categorized as plagiarism need to be explained. (s.10) the result of turnitin evaluation cannot be set as the only one guidance in evaluating the students’ writing. to reduce inaccurate result on detecting plagiarism, other students also advised that the turnitin technical setting needs to be set up to avoid the plagiarism indication mistakes by leaving the reference list unchecked. these students advice received in this study can be seen as follow: (s.4) the lecturer also needs to set the turnitin configuration setting to avoid in checking some part, such as reference list. (s.7) it needs a specific technical setting in checking students’ writing to determine common phrases or sentences. (s.12) a better progress can be reached if turnitin can exclude the reference list in checking the plagiarism. (s.13) it would be better if the reference list, cover, and common phrases, such as “this part talked about. . .” are directly excluded from plagiarism checking because these parts were indicated as plagiarisms. regarding the students’ general perception on turnitin as plagiarism detection software, several benefits were found by many students and they realized the positive impacts of the turnitin utilization on their writing skill improvement. however, their suggestion and recommendation on how to be wise in utilizing this software needs to not be taken for granted since it can influence the result of similarity percentage and leads to inaccuracy result of turnitin evaluation. therefore, being wise in using turnitin by setting up some features and configurations on turnitin may lead its maximum function on educating the students on how to avoid plagiarism in their academic writing. conclusion the fact of the positive impacts given by the existence of technology in educational field cannot be argued. though, as technology users, the lecturer and the students have to be wise in utilizing the tools to achieve its maximum beneficial impacts and to avoid the negative impacts on educational aspect. as one of the technology-based tools in detecting plagiarism, turnitin has been perceived both positively and negatively by the efl students in indonesia. the positive perception was given on its effectiveness in raising students’ awareness on writing similarity and writing originality. besides, students’ writing skill improvement, including creativity and critical thinking, is also one of its benefits in having turnitin in checking the plagiarism on students’ writing. moreover, turnitin can also help the students in assessing their writing and checking their academic honesty. nevertheless, the negative attitudes existed among the students cannot also be avoided. some mistakes in detecting plagiarism cases with turnitin, including the inability in differentiating direct quotation, common phrase, and citation, leads this international journal of education vol. 10 no. 2, february 2018, pp. 141-148 ©2018 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: http://dx.doi.org/ 147 software to its ineffectiveness which affected students’ understanding about plagiarism. most of the students were actually confused about the plagiarism itself and how it works on turnitin especially the similarity percentage result. therefore, it is recommended for the academic staff in university, especially the lecturer to teach the students about plagiarism. it includes the definition of plagiarism, the activities regarded as plagiarism and how to avoid it. it is very crucial due to the understanding between the lecturer and the students about plagiarism must be equal. moreover, the utilization of turnitin should also be as clear as possible to avoid misunderstanding regarding the similarity percentage result. it is also recommended to have lecturer’s cross-checking and feedback on students’ writing in utilizing this plagiarism detection software to create accurate evaluation result on plagiarism phenomenon and not being dependent only on the evaluation result given by turnitin. the detail from similarity percentage result should be examined carefully for the lecturer to come into the final decision whether a student falls into serious plagiarism activity or not. the additional change in the system configuration in detecting plagiarism on students’ writing is also needed, for example by disabling bibliography checker. it can help decreasing the inaccurate result of similarity percentages. furthermore, the scoring rubric of a paper should also include the part of turnitin’s utilization and be informed to the students. thus, the students can write a paper that concerns on the content while ethically avoiding plagiarism at the same time. even though the study had carried out its result on students’ perception on the utilization of turnitin in detecting plagiarism on academic writing, this study still has some limitations which can give essential contribution toward its result. first, the number of students participated in this study still in a small number. a wider range of participant can bring a deeper explanation and a new perspective on turnitin application. second, as the study was conducted in indonesia, a different result may be carried out by other researchers who conduct their research in another country. cultural implication and the use of english as a foreign language can also give significant influence on the rate of plagiarism phenomenon in one country. third, the technique of collecting data was limited on self-reflection questionnaire survey; meanwhile, deeper perception and attitude can be achieved through additional technique, such as interview which can strengthen students’ opinion and comments. therefore, further research on the similar investigation is recommended to be conducted to seek deeper perception on students’ perception towards turnitin or other plagiarism detection software. a further research regarding the attitude of the lecturers towards the utilization of turnitin or other plagiarism detection software is also needed to be done. finally, the result revealed can give a significant evaluation for a comparative study. acknowledgement this research was supported by the funds of indonesia endowment fund for education scholarship (lpdp), republic of indonesia (grant no. 20160611087314). references ali, h. i. h. 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(2017). research ethics and anti-plagiarism software: a study on turnitin users of general sir john kotelawala defence university (kdu). proceedings of information use and user studies (pp. 347-350). 40 management of bank loans for micro, small and medium-sized marketing perspective and in terms of legality in its distribution and its impact on economic development and labor absorption sampurno wibowo agus maolana hidayat h m yahya arwiyah abstract this study focuses on the development value of sales, labor on ict companies in bandung, the output value of industry sector and subsector telecommunications equipment industry, exports of communications including communications telecommunications equipment industry, as well as economic development, employment and bank lending in the form of small and medium-sized micro-credit for the years 2000 2008 to kabupatenkota in west java province. results obtained bank loan facilities for the industrial sector and the inflation rate together to have a significant impact on employment in west java, on changes in bank lending as a whole no significant influence on the change of value of output and employment in the industry as a whole and telecommunications equipment industry, exports of communications and telecommunications equipment communications in western java, while the umkm loans to agriculture, mining, processing industry, trade, hotels and restaurants, transport and communication co, construction, service businesses, community social services, and other sectors together have a significant effect on employment in western java. so that banking institutions should give greater credit to sectors of the productive economy, and have a wider effect multipier between sectors, so the increase in credit for umkm will positively impact employment in west java, so does the local government to provide certainty law for licensing services, transparency, and lower cost, especially for umkm to various economic sectors in western java. keyword : bank credit, small and micro puff, economic growth, labor absorption. introduction west java as the most populous province in indonesia has a variety of problems related to welfare. increasingly complex range of problems because of well-being depends heavily on the real condition of the economy that can not be separated from the micro-economic issues such as relationship lending, banks and companies as business entities in general. in the local regulation no. 1 of 2003 on basic pattern of regional international journal of education vol. 5, no. 1, november 2010, 40-59 sampurno wibowo,dkk., management of bank loans 41 development of west java, determined that the vision of west java which is “by faith and piety west java province in indonesia and advanced pole for the state capital partners 2010”. furthermore, in local no. 1 of 2004 concerning the government’s strategic plan 2003-2008 of west java province, provincial governments set the vision that is west of java acceleration to supportcommunity improvement welfare achieving vision west java year 2010. over the last few years the pattern of sectoral growth show wide gaps that still tends tothe real sector and non-real. relative growth of real sector growth under the banking sector and financial institutions seeing the conditions of economic performance in westjava, anticipated improvements needed to generate the real sector.one effort is to create an investment climate that is conducive in the real sector, which in turn can balance economic growth in all sectors. in general, a growing area can not be separated from sources of investment financing that is still dominated by bank lending. thus, if the slow disbursement of bank credit is feared to be one cause of slow driving engine of regional economic growth, including west java province. in addition, the availability of lending capacity banks will determine the ability of banks in lending some economists argue that, declining lending can be caused by credit crunch which cause the phenomenon credit rationing, so that a decline in credit supply side constraint, but it can also be caused by demand side constaint. the greatest hope for banks, and economic actors are tersalurkannya third party fundsin the right place, to the bank must have good credit management as viewed from the marketing anddistribution of legality. field of umkm are the real sector economic actors who are in need of a helping aid in the form of bank kerdit. business field they work at umkm is very diverse ranging from the service industry sector,manufacturing and telecommunications. in all these sectors absorbed the labor and have an effect on the wheels of the economythat hinted at the same time economic growth. often the question arises that although indonesia’s economic growth as in 2008 is stillpositive and above 5% but why are still many unemployed and poor people?. the answer is growth that occurs is not a quality growth. to achieve quality growth there needs to be investment and exports. bencivenga and smith (1991), develop a model where individuals face the uncertainty of future liquidity needs. individuals can choose the invest ment in liquid assets and are not at risk, but have low levels of productivity, and / or choosing investments in illiquid assets and risk, but has a high productivity level. based on the financial sector can promote economic growth by channeling savings intoprojects that have a high productivity level and at the same time to reduce the liquidity risk faced by individual. research objectives this study intends to empirically obtain a precise and clear about 42 international journal of education, vol. 5, no. 1, november 2010 the phenomenon ofmicro-credit management role of small and medium enterprises for economic development and labor absorption. the purpose of this study are: 1. to determine the effect of bank credit against the sales turnover and employment in ict firms in bandung? 2. to determine the effect of the banking industry credit to the value of output and employment in the industrial sector, as well as telecommunications equipment industry subsector, as well as the export value of the telecommunications equipment industrysub sector in west java? 3. to know the management of bank credit for micro, small and medium enterprises inwest java? 4. to determine the legality of marketing and distribution of bank credit for micro, small and medium enterprises in west java? 5. to determine the role of bank lending (commercial banks and rural banks) according to type of use for economic development and labor absorption in the province of west java? 6. to determine the role of bank lending (commercial banks and rural banks) according to the scale for the absorption of labor in west java? 7. to determine the role of bank lending (commercial banks and rural banks) according to the field of business / economic sector for economic development and labor absorption in the province of west java? the bank is the main business of financial institutions providing credit and providing services in payment traffic and circulation of money. while the definition of commercial banks are banks that collect funds, especially to receive deposits in current accounts and deposits and in its efforts to provide short-termcredit. in-specific bank can serve as: (i) the agent of the trust, which is the main basis is thetrust banking activities (ii) the agent of development, namely both the monetary sectorand real sector always interact and affect each other, where the real sector will be unable to perform well if the monetary sector is not working properly. therefore banking activities in collecting and distributing funds is necessary for smoothreal sector economic activity. and (iii) the agent of services namely, providing the bank also offers other services to the community such as: service delivery, care of valuables, bank guarantees, and settlement of bills. the three functions of banks in these economies, make the bank not only can be interpreted as a financial intermediary (an intermediary financial institution). banks generally defined by its activities by the law no. 10 of 1998 as a bank conducting business in a conventional and / or based on syariah principle in its activities to provide services in payment traffic. while rural banks (bpr) as a bank conducting business in a conventional and / or based on syariah principles in their actions do not provide payment services in cross-lau. sampurno wibowo,dkk., management of bank loans 43 most banks and transaction services focused on specific customer types.in general, the type of banks on the basis of the target market can be classified into three, namely : (1) retail banks namely, the bank’s focus is the type of services and transactions toretail customers. understanding the retail here is that individual clients, corporations and other institutions are small scale. (2) corporate bank is the bank of this kind of focus and transaction services to clientslargescale, usually in the form of corporations. (3) retail-corporate bank is, banks that do not focus on the two options above types ofcustomers. this bank provides pelayananannya not only to retail customers but also to corporate clients. one form of business that can be done by a bank of credit, based on law no. 10 of 1998, credit is the provision of money or bills can be equated with that, based on the consent or the borrowing and lending between banks and other parties who require the borrower to repay debt after a certain period with interest. understanding credit has diverse dimensions, starting from the meaning of the word”credit”derives from the greek word credere, which means “trust” or creditum the latin meaning “belief in the truth. “ in everyday use this understanding developed into abroader, including : 1) credit is the ability to execute a purchase or enter into a loan with a promise of deferred payment will be at an agreed time period (kohler, 1964). 2) credit is the provision of money or bills can be equated with that, based on the approval or agreement between the borrowing and lending bank with other parties who require the borrower to pay off debts after a certain period with the amount of interest, exchange gains and division results (chapter 1, article 1 paragraph 12 of law no. 7 year 1992 on the banks). in a decision on granting credit to prospective borrowers, financial institutions such as formal banks generally have a particular rating standard.standards are often used banks 5c principles, namely: 1) character. 2) capacity. 3) capital. 4) collateral. 5) condition of economy. on the basis of the intended use of funds by debtors, loans can be divided into: (1) kredit modal kerja (kmk), namely, credit used to finance working capital needs of our customers. kmk is usually short term and adjusted for working capital turn over period of customer. judging from the period is wcc consists of 2 (two) types namely, revolving and kmk einmaleg. (2) kredit investasi (ki) ie, loans used to purchase long-termcapital goods for business customers. ki usually medium or long term, 44 international journal of education, vol. 5, no. 1, november 2010 because its value is relatively large and how to call by the customer through the installment. (3) kredit konsumsi (kk) that is, loans that are used in the context of procurement of goods or services forconsumption purposes, and not as capital goods in the customer’s business activities. micro, small and medium enterprises article 5 of law no. 20 year 2008 on small and medium enterprises (msmes) aboutobjectives maenyatakan empowerment, empowerment objectives of micro small andmedium enterprises: (a) achieve a balanced national economic structure, developing, and justice, (b) grow and develop the capabilities of micro, small and medium enterprises becomestrong and independent business, (c)enhancing the role of micro, small and medium enterprises in regional development,job creation, income distribution, economic growth, and poverty of the people frompoverty. article 5 of law no. 20 year 2008 on small and medium enterprises (smes) on criteriafor micro, small and medium enterprises, stated: 1. micro criteria are as follows: (a) has a net worth (the reduction in total net worth of business / assets with a value of total liabilities) of at most rp. 50,000,000.00 not including land and building. (b) has the annual net sales of rp. 300,000,000.00. 2. small business criteria are as follows: (a) has a net worth (the reduction in total net worth of business / assets with a value of total liabilities) of more than rp.50,000,000.00 up to a maximum of rp. 500,000,000.00 excluding land and building. (b) has the annual net sales of more than rp. 300,000,000.00 up to a maximum of rp,2500000000.00. 3. medium business criteria are as follows: (a) has a net kekayaa (the reduction in total net worth of business / assets with a value of total liabilities) of more than rp.500,000,000.00 up to a maximum of rp. 10,000,000,000.00 excluding land and building, or have annual net sales revenue of more than rp. 2,500,000,000.00 up to a maximum of rp. 50,000,000,000.00. paradigm research this research paradigm is the paradigm of a double with two variables (independentvariables), namely: bank lending, which according to economic sector and by type ofuse with two dependent variables (dependent varible), namely: sales turnover and employment in ict firms in bandung and economic development (gdp) and the use oflabor in umkm in west java. the scheme of relationship between variables in the model can be described as follows : sampurno wibowo,dkk., management of bank loans 45 figure research paradigm kredit bank kredit perbankan sektor industri kredit perbankan umkm jenis penggunaan skala usaha sektor ekonomi / lapangan usaha sektor industri nilai output tenaga kerja kredit konsumsi kredit modal kerja kredit investasi usaha menengah usaha kecil usaha mikro pertanian pertambangan industri perdagangan transportasi konstruksi jasa dunia usaha jasa sosial masyarakat lainnya ekonomi jawa barat tenaga kerja jawa barat sub sektor industri alat telekomunikasi tenaga kerja nilai ekspor nilai output research method the approach used in this research is descritive research and explanatory research the model of analysis used to analyze the influence of free variables (independentvariables) on the dependent variable (dependent variable) is a multiple regression model (multiple regression method) using panel data, the incorporation of datatime series and cross section. to determine the extent of the role of credit extended banking industry for sales and labor turnover ict industry in bandung, using multiple linear regression equation model based on the software eviews version 6.0 with the model are as follows: 46 international journal of education, vol. 5, no. 1, november 2010 titti kmky 110 titti kmktk 110 where is : yit = sales turnover of ict companies in bandung tkit = m a n p o w e r i n i c t companies in bandung kmkit = working capital loans on ict companies in bandung β0 = constant value β1 = parameter values εlt = error term t = year (2002 2008) to determine the extent of the role of industrial sector credit by commercial banks andrural banks (state banks, national private banks, private banks and foreign joint venture bank and rb) for the development of value of output and employment industry sector,and its influence on the output value of industry sub-sector exports of telecommunications equipment and telecommunications devices each using multiple linear regression model equation using eviews software version 6.0 with the model areas follows: titti kindy 110 …………… tititti infkindy 1210 …………… titti kindtk 110 …………… tititit infkindtk 1210 …………… titti kindeksakom 110 …………… tititti kurskindeksakom 1210 ……… tititti infkurskindeksakom 13210 … where is: y1 = output value of industry sector in west java y2 = o u t p u t v a l u e o f t e l e c o m m u n i c a t i o n s equipment industry sub sector in west java tk1 = manpower in the industrial sector in west java tk2 = sub-sector workforce in the telecommunications equipment industry in west java e k s a k o m = e x p o r t va l u e te l e c o m m u n i c a t i o n s equipment industry in west java kindit = credits are distributed to the industrial sector in west java infit = the inflation rate that occurred in west java kursit = currency exchange rate of the dollar against the rupiah in west java β0 = constant value β1 = parameter values εlt = error term t = year (2001 – 2007) as for knowing the extent of the role of micro credit, small and medium by commercial banks and rural banks (state banks, national private banks, private banks and foreign joint venture bank and bpr) based on user type (consumer credit, investment andworking capital) and based on the business scale (micro, small and medium enterprises) for economic development and employment in all districts and cities inwest java province sampurno wibowo,dkk., management of bank loans 47 each using multiple linear regression equation model based on the fixed effects model (fem) is follows: titititti kmkkikkpdrb 13210 …… titititti kmkkikktk 13210 …… titititti kumekukekumitk 13210 where is : pdrbit = gross regional domestic p r o d u c t ( g d p ) e a c h sector of the economy in west java province tkit = m a n p o w e r i n v a r i o u s economic sectors in the province of west java kkit = micro-credit, small and medium-sized commercial banks and rural banks for consumption in west java kiit = micro-credit, small and medium-sized commercial banks and rural banks for investmentin west java kmkit = micro-credit, small and medium-sized commercial banks and rural banks for working capital in west java kumiit = commercial banks and rural credit for micro-enterprises in west java kukeit = commercial banks and rural credit for small businesses in west java kumeit = credits of commercial banks and rural banks for medium enterprises in west java β0 = constant value β1 = parameter values εlt = error term t = year (2002 – 2008) to determine the extent of the role of micro credit, small and medium by commercial banks and rural banks (state banks, national private banks, private banks and foreign joint venture bank and rb) for the absorption / use of labor in various sectors: agriculture, mining; processing industry, electricity, gas,water, building, trade, hotels and restaurants, transport and communications, finance, banking and businessservices; and services in kabupten and cities in west java using multiple linear regression model based on fixed effect model (fem) are as follows: titititittittititititti xxxxxxxxxy i 19876543210 … titititittittititititti xxxxxxxxxtk i 19876543210 … where is : y = grdp city / district in west java province tkit = use of labor in west java province x1 = m i c r o c r e d i t , s m a l l a n d medium-sized commercial banks and rural banks for the agricultural sector x2 = m i c r o c r e d i t , s m a l l a n d medium-sized commercial banks and rural banks for the miningand quarrying sector x3 = m i c r o c r e d i t , s m a l l a n d medium-sized commercial banks and rural banks for industrialsector processing x4 = m i c r o c r e d i t , s m a l l a n d medium-sized commercial banks and rural banks for the electricity sector, gas and water supply 48 international journal of education, vol. 5, no. 1, november 2010 x5 = m i c r o c r e d i t , s m a l l a n d medium-sized commercial banks and rural banks for the building sector x6 = m i c r o c r e d i t , s m a l l a n d medium-sized commercial banks and rural banks for trade, hotels and restaurants x7 = m i c r o c r e d i t , s m a l l a n d medium-sized commercial banks and rural banks for transportand communications sector x8 = m i c r o c r e d i t , s m a l l a n d medium-sized commercial banks and rural banks for the financial sector, banking and business services x9 = m i c r o c r e d i t , s m a l l a n d medium-sized commercial banks and rural banks for services sector β0 = constant value β1 = parameter value εlt = error term i = district / city (i = 1 s/d 25) t = year (2002 – 2008) operationalization of variables no variable concept indicator scale 1. ict company’s sales turnover in bandung. value of goods produced by the company in bandung ict in one period. value of product sales company in bandung ict within one year. million rupiah 2 ict manpower in the company in bandung. the number of workers employed by the company in bandung ict in one period. the number of workers at companies in bandung ict within one year. people 3 industrial output and output value of telecommunications equipment communications in the region west java. value of output produced by all the telecommunications equipment industry and communications in the region west java. value of goods produced by all industries and communications telecommunications equipment company in one year. million rupiah 4 exports of telecommunications equipment communications in the region west java value of telecommunications equipment company communications generated in western java that can be sold abroad. value of telecommunications equipment west java communications that are sold abroad in one year. thousands of u.s. dollars 5. bruto regional domestic product (pdrb) according to the field of business in various cities in west java province. output value (final output) of goods and services produced by residents in a particular region in one period. output value (final output) of goods and services produced by residents of various districts in the west java region in one year. million rupiah 6. bruto regional domestic product (pdrb) according to the field of business in various cities in west java province. output value (final output) of goods and services produced by residents in a particular region in one period. output value (final output) of goods and services produced by residents of various kots in west java region in one year. million rupiah 7. bruto regional domestic product (pdrb) according to the business field in west java province. output value (final output) of goods and services produced by residents in a particular region in one period. output value (final output) of goods and services produced by residents of west java province within one year. million rupiah sampurno wibowo,dkk., management of bank loans 49 8 absorption or the use of field workers by businesses in various cities in west java province. total labor force that works according to hours of work or expertise in the various districts in the west java region in one year. the number of workers who work in various economic sectors in various districts in the west java region in one year. people 9. absorption or the use of field workers by businesses in various cities in west java province. total labor force that works according to hours of work or expertise in various cities in west java region in one period. the number of workers who work in various economic sectors in various districts in the west java region in one year. people 10. absorption or the use of field workers by businesses in various cities in west java province. total labor force that works according to hours of work or skill in west java province in one period. the number of workers who work in various economic sectors in various districts in the west java region in one year. people 11. micro small and medium (mkm) according to the economic sector in various districts in west java province. provision of money under c o n t r a c t s b o r r o w i n g a n d lending between banks and m i c r o b u s i n e s s s m a l l a n d medium (mkm) according t o t h e e c o n o m i c s e c t o r i n various districts in west java province, which memwajibkan the borrower to repay the debt after a certain period of time with interest. the number or amount of loans granted by banks u mum and bpr by economic sector in various districts in west java province within one year. million rupiah 12. micro small and medium (mkm) according to economic sectors in various towns in west java province. provision of money under contracts borrowing and lending between banks and micro business small and medium (mkm) according to the economic sector in many cities in west java province, which memwajibkan the borrower to repay the debt after a certain period with interest. the number or amount of loans granted by banks u mum and bpr by economic sector in various districts in west java province within one year. million rupiah 13. micro small and medium (mkm) according to the economic sector in the province of west java. provision of money under contracts borrowing and lending between banks and micro business small and medium (mkm) according to the economic sector in west java province, which memwajibkan the borrower to repay the debt after a certain period with interest. the number or amount of loans granted by banks u mum and bpr by economic sector in various districts in west java province within one year. million rupiah 14. micro small and medium (mkm) according to type of use in various cities in west java province.. provision of money under contracts borrowing and lending between banks and micro business small and medium (mkm) according to the types of uses in various districts of west java province, which memwajibkan the borrower to repay the debt after a certain period with interest. the number or amount of loans granted by banks u mum and bpr by economic sector in various districts in west java province within one year. million rupiah 50 international journal of education, vol. 5, no. 1, november 2010 15. micro small and medium (mkm) according to type of use in various cities in west java province. provision of money under contracts borrowing and lending between banks and micro business small and medium (mkm) by type of use in various cities in west java province, which memwajibkan the borrower to repay the debt after a certain period with interest. the number or amount of loans granted by banks u mum and bpr by economic sector in various districts in west java province within one year. million rupiah 16. micro small and medium (mkm) according to type of use in the provinces of west java. provision of money under contracts borrowing and lending between banks and micro business small and medium (mkm) according to type of use in the province of west java, which memwajibkan the borrower to repay the debt after a certain period with interest. the number or amount of loans granted by banks u mum and bpr by economic sector in various districts in west java province within one year. million rupiah data and data sources data used in this study are primary and secondary data using time series data (time series) for some district / city in west java province in the period 2002 to 2008. research object objects in this study based on data from field surveys on ict companies in bandung, and derived from secondary data, namely: bank indonesia (bi), the central statistical agency (bps), workforce agencies (manpower), cooperatives and business services small-medium enterprises (smes), and regional planning agencies district / city (bapeda) in west java province, while the region is shown in table 3.2 as follows : no. city and district in west java province 1. tasikmalaya city. 2. depok city 3. cimahi city 4. bekasi city 5. banjar city 6. sukabumi city 7. cirebon city 8. bogor city 9. bandung city 10. tasikmalaya district 11. sumedang district 12. sukabumi district 13. subang district 14. purwakarta district sampurno wibowo,dkk., management of bank loans 51 15. majalengka district 16. kuningan district 17. kerawang district 18. indramayu district 19. garut district 20. cirebon district 21. cianjur district 22. ciamis district 23. bogor district 24. bekasi district 25. bandung district west java province model specification tests econometric model using partial regression model using ols (ordinary least square) is important in the process of analysis, the test will then estimate the model. coefficient of determination (r2) coefficient of determination (r2) indicates how much variation e x p l a n a t o r y v a r i a b l e s a ff e c t t h e dependent variable variation.coefficient of determination (r2) ranging from0 £ r2 £ 1. r2 greater or close to one means the greater variation dependent variables can be explained by variations in explanatory variables.otherwise the smaller the value of r2 or close to zero means that the smaller the variation of the dependent variable can be explained by the explanatory variables. formula used to calculate the value r2 is: r2 = tss rss −1 with :tss= total sum square rss= residual sum square hypothesis testing and significance parameter a f t e r t h e e s t i m a t i o n o f regression parameters is done, the next step to test the significance of parameters, which performed to test the hypothesis that has been filed and find significance (significance) effect between the independent variables with dependent variable. as for the research hypotheses, are as follows : h0 : partially independent variables did not affect the dependent variable ha : partially independent variables affect the dependent variable based on the above research hypotheses, using a significance level 95% or a = 5%, hypothesis testing can be made as follows : 1. define a null hypothesis and alternative hypothesis: h0 : bi = 0 ha : bi ¹ 0 where : i =1, 2, …, n 52 international journal of education, vol. 5, no. 1, november 2010 2. t statistic calculations with formula: i i sb b t = (3.20.) 3. testing criteria: q if –ta £ tstat £ ta (n-k-1), then h0 a c c e p t e d , m e a n s t h a t t h e i n d i v i d u a l i n d e p e n d e n t variables are not significant in influencing the dependent variable q if –ta (n-k-1) ³ tstat or ta (n-k-1) £ tstat, then h0 rejected, means that the independent variables individually significant in influencing the dependent variable. in the multan test hypothesis testing in the multan conducted to determine whether or not significant effect given by the multan independent variable to dependent variable. as for the following research hypotheses : h0 : independent variables in the multan does not significantly affect the dependent variable. ha : multan is the independent variable significantly affects the dependent variable. based on the above research hypotheses, testing hypotheses with the f test to determine the effect in the multan independent variables against dependent variable, using a significance level of 95% or a = 5%. process aimed at testing the following: 1. define a null hypothesis and alternative hypothesis: h0 : b1 = b2 = … = bn = 0 ha : at least there is one bi ¹ 0 , i = 1, 2, …., n 2. f statistical calculations with chart analysis of variance : sources of variation degrees of freedom sum of squares (jk) the average sum of squares (rjk) fstat fa regresi residual k – 1 n – k jk regresi jk residual rjk regresi rjk residual rjk regresi rjk residual tabel uji f 3. testing criteria: q if f stat £ f a (k-1; n-k), then h 0 a c c e p t e d , m e a n s t h a t t h e independent variables jointly insignificant in influencing the dependent variable q if fstat ³ fa (k-1; n-k), then h0 rejected, means that the independent variables is jointly significant in influencing the dependent variable. sampurno wibowo,dkk., management of bank loans 53 discussion influence the distribution of bank credit in the industrial sector for output, employment and exports of telecommunications equipment communications in western java based on the results of multiple linear regression analysis, can be expressed mathematically: outputind = 55.684.433 + 5,416kreditind (1,49) f = 2,23 r2= 0,3081 ………(4.1) n.s outputakom = -67.0885,9 + 0,034kreditind (0,93) f = 0,88 r2= 0,1501 ...….…(4.2) n.s tkind= 918.439 + 0,007kreditind (1,36) f = 1,85 r2= 0,2701 ………(4.3) n.s tkakom = 816,96 + 2, 38-e5kreditind (0,35) f = 0,05 r2= 0,0110 …....…(4.4) n.s tkind = 974.318,10 + 0,009kreditind 9.279,021inflasi (2,01) (-2,16)* f = 3,94 r2= 0,4954 ...(4.5) n.s sig. tkakom = -320,99 + 2,47e-06kreditind + 188,96inflasi (0,04) (3,55)** f = 6,42 r2= 0,7624 ...(4.6) n.s sig. eksporakom = 1.853.636 + 0,034kreditind (0,93) f = 0,64 r2= 0,096 ………(4.7) n.s ekspor akom = 1.309.465 + 0,003kreditind + 77,551kurs (0,20) (0,41) f = 0,36 r2= 0,1265....(4.8) n.s n.s ekspor akom = 1.925.197 + 0,011kreditind – 42,276kurs + 29.352inflasi (0,58) (1,64) (0,73) n.s n.s n.s f = 0,78 r2= 0,3691 ………(4.9) ket : (…) = t hitung ns = non signifikan sig = signifikan (*) sig pada α = 0,10 (**) sig pada α = 0,05 (***) sig pada α = 0,05 hypothesis testing in the multan and partial calculated by multiple linear regression model is the equation (4.1), (4.2), (4.3), (4.4) and equation (4.7), (4.8) also equation (4.9) obtained fhitung < ftabel, then the model is shown to receive h0 (h0 accepted), so that the lending bank for industrial sector (kreditind) together have no significant influence on the result of telecommunications equipment 54 international journal of education, vol. 5, no. 1, november 2010 exports munkasi either without or by entering the macroeconomic variables. while for the results of equation (4.5) dan (4.6) ) obtained fhitung > ftabel, then the model is shown to receive h1 (h1 accepted), so that the lending bank for industrial sector (kreditind) and the rate of inflation together have a significant effect on employment in western java. further changes can be explained as a whole bank lending can not explain (no effect) means the change of value of output and employment in the industry as a whole and the telecommunications equipment industry, exports of communications and telecommunications equipment communications in west java, so need for performance improvement that can improve production efficiency and breakthroughs in order to develop the production of various types of telecommunications equipment as well as communication which is expected to increase export of various types of telecommunications equipment such communications to foreign countries and assessed whether the large amount of credit given to the industrial sector is adequate. the influence of micro lending, smallmedium enterprises (umkm) by type of use to the economic development of western java based on the results of multiple linear regression analysis, can be expressed mathematically as follows: pdrbjb = 8.377.620 + 30,465kiumkm + 2,589kmkumkm .….….…..(4.10) (1,99) (0,68) f = 85,09 r2= 0,4974 sig n.s ket : ns = non signifikan sig = signifikan (*) sig pada α = 0,10 (**) sig pada α = 0,05 (***) sig pada α = 0,05 calculated by multiple linear regression model obtained fhitung = 85,09 > ftabel = …. , then the model shows no reason to accept h0 (h0 ditolak), so that the investment credit (kinvumkm) and working capital loans (kmkumkm) for micro, small and medium enterprises (umkm) together have a significant impact produk domestik regional bruto (pdrb) in west java.now to find out where the significant variables, it is necessary to test partial (individual) obtained t hitung = 1,990 > ttabel = 1,645 for kinvumkm, then the model shows no reason to accept h0 (h0 ditolak), so that the investment credit (kinvumkm) partially have a significant impact on bruto regional domestic product (pdrb) in west java. while working capital loans (kmkumkm) had t hitung = 0,681 < ttabel = 1,645, then partially working capital loans (kmkumkm) had no significant effect on regional domestic product. the need for umkm to increase productivity to further increase sampurno wibowo,dkk., management of bank loans 55 the production (output), so that the presence of bank loans, umkm can access even more for the capital with cheaper cost compared to looking for sources of funds outside the banking system which has a higher interest rate. the influence of micro-lending, small and medium enterprises (umkm) according to the business field of economic development west java based on the results of multiple linear regression analysis (multiple linear regression analysis). can be expressed mathematically as follows: pdrb=1.972.968+114,43tan-27,54tam+16,47ind-4,33dag-76,88ang+30,65kon-11.54jdu+14,27jsm+6,39lain (6,27) (-0,61) (3,19) (-1,23) (-2,13) (1,02) (-0,92) (-0,62) (4,90) sig n.s sig n.s sig n.s n.s n.s sig f = 93,00 r2= 0,8370 ket : ns = non signifikan sig = signifikan (*) sig pada α = 0,10 (**) sig pada α = 0,05 (***) sig pada α = 0,05 calculated by multiple linear regression model of umkm credit obtained for the agricultural sector, mining, industry, trade, hotels and restaurants, transport and communication co, construction, service businesses, community social services, and other sectors together have a significant impact gross regional domestic product (gdp) in west java. west java local government, especially through the banking institutions should provide funding policy in order to help umkm to grow and develop in various economic sectors, through the expansion of funding sources through the provision of various banking-credit schemes for small and medium enterprises. the influence of micro-lending, small and medium enterprises (umkm) by type of use of manpower west java. based on the results of multiple linear regression analysis, can be expressed mathematically as follows : tk = 439.153 1,849kinvumkm + 0,598kmkumkm …………(4.12) (-3,,99) (5,20) f = 28,05 r2= 0,2460 sig sig ket : sig = signifikan (*) sig pada α = 0,10 (**) sig pada α = 0,05 (***) sig pada α = 0,05 investment credit (kinvumkm) and working capital loans (kmkumkm) for micro, small and medium enterprises (umkm) together have a significant effect on employment in western java. west java local government, especially through the banking institutions should provide funding policy in order to help umkm to grow and develop to increase lending to umkm, particularly for working capital loans as compared to investment credit, because the use of working capital loans to umkm in western java partly used for add workers or employees in its production process. 56 international journal of education, vol. 5, no. 1, november 2010 the influence of micro-lending, small and medium enterprises (umkm) according to the scale of labor in western java based on the results of multiple linear regression analysis, can be expressed mathematically as follows : tk = 296.141 + 0,469kumiumkm 0,170kukeumkm 0,134kumeumkm ...(4.13) (8,31) (-2,21) (-2,50) sig sig sig f = 41,53 r2= 0,5847 ket : sig = signifikan (*) sig pada α = 0,10 (**) sig pada α = 0,05 (***) sig pada α = 0,05 umkm loans to micro-scale (kumiumkm), small-scale enterprises (kukeumkm), and medium-scale enterprises (kumeumkm) together have a significant effect on employment in western java. banking institutions need to provide policies to facilitate and serve the more micro-entrepreneurs and provide capital support for micro-entrepreneurs to improve their business. the influence of micro-lending, small and medium enterprises (umkm) according to the business field of manpower development in west java based on the results of multiple linear regression analysis, are as follows mathematically : tk = 339.993 + 5,69tan + 3,77tam + 0,58ind – 0,29dag -1,32ang -1,82kon + 0,32jdu + 1,95jsm + 0,05lain (7,42) (1,98) (2,67) (-2,01) (-0,87) (-1,44) (0,61) (1,23) (0,90) sig sig sig sig n.s n.s n.s n.s n.s f = 19,45 r2= 0,5179 ket : ns = non signifikan sig = signifikan (*) sig pada α = 0,10 (**) sig pada α = 0,05 (***) sig pada α = 0,05 umkm credit to agriculture sector, mining, manufacturing industries; hotel and restaurant trade, transportation and communication co; construction, service businesses, community social services, and other sectors together have a significant effect on employment in western java. banking institutions should give greater credit to sectors of the productive economy, and have a wider effect multipier between sectors, so the increase in credit for umkm will positively impact employment in west java.as well as local governments to provide legal certainty for licensing services, transparency, and lower cost, especially for umkm to various economic sectors in western java. the discussion results can be seen that there is great potential in the development sector ukm as domestic sampurno wibowo,dkk., management of bank loans 57 power.if it is properly managed it will create a formidable medium businesses in countries like china and korea, but on the other hand ukm is facing fundamental problems outline includes the difficulty of market access, lack of business development and the limited access to financing institutions in this regard are banks. other problems that hinder the development of banking institutions in ukm is treating generally ukm same as medium and large businesses in any financing proposal, which among others include the adequacy of collateral, capital, as well as in terms of business feasibility 5c.whereas most of the actors can not afford ukm meet these requirements in addition to their needs is still on a small scale. it is seen from the number ukm who enjoy access to capital from the banking institutions amounted to only 22.14 percent. these conditions illustrate that the marketing function of credit in the banking ukm not optimal to run well and are still fettered by the rules in the form of legislation both at local and central inflexible and still wide problems faced by ukm, which was also once a huge potential banks, particularly in lending because it is still a wide open market for micro-credit schemes and small scale. conclusions and suggestions conclusions discussion of the results of the analysis, it can be deduced as follows: 1. bank lending in the form of loans for investment and working capital loans to industrial sector did not significantly affect output and employment in total industrial output and communications telecommunications equip ment industry also includes telecommuni cations equipment industry, exports of communications. 1. bank lending for investment credit in micro, small and medium enterprises (umkm) providing positive and significant for economic development in west java, while working capital loans provide a positive influence but however not significant. 2. channeling of bank credit to agriculture, industry and other sectors (informal sector), are each providing a significant positive impact for economic development west of java, this is due to the agricultural sector has a distribution percentage (contribution), the largest in the formation of bruto regional domestic product (pdrb), and industrial sectors have the highest economic growth rate compared to other economic sectors. 3. lending to umkm investsi pebankan opposite effect pekembanan employment in west java, while working capital loans provide a positive and significant effects for employment. 4. bank lending to umkm in western java based business scale, microbusinesses providing a positive influence for the absorption of 58 international journal of education, vol. 5, no. 1, november 2010 labor in western java. while for the supply of bank credit for small and medium enterprises in the opposite effect on employment in west java. 5. bank lending to umkm for the agricultural sector, mining, and industry, are each providing a significant positive effect for the absorption of labor in western java, while the trade sector has a negative effect on labor. suggestions conclusions based on the suggestions proposed by the authors are as follows : 1. financial institutions, particularly banks to increase lending to the industrial sector, especially for export-oriented industries, including telecommunications equipment industry, communications, thus not only generate foreign exchange for the country, but also at the same time increasing production capacity and can absorb the use of labor for the community of java west. 2. financial institutions (banks) can increase the provision of micro credit for small and medium enterprises (umkm) based on the type of use for creditoriented, especially in additional working capital, to the later investment loans, and credit limit consumptive nature, which so far has the biggest portion absorption of banking credit to the umkm sector in west java. 3. in an effort to boost the economic growth (gdp) and peyerapan labor for small and medium micro enterprises (umkm) in west java, the financial institutions (banks) to increase lending, with puts especially for the field of economic sectors of the productive enterprises, and have a broad impact externalities for other economic sectors, both to increase output and employment. 4. researchers suggested creating a new alternative funding institutions with the concept of multiplier effects in the hope that this new institution can be split up in the middle of a small community and a source of new hope to be able to build new businesses and improve their quality of life, the concept of a chain effect consists of two basic concepts, namely how to manage and distribute micro-credit and small to be effective and how to find sources of cheap funds that will be used as loan funds for the community, simply the concept of this chain effect can be described by schemes such as the concept of lending, adapted from the concept of grameen bank, grameen is a bank formed the first time in bangladesh by mohammed yunus in 1983.mereka focus on small communities in the hope that their credit channeled to reach and value-added for many individuals is not just a handful of big businessmen. sampurno wibowo,dkk., management of bank loans 59 reference case, karl e., fair, ray c., and oster, sharon m. 2008, principles of economics, prentice hall. christian, baraputra , 2008, sebuah lembaga alternatif pembiayaan kredit usaha mikro dan usaha kecil, sub-tema: penguasaan dan keunggulan iptek. universitas parahyangan bandung. dornbusch, rudiger, and fisher, stanley 2007, macroeconomics, mcgrawhill. kasali, rheinald . 2007 . “re-code change your dna”. jakarta : gramedia. mankiw, gregory n.2008, principles of economics, thomson. michael p. todaro, pembangunan ekonomi di dunia ketiga, terjemahan, edisi ketujuh, penerbit erlangga, jakarta, 2000. muljono, teguh pudjo. 2001 . “manajemen perkreditan bagi bank komersil” yogyakarta : bpfe. pindyck, robert s., and rubinfeld, daniel l 2008., microeconomics, prentice hall. primahendra, r. 2002. “the role of micro finance in economic development & poverty eradication”. workshop on micro credit schemes in nam member countries (empowering women’s role in small-scale business development), jakarta, 24 –25 juni 2002. rudjito, 2003, peran lembaga keuangan mikro dalam otonomi daerah guna menggerakkkan ekonomi rakyat dan menanggulangi kemiskinan: studi kasus bank rakyat indonesia, jurnal keuangan rakyat tahun ii, nomor 1, maret 2003, jogjakarta. sabirin, syahril. 2001. “pemanfaatan kredit mikro untuk mendorong pertumbuhan ekonomi rakyat didalam era otonomi daerah”. orasi ilmiah lustrum ix universitas andalas, padang, 13 september 2001. setyo budiantoro, 2003, ruu lembaga keuangan mikro: jangan jauhkan lembaga keuangan dari masyarakat, jurnal keuangan rakyat tahun ii, nomor 8, nopember 2003, yogyakarta. wijaya, krisna, 2007, pemasaran produk dan jasa perbankan. bahan ceramah dan kuliah pada sekolah staf dan pimpinan bank (sespibank). lppi, jakarta. wijaya, krisna, “kredit mikro bukan hibah”, harian kompas, selasa, 1 maret 2005. international journal of education vol. 10 no. 1, august 2017, pp. 34-45 ©2017 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v10i1.7646 34 judicious use of l1: a sociocultural investigation of teachers’ use of l1 in l2 classrooms fatemeh khonamri & farzam khonamri university of mazandaran fkhonamri@umz.ac.ir first draft received: 24 may 2017 final proof received: 20 august 2017 abstract this study is a sociocultural investigation of the reasons why teachers use l1 in l2 classes through different classroom “modes” (walsh, 2011). so far, a few studies regarding l1 have focused on l1 use in different classroom contexts, and none have used walsh’s model of classroom modes. to this end, the present study used walsh’s model which quarters the classroom context along with the conversation analysis techniques, to meticulously examine the classroom interactions. the classes were chosen from three different teachers in mazandaran, iran. a total of 6 sessions were recorded and transcribed. results suggest that teachers use l1 mostly for managing purposes: drawing students’ attention, and making sure they have comprehended what they are supposed to do, and educational purposes: explaining difficult grammar and vocabulary, and eliciting desired structures or utterances. these findings might help teachers use l1 more efficiently and judiciously, instead of avoiding it when and where it might benefit the learners, as well as minimizing it in their classes as much as possible. keywords: sociocultural theory; conversation analysis; l1 use; classroom modes. to cite this paper (in apa style): khonamri, f., & khonamri, f. (2017). judicious use of l1: a sociocultural investigation of teachers’ use of l1 in l2 classrooms. international journal of education, 10(1), 34-45. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v10i1.7646 introduction this study investigates one of the thorniest issues in second language (l2) pedagogy. the use of l1 in second language teaching and learning has been looked upon so negatively that some theoreticians even suggested banning it from l2 classes. amongst these theoreticians are krashen and long. the ideology these theoreticians and their proponents adopt claims that to learn an l2 one has to be exposed to it as much as possible. at its strongest, this maximum exposure to the l2 has been translated to the total exclusion of l1 in l2 classrooms, or as cook (2001) puts it “ban[ning] the l1 from the classroom” (p. 404). the roots of this animosity can be traced back to the time of the “great reform” of the late nineteenth century (hawkins, 1987, as cited in cook, 2001) when aversion toward grammar-translation method (gtm) resulted in the introduction of methodologies such as the direct method (dm), audio-lingual method (alm) and the like. the success of these methods compounded the animosity and made people believe that the best way to learn a language is the procedure these methodologies take_ the “monolingual principle.” however, this has not been the case for everyone. there were still people who believed l1 could be a useful instrument in the hands of the teachers in l2 classrooms. and indeed it has been (cook, 2001). in addition, research has proven that, despite the dominance of this ideology of “anti-l1ism” in l2 pedagogy, the existence of l1 in l2 classrooms is inevitable in efl contexts (chen & hird, 2006; cook, 2001; song, 2009). although the monolingual principle enjoys popularity and dominance in l2 education, it seems it has only been partially implemented into practice (song, 2009), and according to warford (2007) only around 50% of the class time (allen, 2002; warford, 2007; wing, 1980; wong, 2005) or less (calman & daniel, 1998; shapson, kaufman, & durward, 1978) has been in l2 in north america (all cited in, warford, 2007). apparently, the monolingual principle seems only possible in situations where either the teacher does not speak the language of the learners or the learners come from different l1 backgrounds. one of the theories taking a position against this monolingual principle is the vygotskian sociocultural theory (sct). this is particularly evident in the khonamri, f., & khonamri, f. judicious use of l1: a sociocultural investigation of teachers’ use of l1 in l2 classrooms 35 sociocultural view of l1 as a “scaffolding tool” (antón & dicamilla, 1998; brooks-lewis, 2009). in sct, (language) learning is a social phenomenon which is achieved through collaborative dialogue, and l1 is just another tool which facilitates this dialogue, and thus improves learning. but the problem which arises here is what wells (1998) has cautioned the teachers about: the extensive use of l1. this is of high importance since the class is the main, if not the only, source for the learners. the debates over the “judicious” use of l1 have been simmering for years, but determining a balance between the use of l1 versus l2 in a classroom seems to be impossible due to the lack of definitive research (turnbull & arnett, 2002). one way to solve this issue might be recognizing the existence of different micro-context in the classroom with their specific interactional features. until recently, the studies on l1 have mostly been on the basis of questions asked from the teachers and/or students about their opinions on whether or not it is a good idea to use l1 in l2 classes (mora pablo, lengeling, rubio zenil, crawford, & goodwin, 2011). the issue with these kinds of studies might be that they do not actually capture what really goes on in the classroom and it makes it next to impossible to verify what the teachers and students claimed, and prove any of the conclusions drawn. to go around this issue, some studies have used conversation analysis (ca) to capture what goes on in the classroom and base their conclusions on these documented evidences (de la campa & nassaji, 2009; samar & moradkhani, 2014). de la campa and nassaji (2009) carried out a study on a german-as-a-second-language classroom to examine the amount, the purposes, and the reasons of l1 use, and concluded that the two teachers under study did not differ significantly in their portion of use of l1 and that they used it for a variety of purposes. they used l1 not only to teach l2 but also to make classroom environment enjoyable. the average amount of l1 used in these classes was 11.3% for the whole classes. in a more recent study, samar and moradkhani (2014) investigated the reasons for teachers codeswitching in l2 classrooms in an efl context. they came up with eight reasons why teachers use l1: the most frequently cited reason was students’ better comprehension. the second one was to check students’ comprehension. other reasons were using the l1 for explaining grammar; comparing and contrasting l1 and l2; using l1 for students’ emotional well-being; students’ lack of comprehensibility; students’ proficiency level; and finally, efficiency. but what they seem to miss in their studies is to ask this question that “is the classroom context an indivisible entity or it consists of different microcontexts? are the classroom interactions of the same type through the class time or they differ? these are the questions üstünel and seedhouse (2005) made sure not to miss. they carried out a study on six conversation classes at a turkish university, investigating the sequential organization of “teacher initiated” and “teacher induced” code-switching and came up with three preference organization patterns: (a) teachers code-switched after a pause of more than one second in response to a question in l2 and not receiving any reply; (b) teachers code-switched to l1 to encourage learners to produce turns in l2; and finally, (c) teacher-induced code-switching. teachers asked students to translate to l1 their l2 utterances to make sure the students have understood the teachers. indeed, there seems to be two approaches for answering the above questions. the one seedhouse (2004) adopts, which suggests that the classroom context consists of four micro-contexts, namely (a) form-and-accuracy context, (b) meaning-and-fluency context, (c) task-oriented context, and (d) procedural context. and the one walsh (2011) adopts, which argues that the classroom context comprises four “modes,” namely (a) managerial mode, (b) material mode, (c) skills and system mode, and (d) classroom context mode. the managerial mode “accounts for what goes on in the organization of learning. its prime pedagogic goal is to organize learning in time and space and to set up or conclude classroom activities” (walsh, 2011, pp. 113-114). the materials mode is mainly focused on the materials being used, which is mostly the course book. the skills and systems mode is the mode whose goal is “providing language practice in relation to a particular language system or language skill” (walsh, 2011, p. 118). the classroom context mode is the mode in which “opportunities for genuine communication are frequent and the teacher plays a less prominent role, taking more of a ‘back seat’ and allowing learners all the interactional space they need” (walsh, 2011, p. 121, italics mine). this study, using ca and walsh's (2011) model of classroom modes, is intended to investigate teachers’ purposes of use of l1 in l2 classroom, and investigate the correspondence of l1 use with the pedagogical focus of the particular classroom “mode” it was used in. the results of this study could be significant in a way that it might help teachers not only avoid repelling l1 but to manipulate it “judiciously” in their own and their students’ benefits. international journal of education vol. 10 no. 1, august 2017, pp. 34-45 ©2017 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v10i1.7646 36 methodology the present study takes a qualitative approach toward data collection and uses conversation analysis (ca) for analyzing the data. ca is a methodology for studying and analyzing naturally-occurring spoken interactions, and a powerful instrument in service of sct. one reason to use ca in this study is because, unlike interviews, it captures what really goes on in the classroom and not what teachers and students think has happened. hence, it enjoys a higher validity than interviews and recall sessions, which might not be so accurate. what one, even in an interview right after the class, thinks has happened might be, by far, different from what really has happened. ca records as many bits and pieces of interactions as possible, so as to make the judgments on what has gone on as objective as possible. another reason to opt for ca in this study is its alignment and congruence with the sociocultural framework. although ca was originally a sociological issue, it has been used in other disciplines such as linguistics, sociology and ethnomethodology as well. ca, in a broader sense, “refers to any study of people talking together” (ten have, 2007, p. 6). it is a multidisciplinary methodology and has been widely used in many different academic areas including second language learning and teaching. despite the fact that conversation analysis is an approach in its own right, with its own theories and logics, sct views it as just a tool in service of different sociocultural theories of learning (markee & kasper, 2004). ca has been used in sct paradigm as a powerful tool for analyzing the nuances of the interactions, and consequently better understanding them. since this study uses the sct framework as the theoretical backbone, and aims to base its claims on concrete and provable evidences, the best method to analyze the data of this study is considered to be conversation analysis. ca studies may be questioned regarding their reliability as they do not present their primary data to the readers. hence the reliability of major parts of their analyses is not available for examination (seedhouse, 2005). on the other hand, however, ca analysts display their analyses so transparently as if giving the reader a tour, in a sense, of the processes of the analysis. they take the hand of the reader and walk them through all the stages of analysis step by step. this, of course, enables the readers to analyze the data themselves and judge the trustworthiness of the analysts’ interpretations. therefore, all the analyses are replicable to the readers themselves. in case of validity (internal validity), it could be argued that ca studies are internally valid: the data depicts what the researcher(s) claim. this is due to its emic perspective of ca studies. as participants in an interaction produce signals that are comprehensible for the receiving end (the other participant or participants), so, taking an emic perspective puts the analysts in the receiving end of the signals produced. being on the receiving end, the researcher(s) interpret what any other possible participant, to whom the signals are addressed, would. the question still remains, however, that to what extend ca findings are generalizable (external validity). it is not far-fetched to assert that ca deals with both particular and general at the same time. schegloff’s (1968, as cited in ten have, 2007), introduction of ‘distribution rule for first utterance,’ for example, seems very generalizable to most telephone conversations. so is wong (2002) sequence types occurring typically in american english telephone conversations, or seedhouse (2004) argument about the relationship between interaction and pedagogy. they all, though discussing some specific cases, can be generalized to other similar situations and instances. therefore, ca can be considered not only a study of different cases, but also that the finding from those cases are pretty much generalizable to other cases as well. data collection the data of this study were gathered from three different teachers in two different cities of the province of mazandaran, iran. table 1 below demonstrates some information about these three teachers. it goes without saying that all these teachers share a common l1 with the students. the classes were video-taped either with the institute’s own cctv cameras placed in the classes, or with my own camera shooting the class, accompanied by the institute’s cctv cameras capturing the class from opposite sides in order for having a better picture and hence a better understanding of what goes on in the classroom. a total of 15 sessions were recorded (5 consecutive sessions for each teacher) from which only the last two sessions were selected. the first three sessions were excluded in order to reduce the hawthorne effect. in order to observe a balance in the data, the same procedure was also taken for the classes in which the researcher was not present and the whole class was video-recorded by the cctvs. the classes were transcribed, mostly, using jefferson (1983) model of transcription. the transcripts, then, based on their interactional features, were coded into different modes, according to walsh’s (2011) model of modes. these transcripts were analyzed 3 times with 4 months intervals to verify the intra-rater reliability of the codings. that is, to make khonamri, f., & khonamri, f. judicious use of l1: a sociocultural investigation of teachers’ use of l1 in l2 classrooms 37 sure the interpretations from them were unbiased and remained the same through the course of time. due to the qualitative nature of this study, and to provide more meticulous information, the qualitative data research software of nvivo 8 was used to determine the percentage of each mode, and the percentage of l1 and l2 use in each mode. table 1 age sex years of experience degree and field of study level of teaching teacher 1 29 female 5 b.a.: english language and literature m.a.: tefl lower intermediate teacher 2 30 female 7 b.a.: english translation m.a.: tefl lower intermediate teacher 3 27 male 3 b.a.: english language and literature m.a.: english literature lower intermediate data analysis and discussion one mode in which the use of l1 was more conspicuous and abundant than others was the managerial mode. when teachers wanted to organize the class or when they wanted to attract students’ attention to a point, for example, on how they should carry out an exercise, they preferred to use l1 to avoid any misunderstandings for the students and consequently their following requests for clarifications on what they were supposed to do and how they were supposed to do the exercise. the following is an example of such instances that teachers used l1 in order to make sure no more misunderstandings are going to happen in the future. extract 1 (teacher 1) 1. t: you were supposed to interview one of your friends or family members. 2. ss: (inaudible) 3. s1: ms. teacher /tr.: i have written a conversation instead of an interview,.. er.. is there a problem?/ 4. ss: (inaudible) 5. t: /tr.: who else has done his/her homework incorrectly?/ 6. s2: /tr.: i’m not sure if i have done it correctly or not/ 7. s3: /tr.: i have definitely done them all incorrectly/ 8. s4: /tr.: may i, i didn’t do it because i had absolutely no idea on what to do/ 9. t: /tr.: from now on, everybody has to listen carefully when we are talking about the homework. who didn’t understand it should say it right away so that their problem would be solved immediately. it is unacceptable if you come the next session and tell me that you didn’t understand what you were supposed to do, or you did mistakenly. then don’t get upset with me when i made some decisions about you. it is not a threat, but when i tell you something you are not listening at all. don’t say she is a strict teacher… it is going to be a mutual relationship. if the teacher treats you well, then you have to do your work well, too. just study your lessons, just that. if it was going to be a one way relation that i come here and teach you and receive no feedback from you, then i wouldn’t teach either. why should i teach? make myself tired?... ok. i said it in farsi so that you don’t forget it and also you understand it completely./ extract 1 is an extract from one of the classes of teacher 1 and it takes place in the first 10 minutes of the class. the teacher had assigned the students some homework in the previous session, but almost no student did it, or if they have, they mostly did it incorrectly. so the teacher started a long turn (turn 9) to solve the issue once and for all. the teacher, as she stated it at the end of her turn, /i said it in farsi so that you don’t forget it and also you understand it completely./, used farsi (l1) so that the students could understand completely what she said to them and not to forget it. her choice of language, according to her own accounts was of twofold: she assumed that if she had said it in english the students would not have noticed as much and consequently they would forget it. so she opted for farsi so as to attract students’ attentions so that they would not forget. and that was only, and only if they had understood the teacher in the first place. hence the second reason was to make the students understand what she told them. this is evident in turn 6, when s2 states /tr.: i’m not sure if i have done it correctly or not/, and turn 7, where s3, quite confidently, states that she has definitely done them all incorrectly. these two turns depicts that these students, at least, have not comprehended the teacher’s demands which were pronounced in english in the previous session (extract 2). therefore, the teacher, international journal of education vol. 10 no. 1, august 2017, pp. 34-45 ©2017 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v10i1.7646 38 due to the fact that her pronouncing the homework in english in the previous session had caused the preceding interactions to take place, assumed that if she says it in english the students might misunderstand her again, and do something that is not the preferred action she expects. consequently, she used l1 to make sure the affiliation of students’ response with her demand. by using farsi she wanted to make sure no one is going to make the same mistake ever again. her reasons, as she herself uttered, was to attract the students’ attention to what she told them (managing the classroom environment), and also to make sure they would comprehend what she said entirely. these uttered and inferred claims are in line with the literature regarding l1. kraemer (2006), for instance, identifies eight functions for l1 use by teachers in l2 classes of which using l1 for classroom management is one of the most frequently stated purposes. rolin-ianziti and brownlie (2002), too, as a part of their findings stated that teachers use l1 for classroom management. samar and moradkhani (2014), among others, have counted different purposes for using l1 in l2 classes by teachers. students’ better comprehension, according to them, was the most frequently stated purpose of using l1. this, of course, verifies the second reason mentioned above for using l1 by the teacher. mitchell (1988, as cited in littlewood & yu, 2011), as another example, reports on the disciplinary aspect of l1 use by the teachers as one of the two most common reasons for using l1. we cannot, however, ignore the fact that first; she could have said what she said in english and then translated it into farsi. but she did not do so. that, arguably, could be inferred as her reluctance to spend so much time on that and in a sense “waste the classroom time.” as atkinson (1987) notes, using l1 is a valuable technique for exploiting the class time. therefore, she went straight for the l1 so that she could save more time on what she had to cover during that session. we cannot also ignore the fact that there still could be another reason other than the abovementioned, and that is the teacher’s inability to state what she said in english. this assumption, however, seems very improbable due to the teacher’s experience and knowledge of english that she could not utter those sentences in english. nonetheless, it remains unproven, because the teacher was not afterwards asked to reproduce the utterances in english. extract 2 is the last minutes of the session preceding the session in which extract 1 took place. this is the session in which the teacher announced the homework for the next session. extract 2 (teacher 1) 1. t: for the next session do the exercises of your workbooks → /tr.: and the other thing you should do/ the interview. listen. interview one of your friends or family members about tv shows. what’s her favorite tv show, what doesn’t he like, why. he/she, whatever. and what’s your idea. do you agree with him or not. do you disagree with him or not. 2. s1: er.. write? 3. t: /tr.: of course/ as the extract displays teacher 1 used english (l2) for announcing the homework for the next session. the point, however, is in s1’s utterance in turn 2 of the extract. she asked the teacher whether or not to write the assignment. this utterance is interpretable as s1’s comprehension of the teachers demand, that she has understood what the homework was and she was just asking for more clarifications on its form. but that is not true. because she is the same student who in extract 1, turn 3 confessed that she has mistakenly written a conversation instead of an interview. a case of disaffiliation with the teacher’s demand due to her misunderstanding of the teacher as a result of the teacher’s using l2. another point about extract 2 lies in the second line of the teacher’s turn in turn 1. in this turn, teacher 1 announced to the students the homework for the next session, which consisted of doing the exercises of their workbooks and an additional task, an interview. the point is that to highlight this matter that the students have to do two things for their homework, the teacher used farsi (l1). while still in the managerial mode, she used farsi to make the transition from one requirement to the second one. by doing this, she kept the probability of her students misunderstanding her at a very low level. this is evident in extract 1, when the students, in the following session, were absolutely aware of a second task to carry out as homework even though they did not do it. this is especially evident in s4’s account in extract 1 where she claims that she has not done the required task because she did not know what to do. this account of s4 can be interpreted as her awareness of a second task for homework. therefore, we can conclude that teacher 1’s use of l1 to highlight the transition and attract the students’ attention to the fact that there are two assignments has perfectly worked out and the students truly noticed that there are two tasks to be done for homework. khonamri, f., & khonamri, f. judicious use of l1: a sociocultural investigation of teachers’ use of l1 in l2 classrooms 39 another instance of using l1 in the managerial mode and for attracting the students’ attention can be found in extract 3 below. extract 3 (teacher 2) 1. t: the writing on page 63 is the topic of your next writing. →/tr.: let’s see what it has for you/ my favorite tv show. think of your favorite tv show. answer the questions. and there is a sample writing for you. /tr.: see how it has instructed you. the questions that are in the writing for you or the questions i tell you to write for your writings, you are not supposed to just answer those questions. you should use those questions to write a paragraph or two about the topic. not answering the questions one by one. your writing skills are getting more advanced and you should move on from writing a sentence to writing a paragraph. ok, let’s see what it has for you./ my favorite tv show extract 3, depicts the part of the class in which the teacher (teacher 2) announced the homework for the next session. we can see that the teacher made use of both english and farsi in one single turn. the first time she used farsi she did it to turn the students’ attention to what followed. she showed the transition from her own talking to reading from the book by using l1 as an indicator of this transition. the teacher has, most probably, assumed that by using farsi (l1) she could draw the students’ attention more effectively and consequently avoid any repetition or misunderstanding. this assumed conception of this teacher’s is perfectly in line with the findings of different studies carried out in the field of second language teaching and learning. castellotti (1997, as cited in turnbull & arnett, 2002), for instance, suggested that code-switching (cs) is a useful tool for drawing the students’ attention. faltis (1990), in the same vein, identified four areas for using l1 in the classroom, one of which capturing the students’ attention. after making sure that she has her students’ attention, the teacher switched to english by reading the book. she did not translate the instructions given in the book assuming that the students could understand it. she maintained the english code and continued “and there is a sample writing for you” assuming that she had her students’ attention and that they could understand it fairly. after that she switched to farsi for the second time to make an important note. by doing this, she, most probably, wanted to make sure that students understood what they were supposed to do, and avoid any kind of misunderstanding and disaffiliation. this teacher, too, like teacher 1 in extract 1, seemed to have used farsi to insure everybody understood the points clearly, so that there would not be any excuses for not knowing what to do in the following session. to see whether or not this choice of code which was, most probably, based on teacher 2’s preconceptions has worked out, we should see the result of the students’ writings in the following session. quite interestingly, in the next session, when the teacher asked some students to read their paragraphs aloud, they all did a relatively fair job. except for three students who attempted to answer the questions provided in the task, separately, others’ writing pieces had more or less the form of a paragraph. it is worth mentioning that one of the three students whose writing pieces consisted of separate answers to the questions was absent in the previous session when the teacher made the point on how to do such exercises in extract 3. extract 4 below which is the transcript of a student reading aloud his paragraph can be good evidence to show that teacher 2’s use of l1 for making this point, in order to insure their comprehension, paid off. extract 4 (teacher 2) 1. s: my favorite tv show is avaye baran. it is made in iran. i like this show because i like dramas and it’s a good tv show. the actors and actresses play good in this movie. i like name of an actor in this tv show very much. overlooking its blunders, one can distinguish the preceding extract as a paragraph. with regard to teacher 2’s remark about the students’ answering the questions, we can interpret that these students used to answer the questions which were provided for them as help, separately. this is also evident in the writings of those three students mentioned above. the importance of extract 4, which is just one example of the paragraphs written by these students, is in that it evidently shows the change in the students’ behavior as a result of teacher’s use of l1 for making the point. the fact that this teacher, too, used l1 in the managerial mode for making a point and insuring the students’ comprehensibility adds to the generalizability and reliability of studies, such as castellotti (1997, as cited in turnbull & arnett, 2002), littlewood and yu (2011), and others, claiming and/or counting this aspect of l1 use as one of the most important or frequent reasons for using l1 in l2 classrooms. it goes without saying, however, that we can still argue that this teacher could have used english for explaining the homework at the first place, and then if international journal of education vol. 10 no. 1, august 2017, pp. 34-45 ©2017 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v10i1.7646 40 the student did not understand it, she could have translated it, but as in extract 1, it might be inferred as the teacher’s time management technique that she skipped the english part to save the class time for other activities to be covered in that particular session. the managerial mode occupied nearly 20 percent of the classroom time, on average, from which nearly 12 percent was in farsi and only about 8 percent was in english. in simple math, three-fifth of the managerial mode of the data for this study was held in farsi, and only two-fifth of it was held in english. of course, this is the total amount of use of l1 by both teachers and students, i.e. the percentage of the class which farsi was used in regardless of who used it. these numbers are amazing considering the advice, and sometimes rules, teachers have to follow to minimize, and sometimes abandon l1 and maximize l2. using l1 in order to draw the students’ attention and displaying transition is not merely restricted to the managerial mode. another classroom mode in which the role of l1 can be considered as crucial is the skills and systems mode. this is the mode whose focus, according to walsh (2011) is to enable learners to produce correct forms and manipulate the target language. this mode is naturally replete with formfocused corrective feedback. using l1 in this mode, in the data of this study, relied heavily on the subject matter to be taught and learned. if the subject was relatively easy or that the students were more or less familiar with it, then the interactions took the form of sequential irfs and the use of l1 was more restricted to transition indicators. on the other hand, however, if the subject matter was challenging and difficult for the students, then the extent of l1 use increased and it was used as a tool for explaining the points and decreasing the cognitive load of the learners (scott, 2008), as well. one instance of using l1 to indicate transition in skills and systems mode can be found in extract 5 below. extract 5 (teacher 3) 1. t: um umm when did you graduate from high school 2. s1: (6.0) (inaudible) 3. t: when when the question is when →/tr.: say six years ago/ 4. s1: six years ago 5. t: make.. make a complete sentence i= 6. s1: i graduated from school six years ago 7. t: six years ago um umm why did you um eat food last night 8. s2: why did? 9. t: why did you eat food last night 10. s2: because i was err hungry 11. t: yes (because i was hungry i was hungry) umm why student why are you tired today 12. s3: (7.0) errr 13. t: →/tr.: say because because i worked a lot/ 14. s3: err because i umm worked very 15. t: much 16. s3: much extract 5 is part of a teacher 3’s class in which past tense was being taught. in this part the teacher tried to have students practice the patterns and internalize it. in turns 3 and 13 the teacher guided the students how to answer, or what to answer by telling them the farsi equivalent and asking them to reproduce it in english; however, he did not seem to rush it. in turn 3, it seems that the student had some difficulty understanding the question; this is interpretable through the six-second pause s1 made before he said the inaudible part of the transcript. the teacher, nonetheless, did not provide a translation of the question word “when,” instead he repeated it, putting the emphasis on the word “when” in order not to be mistaken by any other words like “where,” and asked the student (s1) to answer hypothetically by saying /tr.:say six years ago/. hence, the teacher provided the student with both the meaning of the word “when” in the question, and also an answer to the question which the student had to reproduce in english. in turn 13, the teacher, after a long seven-second silence, presumed that the student (s3) could not answer or she did not know what to answer, so he (the teacher) interfered and helped the student by providing an answer in farsi and asking her to reproduce it in english. eliciting desired structures from the students and encouraging them to produce turns in l2 can also be seen in other studies such as üstünel and seedhouse (2005). they argued that teachers used turkish (l1) in order to make the students produce the desired structures. in another study, rolin-ianziti and brownlie (2002) suggested that l1 is used by teachers to motivate the students to speak the tl in the classroom. teacher 3’s use of farsi (l1), in this study, insured that the teacher did not provide the students with the english structure when they were supposed to practice it, and at the same time he elicited what he expected to hear from them. he actually induced the students to make the preferred response he desired. this could be considered a valuable asset available for teachers who share the same first language with the students, or who khonamri, f., & khonamri, f. judicious use of l1: a sociocultural investigation of teachers’ use of l1 in l2 classrooms 41 are familiar with the students’ first language. it can also be seen as an advantage for teachers familiar with their students’ l1 over teachers who come from a different l1. as for the portion of occupying the class time the case was different for the skills and systems mode. on average, skills and systems mode occupied about 23 percent of the classroom interactions from which the percentage of farsi ranged from 0.5 percent to approximately 20 percent of the whole. that is, in some cases this 23 percent could be divided as 22.5 percent english and only 0.5 percent farsi. or it could be seen to be as nearly 20 percent farsi and only 3 percent english. because of this vast range and huge difference between the percentages of l1 use in different classes, i decided not to state the average, since it did not seem very expressive of the fact, and opted for stating the two extremes. one reason for this huge difference could be that, whenever a teacher wanted to teach something new, something the students were not familiar with previously, they used farsi more often to explain it, hence the major part was held in farsi. however, whenever a teacher wanted to teach something the students were already familiar with, or whenever they wanted to practice the already taught materials, they mostly used english and switched to farsi very rarely to make some points, hence the major part in english. the third out of four modes of the classroom is the materials mode. this is probably the most dominating mode in the classroom modes, since there is typically a course book and that book determines everything that goes on in the classroom: the activities, the interactions, and the discussions, if any. the book determines the whole process of instruction in the class: the grammar and the vocabulary taught, all were, as if, dictated to the teacher by the book, in the classes observed. this dominance is also evident in table 2 below, demonstrating the allocation of about 57% of the classroom time to this mode. however, the percentage of l1 use in this mode was not as conspicuous as the previously mentioned two modes: about 8 percent of the whole. in simple words, from the total of 57 percent, about 49 percent was held in english, and nearly 8 percent in farsi. the reason for this could be seen in the interactions taking place in this mode which are mostly short, often one word, and that whatever the teachers say is mostly written in the books and students can read them and understand them better, hence there appears to be no need to switch to farsi. the use of l1 in this mode, too, can be considered twofold: making students understand, and attracting their attention. this could be considered the mode in which the least amount of l1 is used. this may be due to the nature of its interactional feature, which is the irf sequence. the turns are mostly short, may be a single word in some instances, and the words used are either known to the learners or they are presented to the students in the books in the form of “complete the sentences with the words in parentheses.” therefore, very little genuine interaction happens that is not scripted and comes from the students’ own initiatives. however, when there come the times that there are some interactions the students and the teachers seem to avoid missing the opportunity of using their l1 as in extract 6 below. extract 6 (teacher 1) 1. t: we will check er… number three, i always skip the sad parts of the movies skip. student 1. 2. s1: do or have something that you should do or have to 3. t: and you mean letter? (.) no no yes ok you find the dictionary meaning? and which one a to h is the correct answer or definition for skip yes student 2 (1.0) student 2. 4. s2: /tr.: we have found the dictionary meaning/ 5. t: uhuh, and you didn’t find anything for (2.0) student3 what’s your idea? no idea. student4 (12.0) →/tr.: so what is the answer for it/ number three. 6. ss: b…..b…..b to not watch something extract 6 is part of a class in which an exercise was being done in the class. the students were supposed to have looked up the meanings of the new words in their dictionaries and then match the words with the corresponding definitions given in their books. in turn 1 the teacher asked for a matching definition to which students had to provide a letter from a to h that matched the definition with the word, but the student (s1) provided a dictionary meaning for it which was disaffiliative with the teacher’s request. then in turn 3 the teacher asked for the answer from another student (s2). s2 also showed disaffiliation by commenting that she, too, had just found the dictionary meaning, as she said “i have found the dictionary meaning,” and she has not matched the word with the definition. then again, in turn 5 the teacher tried some other students, but when she did not get any answers she switched to farsi, desperately, perhaps, and said /tr.: so what is the answer for it/. that seemed like an impetus that triggered the students and they finally provided the answer for the question. this seemingly small switch to farsi made a difference between affiliation and disaffiliation. by using l1 the teacher made the students international journal of education vol. 10 no. 1, august 2017, pp. 34-45 ©2017 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v10i1.7646 42 answer the way she wanted. it appears that the students had difficulty understanding the teacher and therefore the teacher switched to farsi in order to make the students aware of what she was looking for. as in extract 5 above, use of l1 resulted in affiliation of the students’ response with the teacher’s demand. such utilization of l1 can also be seen in üstünel and seedhouse (2005). as one of the findings of their study, they found that teachers use l1 in order to insure the affiliation of their students’ responses with their demands. another instance of using l1 in the materials mode is for attracting the students’ attention. one such instance can be found in extract 7 below. extract 7 (teacher 2) 1. t: i don’t know anything about iranian football. →/tr.: ok, let’s move on to/ reading before listening to the reading, what do you know about the reality show? ((writing on the board)) reality show 2. s3: er…it…er…it..er…shows the person…the real..realli:z /tr.: no/ really= 3. s: =real person 4. t: realities? 5. s3: uh huh, 6. t: uh huh 7. s3: real person /tr.:yes…no/ people’s realities life. as can be seen in extract 7, the teacher used l1 equivalent of a, seemingly, very simple english phrase “ok, let’s move on to.” here the intention of the teacher must have been something other than making students comprehend what was said to them, since it seemed crystal clear, based on the researcher’s own evaluation of the class, when shooting the classes, their level of proficiency, and the book the students were studying, that the students could not have any difficulty understanding “ok, let’s move on to the reading part.” so, the teacher’s use of the l1 equivalent must have intended to capture the students’ attention to what followed it. the teacher seemed to believe that if she used farsi, it could more easily and more effectively attract students’ attention. in this occasion, it may be clear that the teacher could not have any difficulty – language difficulty – producing the english equivalent. so the only possible explanation for using farsi was to make students notice what she was going to say following the farsi phrase. examples like this are very abundant through the data among different teachers. words or phrases like /tr.: ok/ and /tr.: now/ are among the most frequently used discourse markers that show the use of l1 for the sake of capturing students’ attention and also to announce clearly the transitions from one mode or activity to another, or within one mode or activity. the point about this extract is that the students noticed the transition, thanks to the teacher’s use of l1, terminated the previous discussion and started to talk about the new topic raised by the teacher. as in extracts 2 and 5, it can be seen that the teacher’s aim to attract the students’ attention by using l1 is fulfilled in this extract. the last of the four modes of the classroom, discussed in this paper, is the classroom context mode. according to walsh (2011), as mentioned earlier, this is the mode in which there are more opportunities for genuine interactions. the teacher plays a less prominent role and allows the students to take the initiatives and control the flow of the conversations themselves. this mode provides the opportunity for students to use what they have learned. the teacher’s taking a “back seat” role allows the students to learn how to take turns in talking, how to show they want an opportunity to talk, and lots of other things that they would not otherwise learn, since it is always the teacher who determines who to talk, what to talk, and how much to talk. therefore, this mode, according to clt, must be very important. all the above mentioned emphasize how important the classroom context mode is, nevertheless, in complete surprise – maybe shock would be a more appropriate word! – there was no classroom context mode to be found in the whole classes observed. no teacher, without any exception, provided the class with such opportunity. this lack, if i may call it, may be due to the bookoriented nature of the classes observed and that the whole process of teaching and learning is determined by the books used in the courses. another reason for this lack may be the amount of material that the teachers have to cover during each course and that does not allow them to dedicate some time to such conversations and activities. of course, this cannot justify the inexistence of the classroom context mode. maybe this is why the so called “free discussion” classes exist, in which people discuss different topics and share their ideas and opinions with others. this might show the recognition of the importance of this mode and its interactions in language learning, nonetheless, it requires the learners to attend to another class, which means one needs to spend more money and time. this might be a controversial issue but its discussion is unrelated to the topic of this study. all in all, the reasons teachers use l1 are summarized in table 3. teachers use l1 (a) to make khonamri, f., & khonamri, f. judicious use of l1: a sociocultural investigation of teachers’ use of l1 in l2 classrooms 43 sure students understand what was said to them completely; (b) to turn students’ attention to what followed; (c) to make sure students would not forget what was said to them; (d) to elicit the desired structure; and (e) to teach grammar and/or vocabulary; (f) to display a transition from one activity to another or within an activity; and (g) to save the time of the class. there could, of course, be some other reasons for both students and teachers to use l1 as establishing a rapport as mentioned in mora pablo et al. (2011), or providing scaffolded help as in antón and dicamilla (1998) and many others. discussion and conclusion although these three teachers were advised not to use l1 in their classes or minimize its use, and not to allow students to use it, a great portion of the classes (as depicted in table 2) were in farsi. this is in line with studies claiming l1 use is unavoidable in efl context (chen & hird, 2006; cook, 2001; song, 2009). table 2 (the average percentage of each classroom mode) classroom modes total percentage (average) percentage of farsi used (average) percentage of english used (average) managerial mode ~ 20% ~ 12% ~ 8% material mode ~ 57% ~ 8% ~ 49% skills and systems mode ~ 23% ~ 0.5~ 20% ~ 22.5~3% classroom context mode --------------------- total 100% 20.540 % 6079.5% table 3 (the reasons for using l1 in each mode) modes reasons skills and system mode 1. to draw students’ attention to what followed. 2. to make sure students understand what was said to them. 3. to explain the difficult and important grammatical points. 4. to save the time of the class. 5. to elicit the desired structure. managerial mode 1. to draw students’ attention to what followed. 2. to make sure students understand what was said to them. 3. to display transitions from one activity to another (or within one single activity). 4. to save the time of the class. material mode 1. to draw students’ attention to what followed. 2. to make sure students understand what was said to them. 3. to save the time of the class. classroom context mode ----------------------------------------------------------------------- teachers use l1 for various reasons: (a) to make sure students understand what was said to them completely; (b) to turn students’ attention to what followed; (c) to make sure students would not forget what was said to them; (d) to elicit the desired structure; (e) to teach grammar; (f) to display a transition from one activity to another; and probably (g) to save the time of the class. it is apparent that in some cases the teachers made use of l1 to convey the meaning in the quickest form possible in order to save the time of the class. all these purposes can be gathered together under the umbrella notion of preference. this means that, teachers switch to l1 for the preceding reasons to make sure the preferred response to their questions, requests, demands and so on. as can be seen in table 3, reasons like grabbing students’ attention and making sure of their comprehension are recurring invariably in almost international journal of education vol. 10 no. 1, august 2017, pp. 34-45 ©2017 universitas pendidikan indonesia doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.17509/ije.v10i1.7646 44 (because there was no classroom context mode) all the classroom modes. and reasons like explaining difficult grammar and/or vocabulary and eliciting the desired structure or utterance were constrained to the skills and systems mode. based on these findings, one may reason that teachers can educate their learners about transitional markers in l2 explicitly in early levels, and make them sensitive to these utterances, so that teachers would not have to use l1 for such reasons. by doing this, the use of l1 in l2 classes can fall into its minimum: explaining difficult grammar and vocabulary, and eliciting the desired structure or utterance. the former, nonetheless, can fade away as the proficiency level of the learners increases (woodall, 2002). references antón, m., & dicamilla, f. 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