REDESIGNING AND PROFESSIONALIZING TEACHER EDUCATION BY PILOTING ALTERNATIVES TO TRADITIONAL SUPERVISION: ADDRESSING THE CHALLENGES OF THE INDONESIAN CONTEXT

Abstract

The redesign of Indonesian teacher education is moving forward at a rapid pace and Indonesian teacher educators are now in a position to augment the top down reform efforts of the national government with redesign efforts from the ground up. Redesigning the supervision of student teachers by addressing local problems with local solutions is one way to do this. This article shares the redesign efforts of three teams of faculty working at universities in the United States and explains how these efforts might be adapted to the Indonesian context. Since local expertise is essential in redesign efforts, it is important that Indonesian teacher educators work together to create a mechanism for the redesign process. The redesign of Indonesian teacher education is moving forward at a rapid pace as unprecedented changes occur at both the national and regional levels. The size of redesign is massive because of the large population, the size and nature of the geographic area, the diversity of land and people, and the number of private and public schools and universities. There are a number of resources available to undertake such a large scope of work. Teacher educators who earned Ph.D.s at home and abroad bring a range of expertise to the challenge and a network of quality private and public universities exist. These institutions have prepared quality elementary school teachers in the past but 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