- Title
- A study of the professional field experience of EFL preservice teachers in Indonesia
- Creator
- Bao, Bernardus Kopong Dani
- Relation
- University of Newcastle Research Higher Degree Thesis
- Resource Type
- thesis
- Date
- 2022
- Description
- Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
- Description
- Efforts to improve the quality of teacher education programs have recently focused on the establishment of well-organised preservice teachers’ professional field experience. The professional field experience – described in a range of ways, including student-teaching, teaching practicum, practice teaching, clinical preparation, and internship experience – is a crucial component to prepare professional teachers. However, its implementation and effectiveness have rarely been explored in the context of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in Indonesia. My study aimed at providing an understanding of the preservice teachers’ professional field experience within the Indonesian one-year (postgraduate) preservice English teacher professional education or pendidikan profesi guru Bahasa Inggris prajabatan (PPG) English study programs. I examined the main stakeholders such as the program coordinators, supervising lecturers, mentor teachers and preservice teachers’ perceptions of the current professional field experience management and its effectiveness including the challenges and recommendations for improvement. I adopted convergent mixed methods research design with major emphasis on the qualitative data. Quantitative data was collected through an online survey to 134 preservice teachers from six PPG English study programs across Indonesia. For an in-depth understanding, I also managed 11 focus groups with 36 volunteer survey participants, individual interviews with 12 mentor teachers, 11 supervising lecturers, and 6 program coordinators while collecting and analysing relevant national and institutional documents during my visit to each research site in July to October 2019. Thematic analysis was employed for interpreting qualitative data while descriptive statistics and one-way Analysis of Variance was used to analyse and compare the survey responses. The quantitative data analysis indicated that a majority of respondents consistently agreed that the professional field experience was an essential opportunity to facilitate their professional teaching competencies. The subsequent qualitative data analysis identified some initial features of effective professional field experience within the six participating PPG programs. These components include clear explicit provisions, well-selected mentors, supportive mentorship interactions, and quality learning opportunities provided both in campus and at schools. The most commonly cited factors to improve the effectiveness of the professional field experience include initiating genuine partnerships between the university and school, providing clear distribution of stakeholders’ roles and responsibilities including fair assessment systems, and establishing transparent mentorships rewards systems. Considering the preservice teachers’ professional competencies, my study findings indicated that although the majority of PPG stakeholders were in agreement that the current EFL preservice teachers had adequate English proficiency, teaching skills, and positive social-personal dispositions, they also suggested the need to improve the content of subject specific pedagogy workshops to achieve the PPG graduates’ competency standard. They mentioned three main aspects to improve the content of specific subject pedagogy (SSP) workshops to include equal cognitive and procedural pedagogical knowledge, a more structured workshop to develop preservice teachers’ disciplinary knowledge (subject matter knowledge), and a systematic workshop on developing a culture of reflective practice to support preservice teachers’ classroom action research. While reflective practice is critical for preservice teachers’ professional learning, my study suggested that the workshops on classroom action research should involve all prospective mentor teachers and supervising lecturers to become more effective mentors and to establish a professional learning community.
- Subject
- professional experience; EFL teacher education; EFL teachers' knowledge base; teaching practicum
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1447322
- Identifier
- uon:43118
- Rights
- Copyright 2022 Bernardus Kopong Dani Bao
- Language
- eng
- Full Text
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| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| View Details Download | ATTACHMENT01 | Thesis | 2 MB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download | ||
| View Details Download | ATTACHMENT02 | Abstract | 258 KB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download |