Professional Development Goes East: Examining Changes in Teachers' Beliefs in Four Indonesian Schools
Document Type
Conference Proceeding
Faculty
Faculty of Education and Arts
School
School of Education / Centre for Schooling and Learning Technologies
RAS ID
8285
Abstract
Teachers’ pedagogical beliefs have long been noted as one of the influential factors to the way teachers plan and implement their teaching and learning activities. Professional development programmes are often used in order to influence teachers’ instructional practice and pedagogical beliefs. This paper reports upon the Master Teachers and School Leaders programme, a collaboration between Edith Cowan University School of Education (Western Australia) and Sampoerna Foundation Teacher Institute (Indonesia). This one-year programme was aimed at changing Indonesian teacher beliefs and practice to encompass such things as classroom-based action research through reflective practice, the use of peer coaching and leadership support. As the content of the PD and its implementation were very western in their approach, the researchers were interested in examining any teacher beliefs and cultural aspects of the programme. The study found that as a result of the programme, teacher pedagogical beliefs had changed from a very teacher-centred to a more student-centred teaching approach. Also teachers reported that they now reflected upon their teaching practice and were exploring new practices. However the researchers found that cultural factors, such as the hierarchical nature the school and the foundation as institutions influenced the outcomes. The paper concludes with an examination of some recommendations for course designers and those implementing professional development for nations such as Indonesia.
Comments
Lim, C. P., Pagram, J., & Nastiti, H. (2009). Professional development goes east: Examining changes in teachers’ beliefs in four Indonesian schools. In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference of Teaching and Learning (ICTL). Malaysia: INTI University College.