English Lecturers’ Preferences for High Impact Professional Development in Indonesia

Accepted Jan 02, 2018 Professional development plays an important role in improving both teachers’ and students’ outcomes. With various models and strategies, professional development is expected to have a high impact on teaching learning success. This study focused on English lecturers’ preferences for high impact professional development in Indonesia. With small survey design, the data were collected from 20 English lecturers around Indonesia by using questionnaire and interview. This research reveals that most of English lecturers in Indonesia expressed that they prefer seminar, conference, workshop, training, and action research to others because of their short durations and their high impacts. Then, related to technology, they said that internet helps them very much in preparing better instruction, but not in developing their professionalism. The result of this study would be very useful for government and stakeholder to take any decision related to English lecturers’ professional development.


Background of Study
The importance of professional development is unquestionable for every teacher around the world. Developing professionalism is like bringing a new inspiration back to classroom in order to produce better students' achievement. Brown (2007:486) says that professional development is when a growing teaching walks into classroom, faces some problems and learn something new.
Since it appears many years ago, professional development keeps being so crucial to discuss and to conduct. Its role determines not only lecturers' outcomes but also students and class success. Therefore, the materials and the way of professional development have gotgreat attention from government, stakeholders and society.
Stated in Law of Indonesia No. 14, 2005 about teachers and lecturers, a professional lecturer is a lecturer that has academic qualification, competences, teacher certificates, health body and soul, and other qualifications determined by universities as well as has ability to support national educational goals. Moreover, professional development for lecturers becomes trend in Indonesia recently, especially to get lecturer certification. It is because there are some conditions to be fulfilled by the lecturer to get the certification; some of which are related to professional development activities.
It is clearly understood that professional development must have impact to lecturer and teacher themselves. The impact might be contributions to better teachers' knowledge and skills and better students' outcome. In fact, a high impact professional development is much more needed by lecturers in Indonesia in order to solve so many problems in classes in Indonesian universities. This paper deals with lecturer's preferences for high impact professional development in Indonesia. Besides this could be a base for government and stakeholders to make decision dealing with professional development, it is also can be a record on trend of professional development activities in Indonesia.

Objectives of Study
In accordance with the background of study, the objectives of this study are formulated as below: 1) To investigate the lecturers' preferences for high impact professional development 2) To find lecturers' perception on professional development activities in Indonesia.

Review of Literature
Basically, professional development can be defined as learning to earn or maintain professionalism such as academic degrees, formal course, conferences, workshop and informal learning opportunities situated in practice. Glatthorn (1995:41) asserts that "Teacher development is the professional growth a teacher achieves as a result of gaining increased experience and examining his or her teaching systematically". Both formal experiences (workshop, conference, mentoring, professional meeting, etc.) and informal experiences (reading journal, watching documentaries, etc.) are the concept of professional development.
There are some reasons why professional development is important for lectures. Villegas-Reimers, through UNESCO (2003:20), finds evidence showing that teachers' beliefs and behaviors are affected by professional development. Wood and Bennett (2000) support this by finding educators in England changed their theories and teaching practices. Moreover, Kettle and Sellars (1996) report the development of practical theory of student teacher in Australia. In Norwegia, teachers' professional preparation and development have great impact on teachers' goals (Kallestad and Olweus: 1998 From those activities of professional development, only 20 activities were selected to be used in this research. The selection of them is based on their popularity among lecturers and the high frequency to do by them. The twenty activities are explained in Table 3. Table 3 Descriptions of The Twenty Professional Development in ELT

1.
Action research A research conducted by an English lecturer in a classroom to solve the problem and to improve current practice.

Case Study
The case method is an English teaching approach by presenting the students with a case and putting them in the role of a decision maker facing a problem

Classroom/School visitation
Lecturers visit the classrooms/schools of colleagues to view innovative English teaching practices, expand and refine their own personal pedagogy

Collaborative Curriculum Development
Some lectures work together to design new planning materials, teaching methods, resource materials and assessment tools in English class

5.
Conferences& Seminar Conferences and seminar can provide very effective professional development opportunities, particularly when they are part of a teacher's ongoing professional development plan

6.
Community/Service Organization Community and/or service organizations provide an opportunity for lecturers to develop leadership skills and gain important knowledge related to their role and community context

Education Exchange
Calendar year and short-term exchanges are offered in a number of countries in order the lecturers can learn many good things from others.

8.
Focused Group Discussion Focused Group Discussion can help lecturers reflect together about any issue, large or small in ELT: a facilitator leads the conversation and asks a series of questions that elicit responses that take the group from the surface of a topic to its in-depth implications.

9.
Hosting a Student Teacher Host teachers are responsible for their students and therefore must closely supervise what the student teacher does with respect to lesson planning, classroom instruction and student evaluation in English class

10.
Lesson Study Used in Japan, lesson study is the solution of practical dilemmas related to intervention or instruction through participation with other professionals in systematically examining practice. In this process, lecturers work collaboratively to plan, teach, observe and critique a small number of study Some organizations and institutions have developed online courses, tutorials and self-guided programs for teacher professional development.

Leadership Development Program
Leadership development programs are generally designed to provide teachers aspiring to school or district administration with an opportunity to learn about various aspects of the role and thus increase the pool of applicants for leadership positions

13.
Peer Coaching Peer coaching is used to enhance a person's competencies in a specific skill area by providing a process of observation, reflection, and action; lecturers solicit and receive feedback about their practices after being observed by a peer or other observer.

14.
Mentoring Mentoring is used to promote an individual's awareness and refinement of his or her own professional development by providing and recommending structured opportunities for reflection and observation

15.
Professional Portfolio Professional portfolios are collections of credentials, artifacts and reflections that document a lecturer's professional practice.

Internet Research
The Internet provides access to a wealth of information on countless topics contributed by people throughout the world and the lectures have opportunity to develop their professionalism by doing research on it.

Study Group
Study groups involve small groups of educators who meet regularly to work on a predetermined project

Workshop and Training
Workshop and training is activities of equipping lecturers with new knowledge, skills, attitudes and behaviors.

19.
Specialist Consultation A specialist might assist English lecturers about the problems in a consultation.

20
Teachers' Convention Local, provincial and national English lecturers' convention provides a forum in which ideas can be debated, analyzed and sometimes validated. They can inspire, motivate and create feelings of renewal.
Then, teachers and experts know that what they really need is a high impact professional development in which its quality may be defined in many ways. Lawless and Pellegrino (2007:579) resume what constitutes quality professional development. They define that high impact teachers development activities are longer in duration, provide access to new technologies for instructional process, actively engage teachers in meaningful and relevant activities for their individual contexts, promote peer collaboration and community building, and have a clearly articulated and a common vision for students achievement. Futrell et al. (1995) mention that there seven factors affecting the correlation between educational reform and teachers' professional development: local focus, significant funding, local leadership, long-range planning, including teachers and their professional development as part of reform, collegiality and time. If those factors exist, the teachers' professionalisms are well developed and educational reform is established.

RESEARCH METHOD
This research applied small survey as research method. The instrument is questionnaire and interview, which were validated by an expert. The survey was conducted from August -September 2017. The correspondents of this survey were 20 lecturers from Indonesia; 1 lecturer from Takengon, 1 lecturer from Meulaboh, 5 lecturers from Medan, 1 lecturer from Padang Sidempuan, 1 lecturer from Batam, 1 lecturer from Lamongan, 1 lecturer from Jember, 1 lecturer from Magelang, 4 lecturers from Malang, 1 lecturer from Bali, 1 lecturer from Lombok, 2 lecturers from Banjarmasin. Because of long distance, most research activities were doing online.

FINDINGS
After the data were collected, they are put in a table. Table4 presents the data of questionnaire on lecturers' preferences for high impact professional development. Based on Table 4, it can be concluded that the most preferred professional development is seminar and conference, then workshop and training and action research also work out for them. The four questions of questionnaire are actually asking the same thing "Do you like it?" It is because when the lecturers like the activity, they must have ever done it, must think that the activity is significant for them, and they must say they cannot be better without it.
Moreover, the correspondent also mentions the reasons why they choose think some professional development activities better than others. Most of them like seminar, conference, workshop and training because those take short time but the impacts are quite high. Then, action research is also preferred because the impact is really useful to improve both students' outcome and lecturers' performance.
Furthermore, the interview was conducted to find the lecturers' perception about professional development activities in Indonesia. For the detail, the questions and the answers are detailed as follows.

a. Which professional development activities has the highes impact?
The professional development activity that has the highest impact is workshop and training. It is because workshop and training give them a new skill to be used in English class. The impact is high not only on teachers' skill, but also students' achievement. Moreover, some activities like education exchage and school visit are also considered to have high impact but they need lot of money and time.

b. Who is responsible of funding for professional development activities?
Government, university and the lecturers themselve have responsibility to provide the fund for professional development activities. However, the correspondents mentioned that government and university should pay most of the professional development activities cost.
c. How often is the frequency and how long is the period of professional activities should be conducted. The answer is the more often, the better. However, the lecturers do have limited time because they have to teach, do research and get society responsibility. Therefore, they think that professional development activities should be done around 1-5 days at least once a semester.

d. How far technology does help lecturers in developing professionalisms?
Related to technology, all of them say that it is very useful in teaching learning process but only a few of them make use of it for professional development.

DISCUSSION
The findings reveals that most lecturers in Indonesia prefer Seminar/Conference, Workshop/training, and action research because they are practical, need shorter time and have high impact to lecturers. Referring to Lawless and Pellegrino (2007:579) that list what constitutes quality professional development which are longer in duration, provide access to new technologies for instructional process, actively engage teachers in meaningful and relevant activities for their individual contexts, promote peer collaboration and community building, and have a clearly articulated and a common vision for students achievement. We may see that seminar and conference are short-time activities but may engage lecturers in meaningful and relevant activities for their context, as well as promote community building. Moreover, a new technology in the classroom is often introduced through seminar and conferences. Then, workshop and training surely have a clear target, skill and knowledge improvement which highly impact to teaching and learning process. They also may promote peer collaboration and community building. Furthermore, action research highly engages lecturers in meaningful and relevant activities for their context because they deal with their own problem and solution in their own class with their own way.
Related to funding, actually the government has give the incentive through certification program. Those lecturers who are qualified will got incentive payment which should be used for developing their professionalism. However, some lecturers, especially who are not civil servants or contract workers, get so low income from teaching that they use the money to fulfill their living cost. Therefore, the professional development activities are rarely done by the lecturers due to fund problem. The university also has responsibility on it. Nevertheless, university usually selects only valuable ones that will be afforded; sometimes it is not easy to fulfill their criteria. Then, the lecturer him/herself alsho should realize about the importance of professional development. Whether it is paid by government, university or the lecturer, it is important to develop the professionalism frequently.
The frequency and the period of professional development vary based on the needs.Seminar and conference usually are conducted in one or two days. Moreover, workshop and training could be longer around 1-10 days. The action research is usually carried out in several weeks. In addition, another important thing is the frequency and the consistency. English lecturers should be consistently develop their professionalisms frequently. It is like maintaining their knowledge and increasing their skills related to English language teaching.
As the use of technology by English lecturers increases time by time, it also may take part in developing their professionalism. Furthermore, many of them have joined online class to develop their teaching skills like IMOOC (Indonesian Massive Open Online Course). Internet research also have been done by every English lecturers. However, many of them argued that technology, especially internet, helps them in preparing the class, but not in developing their professionalism. They thought many of them are not ready yet for the technology. The main problems are low human resource and bad facility.
From the discussion above, it is found that every activity of professional development actually have special thing in improving lecturers' teaching skills and knowledge. Not only seminar/conference, workshop/training, and action research, all professional development activities on the list are very good for lecturers.
Moreover, there were still many lecturers that have not tried other professional development activities besides their favorite ones. There was no correspondent that has ever experienced education exchange; only 20% of them have consulted with specialist consultant; only 30% of them have done coaching and mentoring. In a nutshell, Indonesian lecturers still need to vary their development activities because they might find it very useful and meaningful for them to develop their professionalism.