In-Service Teacher Certification in Indonesia;

A policy for professionalization or professionalism?

Introduction
The teaching workforce in Indonesia has for very long been seen as unique for two main reasons. First, because becoming teacher generally means willingness to abide the higher ascribed cultural status but to earn lower payment than many other occupations. Second, because Indonesian government regards teaching as no more important than any other jobs. Indeed, only recently, through the enactment of Law on Teachers and Lecturers Year 2005, teachers are officially stated as professionals. This paper argues that the national education policy to boost teachers’ professional development through the In-Service Teachers Certification reflects professionalization more than professionalism. These two words often used as synonym and sometimes when they are conceptually seen as different they are variously defined. The author specifically refers to Hoyle’s (2001, p. 146) description of professionalization as ‘the pursuit of status’ while professionalism as ‘enhancement of the quality of service’. The social, cultural, as well as political context of teaching in Indonesia and the objectives and on going implementation of the In-Service Teachers Certification are discussed to see the possible outcomes in regard to the concept of professionalization or professionalism.

Teaching in Indonesian Context
Very few teachers in Indonesia, the author believes, do not find themselves always on the spot of people’s attention. Culturally, teachers are seen as moral guardian and source of knowledge (Lewis, 1997, p. 14). People look at teachers as being in the higher position in the hierarchy of knowledge pursuit and moral authority. People trust teachers for making their younger generations literate, educated and morally dependable. Thus, teachers traditionally get pressure not only for doing their jobs to transfer knowledge but also for behaving themselves in accordance to people perception of their high moral.
In their communities, teachers also play significant roles. Their being teachers are not limited to schools environment. People expect them to also share their knowledge and wisdom in social life. It is not unnatural to have teachers as community leaders in Indonesia. Teachers are accustomed to taking first responsibility and frequently to provide ideas for maintaining the harmony of their communities. This status of teachers in Indonesian societies put those people doing the teaching jobs in a situation where they always have to negotiate their personal needs and the needs of the communities, not only when they are at work but also when they are out of work. Many teachers eventually live in the middle of the continuum between personal and communal lives. Not many teachers are able to differentiate what are good for themselves only and what are good for the communities only because everything seems intermingled. This is probably the reason why the number of teachers leaving their jobs or taking other career steps is comparatively lower than other countries (Basikin, 2007, p.1). Teachers know they are not well paid but they feel they make good sacrifice for the welfare of their communities.
For very long time after the Indonesian independent, teachers were seen more as political agents than as educational agents. The Old Order as well as New Order Regime assigned teachers with some political agenda like being the promoters of the unity of the nation and the spoke persons for the national ideology. Both regimes paid many teachers as civil servants. In the New Order era, the government emphasized the teachers’ being civil servants rather than educators and it created a teaching culture where being faithful followers of their superiors’ instructions was more appreciated than being competent teachers (Bjork, 2004, p. 252). In this political context, Government provided the curriculum and teachers implemented them without protest; Even government controlled the teachers union and teachers training; Teachers were evaluated more on their contributions outside their classrooms that they shared an understanding that what they were teaching were not the government concerns (Bjork, 2004, p. 257). Teachers became functionaries of the state (Graham, 1998, p. 9) since the nation considered them as helpful to strengthen its power and authority but not as group of professionals that can self-manage themselves and contribute to wider purposes.
Teachers in Indonesian social, cultural, and political context are group of people that are trapped in between the opposing demands of being individuals who pursue their own happiness and of being parts of communal societies that expect them to eagerly forfeit their being individuals whenever they have to for the sake of the goodness of the community; and in between the opposing demands of being competent educators and of faithful government agents. It is not surprising that people seem not to worry too much on the outcomes of their children education; teachers themselves look as if they do their jobs for the sake of routines; and the government appears to neglect the professional development of teachers because teachers, communities, and the nation are involved in making teaching jobs fragile for too many interest outside the scope of education. On a research report on teachers’ absenteeism in 2002 to 2003, it is revealed that from Indonesian 19 % rate of teachers absenteeism annually, 45 % is without any reasons (Usman, Akhmadi, and Suryadarma, 2004, p. iii). It shows that many teachers were still unable to fulfil the least requirement of their profession; to be in their classroom on their teaching times. This of course serves as bad role model for new teaching workforce (Toh, Diong, Boo, Hong-Kwen and Chia, 1996, p. 232).

Recent Educational Policies
Consisted of 33 provinces and 440 districts and municipals, Indonesia faces huge challenges in coordinating its teaching workforce. Indonesia always finds it really difficult to guaranty the sufficient supply for teachers for all parts of the nation and to ensure that the qualification and competence gap between teachers in urban, sub urban and rural areas is not widening. In order to immediately supply teachers for regions lack of teaching workforce and to maintain ratio of student-teacher, there were times when applicants were made easy to become teachers regardless of their qualification and competence. In 2006, there were 2.7 million teachers around Indonesia and student-teacher ratios are: 18:1 for Elementary Schools, 12:1 for Junior High Schools, and 11:1 for Senior High Schools. However, the statistics also shows that 84.70 % or 1.140. 836 of Elementary School Teachers, 39.66 % or 244.437 of Junior High School Teachers, 17.39 % or 46.517 of Senior High School Teachers, and 24.46 % or 49.389 of Senior High Vocational Schools Teachers do not have bachelor or S1 degree. (Education Statistics, Ministry of National Education).
It is clear that due to the above problems Indonesia belongs to what OECD calls as countries with greatest difficulties since at the same time Indonesia needs to provide enough teaching workforce therefore it attracts as many candidates as possible and to ensure that those prospective teachers as well as current teachers have the required skills to become competent teachers (OECD, 2002, p. 66). In 1999 through the issuance of Law no 22 on Local Governance, the government started all efforts to distribute its centralized power to local governments. Since then, local authorities have exercised their autonomies in many aspects, including education. Districts and municipalities have been active to solve problems related to expanding, retaining, and improving the quality of teaching workforce but still their endeavours are only partial and unable to address the complexities of the problems.
In the year 2005, seven years after the downfall of the New Order Regime, by enacting Law no 14 on Teacher and Lecturer, the central government provided all local governments an umbrella policy for tackling various problems concerning teaching workforce. This Law immediately ignited a feeling of joy and optimism for many people, not only teachers, because it officially acknowledges teaching as profession and it requires all local government to increase teachers’ salary 100 % percent as soon as they were rewarded the educator certificate. It had been a question for many people why teachers did not deserve well payment.
Other things that not many people are aware of as consequences of the Law are: First, for getting the educator certificate, teachers must fulfil some requirements that make many of them ineligible to apply for the certificate. Second, Government needs lots of money to implement this policy therefore it needs 10 years to accomplish this project. Third, government agencies and infrastructures to support this policy are very limited in regard to the number of teachers that this policy is aimed at. Based on the Law No. 14/2005 about teachers and lecturers (UU No. 14 2005) Section IV Item No. 8 and 9 in order to realize the goal of national education, beside being healthy physically and spiritually, teachers must have academic qualification, competencies, and educator certificates. What is referred as academic qualification is a bachelor (S1) or a 4-year diploma (D4) degree. The statistics above shows that more than 1.6 out of 2.7 millions teachers are ineligible for being teachers. Even though they will not be dismissed and they have teen years to acquire the S1 or D4 degree but these teachers are surely put into more complicated situation because they have to afford the degree on their own expenses and they earn only half of the recommended national teachers’ salary before they get the educator certificate.

In-Service Teacher Certification; Objectives and Implementations
To follow up the mandate to position teachers as professionals and to ascribe them with the educator certificate, the Central Government issued Regulation No 19 Year 2005 on the National Education Standard, Ministry of Education Rule No 16 Year 2005 on Teaching Staff Qualification and Competency Standard, Regulation of the Minister of Education No 18 Year 2007 on In-service Teacher Certification through portfolio Assessment , and Regulation of the Minister of Education No 40 Year 2007 on In-service Teacher Certification through Education and Training. Those rules and regulations are the legal aspects of the In-Service Teacher Certification. Whitty (2000, p. 282) refers to this type of action as ‘professionalization’ or ‘professional project’, by which government ensures all involved in particular profession have all the required characteristics.
The rules and regulations above demand teachers who already have S1 or D4 degree to involve in all process for getting the educator certificate. They can either join the In-service Teacher Certification through portfolio Assessment or In-service Teacher Certification through Education and Training. However, teachers do not have real choice as suggested because government gives quota for each region in each certification project due to its financial limitation. In addition, teachers may have to join both types of in-service certification because when they fail in their portfolio assessment, they are highly recommended to take the education and training.
The objectives of the In-Service Teacher Certification are:
1. To fit and proper teachers in doing their jobs as the agent of learning
2. To enhance teachers professionalism
3. To boost process and outcomes of education
4. To accelerate the realization of National Education Goals
(Source: Regulation of the Minister of Education No 18 and 40 Year 2007)
These four objectives seem to address both the concepts of professionalization and professionalism as described in this paper. It looks like only the first objective is aimed at pursuing the status of teachers as professional while the remaining three are for enhancement of teachers’ quality service but the on going implementation of this policy as discussed below may prevent all stakeholders to become too optimistic in seeing the future of teaching profession.
In the year 2007, two years after the issuance of the Law, the Nominal National Education Expenditure was 135, 4 trillions from the Total Nominal National Expenditure of 785.4 trillions or 17, 2 % of Total National Expenditure. This is below what Indonesian constitution says that the minimum 20 % of national expenditure must be on national education expenditure (World Bank staff calculations base on MoF and SIKD data). In 2007, there were only 170.450 of teachers at elementary and junior high school across nation entitled the educator certificates. In 2006, the first year of the implementation, only 20.000 thousand teachers at elementary and junior high school across nation were entitled the educator certificates (http://www.sertifikasiguru.org/). Thus, they are still more than 1.5 million teachers waiting.
The time span for the accomplishment of the in-service teacher certification stated by the minister of education’s regulation is ten years, approximately 150.000 teachers every year for 1.5 million teachers who haven’t got their bachelor degree qualification. 278 teacher colleges across nation provide not enough seats for 150.000 teachers for their professional qualification upgrading because it means that at least every teacher college should have around 540 seats every year while at this moment even the biggest teacher college can only afford less than 200 students every year. To make it worse, there are only 23 teachers’ colleges plus 1 Open University assigned to cooperatively offer an in-service teacher training via distance learning mode called as HYLITE/Hybrid Learning for Indonesian Teachers in 2006-2007 (Panen, et. all. 2007, p.1). During the ten years implementation of the In-Service Teacher Certification project, the government is very likely focusing on the effectiveness of the certification process, through both portfolio assessment and education and training, so that no teachers are left behind in the project. It can be said that the government endeavours to achieve four objectives of the In-Service Certification will unavoidably focus on the first objective; To fit and proper teachers in their profession.

Professionalization or Professionalism?
The conceptual framework for the In-Service Teacher Certification project is in order to increase the quality of education in Indonesia all teaching activities in classroom must be effective; for creating teachers’ effectiveness government needs to increase teachers’ salary as incentive and teachers themselves have to develop their competencies necessary for doing their profession; educational certification is the formal document acknowledging the fit and proper of individuals in the teaching profession and a prove for their entitlement for getting the professional incentives of teachers. There are two questions to be asked regarding this conceptual framework. First, to what extent the educator certificate can be used to predict the effectiveness of teaching activities in classroom? Second, is the educator certificate an instrument for enhancing the teaching profession? Or is it in itself a final stage at the current teachers’ professional development?
Scholars may not debate on the important of teachers’ effectiveness and students’ performances as key indicators for quality teaching (Vongalis, 2005, p. 11). However, not many researches provide convincing results on the positive relation between certification project, teachers’ effectiveness in the classrooms, and students’ outcomes (Goldhaber&Brewer, 2000, Torff&Sessions, 2005, Hoyle, 2001, Ballou&Podgursky, 1998). Goldhaber and Brewer (2000, p. 130) say most researches reveal the positive relation between teachers educational background and experiences to students performance but few of them explicitly describe the influence of certification project to students performance. Torff and Sessions (2005, p. 531) argue that among the researches available on the phenomenon of teachers’ ineffectiveness, none of them focus on answering whether it is their lack of content knowledge or their lack of pedagogical knowledge that frequently cause the ineffectiveness. Therefore, there are not enough bases to confidently claim that certification is a must for improving teachers’ quality. Generally, teacher certification project emphasises on equipping teachers with adequate pedagogical skills although there are no convincing proofs that teachers with adequate content knowledge but are not certified as educators have lower performance than their counterparts who are certified as educators. Finn (1999b, p.3) argues:
…because teacher-preparation programs and state teacher-certification regulations “place low priority on deep subject matter mastery and heavy emphasis on things that colleges of education specialize in (i.e., pedagogical knowledge), many teachers get certified without having mastered the content they are expected to impart to their students”.

The complexity lies on the fact that teachers may depend on both content knowledge and pedagogical knowledge but not enough evidences to conclude which one is more important for creating teachers effectiveness and very often there are not enough time to address both knowledge in balance in certification project.
The procedures for getting the educator certificate outlined in the Rules and Regulations on In-Service Teacher Certification in Indonesia are time-consuming and indiscriminative. For obtaining the certificate through education and training the successful applicants must undergo seven steps as follow: administrative selection, academic selection, enlisted as candidate, joining the education and training, taking competencies examination, having passed the exam, getting the certificate while those candidates who have to do some remedies may undergo ten steps before finally get the certificate because they are recommended to redo the administrative selection and academic selection if they are not qualified for being the candidate for education and training and to remedy the examination until they pass. They may take the exam three times maximum. Whereas for joining the In-Service Certification through portfolio assessment, the flourishing candidates have to go through three steps as follow: portfolio assessment, having passed the assessment, getting the certificate. Once candidates’ portfolio fail the assessment, the candidates can add some more documents to the portfolio but if they fail again, they have to join professional training then take the competencies examination and still if they fail then they undergo the ten steps similar to those teachers taking the education and training type of the certification.
The procedures are indiscriminative in a sense that even teachers who graduated from teacher colleges before the enactment of the Law, they also have to undertake the same process. Their certificates as educators issued by their teacher colleges, publicly known as AKTA IV, are not valid for entitlement of their professional incentives. Ironically, the central government depends to the similar teacher colleges rather than to establish a new agency for providing the education and training as well as assessing teachers portfolios for certification. How can the central government disregard the certificate entitled to teachers who have studied in teacher colleges for four years minimum and then ask those teachers to obtain another certificate from the same teacher colleges in relatively shorter period? Those teachers certainly do all the procedures because they do not have choice. If the central government insists on implementing the procedures because of the belief that AKTA IV failed to contribute to the teachers’ effectiveness than on what base the central government now believes that the new certificate published by the consortium of 23 teacher colleges and 1 Open University will do more to create teachers’ effectiveness? It is reasonable to argue that the central government take all the risks for the sake of professionalization. All actions taken after the issuance of the Law seem to pursue the status of teachers as profession by addressing the formal requirements of professionalization, which are the enhancement of pedagogical skills through education, and training and examination rather than really changing the practices of ineffective teaching. Surprisingly, the common strategy chosen by districts and municipalities in the selection of the candidates for obtaining the educator certificates, which is so tough due to the given quota, is to prioritize teachers who are close to their retirement age, then those who have longer teaching experiences, and finally high achiever fresh teachers who have S1 or D4 degree. The consideration is perhaps to allow senior teachers to be paid doubled before they retire because for very long time they are all underpaid. If this certification project can really improve the teachers’ effectiveness, students may not get the advantages for long because soon many of those senior teachers will stop working. This certification project very likely helps teachers pursue their status as professionals but very unlikely enhances teachers’ quality service that leads to professionalism.

Conclusion
To sum up, to be happy with the central government recognition of what teachers are doing as profession is all right because it may be a good start for making huge change in the teaching practices in all schools as what Hoyle (2001, p. 149) says professionalization may create opportunities for professionalism and, conversely, deprofessionalization may constrain opportunities for professionalism. However, Indonesian teachers need to be aware that acquiring the status as professional is not enough. They have to start organizing themselves through a strong self-managed professional union and improve their professional skills in order to contribute to wider purposes of educating all human being in this world not just limited to their localities. Government needs to do lots of evaluation to ensure that the certification project can really influence teachers’ effectiveness in the classrooms and that the certification project can cover up more individuals, rather than just in-service teachers, because those individuals highly qualified and interested to become teachers are as important as in-service teachers in their potential to enhance the quality of education in Indonesia.



Word Count: 3427 words



References

Bakker, A.B., Hakanen, J.J., Demerouti, E., Xanthopoulou, D. (2007). Job Resources
Boost Work Engagement, Particularly When Job Demands Are High. Journal
of Educational Psychology. Vol 99 (2) pp. 274-284

Ballou, D., & Podgursky, M. (1998). The case against teacher certification. The
Public Interest, no 132 pp. 17-29.

Bray, M. (1991) Centralization versus Decentralization in Educational
Administration: Regional Issues. Educational Policy. Vol 5 (4) pp. 371-385

Darling-Hammond, L., Berry, B., and Thoreson, A. (2001). Does Teacher
Certification Matter? Evaluating the Evidence. Education Evaluation and
Policy Analysis. Vol 23 (1) pp. 57-77
Graham, Jim (1998) From New Right to New Deal: nationalism, globalisation and the regulation of teacher professionalism. Journal of In-Service Education, Vol 24 (1) pp. 9-31
Goldhaber, D.D. and Brewer, D.J. (2000) Does Teacher Certification Matter? High
School Teacher Certification Status and Student Achievement. Educational
Evaluation and Policy Analysis. Vol 22 (2) pp. 129-145

http://www.depdiknas.go.id retrieved 5 April 2008 at 2.15 pm

http://www.sertifikasiguru.org/ retrieved 5 April 2008 at 02 pm

Hoyle, E. (2001) Teaching; Prestige, Status, Esteem. Educational Management and
Administration. Vol 29 (2) pp. 139-152

Johnson, S.M., Birkeland, S.E., and Peske, H.G. (2005). Life in the Fast Track: How
States Seek to Balance Incentives and Quality in Alternative Teacher Certification Programs. Educational Policy. Vol 19 (1) pp. 63-89

Levin, H.M. (1980). Teacher Certification and the Economics of Information.
Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis. Vol 2 (4) pp. 5-18

Levin, H.M. (1988) Cost Effectiveness and Educational Policy. Educational
Evaluation and Policy Analysis. Vol 10 (1) pp. 51-69

Lewis, R. (1997). Learning styles in Transition: A study of Indonesian students.
Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Japan Association of Language
Teachers (23rd, Hamamatsu, Japan, October 1997). ERIC Document: ED 421 862.

Luts, F.W. and Hutton, J.B. (1989). Alternative Teacher Certification: Its Policy
Implication for Classroom and personnel Practice. Educational Evaluation
and Policy Analysis. Vol 11 (3) pp. 237-254

OECD. (2002) The Teaching Workforce: Concerns and Policy Challenges. Education
Policy Analysis. pp. 65-87

Pannen, P., Riyanti, R.D., & B. Pramuki, E. (2007) HYLITE Program:
An ICT-based ODL for Indonesian Teachers Education. pp. 1-14 Paper
presented at the 11th UNESCO APEID Conference on Revitalizing Higher
Education, Dec. 12-14, Bangkok, Thailand
Toh, K., Diong, C., Boo, Hong-Kwen and Chia, S. (1996) Determinants of Teacher Professionalism. Journal of In-Service Education, Vol 22 (2) pp. 231-244

Torff, B. and Sessions, D.N. (2005). Principals’ Perceptions of the Causes of Teacher
Ineffectiveness. Journal of Educational Psychology. Vol 97 (4) pp. 530-537

Vongalis-Macrow, A. (2005) Displaced Agency: Teachers in Globalized Education
Systems. pp. 1-17. Paper presented on a Conference “Redesigning Pedagogy:
Research, Policy, Practice” National Institute of Education, Nanyang
Technological University, May 30 - June 1, 2005
Whitty, G. (2000). Teacher Professionalism in New Times. Journal of In-Service Education. Vol 26 (2). Pp. 281-295

World Bank staff calculations base on MoF and SIKD data.
http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/TOPICS/EXTEDUCATION retrieved 7 April 2008 at 10 am

Yee, K.M., B.A. (2007). Head of The Class: Exploring the Link between Teacher
Quality, Instructional Practice, and Student Outcomes in Indonesia, Malaysia,
and The Philippines