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