International Portal of Teacher Education

Source: Journal of Teacher Education for Sustainability, vol. 21, no. 1, pp. 48-66

(Reviewed by the Portal Team)

This research aimed to investigate the concept and implementation of community-based training as a form of teacher training transformation in Indonesia based on the results of teachers’ competency test.
More specifically, the research questions to be answered through this research are:
1) What is the community-based training?
2) Why is a community-based training needed?
3) Who are the targets of community-based teacher training?
4) What are the application modes of community-based training?
5) What are the results of the training that has been carried out?
The results of this research are expected to provide information about best practices in community-based teacher training as an alternative to teachers’ sustainable professional development program.

Method
The authors state that this is a descriptive research to investigate a community-based training program in Indonesia.
The research was performed on the basic concepts of community-based training program policy; its application and the results in improving teachers’ competencies in Indonesia.
The data for this research were collected through documentation study and interviews.
The documents studied in this research were documents about Indonesian government’s community-based training program policy, formulated by the Directorate of Teachers and Education Staff, Ministry of Education and Culture, Indonesia. Interviews were conducted with community-based training program national developers, national instructors, and teachers from various provinces in Indonesia who joined the training program.
Interviews with program developers were aimed to search for information about the nature of community-based training and the way of its implementation, interviews with national instructors were aimed to search for information about training execution, and interviews with participating teachers were aimed to reveal information about responses towards process and results of the training.
Data analysis was conducted in descriptive quantitative and qualitative manner, in which the quantitative analysis was carried out based on the data of document study results, whereas the qualitative analysis was performed based on the interview result data.

Conclusion
Based on the results of this research, the authors conclude that community-based teacher training is a program from the Indonesian government to improve teachers’ competency as a follow-up to the Learning Teachers’ Competency Improvement Program in 2016.
This training program is needed as the follow-up on the results of teachers’ competency test that was conducted in 2015, that is, to improve the competency of teachers who, based on the competency test, still have low competency mastery.
The target of community-based teacher training program are teachers whose competency profile (based on the results of teachers’ competency test) shows three to ten competency groups that have lower than minimum score (65). Through the community-based teacher training program, it is expected that the teachers could reach the minimum average competency score of 70 in 2017, reach the score of 75 in 2018, and reach minimum score of 80 in 2019.
The authors found that the community-based teacher training is organized in three modes, namely
1) face-to-face,
2) full online learning, and
(3) blended learning.
The modes are selected by Provincial/Regency/City Service Office or the Technical Execution Unit to organize classes according to the participants’ profiles.
The authors also found that the community-based teacher training succeeded in increasing the professionalism of teachers in Indonesia, especially related to the improvement of pedagogical and professional competencies.
They found that the training is also successful in motivating the teachers to keep learning in order to improve sustainable self-competency through the teacher network collaboratively with colleagues.
Quantitatively, training was proven to increase the average of teacher competency by 23.97 (on a scale of 100).
In the process, the authors note that the community-based teacher training program is positively welcomed by the teachers, and those who have joined the program generally succeeded in improving the competency according to the target that has been set.
Other than competency improvement, the authors note that the community-based teacher training is proven to have given another benefit, that is, the development of synergy among teachers in the community, so that a collaborative learning culture develops among them.
The authors conclude that other than the empirical findings above, this research also gives an inspired finding about the potential of community-based teacher training as part of teachers’ sustainable professional development program.
The community-based teacher training can give motivating stimuli to the teachers to continue studying to improve self-competency collaboratively through a network with colleagues.
Involving teachers as mentors for other teachers also gives another dimension about chosen local teachers who can become the learning partner for other teachers.
The problems that the teacher community has in finding training resource persons from outside can be minimized by empowering colleagues who have better competency mastery.
The learning synergy in one area can encourage the emergence of a teacher community with the passion and willingness to keep on improving competencies.
“Teachers as lifelong learners” is no longer a mere slogan, but a reality jointly presented by individual teachers who are in synergy to one another.