Policies in Higher Education: what they mean to TEFL in Indonesia

Oleh: Fuad Abdul Hamied

a version of this paper was presented at LIA International Conference in Jakarta (2005) and part of it at Asia TEFL Conference in Kuala Lumpur (2007)

This paper discusses policies in education, specifically those related to higher education and their implication on English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teacher education in Indonesia. The new paradigm in higher education in Indonesia as outlined in the Indonesian higher education long-term strategy (HELTS) accentuates the issues of quality, relevance, accountability, institutional health, autonomy, and equity. Although a significant growth in higher education development has been shown in Indonesia, the critical mass of educated people, considering the size of the population, disparities among regions and areas of coverage, is still far from adequate. The stakeholders should therefore consider higher education development more significant in their priority list. The government intervention in higher education development is of course still very important, as we cannot just leave it to the market. Relying solely on market forces could create greater inequality and widen the gap between the rich and the poor.  Some fresh air has been around in our collegiate atmosphere as news has been around on the possibility of having a state ministerial office specifically handling higher education matters to be set up in the upcoming cabinet in Jakarta. This could certainly be looked at as an important step towards putting higher education in our priority list.

Indonesian higher education development is to be implemented using the new paradigm in which institutional autonomy and accountability become the strategic issue. This is required to meet the challenges of the globalization. It is expected that by 2010 Indonesia will have a competitive edge due to the existence of highly reliable and trusted higher education institutions, and we believe that a strong higher education program will lead to a nation’s competitiveness. Higher education today is challenged to carry a new and astounding burden entwined in our lives, and as we have experienced along the history of higher education in Indonesia, the very core of the university’s mission and of the faculty’s academic duty is responsibility to students as specifically reflected in the vigorous pursuit of teaching in classes. Thus, this paper will highlight the basic issues and policies in higher education in Indonesia and discuss what they actually mean to improvement in teaching activities in classes as part of responsibility to students.

The Basic Policies

The 1945 Constitution has faultlessly accentuated the importance of education and its provision and acquisition, of taking benefit out of science and technology, and of gaining access to information through different types of channels and media available. The preamble of the 1945 Constitution has emphasized the significance of advancing the intellectual life of the people of Indonesia as it sates in paragraph four “…. to improve the public welfare, to advance the intellectual life of the people and to contribute to the establishment of a world order based on freedom, abiding peace and social justice, …” In its amendment version article 28C, the constitution has acknowledged the right of every person “to improve himself/herself through fulfillment of basic needs, and entitled to an education and to obtain benefit from science and technology, art and culture, in order to enhance his/her quality of life, for the sake of human welfare.” In addition, Article 28F of the amended constitution also underlines the right of every citizen “to communicate and to obtain information to develop his/her personality and social environment, as well as the right to seek, to obtain, to possess, to keep, to process, and to convey information by utilizing all available kinds of channels.”

As to education per se, the constitution specifies in Chapter XIII Article 31 that each citizen has the right to education and is obliged to attend primary education and the Government is obliged to bear the cost. It is also required that the Government develop and maintain a national system of education that increases faith, God-consciousness and noble conduct, in the course of educating the people, which is regulated by law. As regards expenditures, the State shall prioritize them on education, so that it shall comprise at least 20% of the State Budget and Regional Budgets in order to fulfil the needs of national education. The Government shall advance science and technology by respecting religious values and national unity, for the progress of human civilization and the welfare of the human race.

Indonesian higher education long-term strategy (HELTS) has correctly observed that the world is facing unparalleled challenges arising from the convergent impacts of globalization, the increasing importance of knowledge as an engine of growth, and the ICT revolution. Sustained economic growth and improved living standards require capability to produce, select, adapt, commercialize, and use knowledge in an effective and efficient way. In this respect, the higher education system has the responsibility for providing students with strong knowledge and understanding to become good citizens and to live meaningful lives and in the process of shaping a democratic, civilized, and inclusive society, maintaining national integration through its role as moral force, and should act as the bearer and guard of public conscience.

It is also true that Indonesia is currently still on the stage of reconstructing its economy and social and political system after experiencing the worst crisis ever. Fund-wise, the higher education sub-sector has to compete with more pressing sectors: basic education, poverty alleviation, and health. Although the urgency to treat these sectors as more important is indubitable, providing inadequate support to higher education would make the nation suffer a lot as a result in terms of its nation’s competitiveness, critical in a knowledge-driven economy. Another important contribution of higher education is its role in supporting basic and secondary education, particularly in producing quality teachers, although in order to successfully discharge this function it requires the cooperation of agencies responsible for recruitment and deployment of its graduates. The third justification for allocating public fund to the higher education sub-sector is to ensure access to higher education for academically potential but financially disadvantaged students. Lastly, higher education is expected to protect the national interests—national integration, nation and character building, and defense.

The role of higher education in the creation of knowledge economy and democratic society is more efficacious than ever. Its contribution to the knowledge driven economic growth and poverty reduction is accomplished as indicated in HELTS through the capacity to (i) train qualified and adaptable work force, (ii) generate new knowledge to increase the nation’s competitiveness, (iii) access and adapt global knowledge to local use.

The geographic layout of Indonesia has made it a highly pluralistic country and a culturally diverse nation. The diversity is reflected by its national credo: Bhinneka Tunggal Ika or Unity in Diversity. With dozens of existing ethnics and several hundreds of different local dialects, the country might only be comparable with Europe in terms of diversity. The diversity becomes more discernible by considering the discrepancy in economic, social, and technological infrastructure as well as in natural resources. In such a highly pluralistic country, a universal policy applied to every institution is unquestionably inappropriate. Although in facing urgent problems requiring quick decisions uniformity is sometimes seen as the best short-term solution, it does not fit for such a heterogeneous system. Inability to centrally manage a large and complex system could also be illustrated by the existence of malpractices such as diploma mills and new types of higher education providers that fail to be accountable in executing education process.

In Indonesia, we have a highly complex higher education system; therefore, in handling such a complicated system, decentralizing authority by providing more autonomy to institutions is considered as the most appropriate approach. Bundled with decentralization and autonomy, the role of the central government, represented by the DGHE, should also shift from regulating into more empowering, enabling and facilitating. However, it could still intervene through resource allocation and other means within the context of the national higher education system. By shifting the role, responsibility and accountability will also be shifted to institutions. Providing autonomy and demanding accountability, however, need a comprehensive and consistent policy. Each relevant aspect has to be adjusted following the policy shift: funding policy, personnel policy, governance, and quality assurance system.

In implementing the new policy, the Directorate General of Higher Education (DGHE) is required to prepare institutional formats and legal infrastructures. The institutional formats include adjustment of the structure and responsibility of DGHE, as well as the structure and responsibility of National Accreditation Body (NAB) and of the university including its legal status. Whereas the legal infrastructure includes higher education laws, necessary government regulations, and ministerial decrees.

The third basic issue in HELTS is the institutional health which is referred to as a state of good health or well-being in an institution. In an academic institution, this concept is characterized by its ability to flourish academic freedom, highly value innovation and creativity, and empower individuals to share knowledge and to achieve their institution’s success. A healthy institution provides its members with the tools they need to adapt to complex and difficult situations. It gives them enough leeway and autonomy to deal with unusual demands and unforeseen circumstances. We certainly believe that a system with healthy institutions alone does not warrant that it has the capacity to respond to the environment appropriately. Likewise, a system with unhealthy institutions would not have the capability to provide the expected responses. Each institution is responsible for the institutional health within its own institution, whilst the DGHE is responsible for the organizational health of the entire system. Although a healthy institution should also take into account various aspects in its environmental context, its focus is more toward its own organizational health.

We are aware of the fact that the capacity of each higher education institution varies across the country. Therefore, implementation of market economy in the pure sense should be avoided. A tiered competition, by grouping institutions having similar development stages, types, or foci, is more appropriate. The DGHE, as a result, has to develop policies and programs that would encourage institutions to improve their organizational health by providing incentive, technical assistance, and corrective measures.

From the point of view of financial gains and resources, higher education institutions have received large sums from the public resources but many also generate significant funds from other sources. However, due to the previous highly centralized system that prefers compliance to a uniform standard, the capacity in most institutions to ensure cost effectiveness and efficiency and the highest academic standards is inadequate. Thus, to reach the level of healthy organization is at stake. The DGHE has, therefore, the responsibility to develop and implement a systematic program to improve the institutional management capacity.

As a higher education institution’s core missions include teaching, research and public service, and as teaching is the essence of the three core missions for most institutions in our country, all higher education policies and programs in ensuring the nation’s competitiveness, enhancing autonomy, and ascertaining institutional health should be maintained and developed to support teaching, bolster all its entailing teaching activity components, and reinforce all facilities it calls for.

Teaching Duties

The core activity of a higher education institution is undoubtedly teaching and this is the very activity expected by the society, “of the many expectations that society has of the modern university, the most important is that it will teach well” (Kennedy, 1997 p.59). He further observes that this particular expectation envelopes many different accounts of what the product of higher education should be: culturally aware, analytical, intellectually curious, employable, and capable of leadership. This would entail the teaching activity that covers efforts in making students aware of any cultural values and encounters as they fit whatever is good at a particular cultural environment, plus efforts that could intellectually and analytically intrigue the students so that they could be ready to get involved in any future employing setup and to become ‘effective future leaders.’

Teaching activity that earnestly accommodates the principles of cultural awareness, analytical ability, employability and leadership is in accordance with the higher education vision as indicated in HELTS. In order to contribute to the nation’s competitiveness, the national higher education has to be organizationally healthy, and the same expectation also applies to every individual higher education institution.   The structural adjustment to be carried out aims to have, by the year 2010, a healthy higher education system, effectively coordinated and characterized by the features of quality, access and equity, and autonomy, the features which are certainly expected to pervade teaching activities in the classroom as well.

Quality higher education would be portrayed by its effective linkage to student needs, development of intellectual capability to become responsible citizens, and contribution to the nation’s competitive-ness. In addition, quality higher education should be developed as a system that could contribute to the development of a democratic, civilized, inclusive society, and meet the criteria of accountability as well as responsibility to the public. To nurture access and equity, we basically need to develop a system that provides opportunities for all citizens to a seamless learning process, inspiring and enabling individuals to develop to the highest potential levels throughout life, so that they can grow intellectually, well equipped for work, and contributes effectively to society, as well as achieve personal fulfillment. Whereas to foster autonomy is to decentralize the authority from the central government and provide more autonomy as well as accountability to institutions, plus legal infrastructure, financing structure, and management processes that encourage innovation, efficiency, and excellence. Key lexical items pertinent to teaching here include student needs, intellectual capability, enabled individuals, accountability, and excellence—attributes worth nourishing in any teaching endeavor.

Teaching requires the teacher to play various different roles exhibited in a single setting of teaching. Kennedy (1997, hlm 60) faultlessly says that to be a teacher is to be many things, “… a communicator of fact, a coach for skill improvement, an inspirer of creative insight or a thoughtful guide to analytical thought, a professional mentor, and many more.” To play these different roles would certainly necessitate arduos endeavors at all stages related to teaching including preparation, implementation, as well as evaluation. Expectations from the students and other stakeholders are quite different now, demanding a lot of the teacher’s time, energy and attention. The students are now accustomed to a higher level of accountability.

In assisting students to be able to compete with other students coming from different nations with different cultures, a teacher is then required to develop cultural awareness, which means “being aware of members of another cultural group: their behavior, their expectations, their perspectives and values” (Cortazzy et al, 1999). They further assert that cultural awareness also means attempting to understand other people’s reasons for their actions and beliefs, which then need to be translated into skill in communicating across cultures and about cultures. This can be encouraged by developing an ethnographic stance toward cultural learning, in our daily teaching activities.

Competency-based curriculum

Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC) which has been introduced by the Curriculum Center (2001) is expected as the basis for revising the 1994 Curriculum. The 1994 Curriculum has been around for eight years now. The eight-year period could be looked at from the viewpoint of curriculum change and development as sufficient for a review and even to some people for a revision of the curriculum. However, many experts as well as laymen have raised doubt about the effectiveness of improving a system of education simply by revising or changing the curriculum. There are a lot to take into consideration when we intend to improve education as it involves groups of people such as the staff, faculty, administration and students and at the same time requires supporting software and hardware facilities, which are commonly lacking in our educational institutions. I believe that revising the curriculum is a need to create relevance to the existing demands in the society. However, curriculum revision would not be effective if it is not accompanied by other necessary efforts to improve education as a whole. We are aware that there are other sectors in our current education system that need handling at the moment on the top of priority list, such as budgeting and recruitment of teaching and other educational personnel as has been discussed earlier in this paper.

As to the objectives of the teaching-learning process and the coverage of instruction, English CBC does not significantly differ from the previous curricula. The 1994 EFL Curriculum for SLTP and SMU had been developed on the basis of some research findings (See Huda 1990 & Hamied 1993), as reflected in the formulation of the basic principles adopted in the curriculum and in the delineation of guidelines for the implementation of the curriculum. English at the SLTP and SMU is still considered a compulsory subject serving as a tool for self-development in science, technology and arts. The language skills to be covered still include all the four languages skill—listening, speaking, reading, and writing—with a special emphasis on reading as expected by the teachers and the students. Such language components as structure, vocabulary, pronunciation, and spelling is by design strengthened in the teaching-learning activities as the use of spoken English is encouraged. This is precisely what is covered in English CBC whose objectives are development of communication in English, understanding of the English language system, cultural understanding, and development of general knowledge through English with the coverage consisting of macro-skills (listening, speaking, reading and writing), language components (grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation and spelling), and cultural aspects in English expressions (written and spoken discourses).

Competency-Based curriculum has adopted precisely the same basic concepts as its guidelines as outlined in the a994 curriculum. A tenet is a tenet. And the best tenet is the one that could realistically be materialized in classroom activities. Of course, it is true that a good tenet would be impossible to be put into real life situation unless it was well understood and positively perceived by the person expected to put it into practice. However, a well-informed teacher with a positive attitude towards a tenet could not guarantee that a successful implementation of the tenet would properly take place as expected. There are other supporting variables that could make a teacher become an effective tenet implementer.

English CBC still adopts the communicative approach in its implementation as “di antara pendekatan yang pernah dikembangkan, pendekatan komunikatif dipandang paling cocok…”  The very characteristic specific to English CBC is its list of main competencies to be achieved by SLTP and SMU students. The competencies as outlined in CBC are the same for both SLTP and SMU, the only differing indicator is the size of the vocabulary to be covered—1500 for SLTP and 4000 for SMU. The competencies include the ability to

1. understand and interpret spoken discourses in the form of conversation, narration, and description;
2. conduct conversation, express feelings and emotion, and exchange ideas on selected topics;
3. understand and interpret written texts in the form of conversation, narration, description, and such specific texts as schedules, tickets, forms, announcements, directions, brochures, tables of contents, and diaries;
4. present a piece of information, a concept and an idea on different topics in writing with 200 words for SLTP and 500 words for SMU; and
5. use English for hobbies and self-enrichment.

The above competencies are quite relevant to the need of this country in improving its competitive capacity in the era of globalization in which the country is expected to  complement and enhance economic cooperation with other countries and to respond to the rapidly changing external conditions and trends in both the economic and political fields.

EFL teachers and teacher education

Doubt about the effectiveness of improving a system of education simply by revising or changing the curriculum has been lingering around. I believe that revising the curriculum is a need to create relevance to the existing demands in the society. However, curriculum revision would not be effective if it is not accompanied by other necessary efforts to improve education as a whole. It has been found that the  newly developed curriculum is in line with the efforts of the country in improving its competitive capacity in the era of globalization in which the country is expected to  complement and enhance economic cooperation with other countries and to respond to the rapidly changing external conditions and trends in both the economic and political fields. However, there exists insufficient attention in the country to the key implementer of the curriculum, i.e. the teacher including his teacher education.

A teacher is a director in the real-life classroom performances and at the same time s/he is a participating actor/actress who will significantly contribute to the success of the teaching-learning show as assessed through the on-going existence in the classroom of meaningful, effective, appropriate, contextual, and motivating communication in its broadest sense, which in its turn will fruitfully result in expected learning outcomes.

The history of TEFL in Indonesia has been through a relatively short period of time with very little change as regards curricular allocation and instructional practices in school and with some indication of somewhat ‘major’ change at the macro-level of language-policy, keeping in line with the development of approaches to language teaching elsewhere. In formal schooling, in the earlier part of our country’s educational development since independence up to the 1960s English had officially been included in the lower secondary school curriculum with 4 credit hours and in the upper secondary school with 3 credit hours, adopting in most instructional modes grammar translation methods. The same time allocation can be seen in the 1975 school curriculum—4 hours at the lower secondary school and 3 hours on the average at the upper secondary school (in the upper secondary school language stream, English was offered 6 hours on the average), with audio-lingual and grammar-based instructional practices widely implemented. The 1984 curriculum still emphasizing language components and aspects as keys to language-skill development has opted for the communicative approach with some obstacles in its implementation and this has continued in the subsequent curricula, i.e. the 1994 and the ‘aborted 2004’ with its so called genre-based perspective.

As indicated above, English that is expected to become a tool for the students’ development in science, technology and arts could only be enhanced, as needed by the school leavers when come to real life contexts especially job markets, by the realization of English across the curriculum, an expectation which would need support from both human and non-human resources. English across the curriculum could be put into reality when non-English teachers have sufficient English proficiency themselves to encourage their students in grasping their materials printed or conveyed in English. In the same token, English across the curriculum could be materialized only when school libraries and other types of resources were available in the school. When this new set up for the curriculum implementation is linked to the enactment of Regional Autonomy Law (RAL), it would require different types of prerequisite efforts with orchestrated planning and development in the school setting and its community. RAL has been adopted as indicated above to enhance implementation of democratic principles, attract more social participation in the country’s development efforts, establish justice and equality, and take more benefit out of any existing regional potentials and varieties. The last goal, i.e. taking more benefit from regional potentials and varieties, is very closely related to the question of how we can make use of the potentials in the region to enrich and develop the implementation of the curriculum. As to the teaching of English, regional potentials with their entailing needs and necessities should be taken into consideration in developing teaching materials and in creating classroom activities. For example, teaching materials consisting of descriptions and pictures of tourist resorts should be developed when English is taught in a region in which tourism plays a significant role in the region’s economic development. Classroom activities should also then be created and developed in such a way that tourism is adequately reflected.

We have also learnt from RAL that regional autonomy implies the importance of taking into consideration the people’s needs and necessities in the region on the basis of their own will and aspiration in accordance with the existing rules and regulations. When we organize activities in the classroom, the will and aspiration of the people involved, i.e. the teacher and students, should be utilized in a synergic fashion. In the case of the teaching of English, the synergy could be maintained by adhering ourselves to the basic principles and concepts of the recently introduced Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC). The principles of material presentation based on CBC are similar to the ones adopted in the 1994 curriculum. In CBC when discussing Pendekatan dan Pengorganisasian Penyajian (approach to and organization of presentation/teaching), the principles to be adopted and used as guidelines are as follows.

1. Knowing what to do. Knowing of what is being done maintains interest on the part of both the teacher and the students.
2. Integration of the language skills. The whole is not a collection of the parts. By teaching linguistic forms and language skills each in isolation, we cannot guarantee that our students will automatically learn the English language as a linguistic and communicative entity.
3. Learning a language is learning how to communicate. As we want to assist our students to become effective participants in real-life communication in its truest sense, we teachers need to help them in any way that motivates them to work with the language i.e., to attempt to communicate in the language which may be encouraged from the very beginning.
4. Significance of meaningfulness in teaching. Learning activities would be meaningful for the students if they are related to the students’ needs, experience, interests, values, and prospects.
5. Learning by doing. The students would be successful in learning a language when they are given appropriate opportunities to use the language by carrying different types of language activities.
6. Learning through trial and error. We do not mean to discard accuracy in its entirety but we do not value accuracy as the only primary goal in the teaching of English. Fluency and acceptable language is our primary goal in which accuracy is judged not in the abstract but in context.

Various teaching-learning strategies should be vigorously devised and appropriately implemented by the teacher in teaching English within the paradigm of utilizing regional potentials and varieties and bringing about learning process as well as learning outcomes—the former being as important as the latter. In the teaching-learning process, the students are expected to interact with other people, either in the flesh, through pair and group work, or in their writings. The students should be properly motivated through different learning atmosphere to mingle with their peers using English in a somewhat integrated fashion. The success of the teaching is not only determined by the quality of the selected teaching material but also by the flexible and interesting way of presentation and teaching-learning set-ups. A teacher is a director in the real-life classroom performances and at the same time s/he is a participating actor/actress who will significantly contribute to the success of the teaching-learning show as assessed through the on-going existence in the classroom of meaningful, effective, appropriate, contextual, and motivating commun-ication in its broadest sense, which in its turn will fruitfully result in expected learning outcomes.

Another important issue to be taken into consideration by teachers of English in Indonesia is the agreement signed by six ASEAN leaders. On 28 January 1992 a framework agreement on enhancing economic cooperation was signed by six ASEAN leaders–The Sultan of Brunei Darussalam, the President of the Republic of Indonesia, the Prime Minister of Malaysia, the President of the Republic of the Philippines, the Prime Minister of the Republic of Singapore and the Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Thailand. Conscious of the rapid and pervasive changes in the international political and economic landscape, as well as both challenges and opportunities yielded thereof, which need more cohesive and effective performance of intra-ASEAN economic cooperation, the ASEAN leaders Member States have agreed to endeavor to strengthen their economic cooperation through an outward-looking attitude so that their cooperation contributes to the promotion of global trade liberalization, to abide by the principle of mutual benefit in the implementation of measures or initiatives aimed at enhancing ASEAN economic cooperation, and to participate in intra ASEAN economic arrangements. However, in the implementation of these economic arrangements, two or more Member States may proceed first if other Member States are not ready to implement these arrangements.

AFTA, an abbreviation of ASEAN Free Trade Area, is part of the framework agreement, which says among others that all Member States agree to establish and participate in the ASEAN Free Trade Area within 15 years for which a ministerial-level Council will be set up to supervise, coordinate and review the implementation of the AFTA and that Member States shall explore further measure on border and non-border areas of cooperation which supplement and complement the liberalization of trade. Besides trade, the agreement also covers cooperation in industry, minerals, energy, finance, banking, food, agriculture, forestry, and transportation. Other areas of cooperation include cooperation in research and development, technology transfer, tourism promotion, human resource development and other economic-related areas. To complement and enhance economic cooperation among Member States, and to respond to the rapidly changing external conditions and trends in both the economic and political fields, Member States agree to establish and/or strengthen cooperation with other countries, as well as regional and international organizations and arrangements. Cooperation in all these areas especially in human resource development has become a burning issue as it has forced us to assess seriously the quality and competitiveness of our existing human resource, including Indonesian teachers of English as a foreign language.

The validity of AFTA agreement is Hobson’s choice. It is a situation in which we must accept what is offered as there is no alternative other than taking nothing at all. The only alternative for local English teachers is to strengthen their professional competence so that they are capable of producing school graduates whose English proficiency meets the standards commonly set up for English to the Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) students. In this regard, TEFL education programs at higher learning institutions need to learn from what has been formulated by TESOL (1997) when it standardizes the teaching of ESOL as it is offered in elementary and secondary schools. The standards specify the language competencies ESOL students in elementary and secondary schools need to become fully proficient in English, to have unrestricted access to grade-appropriate instruction in challenging academic subjects, and ultimately to lead rich and productive lives. The development of these standards has been informed by the work of other US standards groups, particularly by the English language arts and foreign language standards. All three language standards projects share an emphasis on the importance of:

1. language as communication
2. language learning through meaningful and significant use
3. the individual and societal value of bi- and multilingualism
4. the role of ESOL students’ native languages in their English language and general academic development
5. cultural, social, and cognitive processes in language and academic development
6. assessment that respects language and cultural diversity

In TESOL’s vision:

1. Effective education for ESOL students includes native like levels of proficiency in English.
2. Effective education for ESOL students includes the maintenance and promotion of ESOL students’ native languages in school and community contexts.
3. All educational personnel assume responsibility for the education of ESOL students.
4. Effective education also calls for comprehensive provision of first-rate services and full access to those services by all students.
5. Knowledge of more than one language and culture is advantageous for all students.

TESOL has established three broad goals for ESOL learners at all age levels, goals that include personal, social, and academic uses of English. Each goal is associated with three distinct standards.

Goal 1: To use English to communicate in social settings

Standards for Goal 1—Students will (1) use English to participate in social interaction, (2) interact in, through, and with spoken and written English for personal expression and enjoyment, and (3) use learning strategies to extend their communicative competence.

Goal 2: To use English to achieve academically in all content areas

Standards for Goal 2—Students will (1) use English to interact in the classroom, (2) use English to obtain, process, construct, and provide subject matter information in spoken and written form, (3) use appropriate learning strategies to construct and apply academic knowledge.

Goal 3: To use English in socially and culturally appropriate ways

Standards for Goal 3—Students will (1) use the appropriate language variety, register, and genre according to audience, purpose, and setting, (2) use nonverbal communication appropriate to audience, purpose, and setting, and (3) use appropriate learning strategies to extend their sociolinguistic and sociocultural competence.

The three goals above together with their foundational principles are important for Indonesian teachers of English and policy makers in this area to appropriately and critically adopt should we think that we need to create an English program at our schools, which maintains its global competitiveness.

One of the strategic measures to take by a TEFL teacher education program is to uplift EFL teachers’ competence so that it could produce professional teachers of English as a foreign language. Teachers’ competence should be developed in at least four different areas: attitudes, understandings, skills and habits (Marquardt, 1977). For teachers to be highly competitive, they need to keep improving themselves in those four domains for their personal and professional development.

As to attitudes, teachers of English are expected to believe that the phenomenal spread of English throughout the world can be made to cause to happen improved cross-culture and inter-group communication and ultimately a more stable and more civilized world. In order for the teachers to be able to appropriately teach English, they should develop interest in the languages or dialects and cultures of his students. By doing so they will not only have a better understanding on the students’ learning problems but they will become a good example as they are also learners of English themselves. In this respect, they know that they have to respect the students’ language and culture and to encourage the students to preserve their own language and culture. They should let the students know that learning a second or foreign language is only an effort to expand communication, experience and gain, not to wipe out the already existing first language. Realizing the current development in communications technology, the teachers of English should also have a positive attitude towards the great potential of it and explore and use it in their teaching activities.

As regards understandings, teachers of English are expected to understand that non-native speakers of English and native speakers of English differ in their goal of learning the language—the former for cross-culture communication, whereas the latter for communication with members of their own culture. Besides, teachers of English are expected to understand that language is only a tool for human communication and that members of a culture should share certain features of outlook and behavior which will then affect ways of interaction among them selves and with members of other cultures. Another understanding that English teachers need to possess include the one regarding the communication theory model as a more appropriate basis for teaching competence in cross-culture communication in English for non-native speakers than traditional grammar, structural grammar, or generative transformation grammar. As to the early exposure to English, teachers need to understand that involving students as early as possible to meaningful cross-culture-interaction-situations could expedite the students in becoming effective cross-culture communicators.

Among the skills that teachers of English need to have are the skills to find and use contrastive analysis, to use sociolinguistic analysis of variations in language behavior in cross-culture-interaction situations, to compare features of the students’ languages and cultures with those in English speaking communities, and to select and organize real cross-culture-interaction activities.

Among the habits that teachers of English need to develop are the use of every opportunity to interact with the students in their mother tongue and culture to show to them that the teachers respect and have interest in what they have so that the students would be motivated to interact in the target culture as much as possible. Another important habit that teachers of English need to develop is the habit of filing interesting features of cross-culture interaction behavior that can be used when teaching the students involving particular cross-culture situations.

Another issue which is significant to raise here is that improvement of teacher quality would require not only the capacity of the teacher in terms of his mastery of the subject to teach and of the methodology of teaching but also his commitment to the profession, one of the prerequisites to it is the teacher’s welfare. As has been indicated earlier, teacher support and welfare have been commonly conceded as still beyond what is expected. This inapt degree of welfare has been publicly acknowledged as a triggering factor for the curtailment of teachers’ social status and of recognition in the society, which in turn brings about the plummeting of their commitment to their own profession. Although doubt has been cast here and there regarding teacher welfare as an effective point of departure for improving education in our country, I believe that improving teacher welfare would be worth an effort and that it would have a snow-balling effect on the improvement in all aspects related to preservice and inservice education of teachers. The simple logic behind all these arguments is that when teacher support and welfare are pleasing, the teaching profession as a whole would become an attractive profession so that it could appeal better candidates into it and as a consequence it could lift up and better synergize the teaching learning activities that take place in teacher education institutions. In this respect no exception applies for English teacher education, meaning that when we intend to improve the teaching of English in our schools, make the teaching of English profession attractive first, by among others lifting up teacher welfare, so that English teacher education programs could attract the cream of the crop from high school graduates. In the current regional autonomy era, this particular problem is especially to be faced by the regional governments, the regency (kabupaten). When the regional government is committed to education, it will automatically commit itself to developing (incl. financing) education in its area by making every effort and utilizing every resource available in its regency. In short, commitment from all parties is the key issue in improving education as “education is too important to be left to educators alone” (Professor Makaminan Makagiansar in his public lecture at IKIP Bandung in the early 70s).

So?

Indonesian higher education long-term strategy has rendered its basic issues covering the nation’s competitiveness, autonomy, and organizational health. The three focal points when applied to teaching, including the teaching of English as a foreign language, would call for various different skills and abilities on the part of the teacher, which will then entail significant roles to be played by teacher education institutions in developing and seeking healthy and innovative efforts in assisting their teachers-to-be to become raisers of ICT awareness, cultural awareness enhancers,  communicators of fact, coaches for skill improvement, inspirers of creative insight, thoughtful guides to analytical thought, professional mentors, and emboldeners for global competition. In order for us to be able to successfully carry out these tough and challenging tasks, we need to place in the limelight the long-forgotten part of the teachers’ human entity, that is, their health, comfort and happiness (to be spelt w-e-l-f-a-r-e), within the context of their coming to terms with their endeavor to better their mastery of the subject to teach and of the methodology of teaching itself. Maybe (?).

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