ANÁLISIS DE LA EXPERIENCIA

The low ⇒ low group consists of six teachers (see Table 4.1), whose investment trajectories as learners remained low both in high school and in their teacher- training course.

Table 4.1: Trajectory 1 – Begins Low, Remains Low

Respondents Investment at school Motivation to choose English teaching Investment at college Amir, Deni, Maryam, Yeni, Ani, Hendro Investment = low • See constraints as a burden on teachers: • Taught with a threatening approach • As learners thought of English as the enemy • Strong motivation to study English, as a stepping stone to the civil service and a ‘valued’ career, • No personal desire to

learn English • Some made own

decision (Amir, Maryam), others influenced by parents (Yeni, Hendro) • No personal desire to study teaching or become a teacher Investment=low • Perceived the quality of English teaching as being poor • No experience of role models or motivating lecturers

English Investment in High school

These teachers had negative perceptions of their experiences of learning English at high school, including perceiving the teacher’s approach as threatening and seeing studying English as ‘enemy’. This appears to have diminished their motivation to learn English with the result that they report putting little commitment and effort into their learning. As Amir explains:

For me English was like an enemy! … at that time the teacher was very authoritarian. If we made a mistake, we were not informed what our mistake was, why it was wrong or how to fix it, yet the

teacher would be angry and even hit us!” (Amir, Interview, December 2, 2005).

He reports that this teacher’s approach instilled negative attitudes towards English in him. The teacher’s approach can have lasting influence, as Amir says:

I thought at the time I did not know anything about English. When I graduated from high school my ability in English was zero! Maybe what I could say in English were only the words yes and no! Nothing good! I hated English …! (Amir, Interview, December 2, 2005).

Amir had built a barrier between himself and English. The other five teachers (Deni, Maryam, Yeni, Ani and Hendro) have similar perceptions of their teachers as authoritarian figures. This contributed to creating a barrier that affected their interest in, and motivation for, investing in English. Yeni and Deni’s recollections are below:

… in the past, a teacher was usually authoritarian and therefore we hated learning the lesson [English] because we hated the teacher (Yeni, Interview, November 29, 2005).

I did not like to learn English at the time because our English teacher was a difficult person and he was also so strict I was not interested at all in English … (Deni Interview, 2005).

Whilst each of these six teachers’ recollections show that their dislike of and low investment in English was due to the way they understood teachers as being authoritarian figures thereby affecting how they were constructing themselves in relation to English learning, it is worth noting that regardless of their low investment they all studied English as their major at pre-service teacher education (hereafter called IPSTE) after graduating from high school. So, if the teachers had no love of English, what underlying factors motivated them to choose English and become teachers?

Motivation to choose English teaching

This section examines how and why the six teachers chose English when embarking on their teacher training college period. The aims are to explore the

factors that had an impact on their decision to choose English and to discover their motivation for teaching.

Based on their narratives, none of the six teachers had any personal motivation to study either English or teaching, instead, their motivations derived from a range of factors discussed further below.

Two teachers, Amir and Maryam, believed that graduating from the English department would ensure that they could easily satisfy the selection criteria for a government civil service position.

I chose English because at the time the number of English teachers was still minimal and therefore needed. Graduating from the English Department would mean I could easily pass the selection process for becoming a government civil servant. (Amir, Interview, December 2, 2005).

… [I studied English] so it would be easy to be appointed! (Maryam, Interview, 2006).

These remarks clearly indicate that the teachers’ motivations to major in English were not because they liked the subject particularly, but rather because they saw it as a stepping-stone to reach their main goal.

Parents also appear to be driven by the same interests and to have influenced their children’s decisions regarding what major should be taken to ensure a good opportunity to obtain a government posting. Two (Yeni and Hendro) out of the six teachers in the low-low category specially say that their choice of English after graduating from high school was strongly influenced by the voice of their parents. For example, Yeni told me that she personally did not want to choose English, but her parents thought that choosing it was the best decision as she recalls:

Actually I wanted to work as a secretary in a big company or something like that and I didn’t want to be a teacher. But what could I do, as only Pre-Service Education was available here at the time? There was no other university or anything like that. The IPSTE did have a study program called “Office Administration”. I wanted to choose that program because graduating from it, meant that I would not necessarily need to become a teacher, but could work in an office instead. However, my parents told me it was

better to choose English rather than Office Administration because English would give me a greater chance of passing the civil service selection criteria (Yeni, Interview, November 29 2005).

Similarly Hendro recounts:

Initially I wanted to become an engineer but my parents pushed me to choose English because they thought that by becoming an English teacher meant it would make it easy to be appointed [i.e. to pass the selection criteria for entering the government civil service] (Hendro, Interview, February 9, 2006).

There is no additional information given which would further explain the reasons behind the teachers’ decisions to follow their parents’ wishes. However, it is possible to say that young learners’ own desires to learn other subjects might have become a second priority to fulfilling their parents’ wishes. Putting aside their own desires to please their parents is a family characteristic common within a society which emphasizes the group and belonging (Setiadi 2006; Niode 2007) as discussed in Chapter 2. Another possible explanation is that these interviewees, at the time the decision was made, consciously understood that their parents’ wishes for English to be used as a ‘stepping stone’ were achievable and logical. It highlights also the extent to which gaining a government civil servant job is regarded as a valued. The benefits of a government position have been discussed in detail in the literature review (see Chapter 2). Another benefit of the job that emerges and which has been emphasized by Deni, is that choice of profession is part of a commitment to help siblings:

I am the eldest in the family, so I thought I cannot only think about myself [meaning what he wanted to be] but I have to think about something practical. If I can be appointed as quickly as possible [to become a government civil servant] I could easily help my siblings who also need to continue their education. Everybody wants to go to university (Deni, December 11, 2005).

Deni felt torn between desires for his own education and the need to help his family, a common occurrence within family structure when there is a high sense of belonging. Children grow up being taught that every member should take care of the others. These values contain the sense of belonging within the family Setiadi (2006) and (Niode 2007). Based on my observation as cultural insider the

more so than younger children. Another factor that influences one’s decision to choose English is perceptions that the language is in demand in the labour market. For example, Ani believed that with English major it would be easier for her to get a job after graduation as people with English skills were in demand in the labour market:

I did not actually want to be a teacher. I just chose English because with English it would be easy for me to apply for a job (Ani, Interview, November 29, 2005).

In summary, this group of teachers appeared to lack any personal interest in English in their decision to choose English and the teaching profession when they were learners. When entering IPSTE their decision to choose English was based on other motivations that reflected a desire for bettering their social and economic position. For some, the primary motivation was a personal desire to enter the civil service (Amir, Maryam), others were strongly influenced by the voice of their parents (Yeni and Hendro). Deni needed to adopt a career that was perceived as helping the family and Ani specifically chose a career in English because of the perceived marketplace value attached to being an English graduate. In other words, this analysis reveals that for all the low-low interviewees, English was chosen as a stepping-stone toward achieving job opportunities either in the government sector or private enterprise. Under these circumstances, these teachers’ perceptions of their learning experiences when they were pre-service teachers is of interest. This is a theme I will discuss in the next section.

English Investment in Pre-Service Teacher Education

This section builds on the previous section and aims to examine the six teachers’ investment during their studies in the teacher training college. It considers the factors that contribute to shaping the teachers’ beliefs and attitudes towards advanced English learning and teaching which affect their commitment and effort in investing in English. Two factors are identified as critical in affecting the teachers’ attitudes and beliefs regarding their learning experiences in teacher training college. The first is the poor quality of teaching (both perceived and

actual), and the second is a lack of role models to motivate them about the prospect of being a future teacher. Both factors appear to affect investment. Some teachers held beliefs that they did not learn much from the IPSTE, which caused their low investment in English. Yeni, Maryam and Deni raised the issue of poor quality teaching and explained how this affected their motivation for English learning:

At the time there were many lecturers who delivered their teaching by simply talking at the students in a very boring manner. We did not feel that we were interested in learning … and the teaching was also often delivered using Indonesian (Yeni, Interview, November 29, 2005).

What I remembered is that what we actually learned was less than what we could or should have learned because there were many lecturers who not only came to our class without having done much preparation, but also many of them were so often teaching English by using Indonesian more than English … our own competency in English was low because we did not have much practice… (Maryam, Interview, December 3, 2005).

Teaching methodology was taught theoretically. There was no practice of the method. We experienced that [the practical use of the teaching methods] when we became teachers (Deni, Interview, December 11, 2005).

The second factor relates to the perceived unavailability of motivational and inspiring models at the IPSTE. Among the six teachers, Hendro, Yeni and Deni have pinpointed the lack of motivational and inspiring teachers as a major contributor that negatively impacted on their investment in English learning and teaching.

There were a small number of lecturers who were teaching interestingly there; we could count them on our fingers [names given] and the situation became even worse because this small number was reduced because they had to go away to undertake their postgraduate studies … (Hendro, Interview, February 9, 2006).

Many lecturers were away undertaking their postgraduate degrees and therefore we did not receive excellence in our learning experiences. I thought that many of the remaining lecturers could not teach English well (Yeni, Interview, November 29, 2005).

Some of the lecturers, even if they were great and could motivate us to learn, just taught for one or two semesters and then had to go for further study. So I thought the graduating students did not get much (Deni, Interview, December 11, 2005).

From my own personal knowledge of IPSTE in Gorontalo, there have been approximately 20-25 English teaching staff during the 1980s-1990s when these teachers were trained. Of these staff, only 20% were widely regarded as being motivational and inspiring teachers as revealed also by the teachers’ accounts above.

These two broad issues, the mode of English teaching delivery and the availability of motivational and inspiring lecturers, appear to affect the advanced learners’ feelings of competence in both learning English and learning how to teach in different ways. As a result they express dissatisfaction regarding what they have learned from their IPSTE through how they perceive their learning experiences. Amir, Hendro, Deni, and Yeni raised this, believing that what they had learned from IPSTE was minimal:

What we learned was not much. I mean it could not fulfill the needs of a teacher in training. I thought we were just being pushed to pass [meaning to graduate from the IPSTE] without any consideration of the quality of the education… (Amir, December 2, 2005).

Even though it was useful in some extent but I still thought that what we had to learn more (Hendro, Interview, February 9, 2006). When I started teaching, I realized that I had to start to prepare myself as an English teacher because I did feel that I did not learn a lot from IPSTE. As a teacher you should do a lot of preparation that otherwise you will look stupid in front of your students. Therefore we had to study and prepare ourselves (Deni, Interview, December 11, 2005).

I thought that I did not learn much about English and how we should teach English. When we did our teaching at school after graduation there were a lot of things we have to do but we had to learn from the process [of their own classroom teaching] (Yeni, Interview, November 29, 2005).

As seen in the discussion above, these six teachers, Ani, Amir, Deni, Maryam, Hendro and Yeni expressed negative beliefs and attitudes towards their learning experiences at the IPSTE. Two factors emerged that appeared to have an impact

on the formation as learners and affect their views and attitudes: the teaching methodology used in teaching and learning activities during their learning stages and the limited number of competent lecturers. It seems that these interviewees believed these factors have at least influenced their efforts in, and commitment to learning, English, resulting in their low investment.

How have these formative factors shaped the negative beliefs and attitudes of these teachers? First, they entered the pre-service teacher training institution with previously established negative beliefs towards English learning and teaching. As low investors in English at school, they found that experiences during their IPSTE learning process resonated with their previous learning experiences. This resonance further reinforced their negative attitudes and contributed to a sense of disengagement from both English and teaching. Along the same line of thinking, Richards (1998) has suggested that the influence of the prior beliefs of the student teacher are pivotal, often held tacitly and “often serve as a lens through which they [students] view both the content of the teacher development program and their language teacher experiences”(Richards 1998:17). Almarza (1996) and Thornbury (1996) have also recognized the critical role of a student teacher’s prior beliefs in affecting their beliefs, attitudes and experiences during their pre- service teacher education. In addition, Freeman and Johnson (1998) suggest that when entering a teacher education program, a candidate brings their previous experience, personal values, and beliefs, and those inform their knowledge of teaching. Many of the teachers entered teachers’ college with prior experience, values and beliefs and low investment in high school. This perhaps contributed to their passive attitudes to learning English and their low level of motivation in proactively facing the challenges in the IPSTE.

Second, these teachers lacked an interest in English and teaching when entering the teacher training institution. There was no emotional connection between the teachers’ ambition and English, and this may have affected how they perceived learning and teaching activities at the IPSTE. However, the fact that the IPSTE was not well resourced to provide a strong educational foundation for these English teachers contributed to the fact that their negative experiences and beliefs from their high school learning remained unchallenged. The position of

English in Indonesia as a foreign language and its impact on the availability of appropriate resources, such as high quality English lecturers, and appropriate English teaching materials affected the capability of the IPSTE level programs to enable these pre-service teachers to develop more positive attitudes and ways of thinking about themselves as future English teachers.