Data on teachers’ professional and linguistic backgrounds consists of a variety of relevant information on their position, length of experience as a teacher, their responsibility as a classroom teacher, their employment status, and the languages they speak other than English.
Table 5.2 overleaf shows that teachers are also diverse in terms of their professional and linguistic backgrounds. First of all, the majority of the teachers (PSET1, PSET2, PSET3, PSET4, PSET5, PSET6, PSET10, PSET11, PSET12, and PSET13) undertook part-time employment. Part-time employment is synonymous with being a non-civil servant teacher; none of these part-time teachers were civil servants. On the contrary, three full- time teachers (PSET7, PSET8, and PSET9) had been appointed civil servants long before they were appointed to teach English.
Full-time employment is synonymous with being a classroom teacher. When the data collection took place, two full-time teachers (PSET7 and PSET8) were classroom teachers who taught English and other subjects. An exception is PSET9 who was a full-time civil servant teacher but was not a classroom teacher. He was initially a classroom teacher from 1993 to 2008 before “finally being appointed English teacher two years earlier”
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(PSET9: 257). On the other hand, part-time teachers were non-classroom teachers. PSET2, PSET3, PSET4, PSET5, PSET6, PSET10, PSET11, PSET12, PSET13 only taught English; they were responsible to teach English to students across levels, ranging from Year 1 to Year 6.
Table 5.2 Teachers’ occupational and linguistic backgrounds Status of
teachers
Teachers Position Years of experience*
Language(s)
Civil Servants
PSET7 Full-time 38: Subjects, 1: English Minahasa, Indonesian
PSET8 Full-time 22: Subjects, 1: English Minahasa, Indonesian
PSET9 Full-time 18: Subjects, 2: English Lombok, Indonesian
Non Civil Servants
PSET1 Part-time 1 Indonesian, Betawi
PSET2 Part-time 2 Minahasa, Indonesian
PSET3 Part-time 1 Minahasa, Indonesian
PSET4 Part-time 1.5 Javanese, Indonesian, Madurese
PSET5 Part-time 10 Javanese, Indonesian
PSET6 Part-time 11: English, 5: Social Science
Madurese, Javanese, Indonesian
PSET10 Part-time 2 Sundanese, Indonesian
PSET11 Part-time 7 Javanese, Indonesian
PSET12 Part-time 5 Javanese, Indonesian
PSET13 Part-time 8 Javanese, Indonesian
*Note: Unless otherwise stated, ‘experience’ refers to the length of experience in teaching English. Some teachers used to teach other subjects such as Indonesian language, Math, and others (marked with Subjects) and also teach English. PSET9, for example, had been teaching various subjects for 18 years and English for 2 years.
The findings of the study show that the teachers’ experience ranges from 1 to 38 years. At the time of data collection, more than a third of the teacher population had less than 5 years of teaching experience, from 1 to 2.5 years. This includes PSET2, PSET3, PSET4, PSET10, and PSET1. Seven other teachers (PSET11, PSET12, PSET13, PSET6, PSET5, PSET9,
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and PSET8) had between 7-15 years of teaching experience. Two teachers had more than 20 years of teaching experience: PSET7 and PSET8. PSET8 had 22 years of teaching experience, while PSET7 had 38 years of teaching experience including one year of teaching English.
In terms of linguistic background, two teachers (PSET4 and PSET6) in this study spoke three languages, whereas the other twelve teachers spoke two languages in addition to English. All teachers spoke Indonesian (Bahasa Indonesia), which is the official language in the country, and at least one local language. Javanese was spoken by the majority of teachers, namely PSET4, PSET5, PSET10, PSET11, PSET12, and PSET13. This is followed by Minahasa, which was spoken by PSET2, PSET3, PSET7, and PSET8. Four other local languages: Betawi, Sundanese, Lombok, and Madurese were spoken by PSET1, PSET4, PSET9, and PSET6 respectively.
The findings in this section demonstrate that teachers of English at primary level are diverse in terms of educational, linguistics, and occupational backgrounds. Some teachers had a background in pre-service English education, some did not; and all were either bilinguals or multilinguals. The majority of the teachers were not classroom teachers and were not civil servant teachers. The data in this profile of teachers are highly relevant to policymaking on teacher education as suggested in Song & Cheng’s (2011) study that the development of teacher education programs that cater for the needs of a specific group of teachers requires ample data on the backgrounds of the teachers.
While identification of the profile of teachers has been justified above, it is now necessary to provide a rationale for analysing the needs of teachers in teacher education. LTE2 stated that “we need to assist them (teachers) so they don’t see this training as an academic exercise. But this is for really functional purposes, functional skills, to back up, to perfect their teaching-learning processes. So for this reason, we start from the bottom, from identification of needs, from the bottom.” (LTE2: 267-271). This view was confirmed by MEB1 who asserted “those who give the training must be able to analyze the needs of
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the teachers, what the needs of the teachers are, their interests, their habits, their preferences” (MEB1: 361-363). When a training program is held by a government-based training institution, this means “the institution needs to have a needs analysis of teachers” (MEB1: 326) to ensure the creation of informed decisions with regard to the design of the training program. The subsequent sections (5.2 & 5.3) discuss the needs of teachers of English at primary level in Indonesia in terms of skills and knowledge.