Professional Learning Communities for English as a Foreign Language Teachers in a Remote Island in Eastern Indonesia: An Intervention Study

Abstraksi

The disparity between the quality of education in the Western and Eastern part of Indonesia has been a challenge for the Indonesian Education sector for many years. The World Bank reported that there is a gap between teachers' knowledge and teaching quality which is particularly evident in rural areas in Indonesia (Chang et al., 2014; Ragatz, Sugiarti, & Iskandar, 2015). Indonesia uses teacher support groups or Musyawarah Guru Mata Pelajaran (MGMP) to support teachers' professional growth. However, MGMP may not be serving their intended purpose of providing ongoing professional learning opportunities for teachers (USAID, 2005). The current study was conducted to find out whether and how a new approach, a professional learning community, could help English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers improve their teaching practice. The Quality Teaching Framework (Bowe & Gore, 2016; Gore et al., 2015) and Lesson Study (Stigler & Hiebert, 1999) were adopted and adjusted to guide teacher professional learning communities in schools on a remote island of Eastern Indonesia. Data were collected through interviews and video-observations of participant teachers teaching in their classroom before and after an intervention that they had planned to promote higher order thinking. Early results suggest that this approach assisted teachers to improve their pedagogy. The paper explains how the model of professional learning communities was used with teachers in the schools. The paper concludes with recommendations for how this model could be used to maximise teachers' professional learning in remote areas of Eastern Indonesia.