Investigating and Assessing Competence of High School Teachers of English in Indonesia

Abstract

Teacher competence is a description of skills, knowledge, and behaviours required by teachers to perform effective teaching. Although there are variations of required competence from one scholar to another, the question remains the same – whether teachers have competence. This paper reports on the competence required by high school teachers of English in Indonesia (HSTEI), and describes the development of performance tasks to assess it. The required competence was firstly identified from theories of teacher competence (Cross, 2003; Mulhauser, 1958; Richards, 1998), resulting in three domains; language competence, content knowledge about language, and teaching skills. These domains consisted of several dimensions. The dimensions were defined operationally, then validated by correlating them to five course syllabuses of English teacher training, and reviewed by asking teachers, supervisors, teacher trainers, and faculty members to view the dimensions in the context of English teaching at high schools in Indonesia. The investigation revealed 12 dimensions of competence HSTEI should have. Two rubrics were developed to assess the 12 dimensions through their lesson plans and teaching performance. The research concludes that 1) competent HSTEI have content knowledge and teach that knowledge in a pedagogically engaging learning context using good English, and 2) the performance tasks developed can assess the identified competence.