The exam’s new system: One step forward, two steps back

 This year, more than three million senior high schools students and vocational schools are expected to participate in the annually-held national exam — popularly known as the National Examinations (UN) — that is slated to kick off on April 15.

 Slightly different from the previous year, this year’s UN will be held under a new system. The question sheets have been designed in the form of 20 dissimilar packages, with each containing completely different versions of questions.

 Each student then takes the same exam with a different version of questions. Through this new system, students are expected to focus on answering their own questions and more importantly cheating and other possible fraud committed during the exams can be prevented.

 Unlike last year’s system, the new system is indeed one step forward because it is more likely to curb cheating, although no one can be sure that cheating will not recur.

 It should be apparent here that what is new in this year’s UN system concerns technicalities, that it is an anticipation of possible students’ cheating, which caused an uproar last year.

 Thus, this is a solution to the technical, if not trivial, problem, but does not address more substantial problems of the final exam often voiced by educational practitioners.

 What both the past and current systems have always ignored is the extent to which the national exam, as a large-scale standardized test, yields positive pedagogical effects on students and teachers and the extent to which it is accountable in the eyes of the public at large.

 Pedagogically, a test intended to measure students’ learning achievements must yield to beneficial effects on learning (technically called washback effects). This suggests that a test such as the exam must arouse and motivate students’ further learning to their own advantage.

 It should allow students to monitor their own learning strategies, provide corrective feedback to these strategies, and aid retention and transfer of what has been learnt. In essence, the exam must allow students to conduct self-assessment.

 Furthermore, the accountability factor should not be deliberately dismissed from the exam. This is especially true, given that this state-sponsored exam belongs in the category of a high-stake exam, the obtained scores of which have been used to make crucial pedagogical decisions.

 Test accountability also entails fairness and the inclusion of a code of ethics, which includes, among other things, respect for humanity, prevention of the misuse of knowledge and skills, commitment to the integrity of the community and the mindfulness of obligations to society (Crusan, 2010). Thus, the results of the test have far-reaching implications, not limited to educational context only.

  We have witnessed that whatever pedagogical paradigms (manifested in the curriculum) we have been adhering to in the national education system, the state-mandated UN always withstands the test of time.

 Despite the strong, repeated resistance against it, it is highly likely to be used as the sole standardized test under the much-debated 2013 curriculum in years to come.

 Assuming that it will be used, the fiercest criticism the final exam will face is related to how the unobservable qualities (constructs) highlighted in the basic competence in the new curriculum can be tested using a single instrument measurement (i.e. the UN).

 Again, it seems that the feasibility or practicality of the national exam over its validity and reliability will still be the prime consideration for its continued use in the future.

 A quality test (or assessment), however, should not always be in the form of a standardized large-scale test like that of the exam. Assessment experts and researchers concur that this kind of test often does more harm than good.

 They propose instead a more situated, context-specific, and locally designed test. Contrary to a larger-scale test that is detached and often has no clear pedagogical benefits, locally developed tests are more test-taker-friendly as their design or construction often envisions the real contextual factors such as the instructional learning goals, teaching materials used and the cultural and social milieu of the institution where the students learn. This will surely help attain the intended, positive washback effects.

  What is more, the accessibility to obtain information such as the contents of materials to be covered in the test, the format of the test, and the scoring criteria used are made easier and relatively transparent to test-takers and other stakeholders, hence its public accountability.

 All of these features are clearly missing in a widely-used standardized large-scale test like the national exam.

Setiono Sugiharto  ;   

An Associate Professor at Atma Jaya Catholic University,

Chief-Editor of the Indonesian Journal of English Language Teaching

JAKARTA POST, 13 April 2013

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Questioning autonomy in higher education

   The recent debate on a judicial review filed with the Constitutional Court against Law No. 12/ 2012 on higher education has spawned concerns among the country’s intellectuals over the autonomy of higher education. The law has been contested by six students from Andalas University who said that their access to university had been impeded.

 If the Constitutional Court annuls this law, it is feared that the autonomy of higher education in Indonesia will be at stake.

 The concern over the autonomy of higher education is reminiscent of the previous revocation of Law on legal educational institutions (BHP), which at that time similarly sparked heated debate among academics and education pundits.

 While the notion of autonomy in higher education has become a popular catchphrase, it is has never been perceived with uniformity. There is no such consensus, even among intellectuals, as to what constitutes autonomy in higher education.

 The notion of autonomy, unless implemented with precision, can be subject to semantic manipulations that are at the whims of the power holders of educational institutions. If related to an institutional and bureaucratic context, it is clearly not a neutral word. It is a word loaded with ulterior meanings.

 Construed from the perspective of the technocratic logic of an educational institution, autonomy signifies the idea of full control in managing universities and in designing policies related to educational activities.

 Autonomy in this sense tries to disconnect the management of an institution from state intervention.

 Yet, autonomous educational institutions are not free from flaws. The policies they impose may not benefit stakeholders (especially students) and are not amendable to their interest and needs, as these policies are the by-products of ideological and institutional logic to which educational staff, students, and teachers must accede.

 It is no surprise that clashes — which often end in violence — between university rectors and students occurred in many, if not most, universities.

 Autonomy, however, can be understood from the perspective of a pure academic logic, which emphasizes the spirit of lehrfreiheit (freedom to teach) and lernfreiheit (freedom to learn) — the well-known slogan long preserved by the University of Berlin. Educational institutions should be autonomous under this perspective, in that academic freedom is nurtured and the habits of mind such as inquisitiveness, persistence, creativity, responsibility, and imagination are highly respected.

 In contrast to the former notion of autonomy, which has the tendency of favoring the rigidity of technocratic reasoning and ideology, the latter notion allows fluidity and flexibility, and is not predetermined and imposed upon those who are undertaking educational activities.

 It seems that the imminent annulment of the higher education law may considerably dilute the autonomy (in the former sense) of higher education, as has been enthusiastically voiced by the country’s intellectuals.

 The concern here is plausible because without the law, autonomy with the technocratic logic doesn’t hold sway and has no mutability in the presence of conflict and disruption.

 It is resistant to changes and by hook or crook tries to conserve constancy for the sake of maintaining the vested interests and the constellation of structural power of elites in educational institution.

 But autonomy from the perspective of the academic logic is fluid, not seeing things as always remaining constant in different circumstances. With or without the law, it may not be distorted and can surely withstand efforts which will disrupt it. Because it valorizes the habits of mind, any disruption will be appropriated rather than summarily rejected.

 Thus, given the vacuous notion of autonomy, the bogey of losing autonomy of higher education should by no means cause us to succumb to unnecessary and counterproductive politics of education and to lose sight of the long-standing academic beacon of lehrfreiheit and lernfreiheit, which have been instilled into those undertaking educational activities in most universities in the US and European countries.

 On the face of it, it would be much more productive if we intellectuals were concerned instead over how the tradition of nurturing the habits of mind among our students can be sustained rather than be overwhelmed by the apprehension of the judicial review of higher education law.

Setiono Sugiharto ; 

An Associate Professor at Atma Jaya Catholic University,

Chief Editor of the Indonesian Journal of English Language Teaching

JAKARTA POST, 30 Maret 2013

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The myth of teacher’s training

As a logical consequence of the newly introduced 2013 curriculum, school teachers are obliged to enroll in a 52-hour training course as mandated by the Education and Culture Ministry.

 This government-sponsored training aims primarily at the teachers’ mastery of the concepts and principles underlying the new curriculum.

 Because school teachers are assumed to have no prior knowledge of how the curriculum ought to be translated and realized in classroom settings, they are required to participate in the training, which will start in March this year. 

 We need to underline here that since it is the mastery of the concepts in the curriculum that is the eventual goal, this incoming teacher training is only theoretically motivated.

 That is, teachers are to theoretically understand the rationales behind the government’s policy on the implementation of the curriculum as well as the premises underlying the curricular designs — which differ from the previously used curricula.

 The purpose of the training is not to equip teachers with the technical know-how related to the real application of curricular contents in the classroom.

 We cannot expect teachers to gain practical knowledge about how, for example, the natural and social sciences can be extracted effectively when these subjects are merged within a single subject — Indonesian.

 The training is highly likely to present more problems than solutions and more contradictions than symmetries. In the country’s history of pedagogical paradigm shifts, it is not the first time that teacher training is sought and believed to offer a panacea to a myriad of problems faced by the country’s educational system. Teacher training — known locally as the PLPG — became the apex when teachers failed the certification program. 

 There seems to be a developing myth that training in educational activities, more precisely teacher training, can fix the educational snags and offer ready-made solutions to them.

 The current government’s move to train schoolteachers seems to perpetuate this myth.

 Amid the educational problems and challenges we encounter, we often fail to address the intricacies of the relationship between curricula, teaching materials, teachers, students and other countless related factors.

 The curriculum has often become an easy scapegoat every time problems occur. It has in other words been viewed as an educational straitjacket.  

 However, the changing nature of the above educational elements ineluctably requires a shifting orientation when we deal with the pertinent problems in our educational system and seek possible solutions to them.

 This by no means suggests that teacher training is unnecessary and of little value. We first need to admit that all educational activities are always in disarray, convoluted, discursive and beset with conflicts and contradictions.

 The implication is that we need to reconceptualize the notions of teacher training and probably teacher education as a site of contestation, conflict and struggle where diverse perspectives on pedagogical knowledge may clash.

 Like or not, this reconceptualization stands in stark contrast to the commonly-held traditional normative sense, which carries the meaning of adherence to pedagogical prescriptions (by purported pedagogical pundits and teacher trainers) as a list of do’s and don’ts, so that teachers can teach successfully.

 While in the former sense, teachers’ agencies, voices and subjectivities in knowledge participation are considered disruptive, downplayed and summarily dismissed, subjugated and even silenced, in the latter these are seen as important constructs that play a significant role in the process of knowledge construction.

 The repositioning of ideas on teacher training as well as teacher education in the frameworks of agency and subjectivity provides room for teachers to exercise their authority as intellectuals (not as conformists) who have a voice to negotiate educational policies and agendas (including the frequent shifts of curricula) imposed on them by the government.

 Thus, rather than asking teachers to uncritically conform to what has been prescribed by educational policymakers and pundits, teacher trainers and teacher educators need to take a bold step and inspire teachers to negotiate and even challenge the prescribed rules of the game by virtue of the latter’s pedagogical knowledge obtained from classroom teaching experiences.

 If we do this, then we will nip the developing myth in the bud

Setiono Sugiharto ; 

An Associate Professor at Atma Jaya Catholic University, Jakarta’; A Chief Editor of the Indonesian Journal of English Language Teaching

JAKARTA POST, 23 Februari 2013

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RSBI and the politics of pedagogical choice

 The fierce debates over the international pilot project schools (RSBI) that once raged between education activists and the government have come to a halt with the Constitutional Court ruling that the establishment of the often-dubbed “elite” schools is not in line with the Constitution.

 In its verdict, the Constitutional Court said that the RSBIs had created dualism and discrimination in the national education system.

 Also, with their exclusive use of English as the medium of classroom instruction, the schools have been lambasted for eroding national identity.

 Yet, one day after the ruling the Education and Culture Ministry seemed adamant that it would not immediately dismiss RSBI.

 The government’s efforts to improve the system of national education and to pursue quality education ought to be commended.

 This is especially true given that most Indonesians have been casting doubts over local education and opting instead for overseas education.

 While we have to extend our full support to the government for its seriousness in boosting the country’s education, we need to call into question the blind adoption of the label “international standard” in the RSBIs, which is associated mainly with the mandatory use of English (as an international language), imported curriculum and assessment instruments and the idea of English native speaking.

 Perhaps this label is attributed among teachers, students and educational technocrats to pedagogical jargon like international standard competence, which has become the guiding principle in the curriculum design.

 Needless to say, the idea behind the establishment of the RSBIs is more political than pedagogical if contextualized in the global spread of the hegemonic forces of Western education.

 Thus, the often-voiced claim that the national education system needs to adjust itself to the rapid changes of the globalized world (through the establishment of RSBIs), so that local schools are poised to compete with schools overseas is certainly a political statement — a statement that cannot be perceived as neutral and innocent.

 Complicating this statement, we can raise critical question: From which perspective is the banal notion of globalization viewed?

 Clearly, in common knowledge the phrase “international Standard” is construed as designating globalization from the outside world, or what is often referred to as the Center World (the colonizing countries) as opposed to the Periphery World (the colonized countries).

 It is this understanding that the opponents of the RSBIs object to and harshly denounce.

 It is also because of this perception that they have accused the RSBIs of perpetuating liberalism and capitalism in education and also language imperialism.

 Describing the fetish of the dissemination of English through education, as has been the case in the RSBIs, linguist JE Joseph (2004) said: “When members of the ‘peripheral’ population are themselves the ones opting for education in the ‘center’ language or promoting it for their countrymen, this merely means they have been co-opted into linguicism; they are internal colonialists.”

 Interestingly, most education observers through their published writings in the media have unwittingly helped promote pedagogical imperialism by extolling the superiority of education of the center.

 They uncritically believe in the reports released by international associations such as Trends in International Mathematics and Science Studies (TIMSS), Progress in International Reading Literacy Studies (PIRLS) and the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) — reports that provide a statistical comparison of the quality of academic performance across different countries.

 Inferences on quality education are made based on these reports. Thus, if the reports show that other countries better Indonesia in terms of academic performance, the conclusion is often hastily drawn that the latter performs worse than its counterparts and is eventually condemned for not having competitive values.

 If these reports are used as a sole reference for improving the country’s education system through, say, the creation of the RSBIs, then we become engrossed in a pedagogical determinism without taking into consideration the fact that the geopolitics of every country differs considerably.

 After all, just as resorting to the RSBIs as the ostensible panacea of the country’s educational snag is a political choice, so too is the attempt to revive national-based education as a reaction against it.

 The reconsideration of the relevance of national identity, culture and ideology amid the suppression of Western hegemonic pedagogy also has a political overtone.

 To counter the spread of international schools in Indonesia, A. Chaedar Alwasilah, a professor in education, has recently proposed what he calls “ethnopedagogy” — a local genius-based pedagogy that tries to reinvigorate local languages, cultures and ideologies.

 This proposal certainly has a political nuance, suggesting therefore that all pedagogical choices are value-laden and political.

 In the face of globalization, educational policies certainly need to be altered in line with the needs and demands of the modern world.

 Yet, this shouldn’t always be done by upgrading the status of local schools with an “international” label.

 Instead, the revitalization of local wisdom in education can strengthen the foundation of national education and serve as a counter-politics to pedagogical determinism.

 It can also give teachers the confidence to face the unexpected challenges of the globalized world. Quality education should begin from such an effort.

Setiono Sugiharto ;

An Associate Professor at Atma Jaya Catholic University,

He is also chief editor of the Indonesian Journal of English Language Teaching

JAKARTA POST, 12 Januari 2013

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