SM3T and PPGT: Preparing Professional Teacher for Indonesia

By Nia Martiana, S.Pd

SM3T Teacher in Ende Regency 2nd cohort  

Semarang State University, Indonesia 

Shortage of teachers in rural areas has been one of a worldwide challenge faced by many countries. This issue occurs not only in developing countries such as Indonesia, India and Africans but also in developed countries such as Australia, Canada and United States. Moreover, Australian Educators have highlighted this shortage as a national crisis in the country (White, Green, Reid, Lock, Hasting, & Cooper, 2008 as cited by Hudson, 2010). Geographical condition and imbalance demographic distribution become the main factors in forming areas as rural. Furthermore, the vast area of a country also contributes in parting many rural areas. This condition makes teachers tend to prefer teaching in urban areas as they provide better access and professional opportunity.

                 Indonesia is a unique country. It has approximately 17.000 islands spread from west to east separated by oceans. The big fives are Sumatra, Borneo, Papua, Sulawesi and Java. The last is considered as the prominent land where Jakarta, the capital city is situated with the largest amount of population. The rest of the islands consist of small with lower density and even uninhabited. Therefore, the rural area with relatively small population and geographical challenge scattered throughout a wide country intensifies teacher shortages and some other problems.

According to Indonesian Ministry of Education, some problems faced by rural teaching are shortage of teachers, imbalance distribution, under qualification, low competencies and mismatched. The other problems are the relatively high number of school cut  off whereas the number of school participation is still low.

Nowadays, the concern of rural education has been brought to attention. Indonesian government with its Ministry of Education and some private institutions put this issue as an essential matter for Indonesian education. In order to solve this problems they promote some programs such as Maju Bersama (SM3T and PPGT) by the Ministry of Education as well as Indonesia Mengajar and the other similar programs hold by private institutions.

 However, putting teachers to teach in rural area is indeed another problem. Collins, as stated in Hudson (2008) noted that attracting teachers to rural schools has presented a challenge for education departments for years.  Most of teachers who have teaching experience in urban area are likely to deny teaching in rural ones. Social, cultural and professional isolation may be reasons for losing rural teachers. According to Watson & Hatton (1995) geographical isolation with strong cultural differences such as recent immigrants, indigenous people, or isolated rural dwellers may present issues for retaining teachers in rural school.

On the other hand, teaching in rural schools gives benefit as well. Research conducted by Ralph from Saskatchewan University (2003) summarized nine advantages of teaching in rural schools, (1) better acquaintance with students, (2) high community involvement, (3) support by staff and community, (4) better acquaintance with families, (5) opportunity to engage in variety of opportunity, (6) lower enrollments, (7) A “country side” pastoral setting, (8) fewer students discipline problems, (9) opportunity to secure a rural teaching position.

   As previously stated, Ministry of Education has promoted two programs in providing teachers for rural school through out Indonesia. These are PPGT (Integrated Teacher Education Program) for preparing teacher candidates from rural areas, and SM3T (Education Bachelor preservice teaching in rural areas). These programs are aimed to produce professional teachers. Since teaching in rural area is not free from any challenges, the SM3T teacher candidates should be equipped with sufficient preparation to cope with the challenges they probably would face during the duty in rural areas. Therefore, the candidates should take part in the precondition stage  before leaving.

SM3T is a preservice teaching program of Education Bachelor to participate in the accelerating education development in rural areas of Indonesia. Here, rural areas are defined as the left behind areas, frontier areas, and rural isolated area. The teachers should devote their selves for the schools and the societies in which they are placed. This stage is the initiating stage to prepare professional educators who will be brought to Teacher Profession Program (PPG) for the next following year.

According to the guide book of SM3T published by Directorate of Higher Education which is in charge in conducting SM3T program, the purposes of this program are:

1.      To help rural areas in solving the problems of education in terms of shortages of teachers.

2.  Giving the experience of devotion to education bachelors so that the professionalism, nationality, empathy, and creativity can be developed to solve education problems, and responsible to the development of the nation, as well as having tough spirit of survival.

3.       Preparing teacher candidates to be professional educators in rural schools of Indonesia.

4.      Preparing professional educators before joining Teacher Profession Program.

The Scope of SM3T

In the placement school, SM3T teachers are supposed to teach subjects they are asked by the headmasters. Since shortages of teachers are often faced by the schools, sometimes they are asked to teach double subjects or double grades. However, the scope of SM3T is not merely in the teaching duty. Extracurricular activities, school management and triggering teaching innovation are some points to be done by the teachers in the placement schools. Furthermore, SM3T teachers should conduct community service activities in purpose to encourage the societies in developing their environment.      

·         Preparing Teacher for Rural School

Collins, as stated in Hudson (2008), argues that candidates for rural teaching placements need to come with personal characteristics, rural background, or educational experiences that predispose them to live in rural areas. Hence, universities should be proactive by introducing rural education as part of preservice teacher preparation (Boylan, 2004; Collins, 1999; Roberts, 2005). Dealing with this matter, 12 chosen universities which are in charge of conducting SM3T should initially prepare the participants in precondition stage before leaving. 

In the precondition stage, the participants learn and equip themselves with educational material, such as how to develop good syllabi, lesson plans and materials of study in the context of rural schools. Simulation of dual grade teaching is also given here to provide sufficient preparation for the participants in coping with the condition there. Monk in Hudson (2008) emphasizes that rural schools need high quality teachers who understand rural areas, which necessitates contextualizing preservice teacher preparation, survival material is considered important to learn before leaving. Teachers in rural and remote schools can feel isolated and may require support through mentoring, modeling and counseling (US Department of Education, 1998). Dealing with this, precondition stage provides the participants to take part in survival activities mentored by Indonesian Army members, and some activities such as scouting and self counseling. 

The follow up after having a year service in rural area, SM3T teachers have the chance to join Professional Teacher Education Program at the universities in which they initially registered. It is a full scholarship program supported by Directorate of Higher Education in the purpose to equip teacher candidates with advance knowledge and experiences in becoming professional teachers. 

 References

Beutel, D., Adie, L., & Hudson, S. Promoting Rural and Remote Teacher Education in Australia through the Over the Hill Project. Queensland University of Technology, Australia.

Diah, Riza A. K & Pradna, P. 2012. Resiliensi Guru di Daerah Terpencil. Jurnal Psikologi Pendidikan dan Perkembangan. Vol I. No. 02.

Faridi, A. 2013. Method Used in Teaching English at Junior High School in Central Java. Arab World English Journal. June 2013. Pp 45-55

Guenther, J. & Weible, T. 1983. Preparing Teachers for Rural Schools. Rural Education, Volume I, Number 2, Winter.

Hudson, Peter. 2008. Changing Preservice Teachers’ Attitudes for Teaching in Rural Schools. Australian Journal of Teachers Education volume 33 issue 4 p.66-77.pdf

 Kline, J., White, S., & Lock, G. (2013). The rural practicum: Preparing a quality teacher workforce for rural and regional Australia Journal of Research in Rural Education, 28(3),1-13. Retrieved from http://jrre.psu.edu/articles/28-3.pdf

Ralph, Edwin G. 2003. Promoting Teaching in Rural School. 2003. Journal of Teaching & Learning, Vol 2 ., No. 2.
Buku Panduan Prakondisi SM3T 2012