Sustaining English Teacher Doing Classroom Action Reseach: Perception of Palu City's English Teacher

Abstract

Classroom Action Research (CAR) has been a popular avenue for developing teacher's professionalism in Indonesia nowadays. Many studies reveal that engaging with CAR provides beneficial for teachers which eventually impact on their practice. However, studies also found that many teachers also face problems in doing CAR that potentially inhibit them not to engage with CAR anymore. This current paper discusses the experiences of five SMU English Teachers in Palu who participated in a massive pilot CAR project initiated by Dinas Pendidikan (DISDIK), Provinsi Sulawesi Tengah in 2006. Specifically, it discusess what are the challenges faced by the teachers to do CAR and their recommendation of ways to facilitate and support them on doing CAR which promoting more sustainable practice. This study employed a case study qualitative approach in which the writer explored the experience five teachers who participated in this CAR pilot. Data were collected through in-depth interview and gaining documents. Data then were analyzed through thematic analysis by collecting, recording and transcribing the interview data. The result of study found insufficient knowledge of CAR concepts, lack of mentoring, no assistance from collaborators and time constraints emerged as the key factors that hampered them in doing action research. Hence, they recommended that for teachers are expected to keep practicing CAR projects they need to be supported both externally such as support from expert mentors along with the internal support such as from school principals and colleagues. Support can also be given in the form of incentives and broad access for publishing teachers‘ works. This study implicates that providing considerable support for teacher researcher is critical to sustain them engaging in CAR practices which is one the avanue of growing as professional teachers that eventually impact on their students learning achievement and their self development.