“Trapped in the reform”: Kindergarten teachers’ experiences of teacher professionalisation in Buleleng,Indonesia

Abstract

Indonesia has been conducting a teacher reform program since 2005. Teachers’ low status and the crisis of student achievement are the rationales of this reform. This paper investigates the implications of Indonesian neo-liberal teacher reform on kindergarten teachers’ professional experiences and practices. The research was conducted in Buleleng regency, the northern part of Bali Province, Indonesia. This research used focus group discussion to obtain general information about teacher reform/professionalisation in the Buleleng regency. In-depth interviews were conducted to gather richer information about teachers’ personal experiences of professionalisation. Drawing from Osgood’s deconstruction of professionalism in early childhood education (ECE), this paper argues that the teacher reform policies have failed to recognise the uniqueness of ECE teaching practices, which are centred on emotion and care. The reform has also overlooked the disadvantaged conditions and unequal playing field of kindergarten teachers in the professionalisation process. Thus, despite the improvement of teachers’ individual welfare, the “regulatory gaze” of teacher reform policies poses a subtle threat to kindergarten teachers’ professional identities.

Keywords

Neo-liberalism early childhood education Indonesia teacher reform

Introduction

International finance agencies, such as the World Bank and IMF, introduced neo-liberal reforms in Indonesia since the rise of the New Order regime (1966–1998) in the mid-1960s, which embraced foreign investment and Western-supported development (Rosser, 2012). In response to the Asian economic crisis which hit the Indonesian economy in 1997, the IMF forced the government to implement further neo-liberal reforms such as the massive reduction in tariffs and elimination of subsidies of daily goods, and the privatisation of public services (Dalrymple, 1998; Parente, 2009). In this period Indonesia moved from an emphasis on development to neo-liberal globalism (Gellert, 2005). The reform agenda stretched to the education sector. Within neo-liberal doctrine, education is defined as a mechanism for producing quality workers for the economy (Robertson, 2007). Therefore, transformation of the education system is very important for future economic development (Lee, 2012; Robertson, 2007).

In 2003, the Indonesian government established the 2003 Indonesia National Education System Act (INESA, 2003) as a marker of the new era of educational reform (Raihani, 2007). In 2005, the government also established the law of teacher and lecturer to improve teacher quality as an important element of the reform. This law marked the beginning of teacher professionalisation in Indonesia. The underlying discourse of the teacher reform is a neo-liberal discourse of human capital, which associates well-trained professional teachers with educational outcome of the children (Adriany and Saefullah, 2015; Formen and Nutall, 2014; OECD, 2006). As a consequence, teachers have also become subject to a “regulatory gaze”, which restricts teachers’ autonomy (Osgood, 2006: 6).

Indonesian teacher reform has been ongoing for more than 10 years. A few studies have been conducted to determine the implications of the reform on student outcomes and actual teacher competence in the Indonesian context (see Abdullah, 2015; Agus et al., 2016; Chang et al., 2014); and the implementation of the certification process in terms of illegal fees (Malkab et al., 2015). Among those few studies, research specifically aimed at understanding early childhood education (ECE) teachers’ experiences in the reform is scant.

This paper investigates the implications of teacher reform policies on the experience and practices of kindergarten teachers who live in Buleleng, a regency in the province of Bali. What is meant by the term “ECE teachers” in this paper is ECE practitioners who teach in a kindergarten (the Indonesian formal ECE setting). Indonesia has three forms of ECE organisation: formal ECE, non-formal ECE, and informal ECE (Yulindrasari, 2014). Formal ECE comprises kindergartens and Islamic kindergartens (raudhatul athfal); non-formal ECEs consist of playgroups, child/day care, and other forms of ECE; informal ECE comprises family-based ECE services. The teacher and lecturer law excludes practitioners in non-formal and informal ECEs from the category of teacher. Consequently, only ECE practitioners in kindergartens (formal ECE settings) are affected by the teacher reform. Therefore, kindergarten teachers are the focus of this study.

This paper is organised as follows: in the first section, we discuss the neo-liberal principles embedded in Indonesian education reform. The rationale of the reform and the process of professionalisation for in-service teachers will be explained. Secondly, we will briefly explain the methodology of the study. Lastly, we will discuss teachers’ lived experiences related to professionalisation. Throughout this paper, we argue that the teacher reform policies have failed to recognise the uniqueness of ECE teaching practices, which are centred on emotion and care. The reform has also overlooked the disadvantaged conditions and unequal playing field of kindergarten teachers in the professionalisation process. Thus, despite the improvement of teacher’s individual welfare, the “regulatory gaze” (Osgood, 2006: 5) of teacher reform policies would pose a subtle threat to kindergarten teachers’ professional identities.

Neo-liberalism and Indonesian teacher reform

Early definitions of neo-liberalism emphasised economic policy characterised by the privatisation of government enterprises, deregulation or reduced government intervention in the economy, and competitiveness or the deployment of market mechanisms (Cox, 1996). However, Ferguson (2009) explains that the term neo-liberalism has been applied to diverse phenomena. According to Ferguson (2009: 170), neo-liberalism is “a regime of policy and practices” that works through and, at the same time, produces neo-liberal agents. Using Ferguson’s (2009) definition, this section analyses the neo-liberal principles embedded in the policy and practices of the Indonesian teacher reform.

The rationale of teacher reform

Neo-liberal principles can be found in the rationale of the reform (Robertson, 2007). Reforming education and teachers to fix student performance in global competitions is a clue to the neo-liberal discourses embedded in the policy (Connell, 2013; Murphy, 2014). Chang et al. (2014) highlight two points of the rationale behind Indonesian teacher reform: 1) the low level of student achievement in the quantitative international tests such as the TIMSS test, PISA, and PIRLS; and 2) the low status of teachers that triggers high rates of teacher absenteeism, high prevalence of teachers having second jobs, and poor-quality candidates as teachers. Young children are not subject to international standardised tests; however, neo-liberal doctrine suggests that investing in early education would result in higher economic return (Becker, [1964] 1993; Penn, 2010). There are widely accepted assumptions that the ECE is prospective to produce citizens with better educational attainment, better future employability, and fewer social illnesses (Adriany and Saefullah, 2015; Bundy, 2012; Dahlberg and Moss, 2005; Yasmin, 2012). The discourse operating within those assumptions is called the human capital discourse (Becker, [1964] 1993: 164). The neo-liberal human capital discourse dictates education as an investment to produce globally competitive agents for future economic development (Adriany and Saefullah, 2015; Ailwood, 2008; Davies and Bansel, 2007; Formen and Nutall, 2014; Purnastuti et al., 2015). The discourse places children as a “collection of assets that must be continually invested in, nurtured, managed and developed” (Martin, 2000: 582) to be a neo-liberal self (Gershon, 2011).

Teachers, as the “gardeners” of the “growing plants” (i.e. children) (Malone, 2007: 515), become subject to governmental control and regulations to ensure that the government’s attempts to shape future neo-liberal agents are successful. As part of these attempts, the government generates a set of policies to standardise and control teachers’ practices, as well as to prescribe characteristics and a list of competencies of the future citizens to be produced by the teachers. In 2009, the Ministry of National Education (now the Ministry of Education and Culture) established the first Indonesian standard of ECE (Ministry of National Education, 2009). In 2014, the Minister of Education and Culture replaced regulation number 58 with two new regulations: regulation number 137, concerning the National Standard of ECE; and number 147, concerning the 2013 curriculum of ECE. These standards regulate children’s minimum developmental attainment, learning content in ECE, learning process, assessment procedures, minimum ECE infrastructures, teacher requirements, and ECE finance (Ministry of Education and Culture, 2014). All teachers and schools should arrange their practices according to these standards.

The other rationale of the teacher reform is teachers’ low status that increases teachers’ absenteeism, which in turn lowers the quality of education (Chang et al., 2014). Before the reform, many teachers did not have a university teaching degree, and only 25 percent of them had a high-school-equivalent teacher education (Chang et al., 2014). Teachers’ salaries were also very low. In 2009, the initial salary of secondary school teachers was 38 percent of the average per capita income. It increased to 52 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita after 15 years, with the top-of-scale salary as much as 56 percent of GDP per capita. This rate has placed Indonesia in the lowest rank of teacher salary in the Asia-Pacific (UNESCO, 2014).

Among Indonesian teachers, ECE teachers are the lowest on the hierarchy of teacher’s status. Most ECEs are community based and small scale. Only 51.9 percent of the ECE teachers have a bachelor degree, which is small compared to the percentage of teachers with bachelor degrees in primary schools (81%) and secondary schools (90%) (Ministry of Education and Culture, 2016c). ECE teachers also suffer from low salary. Official data of ECE teachers’ average monthly income is difficult to find. However, our 14 years’ experience in the field allows us to be familiar with their income condition. Their monthly salary ranges from only 75,000 rupiah (US$5) to up to 3,000,000 rupiah (US$230), depending on the scale and status of the school and the civil service/private status of the teacher (Kompas, 2016; Sinar Harapan, 2015). Civil service teachers who usually teach in public kindergartens have a salary way above the average ECE teachers’ salary. The national standard of civil service teacher’s salary is at least 1,926,000 rupiah (US$147) per month (National Civil Services News, 2016). However, the proportion of civil service teachers in ECE is very small, compared to the number of private teachers. The 2015 statistical report shows that ECE teachers comprise only 82,435 (23%) of civil-servant teachers and 274,527 (77%) of private teachers (Centre of Data and Statistics for Education and Culture, 2015b).

The private/civil-servant status of the teachers significantly affects teachers’ welfare; a teachers’ welfare does not necessarily correspond with their level of education, the length of experience as a teacher, and their training qualifications. Civil service teachers are eligible for the civil service standard salary, with entitlements of health and retirement benefits. On the other hand, the salary of private teachers depends on the capability of the school. Most ECE providers are not profit-oriented. Many of the providers charge low tuition fees to attract more families to place their children at the school. Thus, many of the schools cannot afford to pay a decent salary to their teachers. For example, one of the schools in this study has three teachers, including the school principal, who also plays the role of main teacher. The school has only 18 pupils and charges the parents as much as 35,000 rupiah (US$2.6) per month. The school is a private school that relies heavily on the tuition fees from parents. In one month, the school only earns 630,000 rupiah (US$48.30). Consequently, the teachers get less than 200,000 rupiah (US$15.33) per month, which is equal to only 10 percent of the regional minimum wage in the district. The money covers only the cost of transport from their house to the school. The teachers also do not get any health and retirement funds. Therefore, to some extent, there is a high discrepancy in welfare between civil service teachers and private teachers.

Reforming teachers’ capacity

The government established a set of regulations to transform the condition and status of teachers. In 2005, the government established the teacher and lecturer law and started teacher reform to support the 2003 Indonesia National Education Act. Later, in 2007, the government also established the Minister for National Education’s regulation number 16 about the standard of teacher qualifications and competencies. Then, in 2008, the government established another government regulation – number 78 – about teachers. These regulations standardise teacher qualifications, competencies, management, and development. They also regulate teachers’ additional allowances to improve the status of the profession (Yulindrasari, 2014). The allowance is called the professional allowance, which is earned through a mechanism of teacher’s quality assurance called certification (Chang et al., 2014). In-service teachers get certified through one of two mechanisms: a portfolio and 10 days’ professional teacher training, called Pendidikan dan Latihan Profesi Guru (Ministry of Education and Culture, 2016b). Certified teachers are eligible for a monthly allowance called professional allowance (Chang et al., 2014).

In 2014, the government started to regulate the allowance to be performance-based, requiring certified teachers to be assessed monthly by the school principal and to pass an annual online test called the teacher’s competence test (TCT) (UNESCO, 2015). The TCT consists of 10 groups of competencies. The National Standard of ECE and National Curriculum of ECE describes the 10 groups of competencies in detail. The TCT tests teachers’ mastery of the competencies. The groups of competencies tested by TCT are: 1) understanding young children’s growth and development; 2) theory of play and kindergarten children’s development; 3) curriculum and learning program in kindergarten; 4) learning strategies in kindergarten; 5) information technology in kindergarten learning; 6) learning content and resources in kindergarten; 7) effective communication in kindergarten; 8) assessment and evaluation in kindergarten; 9) action research in kindergarten; and 10) sustainable professional development for kindergarten teachers. The TCT result determines a teacher’s eligibility to receive the allowance.

In 2016, the use of TCT test results as a basis for determining teachers’ allowance continues to prevail under a new scheme of teachers’ sustainable professional development called the Guru Pembelajar program (Teachers as Learners/TL) for certified teachers (Ministry of Education and Culture, 2016a). The TL program arranges three modes of learning: online learning, face-to-face learning, and online-combination learning (Ministry of Education and Culture, 2016a). Within this scheme, each teacher has a “report” consisting of individual test results for the 10 groups of competencies assessed in the TCT. A failed result on any group of competencies will be marked red in the report.

The number of red marks in the report classifies teachers into four groups. These groups determine the mode of learning and how many training modules the teacher should go through. The first group comprises teachers who get no red marks, or only one or two red marks. They are given the opportunity to get an extra 100 hours’ government-funded training to be a national instructor or mentor for other teachers in their region. The second group are teachers who get three to five red marks. They are obliged to complete online teacher training mentored by their peers, the teachers from the first category. The third group are teachers who receive six or seven red marks. They need to undertake an online combination mode, which mixes online and face-to-face teacher training. The fourth group are teachers who get eight, nine, or 10 red marks. They must complete 60 hours of face-to-face teacher training and pay a certain amount of money from their own pocket to pay for the training (Ministry of Education and Culture, 2016a). Their expenses include the training fee, transportation, and accommodation costs. The school leaders also receive additional duties as instructional leaders as well as supervisors for the teachers. The school leaders become an extension of the government’s hand, providing training within the school environment, especially for newly qualified teachers (UNESCO, 2015).

Method

Research location

This research was conducted in Buleleng district, a small town in the northern end of Bali province. There were 292 ECE centres in this district: 25 public kindergartens, 231 private kindergartens, and 61 non-formal ECEs (Centre of Data and Statistics for Education and Culture, 2016). As it is at the national level, ECE centres in Buleleng are run mostly by a private foundation/company. However, Buleleng district is unique in terms of its approach to ECE development. In 2015, the local government of Buleleng adopted 14 private kindergartens and changed their ownership to government ownership (Buleleng Education Authorities, 2015). Before the adoption, Buleleng district had three public kindergartens. It had successfully reached the national target of providing ECE in every village in the district; however, the targeted gross enrolment rate (GER), which was 75 percent by 2015, had not yet been reached. According to the Centre of Data and Statistics for Education and Culture (2015a), Buleleng’s ECE GER was 69.20 percent. There were 37,644 children enrolled in ECE centres; 15,992 of them enrolled in the formal type of ECE, which was the kindergarten. Nevertheless, the “mother of ECE”¹ of Buleleng received a national award called Anugrah Bunda² PAUD (Mother of ECE Award) for its innovative and successful attempt at increasing the GER.

This district had 142 certified teachers out of 726 kindergarten teachers. Using our network, we invited five certified kindergarten teachers to participate in a focus group discussion (FGD). All five consenting teachers were female with more than 10 years’ experience of teaching. Four teachers worked in private kindergartens and one in the public kindergarten. The FGD was audio-recorded and then transcribed. Individual interviews were conducted as follow-up to the FGD. The FGD was conducted in June 2016 and the follow-up interviews were conducted in August 2016. The questions asked in the FGD were about income, work-load, and competence before and after certification. In the follow-up interviews, we asked more questions about teachers’ perceptions and personal experiences of maintaining professional identity. All respondents’ names quoted in this paper are pseudonyms.

Teacher professionalisation in the eyes of Buleleng’s teachers

Osgood (2006: 6) introduced the term “regulatory gaze” in her analysis of the UK government policy documents, Every Child Matters and The Ten Years Strategy, related to ECE professionalisation. The term “regulatory gaze” refers to a hegemonic government professionalism discourse embodied in the policy documents or regulations that shape and control the behaviour of the subordinates (teachers) according to certain standards regulated by the power elite (the government). Under the “regulatory gaze”, teachers are struggling to make their practices accountable, standard, and performative (Osgood, 2006). In the Indonesian context, the “regulatory gaze” includes tempting material compensation, called professional allowance. However, professionalisation also demands extra workload and burdens for the teachers. The two sections below describe certified kindergarten teachers’ experiences in the professionalisation process. The first section discusses their experience with the professional allowance. The second section discusses teachers’ experiences relating to compliance with the procedures of maintaining their professional status and maintaining their eligibility to get the allowance.

Professional allowance tension: blessing and burden

All the respondents in this study welcomed the government’s attempts to professionalise their profession. Professionalisation seems to be attractive and an opportunity to improve their status. One of the respondents, Niluh, a private kindergarten teacher, happily explained her feelings when she received the professional certificate. She said,

I felt like I got a blessing [from God]. Among thousands of teachers I got elected [to go through the certification process], and I passed. The certificate is the fruit of my patience. After twelve years of dedication finally I received acknowledgment.

Four respondents in this study were teachers from private kindergartens. It is understandable that they see the certification as an oasis of their role as children’s educators. They felt more respected and acknowledged. They also saw the professionalisation, commonly referred to as certification, as an opportunity to improve their income, which had been very low for many years. Before certification, their monthly salary ranged from 200,000 rupiah (US$15.33) to 500,000 rupiah (US$38). These salaries were significantly lower than Buleleng’s minimum regional wage, which was 1,839,750.00 rupiah (US$141) (Wicaksono, 2015). After being certified, they received a quarterly professional allowance of as much as 4,500,000 rupiah (US$344.5), a significant increase of 300 percent on their initial salary. However, the allowance that they received was not unconditional and there were consequences to be borne.

Most respondents agreed that the mechanism of certification was burdensome. They needed to document all their work, participating in seminars at their own expense, and making sure they pass the TCT. As explained earlier, there is a wide gap in terms of welfare between civil service teachers and private teachers. It is easier for civil service teachers to spend their professional allowance on the educational training and technology they need, since they already have a salary that is enough to cover their basic living costs. Shanti, another respondent who was also a private school principal, commented:

Yes, it right that we [certified teachers] receive professional allowance as much as four million rupiah every three months. But then we have to go to seminars, conferences, and training at our cost. The seminar alone costs at least 150,000 rupiah. We also have to spend for transport and food. If we do not pass the TCT, and have more than seven red marks in our report, we need to pay 500,000 rupiah for the training. That does not include transport and accommodation. We ended up not using that allowance money for our personal needs. We spent most of it to maintain certification.

Osgood (2006) warns that the professionalisation of ECE teachers is both a temptation and a trap, where a genuine reform will be difficult to accomplish since it focuses more on a technical and rational model of professional development. Shanti’s comment shows that the allowance has successfully trapped the teachers. Teachers will focus more on technical procedures, such as assessment, accreditation, targets, and accountability, to prove their professional competence (Osgood, 2006). In this study, their focus is on fulfilling administrative requirements, such as the daily teaching journal, teaching plan documents, proof of teaching hours, and passing the TCT.

Even though when all the certification-related expenses were included the allowance was not significant in increasing their income, respondents’ thought it was worth maintaining their access to the allowance. They had submitted themselves to a mechanism of control and surveillance that made them powerless and, thus, did not have any choice except to conform. Niluh was crying in the interview when she explained her burden and her helplessness.

Teachers have a lot to do. The administrative work is enormous. We also have to do a test every year. If we do not pass the test we will lose the allowance. I am always very anxious. I am afraid that I will lose my allowance. Sometimes I am sad and tired. I hold my tears and fix my emotions before going to the class [to teach]. I have to be always cheerful in front of my students. All I can do is let everything in God’s hands.

Niluh’s comment reflects the notion of “passive resistance” (Osgood, 2004: 18), which refers to a condition of being in disagreement with a government policy but powerless to resist actively: the options are to comply or to resign from the profession. Niluh felt frustrated by the way the top-down policy affected her work, time, and energy, yet she could not resist it. “Letting everything in God’s hands” is a sign of powerlessness, the feeling of being unable to change anything. Niluh’s comment shows the paradox of the neo-liberal self who is docile and yet free (Rose, 1999). On the one hand, teachers as neo-liberal agents are seen as having freedom to choose and be responsible for their futures (Gershon, 2011). On the other hand, the certification, TCT, and Guru Pembelajar (TL) as “the disciplinary technology of the self” (Osgood, 2006: 7) have made teachers powerless to the state norms of “good teachers” for financial reasons. Therefore, it is not surprising if the certification does not have a significant impact on teachers’ competencies in the classroom, as has been found in the studies by Abdullah (2015) and Agus et al. (2016).

Tension between actual practices and the assessment

ECE professionalisation in Indonesia has adopted a neo-liberal professionalism, which prioritises traditionally masculine attributes such as rationality, individualism, and competition, which are contradictory to the initial beliefs and practices of ECE (Osgood, 2006). The teachers’ pedagogical performances are not assessed and valued based on their real practices in the classroom, which involves a lot of care and emotion (Acker, 1995). Instead, the teachers are assessed and judged based on their answers to theoretical questions, which they must complete using a masculine information technology (Lang, 2007) that devalues the care and emotional aspect of kindergarten teaching.

Most of the respondents complained that the TCT, an online test to measure their teaching competence, and its consequences are bothersome. Their concerns were: first, that many teachers were not familiar with computer and online technology; and second, the questions in the TCT are heavily theoretical and very academic. Kartini, a public kindergarten teacher, admitted that she had difficulty with the technology. She clicked a wrong icon and all the problems and questions that she had to answer were gone from the screen. She lost 40 points (from a total of 100 points) because of that. Ida, a respondent from a private kindergarten, who was luckily more familiar with information technology than others, claimed that she spent time to help teach her colleagues how to use a laptop, create an email account, and register them on the TL system. But she could not help her colleagues operate the computer during the test.

According to the neo-liberal perspective, the neo-liberal agents are responsible for their future success and failure, regardless of their disadvantages and the unequal playing field (Gershon, 2011). Thus, neo-liberal teacher reform fails to recognise the diverse characteristics of early childhood teachers in Indonesia. Economic status, age, and geographical location determine teachers’ exposure to technology and theoretical educational training. Sunarti, a 53-year-old private school teacher, had 12 years of teaching experience but failed the TCT. She said,

I had high blood pressure on the day I had the test. I am old. I didn’t understand how to use the computer. I couldn’t memorise anything. I was blank. I was dizzy and nauseous. I went out of the class and vomited.

Shanti, her school principal, was surprised with the result as she recognised Sunarti’s actual capability of teaching young children. Shanti commented:

I never doubt Sunarti’s capability of teaching our students. She has tried the test [TCT] three times [and failed]. Maybe it was because the test was too theoretical. You know … memorising theory is easy for young teachers. For us [older teachers] it is very difficult. I think that was why Sunarti failed. I am sure if the test is like this [theoretical], lots of old teachers with decades of teaching experience will fail, and only those who are still young with less field experience will pass [the test].

Sunarti’s 12 years of teaching experience was devalued. She has devotedly taught young children for 12 years, despite receiving a salary as low as 500,000 rupiah (US$38) per month. That amount of money was not enough to cover one-month’s living cost, let alone to pay for non-sponsored educational training and access to technology that costs a lot more than what she earns. As a teacher who was already 53 years old, Sunarti could not compete with young teachers who were freshly graduated from universities with more time to study and a fresher mind to grasp new theoretical concepts.

Sunarti’s story is typical for ECE teachers. Their actual expertise and skills in teaching young children have been reduced to their answers to 100 multiple-choice questions, which are frequently completed using unfamiliar technology. The geographical location and economic characteristics of Buleleng, which is not a wealthy regency in Bali, has also contributed to the lack of facilities, such as the availability of an ECE teacher training centre and the Internet technology that is required in the process of certification. Many times, the teachers in Buleleng must travel to Denpasar, the capital city of Bali Province, for professional training. This is very costly and must be covered out of their own personal funds.

The masculinised teacher reform has depreciated the emotional aspect of ECE teaching (Osgood, 2006). Teachers in this study started their ECE career out of their altruistic spirit. They saw their profession as a vocation and dedication. Niluh explained,

I have an extra job at home. I have a grocery shop that I also need to manage. But I cannot leave the school [where she works]. I am never absent from the school, except when I had to have a caesarean section. I left the school for two weeks, but my mind was occupied with the school. I kept wondering how the school was doing without me.

Failure to recognise the emotional aspect of ECE teaching and subjecting teachers to a constant feeling of failure from the TCT would negatively impact teachers’ confidence and self-esteem – qualities that are needed to achieve a professional status in ECE (Osgood, 2006). The teachers might question and devalue their practices or continue their practices as usual and comply with the certification process only to get the allowance, without any effort to improve their practice. Thus, the transformation effect expected from the teacher reform will be difficult to achieve.

Conclusion

Neo-liberal teacher reform as a part of Indonesian Education Reform has played the role of a “regulatory gaze” (Osgood, 2006: 6) to control and normalise teachers. By implementing this reform, the government expects a transformation in teaching practices to facilitate the production of future neo-liberal agents. However, the failure of the government in recognising the unique complexity of ECE teachers has led to further disadvantage for ECE teachers, especially those who are not civil service teachers. The increase in workload, economic expenses, and psychological pressure is inevitable. This study indicates that the professional allowance has generated the fear of economic non-survival as an instrument to produce a neo-liberal self (Davies and Bansel, 2007). The risk is that there would be a shift of motivation in ECE teaching from emotional motivation to financial motivation.

This paper shows that there is a discrepancy between the government’s definition of professional ECE teachers and the actual teachers’ practices in the field. The TCT, which is organised rigidly based on the National ECE Standard, reflects a neo-liberal “technocratic view of teaching” that sees “teachers as a technician who deliver standardized curriculum” (Nygreen et al., 2015: 113). The masculine procedures of professional development and its measurement narrow down ECE teaching skills to Internet-based theoretical test results, which is not at the heart of ECE practices. As a consequence, there are teachers who are excluded from the certified teacher’s identity, regardless of their actual skills in teaching young children. For the Indonesian case, we recommend a re-conceptualisation of professionalism for ECE teachers. It would be worth considering local lead teachers, who understand the specific needs of local ECEs as well as the importance of emotional aspects in ECE, as the assessors of teachers in their local area. Instead of quantifying and reducing teachers’ performance into a multiple-choice test, a qualitative assessment would be more suitable to capture teachers’ actual pedagogical skills. Instead of a numerical score, a qualitative assessment allows on-target and practical feedback for teachers to improve their pedagogical skills, performance, and classroom practices.

In conclusion, this paper exemplifies a top-down governmental concept of professionalism that does not represent the real practices of teachers in the field, thus hindering the realisation of the expected transformation in early childhood classrooms. This paper provides insight into the importance of including locality, actual classroom pedagogical performance, and teacher–student interactions in the process and mechanism of ECE teachers’ professionalisation.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank our colleagues Ika Damayanti, Dian Fikriani, and Sarita Galvez who have been continuously supporting us and willing to spare their time reading and constructively commenting on our draft. We would also like to thank our research assistant, Dessy Rumilasari, who helped us with the transcription of the voice-recorded interviews.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Orcid ID

Hani Yulindrasari

Notes

Hani Yulindrasari is a lecturer and researcher in Early Childhood Teacher Education program at the Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia. She has a background in Psychology from Universitas Gadjah Mada, Yogyakarta ?Indonesia and Gender Studies from the University of Melbourne, Australia. She has currently completed a doctoral degree in Gender Studies with masculinities in the field of early childhood education as her research area. Her last publication is Contemporary Discourses of Motherhood and Fatherhood in Ayahbunda, a Middle Class Indonesian Parenting Magazine in Marriage and Family Review, co-authored with Prof Katharine McGregor from the University of Melbourne. Hani is also a regular article contributor for Child Research Net resources blog based in Japan and Indonesia@Melbourne blog based in the University of Melbourne, Australia.

Putu Rahayu Ujianti is a lecturer and researcher in Early Childhood Teacher Education program in the Universitas Pendidikan Ganesha, Singaraja – Indonesia. She has a bachelor degree in Psychology from Universitas Gadjah Mada, Yogyakarta and Master of Psychology from Universitas Airlangga, Surabaya – Indonesia. Her research fields are early childhood education, mental health, and teacher training. She is also a certified living values trainer for teachers and parents.

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