These are the slides from my presentation in the Comparative and international Education Society Annual Meeting March 2013 in New Orleans, USA. It was about one of Indonesia's biggest education reform initiatives, the teacher certification program. My study was still a preliminary stage, and in here I attempted to unpack what we had known about the impact of the Indonesian certification program. The results were quite surprising.

1. Teacher Certification and
The Quest for Teacher
Quality in Indonesia
Presented at the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) Annual Conference,
New Orleans, March 13, 2013
Iwan Syahril
Michigan State University
Special thanks to the Educational Policy Program at Michigan State University
for its support in this presentation

2. Presentation
Outline
• Teacher Certification Policy in Indonesia
• Teacher Professionalism Framework
• Question & Data Collection
• Findings
• Lessons Learned
• Final Notes

3. 17,501 islands; 240 million people; 350 ethnic groups; 745 languages;
55.8 million students; 3.8 million teachers; 314,000 schools; 34 provinces (ADB, 2010)
Figure 1 : Indonesian Map (http://www.freeworldmaps.net/asia/indonesia/indonesia-map-political-big.jpg)

4. Government
Society
Teachers
Figure 2. Indonesia’s Strategy for Teacher Quality Improvement ( Adapted from Jalal et al., 2009).

5. Teacher Law No. 14/2005 Minimum bachelor’s degree +
Certification Exam
Base salary doubled
Teacher Certification Policy 2007 --> 37.5% teachers w/ min
BA/BSc degree.
2015 --> all teachers certified!
Social
Pedagogical Competence
Competence (community
(teaching participation)
ability) Personal Professional
Competence Competence
(character & role model) (training & education)
Figure 3. Teacher Certification Policy in Indonesia

6. Figure 4. Teacher Certification Mechanism (SMERU, 2012)

7. A profession
(Hargreaves, 2000)
• A profession should have:
✓ a shared culture, specialized knowledge base,
and standards of practice developed and
advanced by members of the profession;
✓ a monopoly over practice with a service ethic
by being committed to client’s needs;
✓ a great degree of autonomy, controlling practice
according to its own standards, norms and
ethics.

8. Professional Capital
(Hargreaves & Fullan, 2012)
• Being professional: quality &
standards of practice (e.g., all
teachers must have bachelor’s
degree & pass certification exam).
• Being a professional: status &
standing. (e.g., doubling base salary,
social standing).
• Professional capital: human,
social, decisional (Hargreaves &
Fullan, 2012).

9. Human Pedagogical
Competence
capital (teaching ability)
Personal
Social Competence
(character, role model)
Capital
Professional
Competence
Decisional (training & education)
Capital
Social
Competence
(community engagement)

10. Professional Increased Being
knowledge, professional,
Training & skills; improved being a
Assessment welfare professional
Teacher Teacher Teacher
Certification Quality Professionalism
Figure 5. The Logic of The Indonesian Teacher Certification Policy.

11. Costing about $5.6 billion, the Indonesian teacher certification
program is perhaps the most expensive one in the
(developing) world (Fahmi, Maulana,Yusuf, 2011).
Question:
Does the Indonesian teacher certification improve
teacher and teaching quality?
What do we know so far?

12. Data Collection
• Search engine: Google Scholar.
• Keywords: teacher certification,
Indonesia; sertifikasi guru.
• Analyzed the first 25 result pages.
• Articles accessible through MSU services.

13. Results
• 43 full papers, 57 abstracts.
• First filter: research-based, talking about
impacts of teacher certification: 13 papers.
• Second filter: clear methodology, at least 10
references: 6 papers.

14. Study Findings Notes
Teacher Certification and 1) Only the first 4 months of
Student Test Scores: Evidence school year.
from Indonesia No significant impact on 2) Should have been matched
Author: Prita N. Kusumawardhani. students’ test scores. with previous, not present
teachers.
Source: Master’s thesis, Tinbergen Institute. 3) Estimate, not actual scores.
Improving Teacher 1) The certified teachers do not Unclear link between methods
and results (no report on data
Professionalism through show significant from interview data,
Certification Program: An performance improvement.
observation, FGD); thus the
Indonesian Case Study conclusion is questionable.
Author: Triyanto. 2) There are some serious issues Unclear definitions on key
with the portfolio assessment: data terms: teacher performance,
Source: World Academy of Science,
Engineering and Technology, 67, 2012. discrepancies, bribery, and and significant/insignificant
falsification of documents. teacher performance.
The performance evaluation of 1)The evaluation instrument was
the certified high school reliable.
physics, biology, and chemistry No detailed description on
teachers. 2) The majority of certified how the items in the
Authors: Yusrizal, Soewarno S., science (biology, physics, instruments were
Zarlaida Fitri chemistry) teachers displayed constructed and validated.
Source: Jurnal Penelitian dan Evaluasi
Pendidikan, Tahun 15, Nomor 2, 2011.
good teaching performance.

15. Study Findings Notes
The Influence of the Certified The teachers usually
Vocational Teachers’ All independent variables (certified selected to be certified had
Competence, Years of Service, teachers’ competence, years of already been good teachers,
& Socioeconomic Background experience and socioeconomic incl. work discipline.
towards Teachers’ Work background) have a positive
Discipline in Pati Regency significant influence towards Unclear elements of teacher
Author: Sutikno. work discipline. competence were
Source: Varia Pendidikan, Vol.22, No.1, Juni 2010. quantified.
The performance assessment of
Unclear how observation
certified teachers using instrument was constructed.
professional teachers’ The certified teachers’
competence written in Law No. competence in general is Unclear how the assessors were
14/2005. selected, trained, & how
Authors: Arif Firdausi Ananda,
good (the second top out of five observations were conducted
levels of assessment criteria). (assessors were teachers’
Amat Mukhadis, Andoko. supervisors, colleagues [certified or
Source: Teknologi dan Kejuruan, Vol. 33, No. 1, Februari
non-certified?], and students.)
2010: 65-80.
Teacher Certification in Teacher certification may have A solid paper!
Indonesia: A Confusion of no impact on students’ Review the renumeration
Means and Ends achievement (education quality). mechanism if it is not working to
Authors: Mohamad Fahmi, improve quality.
Achmad Maulana, & Arief Anshory Teacher certification may have The mechanism should be based
Yusuf. improved teachers’ living on criteria on the performance in
Source: Center for Economics and Development Studies,
Padjadjaran University, July 2011 standard. improving quality (e.g., test scores)

16. Lessons Learned
• Unclear and inconclusive (3 positive/good, 3 no
impacts); notes.
• Academic upgrading & welfare
improvement do not show any clear impact on
quality improvement: teacher knowledge, student
learning outcomes (World Bank, 2012).

17. Teacher Certification does not make an impact on
student learning!
Figure 6. The causal effects of teacher certification on student learning (World Bank, 2012)

18. Academic upgrading does not make an impact on
teacher quality! (subject matter knowledge)
A clear improvement in academic qualifications Teachers with bachelor’s degree performed
(World Bank, 2012). only marginally better in subject matter tests
(World Bank, 2012).
Figure 7. the growth of the number of Indonesian teachers with a
bachelor’s degree from 2006-2010
Figure 8. the growth of the number of Indonesian teachers with a
bachelor’s degree from 2006-2010

19. Past studies on
Indonesian teachers
• More fundamental problems with Indonesian
teachers:
✓ the institutional culture - the civil servant
mentality (Bjork, 2005).
✓ the teacher-centered approach, rote learning as a
common practice (Zulfikar, 2009).
• Change is not easy (Lim, Pagram & Nastiti, 2009).
• Question: How does the teacher certification
policy tackle these problems?

20. A glimpse of hope?
• Welfare improvement is a huge part of the program: 91%
of the program cost is for professional allowance. Is it
worth it?
• The incentive structure embedded in the policy has
attracted more students to enroll in teacher education
programs and more university graduates to enter the
teaching force (USAID, 2009; World Bank, 2010).

21. A side but equally powerful note:
Research on Indonesian Education
is in a deep crisis:
more quantity & more quality!
• More research and easier access (database,
data management).
• Scholarly work: better language use,
improved methodology.

22. Good policies are costly, bad
policies cost more!
Iwan Syahril
syahrili@msu.edu
Special thanks to the Educational Policy Program at Michigan State University
for its support in this presentation.