TEACHING EXPERTISE AND ITS URGENCY FOR BEING PROFESSIONAL TEACHER

MUDAWALI

MASTER IN TEACHER EDUCATION

UNIVERSITY OF TAMPERE, FINLANDIA

PROFESSOR EERO ROPO

APRIL 22nd, 2016

 CONTENTS

Title Page
Table on Content
A. Introduction
B. Expertise in Teaching
C. Acquiring Teaching Expertise
D. The Importance of Teacher Professionalism in Education
E. Conclusion
References
 Teaching Expertise and Its Urgency for Being Professional Teacher
By Mudawali
Introduction
The Results of teacher competence test or Uji Kompetensi Guru (UKG) 2015 that was held in
November 2015 already released. Based on the information circulating that the result of UKG 2015 was
generally still below passing grade that have been determined. The result of National UKG average of
53.02, while the government is targeting average grade at 55. In addition, the average number of
subject matter competency 54.77, while the average grade of pedagogical competency 48.94. UKG
2015 results were achieved above-average grade that have been targeted previously only 7 provinces,
namely West Java, Central Java, Yogyakarta, Jakarta, Bali, East Java, and Bangka Belitung. In other word,
there were 27 provinces below the passing grade (Sergur.kemdiknas.go.id , 2016). Furthermore, Based
on the result of Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2012, Indonesian students at
the age of 15 years have low abilties at Math, Sains and Reading. Indonesia was in the rank 64 from 65
participant countries. The everage score of Math, Science and Reading of Indonesian students are far
below average score of OECD countries.
Despite the fact that the result of UKG is still below the expected passing grade, it has to be
admitted that people have high expectation on teachers for good quality of education. The success or
failure of education is often addressed to the teachers. The expectation of society can be understood
as the teacher is a crucial aspect in successful education. Even though a school has best curriculum,
facilities, infrastructure, but if the the teachers are not the expert, it is difficult to achieve high quality
educational outcomes. Therefore,it is important for the teacher to acquire teaching expertise in order
to improve education quality. In this essay, i would like to discuss teaching expertise and its urgency for
being profesional teacher.

Expertise in Teaching
Learn the way to learn is useful because it makes individual learn more effective and efficient.
If an individual eagers to be an expert, he or she needs to learn how to be an expert. Therefore, it is
important for teachers to learn on expertise in teaching because it can contribute to their own
knowledge in delevoping their competencies. Ropo (2004) stated studies on expertise have made an
important contibution to our thinking about profesional knowledge and skills. The teacher
competencies are related with the students achievements. Teaching expertise of the teachers is critical
to help students abilities such as from ignorance to knowing, dependence to independence, unskilled
become skilled and from receiver of knowledge to active learner through teaching leaning process.
According to Amon and Levin (1993) expertise in teaching can be defined as effectiveness in bringing
about desired learning outcomes in students. Ropo (2004) argued that teachers have important role
in organizing studying, directing the conversation and affecting the students live in many other ways
in school. Therefore, it can be argued that teacher expertise in such partly intuitive and artistic, partly
learned interventions, can be assumed to make a difference in student learning.
I argued that it is important to know how expert teachers perfomance in teaching as compared
to novice teachers. The differencies between expert teacher with novice can provide informations to
be analized about how the expert teacher obtain and develop their expertise. Furthermore, it is useful
for novice to learn and develop their competency to approach expert teachers performance.
Tsui described 4 characteristics of expert teachers comparing with novice teacher . First, in the planning
process, Expert teachers excecise more autonomy to make decision and respond flexibly to contextual
discrepancies. Second, expert teacher more efficient in lesson planning. They spend less time for
 planning, and yet their planning is often more effective. This is because expert teacher have in store well
established outines that they can call upon when planning. Third, expert teacher are much more
responsive to contextual cues, and much more ready to make changes to their plan accordingly. Fourth,
in the planning thoughts of expert teachers refelct a rich and integrated knowledge base. They can
integrate their knowledge to deal with many consideration of the school (Tsui, 2003).

Reflection is a process where teachers evaluate their teaching practise and analizing how to
improve their teaching for better learning outcomes. Reflection is an important part to develop
teaching expertise. According to a study by Farrell (2013), reflection is also a key component of
understanding teacher expertise because it can act as tool for teachers to bring this usually
unarticulated concept to a greater level of awareness. Reflection is widely recognised as a crucial
element in the professional growth of teachers. It is assumed that reflection is intrinsically good and
that reflective teachers will improve as teachers (Calderhead and Gates, 1993). Shulman (2004) argued
that critical reflections are at the heart of learning and that reflection is the key to teacher learning and
development.
Teachers require to have certain knowledge to in teaching. Teacher at least should own
knowledge about subject matter, social competency, pedagogical competency and personality
competency. According to Ammon and Levin (1993) there are probably many kinds of understandings
that are required for true expertise in teaching such as subject matter, about interpersonal relations,
and about moral and societal issues involved in teaching. Most central and unique to teaching,
however, are understandings about pedagogy. We interpret understanding here as knowledge.
Furthermore, there is bases knowledge in teaching for teacher regarding subject they teach.
Shulman (2004) has been classified into seven categories of teachers knowledge (at a minimum). First,
content knowledge, it is refer to the amount and organization of knowlege on the subject in the mind of
the teacher. it includes the knowledge contain of the subject it self. Second, general pedagogical
knowledge. It is refer to organisation , strategies and classroom management. Third, curriculum
knowledge. It is refer to knowledges of the programmes, material resources designed for the teaching
of specific subjects. Fourth, pedagogical content knowledge. It involve knowledge of ways of
representingand and formulating the academic content for teaching to learners. Fifth, knowledge of
learners. It is knowledge characterics of students. Sixth, knowledge of educational contexts. It refer to
knowledge of socio-cultural and institutional context. and, Seventh, knowledge of educational ends. It
refer to values, purposes, philosopical and historical grounds.

Acquiring Teaching Expertise

How do we acquire expertise? there are several component related one another in the process of
acquisition of expertise such as knowledge, inteligence, giftedness, experience, and interaction with social
environment. Ropo (2004) stated that
the literature on the acquisition of expertise can be divided into at least three rather seperate
perspectives. First, the acquisition of expertise may be viewed from the standpoint of individual
giftedness, intelligence, or exceptional abalities tha develop through experience or interaction between
heredity and experiences with the environment. The second perspective is the-so called cognitive view
that emphasizes the role of acquired knowledge (both declarative and procedural) in process of
developing expertise. The third framework in the current literature deals with the social theory of
learning in which the acquisition of knowledge and expertise is typically seen as a kind of side effect of
gaining membership of a social network.

Experience is key role in acquasition expertise. But it is important to understand function of

experience has in the process of expertise of acquisition. As citied by ropo studies addresing expert
performance in open and ill-defined task have shown that naure subject experience explain the
performance better than amount or lenght of expeience (sonnetag, more decisive in 1995; waltz,elam,
& curtis, 1993). Here we can understand that the quality of the experiences is more decisive in
acquiring better performance of expertise rather than quantity and duration of experience it self.
Bereiter and Scardamalia (1993) as citied by ropo Suggested that the central determinat of high level
expertise is the subjects ability to surpase his or her previous level of the knowledge and competence.
In addition to experience, intelligence and giftedness also influence the delopment of expertise.
Sternberg (2001) as citied by Ropo has made proposition if giftedness could be seen as developing
expertise. Those concept integrated two theories of giftedness- stable and dinamic.
The cognitive view emphasize the cognitive abiltity in acquiring exertise. Ropo (2004) stated The
cognitive view seen expertise as developed by acquiring knowledge. even though this point of view can
explain exceptional performance in information processing skill or content of experts knowledge base.
But, is someone studied at home all the time to enrich his/her knowledge can be expert? It is can work
that way because it is also need to interact with social environmet to develop expertise. therefore,
social environment cannot be denied in developing expertise.
As social creature, interaction among one another influence individual learning. According to
Ropo (2004) expertise from social view is a kind side effect of acquiring membership of and legitimate
rights in the social network. It can be understood that expertise development is a social process.
individual learns by actualizing his or her self to interact in the social environment. Greeno et al (1996)
as citied by Ropo argued that the concept that widely applied among social theorists of learning is
identity. Identity has had at least two different meanings in the studies. first, it has applied to refer to
the membership aspect of the social network. Second, a persons identity as an active an responsible
learner is also assumed to supportthe acquistion of knowledge. thus, identity and learning is very close
relationship each other. Someone interpretes the world from his or her identity position. The more
flexible we change our identity position the more we acquired expertise.

The Importance of Teacher Professionalism in Education

Being an expert is the demands of the profession, such as engineers, pilots, doctors, or other
profession that has been familiar in the society. But has teacher become an expert as other professions
mentioned above? Teacher clearly a profession and it is need expertise. Therefore, teacher must have
certain skills and standardized by the code of professionalism. According to (Farrell, 2014; Tsui, 2005)
Expertise and the process of developing into an expert deserve more attention because further
research into how teachers develop expertise can help us understand how to identify and cultivate this
skill in less experienced teachers. This in turn would lead to larger numbers of expert teachers and more
quality teaching in schools.
Good quality education, as expected by today's modern society is always challenging, requires
professional teachers. Teachers is not just to teach (transfer of knowledge); it should be the facilitator
of learning. It means that teacher played not single role. According to Harrison and Killion (2007)
proposed that there are ten roles of teacher to support school and students success, those are: resource
provider, instuctional specalist, curriculum specialist, classroom supporter, learning facilitator, mentor,
school leader, data couch, catalyst fo change, and learner.
Professional teachers are important determinant of quality education process. Responding to
the low quality education, it need professional teacher. Teachers are expected not just do the duties,
but teachers must have passion to do their duties rules professionally. Professionalism of teacher can
not be considered only from the lisence of teaching after graduate their study. It is only covering formal
aspect. Those formal qualification should be actualize into parctice.
Conclusion
I start this essay by showing data that described the quality teacher competences in indonesia is big
issue. Lack of teaching expertise influence the outcome of the students achievement. But, people still
have high expectation to the education of their children. Teacher as the active souce is expected to
bring progress for better education quality. Teacher become the main role to deal with that situation.
In order to deal with condition, teacher need to increase the competencies to meet the expectation of
the society to provide improvement in education. In this case, i suggest that teacher should to acquire
teaching expertise to be profesional teacher. Acquisition of expertise is a complex process. the
expertise develop if someone able to pass the limitation of his/her previous knowledge. The existence
of profesional teacher is urgent as solution of the low quality education. In this essay my discussion
focus on teacher aspect and teoritical related teaching expertise. For further discussion, there are many
ideas to discuss, for example, teaching practise processes and classroom management.

References

Ammon, P.A., & Levin, B.B. (1993). Expertise In Teaching From A Developmental Perspective: The
Developmental Teacher Education program at Berkeley. Learning and Individual Differences, 5 (4),
319-326. [online] Available from
https://libres.uncg.edu/ir/uncg/f/B_Levin_Expertise_1993.pdf.[accessed on 20 april 2016]

Calderhead, J and Gates, P (1993) .conceptualizing reflection in teacher development, London: Falmer
Press

Farrell, T. & Bennis, K. (2013). Reflecting on ESL teacher beliefs and classroom practices: A case study.
RELC Journal, 44(2), 163-176.

Hasil UKG Tahun 2016 [online] available at http://sergur.kemdiknas.go.id/pub/index.php[accessed

[accessed on 20 aril 2016]

Harrison, C and Killion, J (2007) Educational Leadership, Oxford: National Staff Development Council

Ropo, E (2004). Profesional Learning Gaps and Transitions on The Ways From Novice to Expert, New
York: Kluwer Academic Pub.

Shulman, L. (2004), The Wisdom of Practise. USA: Jassey-Bass

Calderhead, J and Gates, P (1993) .conceptualizing reflection in teacher development. London: Falmer
press

Tsui, A. (2003). Understanding expertise in teaching: Case studies of second language teachers,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.