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The Problems in Professional Competence of Teachers in Teaching English

Subject at Vocational High Schools

Authors: Syamsinar and Baso Jabu

The professional teachers must have academic qualification and competencies. The
competencies of teacher are pedagogical competence, personal competence, social
competence, and professional competence. As a matter of fact, Gultom in Antar News (2013)
reported that the result of competency examination indicated that the teachers’ quality in
Indonesia was still low. The average score of the teacher competence test on July 1 st, 2012
was 47.84 while the passing grade was 65.

As we know that professional teacher must have competence, Mulyasa (2002) stated
that competence is knowledge, skills, and abilities or capabilities that a person achieves,
which become part of his or her being to the extent he or she can satisfactory perform
particular cognitive, affective, and psychomotor behaviours. In addition, the teachers must
have a number of standard competencies to be professional teacher either based on the
regulation of the minister of national education of the republic of Indonesia no. 16/2007.

Slavik 2008 categorized the teacher’s professional competence into five items, as follows;

a. Mastery a systematic body of knowledge.

b. Ability to apply practical experience in the specialization according to the subject of the
study.

c. Ability to transform the knowledge based on the subject of study.

d. Ability to integrate the inter-disciplinary knowledge and create subject link.

e. Ability to use the information and communication technology effectively.

Moreover, the teachers also dominantly used the Indonesian language in spite of
English in communicating the materials (Rodriguez, 2007). It used to the teachers are lack of
vocabulary as the major problem. Besides, the minor problem in linguistic aspect is in
pronunciation aspect. Then, communicative competence is considered to be the medium
problem of English teacher’s professional competence. As nodding 1984, in Hager 1993
states, to describe the skills, knowledge, ability and attitudes of a competent person, we must
conduct “an empirically based, comprehensive, naturalistic study a of actual professionals
indisputably held to be competent”. In addition, teacher should have a thorough personality
portrayed in their point of view, speech, and action since they become influenced models for
students similar with parents to their children Yelow & Weistei, 1977;103.

What was the issue?

The issue in this article was about English teacher competence. The authors took the issue for
them research in vocational high schools in Gowa, South Sulawesi, exactly in SMKN 1
Somba Opu and SMKN 2 Somba Opu. From each school, only two English teachers that
authors researched. So, there are four English teachers involved in this research.

Why authors took this issue?

They took this issue because they known to be English teacher in vocational high school need
comprehension about English Spesific Purposes that related to English subject material for
each department in vocational high school. They known that each department had different
topic, concern, and vocabulary. So, they want to know what are difficulties of English teacher
when teaching English in different department in one vocational high school. And this issue
narrowed down to be problems in professional competernce of four teachers in SMKN 1
Somba Opu and SMKN 2 Soba Opu.

What the problems that authors got?

The problems that authors gotten were first teachers had problems in mastering the materials,
second they had problems in mastering the curriculum, third they had problems in developing
materials creatively, fourth they had difficulties in developing the teacher professionalism
competence continuously, fifth they had problems in using the information technology and
last they had problems of classroom management.

What the methodology that used?

The authors applied descriptive qualitative method and the data were collected by using three
instruments that were questionnaire, interview, and observation checklist. The participants
were two experienced English teachers, two inexperienced English teachers, and eight
students.

What was the result gotten by authors?

From the fourth informant that are two teachers experienced and two teachers inexperienced,
only the fourth teacher that had one difficult or problem that is lack of using information and
communication technology for affective communication when teaching English the
vocational senior high school students. But, the most many obstacles that faced the teacher is
only for first teacher that faced 9 problems. Those are lack of vocabulary of special terms for
various departments, difficult to communicate the lesson by using english, difficult to achieve
the basic competence and learning objectives, lack of teaching planning, difficult to sellect
appropriate materials, difficult to adapt the materials to be relevant to student’s department,
difficult to update material from many sources, lack of using information and communication
technology for affective communication, and lack of classroom management.

For the second teacher had faced four problems, such as; lack of vocabulary of special terms
for various departments, difficult to update material from many sources, lack of teacher
development activities, and did not using informaation and communicaation technology for
affective communication. In addition, for the forth teacher faced seven problems, something
like; ; lack of vocabulary of special terms for various departments, lack of pronunciation, ,
difficult to communicate the lesson by using english, difficult to adapt the materials to be
relevant to student’s department, difficult to update material from many sources, lack of
teacher development activities, and , lack of using information and communication
technology for affective communication. So, for the fisrt teacher faced nine problems, th
second teacher faced four problems, the third teacher faced seven problems, and the fourth
teacher faced only one problems.