Learning Systems Institute
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PAPERS #1 |
IN-SERVICE EDUCATION Prepared by:
Continuing Reflections upon the
Teacher Training Programs of the
PPPG IPS dan PMP, Malang
Rodney F. Allen
International Consultant, Social Science
Senior Secondary School Project
Teacher Management and School Development
Directorate of Secondary Education
Ministry of Education and Culture
Republic of Indonesia
April 30, 1998
Introduction
Reason and research indicate than an effective education must do more than merely train students to absorb, retain, and recite information; students must deal with ideas as well as information and to think critically about both. Effective education means learning others' ideas while developing one's own meanings, then applying both to explain phenomena and to pose ways to solve real problems. A new, more active learning model of learning will have students learning information processing skills and problem solving. The in-service and on-service training of social science teachers is expected today to address this new style of teaching and learning. As the proposal writers anticipated, the process will be slow because today's teacher educators (and teachers) were taught to master content by memory. Theirs was a passive education, and that remains their mental construct of teaching and learning. To ask for something different is not only to expect change but to request demanding intellectual work.
Teaching styles and instructional methods are means to an educational end. The existing paradigm of social science student achievement is fixed in the mastery of information from various disciplines, and assessed by recitation of that information upon instructor or test administrator's demand. The new paradigm sought in our proposal and in Curriculum 1994 is a new vision of educational ends where student achievement is perceived and measured by higher cognitive demands than memory. Thus, for students of social science and citizen education a new goal is sought and new measures of achievement will be employed. Similarly, for their teachers a new educational end is implied. How teachers perform will eventually be assessed by changes in their classroom behaviors and in the results measured by student achievement on higher cognitive demands.
Persons responsible for teacher in-service training, however, need to understand that the new educational ends and approaches to teaching in senior secondary schools also require fundamental changes in how in-service and on-service training are designed, delivered, and followed-up in schools. No matter the overt syllabi, goals, and formal program, the hidden curriculum is forever present. The hidden curriculum concerns how educational programs (e.g., schools and PPPGs) latently transmit and reinforce various attitudes and behaviors.