Indonesia Project background 1. Description of the partners The Association of Teaching English as a Foreign Language in Indonesia (TEFLIN) is a professional organisation run primarily by volunteer committee members based mainly in higher education (HE). It is a non-profit organisation founded with the aim of promoting the quality of teaching English in Indonesia. TEFLIN was established in Yogyakarta in the 1970s. The members of TEFLIN are around 21 institutions and 1,900 individuals focusing on Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) across all educational sectors in Indonesia. TEFLIN focuses on developing its members with various academic and professional activities such as conferences, seminars, training, journal publications and developing its international networks. The TEFLIN conferences have become an annual international academic event in Indonesia since 1998 to connect professionals and stakeholders in the field of English Language Teaching (ELT). Its journal publications (TEFLIN Journal) is published twice a year and has been accredited as a scientific journal by the Directorate of Higher Education, Ministry of Education and Culture for Indonesia since 2002. The English Language Teaching Centre (ELTC) is a department of the University of Sheffield and is one of the larger university language centres in the UK with over 200 teachers at peak in the summer (over 100 year-round) and 40 plus administrative, management and support staff. The ELTC teaches and supports over 4,000 students and teachers a year, on full- and part-time programmes, both faceto-face/blended in Sheffield and online internationally, with a dedicated TechnologyEnhanced Learning (TEL) team. The Centre works with the student community within the University, external partner organisations and members of the public (learners and teachers) in the UK and internationally. The range of programmes and services offered at the ELTC is diverse and includes English Language Teaching (ELT), English for Academic Purposes (EAP), teacher training and development, research training and Specific Language Difficulties (SpLD). The Centre is accredited by the British Council and BALEAP and is an IELTS and Cambridge English Test and Teacher Training Centre. The ELTC supports the wider community in ELT, globally and locally, with student
and teacher scholarships, hosting and sponsoring conferences and events, and volunteering for teaching and committee work for IATEFL, English UK, BALEAP, St Mary’s Community Centre Sheffield and the Campaign for At Risk Academics (CARA).
2. Key features of the context TEFLIN is a large, well-established teachers’ association with comprehensive management and administrative structures and potential course participant (CP) numbers of over 1,900 teachers and a further pool of thousands from 21 institutions within the membership alone. It was no surprise that initial expressions of interest in the project were strong and resulted in a final total of 297 CPs who started the course. The majority were women (229) but there were also 66 men and two CPs did not give the data. The cohort was narrowed to junior and senior high school English teachers with an English level of A2–B1. Indonesia is a country that consists of thousands of islands with a population of more than 280 million people. The CPs were located across the 12 TEFLIN regional groups, in the three time zones that cover this vast island nation. The geography ranged from large urban areas with more developed technological infrastructure, to smaller urban and rural areas with less development. In total 108 were from the large urban areas and 187 from the smaller urban and more rural areas (two CPs did not supply this data). Because of this, and according to the initial TEFLIN project documents, “the quality of education is varied among various places in Indonesia. This is also true about the quality of English teachers in Indonesia. In some places it is hard to have an English teacher with a B1 proficiency level for teaching primary or secondary students”. However, the long-established teacher education work from TEFLIN over the years (as outlined in the partner profile above) has provided continuing professional development for over 50 years. Through these more established, traditional approaches, together with the recent use of more advanced technology, and in cooperation with the British Council Indonesia, TEFLIN has been able to provide webinars for more than 4,400 English teachers all over Indonesia on various topics since the pandemic started.
Partnered Remote Language Improvement (PRELIM) project report
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