GovTech Edu @ Telkom Indonesia

The Ministry of Education and Culture July 2020 launched part five of the “Merdeka Belajar” (Freedom to Learn) program: transformational teachers as the driving force for education transformation in Indonesia.

“(The transformational teachers) are expected to be able to support students’ development holistically to become students who uphold the principle of Pancasila. They are also expected to become trainers or mentors for other teachers for student-centred learning, and become role models and agents of transformation for the education ecosystem”.

At present time, the common perceptions of successful teaching methodology are still measured by the existence of the learning facility. We tried to reflect on this statement and found out that it’s not the right answer. As quoted by Mas Menteri, we put our trust and beliefs onto the teachers, the agents of change.

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From discouragement to hope…

In GovTech, we want to create an irreversible change to improve student learning outcomes. Guru Tribe believes that teachers are the primary agent of change to help us realize our big vision. If teachers can be student-centred in their teaching, student learning outcomes could be improved. But how exactly are we planning to do that?

There are three problem areas we’re wrestling with:

First, how can we help teachers to teach effectively? We know rote learning — cramping all the materials at once before the children internalize the learning — is not effective. We’re exploring ways to enable teachers to do differentiated instructions, where teachers will embrace differences in students’ learning pace and tailor their teaching accordingly.

Second, how might we support teachers to continuously learn while they have a lot on their plate? In order to improve teachers’ pedagogy, we explored a way to make learning fun and easy for teachers.

Last but not least, how might we help teachers navigate their careers? We’re currently exploring many ways to improve career opportunities and clarity. The team integrated the experience with the Sekolah Penggerak Program.

Since there is no business interest, we can focus on leveraging technology for Guru, schools, and students to improve the quality of education by ensuring Guru is qualified, motivated and well supported. We are now developing the actual program, curriculum, and teaching designs.

At the Guru Tribe, we have the vision to unlock every educator’s potential to shape the future generation. One of the keys to achieving those missions is Guru. Guru plays a big role in our education system. What can we do? By empowering Guru with technologies, improving the way they teach, the way they learn to continuously improve themselves, and the way they progress in their careers, teachers can make the ideal state of learning become reality where all about learning become joyful activities with the equally joyful outcome, and the harder problem we’re facing, the happier we become. Despite the rhetoric about teacher education today, there does not seem to be a real belief that investing in teacher education will yield results.

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