JAKARTA – U.S. Embassy Jakarta’s Regional English Language Office (RELO) hosted the Impact Conference of the English Language Teacher Training (ELTT) on March 10, 2023 in Jakarta. Twelve (12) senior faculty of Islamic State Universities of the Ministry of Religious Affairs presented their research and research findings on the effectiveness and impact of the ELTT program for 281 English teachers in madrasah and pesantren in Java, Sumatera, Kalimantan, and Sulawesi.
The senior faculty who also served as the Master Trainers worked very closely with a research team in the U.S. under the leadership of Dr. Donald Freeman, a leader in teacher education and research. Throughout 2022, the MTs received support to design their research questions, collect data, and prepare their research findings.
“The U.S. Embassy truly values opportunities such as this, where we can leverage U.S. expertise to build Indonesian expertise that will ultimately be employed to advance Indonesia’s human capacity development goals,” noted U.S. Embassy Press Attaché Michael D. Quinlan in his opening remarks.
RELO Director Rick Rosenberg said, “The research and training network established by the ELTT program is founded on the collaboration between MORA and the U.S. Embassy and provides the academic skills needed for university educators to publish their research in international journals. This project also supports country wide training given via Massive Open Online Courses to help establish academic writing programs (AWPs) in Indonesian universities. Currently four (4) Indonesian universities host American scholars to assist with the AWPs.”The teacher education researchers in the network are continuing data analyses to finalize their findings. Preliminary discussions show several trends most generally, that teachers who took part in the ELTT reported increased professional confidence. This confidence was evident, among other things, in their increased use of English, the target language, in their instruction, in using a range and variety of classroom activities that their students found engaging, and in more comfort with pedagogical concepts and practices.
The research also provided MORA and other stakeholders with meaningful data from coursework and assessments. This data informs the design of future teacher training programs and helps measure coursework and teacher performance, highlighting areas for improvement.
The Regional English Language Office (RELO) Jakarta helps strengthening the U.S.– Indonesia Strategic Partnership by building capacity through English teaching and learning in Indonesia. RELO Jakarta initiated the ELTT program with implementing partner World Learning, a U.S. non-governmental organization, in 2021. The second iteration of this program is currently running with 40 Trainers, 5 Coaches, and 600 Teachers in 17 cities all over Indonesia. The ELTT Program using ELTeach as the curriculum and platform from the National Geographic Learning creates a scalable, sustainable model to raise the quality of English language instruction and improve learning outcomes.
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