Teachers’ voice on their being professional

Abstract

Teacher quality entails the enhancement of the schools, the society and eventually the whole nation. Realizing this, the Indonesian government has done some efforts to make  sure that there aresufficient qualified teachers for students. Since 2006 Indonesian government has established educational reform of upgrading teacher quality by administering teacher certification program supported with teacher professional development.They have to examine what they think teaching and learning is, who their students are, and of course, what their subject is. Considering the key role of teacher quality, this study has its main concern on revealing the teachers’ reasons of being teachers and the teachers’ view on their profession values with regards to their self, student, and subject. This study involved 24 teachers of elementary School, Junior High and Senior High Schools.The data of this study are narrative self evaluationof the participants’ teaching life. The findings of this study reveal two kinds of motivation driving one to be a teacher: the intrinsic reasons which are altruistic and the extrinsic reasons from family members, friends, and former teachers. Further, this study finds the three characteristics of Palmer’s (1997) good teacher. Conclusion and suggestion end the study