Teaching and Learning Classroom Action Research at a Distance in an Indonesian Urban Community

This action research project aims to understand whether teachers are mastering the knowledge and skills necessary to conduct classroom action research through two courses, Classroom Action Research (CAR) and Enhancing Teaching Professional Skills (PKP: Pemantapan Kemampuan Profesional), offered via distance education to Indonesian teachers and to identify areas for possible improvement of both courses. The research was conducted in two urban study centers located in the cities of Bogor and Tangerang in the Indonesian provinces of West Java and Banten. Data were collected via semi-structured interviews, classroom observations, questionnaires, and focus group discussions. All data were analyzed for patterns that might offer insight into the problems tutors and teacher-learners were facing as they worked through the Classroom Action Research (PTK: Penelitian Tindakan Kelas) module and tutorial. The research team from Indonesia Open University (UT: Universitas Terbuka) identified several problematic aspects of each course, including excessive lag time between the first and second courses, insufficient examples of model classroom action research projects, a lack of supervised practice of action research techniques, variability of tutorial quality, and a mismatch between course assessments and the content and purpose of the courses. While the findings of this study focus primarily on two distance courses offered by UT, they offer insight into the challenges of providing in-service teacher development via distance education in the Indonesian context. Key Words: Distance Learning, Classroom Action Research, Teacher Professional Skill