Factors Contributing to Low Teachers Competencies Score

Diterima: 04-02-2020 Disetujui: 14-08-2020 Abstract: Competent teachers contribute to the students’ achievement significantly. Therefore, the government established a teacher professional development program with various activities. The program aims to improve their teaching skills, professional knowledge, and teaching effectiveness. However, many teachers have low competency even after joining the teacher professional development program. The low teacher competency score can be seen from the result of the teacher competency test. This research uses a quantitative design to investigate factors that contribute to the teachers’ competence. The results show factors that contribute to the low teachers’ competence are not doing classroom action research and writing article, rarely attending seminars or workshop, never being a speaker at seminars, low frequency of maintaining their English skill, not understanding the rights, mechanism, implementation of teacher competency test, not understandingng the objective of teacher competency test as a condition job promotion, and the unreadiness of the teacher in taking the examination.

professionalism are reading reputable journal articles, listening to the radio, watching the movie, joining communities for a teacher, attending seminars, workshops, and conferences in English (Elder, 1994;Osamwonyi, 2016;Richards, 2017). Since the teacher is a profession that requires special expertise, it is not enough to only have four skills. Teachers must have a balanced EQ and IQ in order to communicate and be able to convey subject matter to students properly and correctly (Barlożek, 2013;O'Shea, 2019).
The government has run various teacher training programs to ensure effective education system planning and development (Amalia & Saraswati, 2018;A. F. Selvi, 2016). The government programs that have been carried out to support the quality of teachers through teacher professional development (Bautista & Ortega-Ruiz, 2015;Boudersa, 2011;Kennedy, 2016;Rahman, 2011) involve self-development, scientific publications, and innovative teaching methods (Indrawati & Octoria, 2016). The government has conducted various training for teachers, especially for English teachers. This training is also part of teacher professional development, which is carried out for approximately 5 to 10 days (Mrs. Alfi, personal communication. 2019, July 21). This program aims to improve teaching skills, mastery of teaching materials, and the commitment and motivation of teachers in conducting the learning process. The activities during the training period are making textbooks or learning modules, making learning media, designing student assessments, and improving reading, writing, listening, speaking, grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation. In addition, the government also has a program to improve teacher welfare (Tanang & Abu, 2014), because many teachers are still poorly paid. However, it does not rule out the possibility of teachers having additional work besides being teachers which can disrupt their focus in carrying out their duties.
One of the government's ways to find out whether the teacher has qualified as a competent teacher is by conducting a teacher competency test namely UKG. According to government regulation number 57 of 2012, UKG is a test that is emphasized on pedagogical competence and professional competence in the cognitive domain. Pedagogical competence is the teacher's ability to understand students, design and implement learning, evaluate learning outcomes, and student development to actualize the various potentials they have. Pedagogical competency standards include (a) getting to know the characteristics and potential of students, (b) mastering learning theory and principles of active learning, (c) planning and developing curriculum, (d) implementing effective learning, and (e) assessing and evaluating learning. On the other hand, professional competence is the ability to master broad and deep learning material that enables the teacher to guide students to meet the competency standards set in the National Education Standards. For example, English teachers should master four language skills reading, writing, speaking, listening, and also language components grammar and pronunciation. Professional competencies in the field of study include (a) Mastery of material, structure, concepts and scientific mindset that supports the subjects to be taught, (b) Developing professionalism through reflective action, and (c) Consistency of mastery of teacher material between content and performance (text, context, and reality, facts, principles, concepts and procedures, and completeness about the mastery of philosophy, origins, and application of science) (PP No. 19 of 2005).
Even though the government has provided various teacher training programs as mentioned above, many English teachers are still classified low since level of competencies are not adequately achieved (Dahnial, Setiawan, et al., 2017;Adnan, 2018), lack skills in managing classroom efficiency and effectively (Mustafa, 2013), do not give impact on students' English ability (Haruchan, 2016). Moreover, based on preliminary research studies, data obtained from the education office in Pasuruan City, show that the average score of 176 teacher competency tests for secondary and vocational school teachers in Pasuruan Regency is 59, far below the minimum score. Usually, each location has different factors that contribute to the low competence of teachers, i.e., geographical, cultural, and economic factors. Therefore, this study tries to explore what factors contribute to the low competency scores of teachers in Pasuruan district, which refers to data from previous studies, from teachers who have below standard competency scores.

METHOD
In this study, quantitative research is used to find the answer to what contributes to the low-grade of teacher competency. The researcher uses the close-ended questionnaire in the form of yes or no questions. The questions of the questionnaire in this study are adapted from (Wulyani, 2017) and (Suyidno & Yamin, 2015) study. The questionnaires are divided into three parts. The first part is about individual information, which covers three questions about the teachers' name, the teacher's gender, the teacher's teaching period, and the teacher's latest education. The second part is about their professional development, which covers eight questions about the teachers' participation in professional development programs. Then, the teachers are asked to describe the activities of professional development programs. Then, they are asked to mention other teachers who are not participating in the professional development program. The next question is about their affiliation with English teacher organizations, the teachers' habit in writing paper, the teachers' frequency in attending and becoming speakers in seminars or workshops. Last, the teachers were also asked to tell how they maintain or improve their English proficiency. After that, the last part of the questionnaire is about teacher competency tests which cover several aspects such as teachers' understanding about the rights, mechanisms, functions, and objectives of implementing UKG; teachers' understanding about the purpose of teacher competency test as a requirement for job promotion; knowing the level of teacher readiness to take UKG and what factors contribute to their unpreparedness in taking UKG.