Teachers’ Perception as a Crucial Component in the Design of Didactical Design Research-Based Teacher Professional Learning Community in Indonesia

Abstract

Collaborative professional learning community serves as one of teacher professional development forms. In the last few decades, teacher professional learning community has been utilized by the Indonesian government as a model of teacher professional development program. However, several issues are still found in the program. Some of those problematic issues are the design of the activity which has not included teachers’ perception and the learning process which has not put enough focus on students. Didactical Design Research (DDR) is a theoretical and methodological framework in teacher professional learning community. DDR has been developed and implemented in several programs of teacher professional development community in Indonesia. This article elaborates teachers’ perception on teacher professional learning community and design of DDR-based teacher professional learning community which is developed by referring to teachers’ perception. Qualitative and quantitative designs are applied in collecting, cultivating, analyzing the research data. Teachers participated in this research were as many as 145 coming from 9 different provinces in Indonesia. Research findings revealed that majority of teachers generated the following notions; ideal total learning hours were 2-4 lesson hours, meeting was conducted once a month, there should be 10-20 participants involved, and they declared the necessity of involving the government, technology use, and research-based activities. Another idea was the design of the program consisted of 12 meetings which was begun with students’ difficulty test and ended by dissemination of the result of the program. Referring to those outcomes, a conclusion can be drawn highlighting that teachers’ perception serves as a crucial component in developing the design of DDR-based teacher professional learning community.