Enhancing Professional Growth of Pre-service Teachers in Indonesia: An Adoption of the U.S. Professional Development School

1. Introduction

Pre-service teachers are long term investment and asset in educational context. They are prepared to be professional teachers to respond poor quality in education. They function as agent of change in society to reform education better. In the forthcoming years, they occupy themselves as teachers who fill the retired teacher’ positions. They hold great responsibility in which education demands more to solve unanswered problems. They are asked to widen their knowledge, skills and abilities by conducting field experiences. Just like in the US, pre-service teachers in Indonesia also need to accomplish field experiences. Despite of some similarities, field experiences in the US and Indonesia are different in many ways. I assume that field experiences in the US have better perspectives and practices than in Indonesia. The US has implemented Professional Development School (PDS) approach, in which this approach has ideal characteristics of teacher education programs, strong policy which creates relation between universities and schools seen from the worldwide perspective. In this paper, I adopt the PDS model to enhance the pre-service teacher’s professionalism in Indonesia.