18 qualifications and educational level, required competencies, responsibilities, proper
income, continuous professional development, law protection toward their profession, and professional organization Mulyasa, 2007. Professional teachers need to have
abilities to create a conducive teaching and learning environment, develop learning strategies and management, give feedback and reinforcement, and maintain self-
improvement Mulyasa, 2007.
2. Teachers’ Lived Experiences
The phenomenon happens in Indonesia today as teachers need to work hard to conduct their responsibility regarding their profession. Teachers need to build a
commitment as living beings which focus on attaining better learning, better teaching, better economy, and as humans who need to take professionalism into their lives,
which covers a better understanding, higher economy, struggle, and sacrifice. Considering this phenomenon, in making self-determination and preferences
regarding the teaching profession, teachers‟ reflective awareness is strongly needed.
The deep understanding of meaning as the reflective result of life can cause teachers to find a worthwhile preference that can maximize the positive impacts of the choices
regarding the discourse. „Lived experiences gather hermeneutic significance as we reflectively gather them by giving memory to them. Through meditation,
conversation, day dreams, inspirations, and other interpretive acts, we assign meaning to the phenomena of life‟ Mannen, 1990:37. In aiming to see the meaning of life,
self-awareness is needed. Dilthey 1985 in Mannen 1990 states that:
19
A lived experience does not comfort me as something perceived or represented; it is not given to me, but the reality of lived experience is there for me because I have a reflective
awareness of it because I possess it immediately as belonging to me in some sense. Only in thought does it become objective Dilthey, 1985:223.
It is not a matter of perception or representation, but the action, thought, imagination which we are reflected, these all are what really happen and are not pre-
planned. At this point, a lived experience exists because we reflect and being reflective means our lived experience.
A lived experience is not about an object but it is about a phenomenon; it is something which appears to us, which is also active. It is a phenomenon which we
reflect as a meaningful experience that helps us to think about the appropriate developments and improvements that we need. Additionally, since a lived experience
is the „breathing of meaning‟ Mannen 1990, it has a chance to lead teachers to think back about the actions that they have already done and try to find a certain essence, a
“quality” Mannen, 1990 from that experience. According to Dithley 1980, the most basic point considered in a lived experience is self-given awareness or pre-
reflective consciousness of life. Self-awareness is one of the teacher development methods that can help teachers to find an appropriate determination in managing their
profession. Teachers‟ interpretation which they reflect as self-awareness leads them to be more self-actualized. Thus, the development of the essences in the description is
not just explanations or analyses Moustakas 1994, as stated in Cresswell 2007. A reflective process can also improve the outcome. “We believe even more
strongly that the reflective-interpretive approach can improve the outcome, in the
20 shape of research which succeeds in saying something qualified and original”
Alvesson and Skodberg, 2009:3. Representational consciousness can be produced from reflection Lyotard, 1988
. “A reflective interpretation of the text is needed to achieve a fuller, more meaningful understanding” Moustakas, 1994:11.
Furthermore, from a developmental perspective, individual learning needs to be shaped by factors such as length of experience Bolam McMohan, 2004. To
simply uncover teachers‟ lived experiences regarding their professional development, the researcher formulated which are teachers‟ understandings, teachers‟ beliefs,
teachers‟ feelings, teachers‟ intentions, and teachers‟ actions. These segments are used to make it easier for the researcher to reveal the participants‟ experiences and
guide them to come to a reflective process. Understanding means how one changes a representative object to become his or her own version Dufrene, 1973. Meanwhile,
belief relates with the value combined with the psychological construct to teacher education Pinrich, 1990. Feeling refers to adjectives expressed such as happy,
anxious, afraid, and so on Patton, 2002. Meanwhile, intention is linked to the result of thinking Willis, 2001, and action is usually taken with an intention Wilson,
2007. Through the use of those segments, the participants‟ accounts will be explored completely.
3. The “self”
