148 1. What is the nature of Andi’s pedagogic habitus dispositions and beliefs?
2. To what extent is Andi’s pedagogic habitus capable of change as a result of engagement in mediated self-evaluation?
6.2 Andi’s background
Andi, a 30-year-old male, initially did not want to be a teacher. He considered teaching to be a monotonous occupation. He grew up watching his father, an
elementary school teacher; go through the same routine every day: leave for school in the morning, return home in the afternoon, and prepare teaching materials for the
following day in the evening. However, Andi’s father wanted him and his daughter to follow in his footsteps and become a teacher. As a result, Andi chose to study English
education as his major at university and this experience changed his perception of teaching. He started to think that being a lecturer would be a challenging and interesting
occupation, and this inspired him to pursue this as a career path. After a number of years teaching at this level, Andi remains pleased with career choice as the following
excerpt indicates:
Being a lecturer enables me to meet new people, new students every semester and I can do many new things unlike an elementary school teacher who teaches
the same subject in her whole lifetime. One day I had a wish to be a lecturer, but I did not tell anyone about that. Because I had that willingness and made an
effort, I can finally become a lecturer like now Interview 3, 13062012.
As evidenced in the above statements, Andi enjoys being a lecturer as he can teach different subjects every semester with different students. He also feels that being a
lecturer is a great accomplishment that required considerable effort to achieve. After earning a Bachelor’s degree in education from Kanjuruhan University of
Malang KUM, Andi applied to teach at schools in Malang. He went through the recruitment processes, but when it came to the final stage, he decided to withdraw
because he would be required to work as a full-time teacher who also had administrative responsibilities. At that time, Andi wanted to be a part-time teacher as he planned to
continue his study to earn a Master’s degree, which he knew was required if he was to become a lecturer. Andi eventually accepted employment at The British Institute TBI
and found it a good place to work because he received regular teaching workshops, class observations by the school leader, and had the opportunity to share teaching
149 materials and lesson plans with his colleagues. Moreover, TBI provided helpful
teaching resources such as books, teaching media and realia. While teaching at TBI, Andi continued to study at a private university in Malang.
While pursuing his Master’s degree, Andi had the opportunity to teach at KUM in 2009 and, upon finishing his study in 2011, he was assigned as a permanent lecturer
at the university. Andi therefore had a very full teaching schedule, as he was still teaching at TBI. At KUM, Andi taught various subjects including Reading, Vocabulary,
Speaking, Listening, and English Phonology. Andi realised being a lecturer required continuous professional improvement. In turn, when asked what area of his teaching he
thought he needed to improve he responded, “I need to improve my mastery of the materials I’m going to give to my students because I do not have a lot of teaching
experiences so that I need to read a lot of teaching books” Interview 3, 13062012. Not surprisingly, as a novice teacher, Andi was concerned about his level of expertise.
In addition, Andi found that he still needed to improve his English speaking skills, especially his pronunciation. He revealed:
At the beginning of my teaching career, I felt like I lack my speaking ability, especially pronunciation. I sometimes realised that I have mispronounced some
words. I then asked colleagues to practice their English with me and from that I was able to identify some mispronounced words and tried to be better Interview
1, 18102011.
As we can see, Andi considers pronunciation is essential for understanding spoken English well. Having good and correct pronunciation plays an important role in
communication and empowers Andi to be a good model for his students. In addition to practising English speaking with his colleagues, Andi liked to download English
materials from the Internet, watch English movies with subtitles, and read English books to improve his professionalism. Although teaching at TBI provided Andi with the
opportunity to participate in a number of workshops on English teaching, he still looked for additional workshops to attend to improve his skills. He stated, “I really like
participating in workshops because there must be something new that I can learn” Interview 1, 18102011. Andi’s efforts to always improve his professionalism
demonstrate that he is a teacher who is dedicated to improving himself in order to be a more effective teacher to the students. Indeed, Andi displays some of the attributes
associated with transformative teacher professionalism proposed by Sachs 2003:
150 collaborative and collegial, activist in orientation, responsive to change, self-regulating,
and knowledge building. Andi is collaborative and collegial as he shared his teaching matter with his colleagues; he is activist in orientation given he has a willingness to be
active to improve his professionalism; he is responsive to change because he always works at becoming a better teacher; he is self-regulating because he has motivation to
always improve his professionalism by developing his teaching skills; and he is oriented to knowledge building because of his efforts to always develop his expertise as
a teacher. In other words, Andi is driven to continuously improve his teaching practice. The next section discusses Andi’s capital and how it emerges and how it enables him to
