A paper presented at the 4
th
JETA International Conference, Yogyakarta, 3-4 July 2007.
10
1. Principle 1: Promote learning through joint productive activity among leaders
and participants. This means that professional development necessarily involves assisted performance by a more competent other.
2. Principle 2: Promote learners expertise in professionally relevant discourse.
According to sociocultural theory, language is an important tool for mediating interaction. Learning the discourse of teaching is part of learning teaching,
especially if it helps novices to articulate a problem or reconceptualize the problems somehow.
3. Principle 3: Conceptualize teaching, learning, and joint productive activity in
the experiences and skills of participants. Teaching and learning must be based on meaningful everyday activities. This means that activities and problem-
solving tasks should focus on authentic issues relevant to the participants.
4. Principles 4: Challenge participants towards more complex solutions in
addressing problems. It is better to view professional development activities as long-term problem-solving opportunities rather than short-term exercises. In
sum, teacher need meaningful feedback on efforts that are critical to success.
5. Principle 5: Engage participants through dialogue, especially the instructional
conversation. These interactions encourage participants to make connections between formal schooled knowledge derived through education and practical
knowledge gained by experience. These principles, to the writer s opinion, will apply well in making efforts to
empower EFL teachers.
2. The Routes to Teacher autonomy
Ideas of ways to teacher autonomy have been explored by experts such as Brown 2001 Edge Richards 1993 and Harmer 2001. The suggested routes to teacher autonomy
can be classified to individual efforts and collaborative efforts.
a. Individual Efforts
Individual teachers can make efforts to develop themselves professionally to reach full professional autonomy with their students autonomy in learning the main success
criterion. Their efforts may include the following: self-assessmentappraisal, regular reading of professional literature, and make use of available resources electronic, print,
audio, audio-visual.
Self-assessment. Teachers can self-assess the following points in relation to their
teaching Brown, 2001: 1 learning environment relationship with students, the classroom, presentation, culture and adjustment; 2 the individuals physical health,
self-concepts, aptitude and perception, reinforcement, development; and 3 the activity interaction, language. see Brown, 2001: 435-437, for the full form.
A paper presented at the 4
th
JETA International Conference, Yogyakarta, 3-4 July 2007.
11
Regular reading of professional literature. Individually, teachers can regularly
read books, journals, magazines and any other materials available in the school library or other libraries. The problem is that in general schools in Indonesia usually have limited
materials for teachers to read.
Make use of available resources. If books are not available, they can turn to
electronic materials which are accessible through internet. This, however, requires ICT skills and equipment. If the school does not yet have any ICT equipment, they can go to
the internet shops. Or they can go to the ICT centres in the schools joining the Jardiknas. The problem may, however, be faced by those who live in an area with no internet line.
Nowadays, teachers can learn more from mass media, which often present a useful talk on education in English. In addition, English radio and TV broadcasts are available
in certain stations. Those who have access to cable TV can learn a great deal to improve their English skills from various English programs, presented in different varieties of
English, i.e. British English, American English, Australian English, Singaporian, and other varieties.
b. Developing with colleagues
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