Microteaching students` perception on the use of reinforcement skill in microteaching class.

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MICROTEACHING STUDENTS’ PERCEPTION ON THE USE OF REINFORCEMENT SKILL IN MICROTEACHING CLASS

A SARJANA PENDIDIKAN THESIS

Presented as Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements to Obtain the Sarjana Pendidikan Degree

in English Language Education

By Bella Stasia

Student Number: 081214154

ENGLISH LANGUAGE EDUCATION STUDY PROGRAM LANGUAGE AND ARTS EDUCATION DEPARTMENT TEACHERS TRAINING AND EDUCATION FACULTY

SANATA DHARMA UNIVERSITY YOGYAKARTA

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A Sarjana Pendidikan Thesis on

MICROTEACHING STUDENTS’ PERCEPTION ON THE USE OF REINFORCEMENT SKILL IN MICROTEACHING CLASS

By Bella Stasia

Student Number: 081214154

Approved by

Advisor

Date Agustinus Hardi Prasetyo, S. Pd., M. A. October 18, 2013

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STATEMENT OF WORK’S ORIGINALITY

I honestly declare that this thesis, which I have written, does not contain the work or parts of the work of other people, except those cited in the quotations and the references, as a scientific paper should.

Yogyakarta, October 18, 2013 The Writer

Bella Stasia 081214154

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LEMBAR PERNYATAAN PERSETUJUAN

PUBLIKASI KARYA ILMIAH UNTUK KEPENTINGAN AKADEMIS

Yang bertanda tangan di bawah ini, saya mahasiswa Universitas Sanata Dharma: Nama : Bella Stasia

Nomor Mahasiswa : 081214154

Demi pengembangan ilmu pengetahuan, saya memberikan kepada Perpustakaan Universitas Sanata Dharma karya ilmiah saya yang berjudul:

MICROTEACHING STUDENTS’ PERCEPTION ON THE USE OF REINFORCEMENT SKILL IN MICROTEACHING CLASS

beserta perangkat yang diperlukan (bila ada). Dengan demikian saya memberikan kepada Perpustakaan Universitas Sanata Dharma hak untuk menyimpan, mengalihkan dalam bentuk media lain, mengelolanya dalam bentuk pangkalan data, mendistribusikan secara terbatas, dan mempublikasikannya di internet atau media lain untuk kepentingan akademis tanpa perlu meminta ijin dari saya maupun memberikan royalti kepada saya selama tetap mencantumkan nama saya sebagai penulis.

Demikian pernyataan ini saya buat dengan sebenarnya. Dibuat di Yogyakarta

Pada tanggal 18 Oktober 2013 Yang menyatakan,

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ABSTRACT

Stasia, Bella. 2013. Microteaching Students’ Perception on the Use of Reinforcement Skill in Microteaching Class. Yogyakarta: Sanata Dharma University.

There is a similar aspect learnt in education and psychology field, i.e. behavior. The research deals with behavior of students in a classroom. The teacher needs teaching skills to maintain classroom condition. One of them is reinforcement skill.

There are two problems proposed in this research. The first is what Microteaching students’ perception on the use of reinforcement skill in Microteaching class is. The second is what the suggestions of Microteaching students on the use of reinforcement skill in Microteaching class are.

To solve the problems, the researcher conducted a survey research. Survey research is to gain information from a group of people to describe characteristics such as ability, opinions or knowledge through asking question and draw a sample rather than involving all the members of population (Fraenkel & Wallen, 2009). The samples were Microteaching students who have implemented reinforcement skill in Microteachingclass. The instruments used in this research were questionnaire and focused group discussion (FGD). The participants were Microteaching students who were taking Microteaching course in even semester of 2012.

From the research results in the first problem, it was concluded that Microteaching students had positive perception on the use of reinforcement skill in Microteaching class. The teacher candidates have implemented reinforcement skill in their teaching practice using verbal and non-verbal form. Still, there were teachers who tend to use verbal rather than non-verbal. To solve the second problem, the researcher perceived two suggestions. The first is for the teacher candidates in Microteaching class and the second is for the implementation reinforcement skill in Microteaching class.

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ABSTRAK

Stasia, Bella. 2013. Microteaching Students’ Perception on the Use of Reinforcement Skill in Microteaching Class. Yogyakarta: Sanata Dharma University.

Ada kesamaan aspek yang dipelajari dalam bidang pendidikan maupun psikologi, yaitu tingkah laku. Penelitian ini mengenai tingkah laku siswa dalam kelas. Guru memerlukan ketrampilan untuk menjaga kondisi kelas. Salah satunya adalah ketrampilan penguatan.

Ada dua permasalahan yang diangkat dalam penelitian ini. Masalah yang pertama apa persepsi siswa kelas Microteaching terhadap penggunaan ketrampilan penguatan di kelas Microteaching. Masalah yang kedua apa saran- saran siswa Microteaching terhadap penggunaan ketrampilan penguatan di kelas Microteaching?

Untuk mencari solusi permasalahan tersebut, peneliti menggunakan metode survei. Survei digunakan untuk menggali informasi dari sekelompok orang untuk menggambarkan karakteristik seperti kemampuan, pendapat atau ilmu pengetahuan dan lebih menggunakan sampel daripada mengikutsertakan seluruh populasi (Fraenkel & Wallen, 2009). Penelitian ini menggunakan sampel siswa Microteaching yang sudah mengimplementasikan ketrampilan penguatan dalam kelas Microteaching. Instrumen yang digunakan adalah kuisioner dan fokus grup diskusi (FGD). Partisipannya adalah siswa Microteaching yang mengambil mata kuliah Microteaching di semester genap tahun 2012.

Dari hasil penelitian pada permasalahan pertama, dapat disimpulkan bahwa siswa Microteaching mempunyai persepsi positif terhadap penggunaan ketrampilan penguatan dalam kelas Microteaching. Para calon guru tersebut telah mengimplementasikan ketrampilan penguatan dalam bentuk verbal dan non-verbal ketika berlatih mengajar. Tetapi, ada beberapa calon guru yang cenderung menggunakan bentuk verbal daripada non-verbal. Untuk mencari solusi permasalahan kedua, ada dua saran. Saran yang pertama untuk para calon guru (siswa Microteaching) dan yang kedua untuk implementasi ketrampilan penguatan dalam kelas Microteaching.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First of all, I would like to deliver my greatest gratitude to God Almighty, Jesus Christ and Saint Mary because of the blessing during the process of finishing this Sarjana Pendidikan thesis.

I would like to thank my advisor Agustinus Hardi Prasetyo, S. Pd., M.A. for his guidance and patience from passing my proposal until completing the thesis. Also, I would like to express my gratitude to all the lecturers of Microteaching course for their permission and suggestions.

I dedicate my thesis to Bapak Margono, Ibu Indrati, Mbak Awa and Mas Niko. I thank them all for the love, guidance, support and warning. I also thank my best friend, Dyta, for the kindness, generosity and care. My gratitude goes to Bundo Rei, Clara, Delis, Desya, Pyta, Siwi and Okta for the cheer and spirit during this undergraduate program.

My special gratefulness goes to Berlin, Saka, Kojek, Mike and Mia, for checking my thesis and offering best friendship during the undergraduate program. So much laughter, tears and love exist while we are together. Also, my appreciation goes to Power Rangers group, consisting of Frater (my thesis proofreader), Adam, Yosua, Yustian and Benny, and friends of PBI and PSI 2007, consisting of Wichan, Nidya, Ochak, Ines, Dini, Reko and Fanoy, that show me a house with full of laughter and friendliness in their community, events and hang outs.

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All my happiness and proudness goes to Mr. Prast’s thesis students especially year 2008, I thank you all so I can end my destiny as the last man standing in this umbrella group. My thankfulness is directed to Patemon Kotabaru Family for the experiences, knowledge, laughter, tears and hospitality. I would like to express my gratitude to ICEE corner community, consisting of Tiara, Hani, Dhimas, Ismoyo, Tata and Fani, that presents a family with full of fun and lessons. The last but not the least, my deepest gratitude goes to all my participants during the research, Microteaching students in even semester of 2012 (PBI 2009), for their willingness to fill the questionnaires and attend the focused group discussion.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

TITLE PAGE………. i

APPROVAL PAGES……… ii

STATEMENT OF WORK’S ORIGINALITY……….. iv

PERNYATAAN PERSETUJUAN PUBLIKASI………... v

ABSTRACT………... vi

ABSTRAK………... vii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS………... viii

TABLE OF CONTENTS………... x

LIST OF TABLES………. xii

LIST OF FIGURES………... xiii

LIST OF APPENDICES……… xiv

CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION………... 1

A. Research Background………... 1

B. Research Problems……… 4

C. Problem Limitation………... 4

D. Research Objectives……….. 5

E. Research Benefits……….. 5

F. Definition of Terms………... 6

CHAPTER II. REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE………. 9

A. Theoretical Description………. 9

1. Perception... 9

2. Microteaching ………... 11

3. Reinforcement Skill ………...….. 17

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CHAPTER III. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY………. 29

A. Research Method………... 29

B. Research Setting……… 30

C. Research Participants……… 31

D. Instruments and Data Gathering Technique……….. 31

E. Data Analysis Technique……….. 36

F. Research Procedure………... 38

CHAPTER IV. RESEARCH RESULTS AND DISCUSSION………. 41

A. Microteaching Students’ Perception on the Use of Reinforcement Skill in Microteaching class……... 41

1. The Result of Students’ Perception as the Student.... 41

2. The Result of Students’ Perception as the Teacher... 50

B. Microteaching Students’ Suggestions for the Implementation of Reinforcement Skill in Microteaching Class ………... 59

CHAPTER V. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS……… 63

A. Conclusions………... 63

B. Recommendations………. 66

REFERENCES………... APPENDICES ……….

68 70

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LIST OF TABLES

Table Page

3.1 The Schedule of Distributing Questionnaire………..…... 35

4.1 The Result of Students’ Perception as the Student (Close-ended) …... 42 4.2 The Result of Students’ Perception as the Teacher (Close-ended)…… 50

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LIST OF FIGURES

Figure Page

2.1 The Perceptual Process………..…. 26 2.2 Original Microteaching Cycle………...…… 27

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LIST OF APPENDICES

Page Appendix A: Letter of Permission to Conduct Research……….. 71 Appendix B: The Blueprint of the Questionnaire………. 72 Appendix C: Raw Data from Open-ended Questionnaire Questions……... 75 Appendix D: The Focused Group Discussion Result………... 85 Appendix E: Questionnaire………... 90

1 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

The title of this research is Microteaching students’ perception on the use of reinforcement skill in Microteaching class. This chapter describes an introduction that is made up of research background, research problems, problem limitation, research objectives, research benefits and definition of the terms.

A. Research Background

Education field has a close relation to psychology. There are similar aspects that are studied in both fields. One of the aspects is the behavior of an individual. Since this research focus on is teaching education field, the object of the behavior is a student in a classroom. In a classroom, there is an interaction between a teacher and the students. The teacher plays important role in the learning process supported by the students as well. A professional teaching activity requires a set of standard quality to be achieved. The importance of personality, theoretical and practical understandings of a subject and skills are the requirements of being an effective teacher (Cooper, 2011). The unwanted behavior of a student may occur during the learning process in a classroom (Fontana, 1985). For a teacher candidate, it might not be easy to deal with the process of the situation stated by Fontana. Many teaching techniques and skills need to be learnt. A student of teachers training is trained to master the teaching

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skills. It happens in English Language Education Study Program Sanata Dharma University.

Since the subject focus on is English, the students perceive certain understandings of the theory and practice in both oral and written. For the practice in language education especially teaching, the students are introduced and studied a subject named Microteaching. As cited from the academic guidebook of English Language Education Study Program, it is an obligatory course that provides the environment of teaching practice to encourage the students’ self-evaluative skills on the teaching competence and performance. The evaluative skills consist of teaching styles, content mastery and suggestions within. The setting of the classroom is for 20-23 learners (Tutyandari, Prasetyo, Kristiyani & Bram, 2011).

Microteaching is a lesson requiring the teacher candidate (learner) to teach a small group of pupils in a short period of time. The teaching practice consists of a set of skills such as set induction and closure, effective questioning, pupil reinforcement and participation (Brown, 1975: 15). The activity is usually recorded in a video to enable the Microteaching students to evaluate their performances. It also involves an observation for the deeper evaluation.

Based on Fontana theory related to the occurring of the unwanted behavior, the researcher would like to emphasize one of the teaching skills learnt in Microteaching class that is reinforcement skill. Turney, et al_{. (1973) state that} psychologists find out the effect of reward and punishment in humans, especially the students in education. Reinforcement itself has two forms. It is regarded as

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positive if a reward is given in return. It is negative when it is expressed by withholding, corrective feedback and punishment (Brown, 1975). The punishment is no longer used since it can decrease the students’ responses. The researcher has interest in positive reinforcement as the subject because it can increase the students’ participation in the classroom. Using positive reinforcement and its techniques in the classroom can increase the students’ participation by observing the class situation and students’ behavior (Brown, 1975). Turney, et al_{. (1973) say} that the teacher can facilitate the learning process, increase the students’ attention, maintain the students’ motivation and improve the expected students’ behavior.

In Microteaching class, the students are no longer trained as students but teacher candidates during the course. The reason is that they practice and demonstrate how to be an English teacher. Then, the rest will be assigned as the students. During the course, Microteaching students have three kinds of progress tests to be completed. Each progress test has different levels of education that should be demonstrated. The levels consist of junior high school, senior high school and university.

To review the implementation of reinforcement skill in Microteaching class, the researcher investigates Microteaching students’ perception on the use of reinforcement skill in Microteaching class. In one semester, Microteaching students have experienced the use of reinforcement skill both as the teacher and the student and they have the perception of it. According to Altman (1985), perception is how an individual interprets the stimuli from the surrounding environment involving the experience in the past and self-concept. Kalish (1973)

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adds that it is a process of organizing and interpreting the stimuli so the individual can create a meaning to define the stimuli. The theory of perception is chosen to obtain the information from the students in academic year 2009 that were taking Microteaching course in even semester in 2012. This is considered as the first research problem.

After solving the first research problem, the implementation of reinforcement skill needs to be evaluated the strengths and weaknesses in aim of improvement and development. The second problem will focus on the suggestions of the implementation. So, the researcher acquires the suggestions for any improvement from Microteaching students after they applied reinforcement skill.

B. Research Problems

By considering the research background, the researcher is going to find the answers to these two research questions:

1. What is Microteaching students’ perception on the use of reinforcement skill in Microteaching class?

2. What are Microteaching students’ suggestions on the use of reinforcement skill in Microteaching class?

C. Problem Limitation

This research focuses on the use of reinforcement skill in Microteaching class done by the students. The teacher who practices in front of the class should conduct the five basic teaching skills as being mentioned in the research

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background. There are 7 classes in even semester of 2012. The researcher took all the classes as the participants of this research but only several students of each class were taken. The information needed to answer the problems emphasizes the students’ perception on the use of reinforcement skill in Microteaching class and the suggestions from Microteaching students on the use of reinforcement skill.

D. Research Objectives

The research has two research objectives related to the problem questions. 1. To find out Microteaching students’ perception on the use of

reinforcement skill in Microteaching class.

2. To perceive Microteaching students’ suggestions on the use of reinforcement skill in Microteaching class.

E. Research Benefits

There are some benefits that can be perceived from this research. The benefits are provided for public concern. The descriptions are as follows.

1. Microteaching students as the teacher candidates

This research can be regarded as a reflection of an academic subject since it discusses the basic teaching skills that have to be mastered. So, it is expected to help the teacher candidates in Microteaching class find a new reference in how to be a professional teacher. The formal teaching that is investigated during the research can be an evaluation that leads to a better teaching performance.

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2. Lecturers

The researcher has 7 classes as the sources of the information needed. The lecturers who are in charge of Microteaching class should pay attention on their students’ understanding concerning this teaching skill. They can follow up the development of each student’s performance using reinforcement skill. So, they can go deeper into an evaluation of their students’ performances and see what should be improved. This research also allows the other lecturers and teachers in general to develop their teaching experiences that lead to improvement.

3. Other researchers

There might be other researchers who are willing to conduct research related to this topic for further interest. Hopefully, this research can inspire other researchers to expand educative innovations. Also, it can enhance the global knowledge and references. Then, it can be used as an academic source in how to manage a classroom for a professional teacher.

F. Definition of Terms

In this part, there are three terms that are defined. Those terms are used to list the theories as the base of this research. They are stated as follows.

1. Perception

In this study, perception is a stimulus object or event that is experienced; someone is aware of an object, activity or relationship involving senses then he/she

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recognizes, identifies and observes to perceive the conclusion and interpret the stimulus (VandenBos, 2007). When the stimulus is received for the first time, it needs to be identified then it is changed to an interpretation in somebody’s mind. If an individual experiences the stimulus in the different times, still, he/she will correspond to the earliest stimulus. This perception is intended to provoke the experience of Microteaching students when they implement reinforcement skill in the teaching practice to increase the students’ participation.

2. Microteaching

In this study, Microteaching is an obligatory course to be taken since it supports the practical understanding in English Language Education Study Program Sanata Dharma University. It is categorized in Matakuliah Keahlian Berkarya (KPE 361) that is made up of 2 credits in a semester. Microteaching is a training done in pre-service and in-service stages in the process of becoming a professional teacher (Allen & Ryan, 1969). Also, they add that a micro teacher has a small group of students and will be observed while performing to get the feedback from the observer before facing the real teaching situation. It means the teacher candidate should pass this level since this is a simulation imitating a real classroom condition. Microteaching has five basic teaching skills to be mastered. Those are stimulus variation skill, set induction and closure skills, reinforcement for the student and questioning skill.

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3. Reinforcement Skill

As mentioned in the microteaching term, a micro teacher needs to attain the basic teaching skills. They are stimulus variation, set induction, closure, silence and nonverbal cues, reinforcement of the students’ participation, fluency in asking a question (Allen & Ryan, 1969: 15). This research focuses on the reinforcement skill. Turney, et al. _{(1973) say that reinforcement is a positive} response that is given to a behavior in order that it is likely to occur again as it is expected. The purpose of using reinforcement skill is to give reward in return for having the expected behavior and to diminish the students’ unexpected behavior (Brown, 1975). Reinforcement is divided into two types, positive reinforcement including reward and negative reinforcement including withholding, corrective feedback and punishment (Brown, 1975). Those can be in form of verbal and non-verbal ways.

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REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

This chapter provides the theories of the related literature to answer the research problems. It consists of theories that will be used as the base of the research and as the references in the further discussion especially in chapter IV. Theoretical description and theoretical framework are explained as follows.

A. Theoretical Description

In this theoretical description, the researcher focuses on the theories related to the key terms that are stated in the introduction. There are perception, microteaching and reinforcement skill that will be discussed in detail and proved by experts’ theories.

1. Perception

VandenBos (2007) states that perception is a stimulus object or event that is experienced; someone is aware of an object, activities or relationships involving senses then he/she recognizes, identifies and observes to perceive the conclusion and interpret the stimulus into meaningful knowledge. According to Kalish (1973), perception means a process of organizing and interpreting sensory stimuli into meaningful structure. He also cites from Hilgard and Atkinson’s theory that perception is “becoming aware of objects, qualities, or relations by the way of the sense organs” (1967: 77).

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Likewise, Robbins (2001) says perception is a process of an individual interprets and organizes the received sensory so it can give a meaning to his environment. In addition, it affects an individual’s behavior on the perception of what the reality is, not on the reality itself. There are other views stated by Forgus (1966) about the process of perception. The way of an individual obtaining knowledge from his/her surrounding is an important part. There is information from the expansive areas in his/her environment and the individual extracts the information (stimuli) through the individual’s senses. Shortly, perception is a process of receiving or extracting the information from the surrounding environment. Forgus (1966) adds that it becomes the core of acquisition process of cognition or knowledge that is modified by growth, development and experience (p. 2).

Altman (1985) describes several factors that influence the perception of an individual. The factors are as follows.

• Selection of stimuli

When recognizing the surrounding environment, an individual tends to notice the small number of stimuli that the individual perceives. This is a process of selection where the individual selects the specific parts of the stimuli to gain information. So, it can build different perception between one and another individual.

• Organization of stimuli

This second factor is important because it affects an individual’s perceptual process. The stimuli have passed the selection. The brain arranges those to create

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a meaning. The brain function is to select the stimuli and put them together into meaningful way that is based on the experience.

• Situation

A person’s familiarity with, the expectation of an individual, the experience and the situation in the past affects what the person perceives from the environment. Perceiving situation is related to how the person responds to the situation through a behavior. So, the situation is regarded as a factor that influences perception.

• Self-concept

The way we feel about and perceive ourselves is known as the self-concept. The way we see our self-concept affects our perceptions. We might regard ourselves as a patient, honest or intelligent person. This is important because the mental picture of ourselves can determine what we perceive and do.

Kalish (1973) adds some factors influencing perception. They are characteristics of the stimuli and the perceiver, such as needs, experiences, set and personal rigidity. In conclusion, all individuals perceive different stimuli so they create different interpretations of the stimuli. Also, a group of individuals who perceive the similar stimuli have a possibility to have different perceptions.

2. Microteaching

The microteaching part contains a list of sections that can be categorized. The first is an exact description about the definition and its characteristics. The

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second is the principles of microteaching as a subject including the practical use and purpose within.

a. Definition and its Characteristics

This research focuses on Microteaching subject in English Language Education Study Program Sanata Dharma University that is offered in each semester. Since the course is compulsory, all of the students have experienced a teaching practice in order to complete this KPE 361 Matakuliah Keahlian Berkarya. The students are trained as a teacher candidate in the classroom. Microteaching started to be developed since 1963 at Stanford University School of Education as an experimental teacher education program (Borg, Kelley, Langer & Gall, 1970). Borg, et al. (1970) define microteaching into some characteristics and these are the basic elements as follows.

1) The teacher is presented the teaching skills to be practiced.

2) The teacher practices in a short lesson (reducing the time of the lesson) with a small group of pupils.

3) There is a recorded-video as the result of teaching performance and then the supervisor analyzes the applied skill by the teacher.

4) From the video, a further practice is recommended to conduct the practice again by the teacher with the other groups of pupils and another video will be required.

Allen and Ryan (1969) state that there are several aspects are reduced including the length of the lesson, the scope of the lesson and only few students

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about 25 or 30 taught in the microteaching. As cited by Borg, et al_{. (1970)} concerning the elements of microteaching, Allen and Clark (1967) state “some of variables which can be adjusted include lesson length, number of pupils, types of pupils, number of reteaches, the amount and kind of supervision and the use of videotape” (p. 75). According to Allen and Ryan (1969: 2), microteaching presents a situation that has the same characteristic as a real classroom but the complexity is less in degree and the teacher has the feedback after performing his/her practice. Allen and Ryan (1969) provide further evidences of five basic ideas of microteaching viewed from its elements.

1) Microteaching is the real teaching. Even though this is a practice, the teacher and students behave in a genuine situation of teaching.

2) Microteaching involves less a complicated process than a normal classroom. It has the class size, scope of content and also time reduced. 3) Microteaching focuses on completing the specific skills such as the

instructional skills, the techniques of teaching, the mastery of materials or the demonstration of teaching methods.

4) Microteaching can control the aspects of teaching, for example, the practice setting of microteaching, the rituals of time, the students and the methods of feedback and supervision.

5) Microteaching expands the feedback dimensions in teaching. After teaching in a brief lesson, the teacher gets a detailed analysis based on his/her performance. The teacher analyses his/her performance by the guidance of the supervisor. The teacher and the supervisor engage in the

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students’ response forms to examine the detail of the students’ reactions in the specific aspect of teaching during the performance. Since the teaching practice is recorded into a video, the teacher can evaluate the performance by playing back the video-recorded and see what should be improved. The last, after this process of assessment, the teacher can re-teach for a further practice.

b. Practical Process in Microteaching

Allen and Ryan (1969) state microteaching can be as a safe practice. A practice is a prior condition for many learning activities. The teaching performance can be improved by practicing. The skill and technique applied in the practice must be suitable with the lesson at that time. Allen and Ryan (1969) say, “microteaching was designed to provide teachers with a safe setting for the acquisition of the techniques and skills of their profession” (p. 4). In addition, between a micro teacher who starts to learn the skill of teaching, and the experienced teacher, microteaching is a realistic setting that can develop professional competencies.

A student who is willing to improve the performance in teaching identifies the specific teaching activities. Microteaching consists of several teaching skills such as explaining, questioning, reinforcement, set closure and induction. The student who practices as a teacher will identify what act is appropriate in response to a particular skill so it can help the teacher achieve the aims of that skill, the practice environment allows the teacher candidate to deal with the acquisition of

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specific skills, for example, how to increase the students’ participation using a particular method or questioning the students (Allen & Ryan, 1969). The feedback and re-teaching practice can enable the teacher candidate to acquire the teaching skills fluently in a short time.

Allen and Ryan (1969) also state, in a microteaching setting, a good teacher can apply his skill and it is recorded into a video as the result. The basic characteristic of microteaching builds a natural setting that gives a chance to the teacher (the student who practice teaching) to develop the instructional methods of the various teaching skills and techniques. The methods can separate the teaching skill and emphasize the teacher performance so the observers can focus on the teacher’s behavior. The well-performed models of instructional skill have a number of uses, they can be imitated as the example, show the alternative instructional, and stimulate the discussion about a teaching among the student who practices teaching (Allen & Ryan, 1969).

The less number of students, duration and the scope of the lesson can lessen the pressure of the teacher who is practicing. Allen and Ryan (1969) say “one of the key principles of microteaching is to focus on a particular teaching skill or some very clear objective” (p. 7). It is related to this research that is intended to investigate the use of one of the teaching skills, reinforcement skill. So, the safe practice, modeling the instructional skill and focus on a particular teaching skill are a means to achieve the microteaching practice objectives.

In Teachers Training and Education Faculty of Sanata Dharma University, Microteaching is one of the obligatory courses that must be taken by English

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Language Education Study Program (ELESP) students. ELESP offers this course in semester 6 (even semester) and 7 (odd semester) in the undergraduate program. As stated in ELESP academic guidebook, Microteaching is a pre-requisite course before a student takes Program Pengalaman Lapangan as the further training of applying the concept and procedure of English language teaching in a real classroom especially in high schools (Tutyandari, et al., 2011). It is also explained by Suseno and Gilarso (1986) that say the teaching skills training passes two phases, those are a peer teaching –teaching in front of the other Microteaching students– and a real teaching –teaching in a real situation of classroom–. They add, in the peer teaching, a Microteaching student teaches a small group of students which consists of Microteaching students and it is called “Microteaching” or Program Pengalaman Lapangan I.

The student who is assigned as a teacher has three-time chances to perform the teaching practice with the lecturer as the supervisor and three other students as the observers, the rest of Microteaching students act as the students and it goes by turns. The process of teaching a group of 4-7 students in the beginning of the course initiates the three-time progress tests of the teaching practice. The tests consist of levels of junior high school, senior high school and the complicated part, lower semester. The duration is about 30 minutes with a lesson plan that has been discussed with the supervisor. However, the duration in teaching lower semester depends on the agreement between the lecturer and Microteaching student.

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Each student who practices in Microteaching lab gets a video record as the result of teaching practice. The researcher took the 2009-academic-year students. There are seven classes chosen as the subject. The focus of this research is on one of the basic teaching skills learnt by Microteaching students especially reinforcement skill. This skill will be discussed further in the next part.

3. Reinforcement Skill

As stated in the introduction of theoretical description, this part will discuss the third specific theory that is reinforcement skill. It will be divided into two points of theory discussion. The first is about the types and techniques of reinforcement. Another part discusses the principles of reinforcement skill used in a classroom.

a. Types and Techniques of Reinforcement

The researcher focuses on this skill as the subject in Microteaching class. According to Allen and Ryan (1969), as cited by Asril (2011), there are 14 components of teaching skill.

1) Stimulus variation 2) Set induction 3) Closure

4) Silence and non-verbal cues 5) Reinforcement

6) Fluency in asking questions 7) Probing questions

8) Higher order questions 9) Divergent questions

10)Recognizing attending behavior 11)Illustrating and use of example 12)Lecturing

13)Planned repetition

However, English Language Education Study Program of Sanata Dharma University considers five basic teaching skills to be trained in Microteaching class. It is proved by Suseno and Gilarso (1986), that are used to be the senior lecturers and supervisors of IKIP Sanata Dharma, that there are many teaching skills need to be trained but there are only possible five skills taught in Microteaching course. These are the possible five basic teaching skills.

1) Set induction and closure skill 2) Explaining skill

3) Questioning skill 4) Reinforcement skill 5) Stimulus variation skill

Those experts state that reinforcement skill is one of the basic teaching skills trained in Microteaching course. The other experts also define their ideas about reinforcement skill. Turney, Cairns, Williams, Hatton and Owens (1973) say “positive reinforcement means positive response to a behavior which increases the probability of that behavior occurring again” (p. 12). Walker, Shea and Bauer (2007) have a similar idea that positive reinforcement is the presentation of a reinforcer showed because of the exhibition of a behavior that is expected. So, by those definitions, positive reinforcement can be defined as a means to convey an expression in order to cause a behavior as likely to happen again. Downing, et al_{. (1991), as cited by Walker,} et al_{. (2007), add that the} process of positive reinforcement causes the possibility of a behavior to occur

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again by reinforcing the individual with the appropriate and meaningful reinforcer.

Furthermore, there will be other experts’ views about the types and techniques of reinforcement. Generally, based on Turney, et al_{. (1973), there are} two types of reinforcement that is the primary reinforcement –refers to the environment that can be as a reinforcer related to the natural biological needs, e.g. foods, drinks, sex– and the secondary reinforcement –the conditioned or learned reinforcement that is neutral or has no effect on the behavior but it can be a reinforcer when related to other rewarded events– consists of money, verbal praise and peer attention as the examples. The second one consists of several components of skill. The researcher is going to discuss an expert’s idea about two components of reinforcement skill and present the other experts’ ideas as the supporting theories.

As stated in chapter I, reinforcement has two forms, positive and negative. Turney, et al. _{say ‘... the positive response to a behavior which increases the} probability of that behavior occuring again’ (1973: 12). This reinforcement only appears when the students show the positive response (the desired behavior). The researcher emphasizes positive reinforcement to be discussed. Cooper (1982) divides reinforcement into two broad categories, verbal and non-verbal. This common verbal used is praise such as “okay”, “good”, “nice job”. The teachers often use the verbal form as a simple way as the reinforcer for their students. Also, the teachers can use the students’ ideas to develop the lesson. Cooper (1982) says this reinforcement technique makes the students have more positive attitudes

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and higher achievement comparing to a classroom where the teachers do not involve the students’ ideas in developing the lesson. It can increase the students’ participation in classroom. Turney, et al_{. (1973) add some components of verbal} form. They are teacher’s comments of praise and encouragement, personalized comments and feedback. Another expert named McNamara (2000) shares identical thought about the verbal reinforcement consisting of praise by specifying the appropriate behavior such as ‘Well presented work!’, personalized positive comments involving the student’s name, showing an interest when engaging in the non-work conversation and calling the students using positive descriptive phrases such as “George looks as if he knows the answer.”

From those theories stated, the experts have a similar belief that praise is a reinforcer in the verbal form. According to Sutherland, Copeland and Wehby (2001), as cited by Walker, et al_{. (2007), praise is regarded as an effective strategy} to support students’ learning and behavior. They also list some guidelines in how to use the effective praise.

1) Praise should be delivered immediately after the behavior exhibited.

2) Praise should be delivered as unobtrusively as possible to avoid an interruption of the continuous classroom activity.

3) Praise should be delivered in a manner that the teacher is sincere.

4) Praise should include a statement of the positive behavior for which the learner is being praised.

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6) Praise for a new behavior should be frequent and it should be less frequent when it is habituated in the beginning stages of learning.

Praise is faded when the praised behavior becomes the part of a usual behavior. Reinforcement can be regarded as a reward also. Fontana proves it through his statement that “a reward is something (material or non-material) that appears desirable to the person concerned” (1985: 78). It appears desirably caused by the existence of the expected behavior. Non-material reward categorized by Fontana (1985) has a close relation to the other experts’ theories consisting of the teacher attention, the teacher praise, and the teacher encouragement peer-group attention. The non-material rewards, according to Fontana (1985), are at the most effective point when they are given as immediate as possible, consistently and by a person who has the prestige and status in the eyes of the recipient.

However, the non-verbal reinforcement is not less effective to create a good classroom atmosphere. Cooper (1982) states the non-verbal reinforcement refers to the physical messages including eye contact, facial expressions and body positions. He adds the way of teachers smile, frown, remain impassive toward the students’ comments, look at or away from the students, stand by (position) and look relaxed or tense can indicate whether the teacher is bored or interested and pleased or displeased with the students’ comment. Those gestural expressions may stimulate the students as positive reinforcers. McNamara (2000) also lists the non-verbal reinforcement consisting of eye contact and friendly expressions, standing close to the students and nodding while examine closely to the students’ work, giving the thumbs up sign if necessary or the other esoteric signals, and

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varying the facial expressions that are friendly and not threatening. Turney, et al_. (1973) describe a close definition to the other experts that non-verbal reinforcement contains gestural expressions referring the teacher’s use of smiles, nods or pointing as the non-verbal responses to the students’ performance or behavior.

However, Fontana (1985) includes the material rewards into non-verbal reinforcement such as good marks, good reports, stars, points or gifts in return of the students’ behavior. According to Turney, et al_{. (1973), the reinforcement in} forms of ticks, stars, points and written comments are called token reinforcement. It means the teachers use any symbolic reinforcer in return of the students’ desired performance or behavior. McNamara (2000) states the written form such as personalized comments in an exercise book is one of the reinforcement forms. This type is not popularly used in Microteaching class since the duration and the scope of lesson including the activity are reduced. The verbal and non-verbal reinforcement have effects only after it is delivered to the students. Nevertheless, the written reinforcement may have the effects when each time the students read it, for example, the positive and personalized comments in an exercise book are potential to have a repeated effect (McNamara, 2000).

However, negative reinforcement can result in a positive effect. As stated in chapter I, reinforcement is negative when it is expressed by withholding, corrective feedback and punishment (Brown, 1975). He says that besides having praise as the reinforcement from the teacher, help is a good turn to assist the students for having an expected understanding by giving corrective feedback. The

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corrective feeedback consists of prompts, probes and giving direction (Brown, 1975). It can be combined by positive reinforcement. He adds that the teacher may praise the student at the beginning and give the student information or feedback as a corrective to his/her behavior (Brown, 1975). Cooper (1982) says that giving feeback directly is more effective and one of the reinforcement techniques that is used to increase the students’ participants. In the discussion of theories and results, the researcher would emphasize both positive and negative reinforcement since the focused teaching skill is reinforcement.

b. The Principles in the Use of Reinforcement

There are some bases of rules to conduct reinforcement skill. The students’ behavior change is dependent on the implementation of the principles. There are five important rules in the principles of reinforcement as Walker, et al_{. (2007)} state.

1) Reinforcement is dependant on the exhibition of the target behavior. The teachers must reinforce only certain students’ behavior that is expected and only after it is exhibited.

2) The target behavior is to be reinforced immediately after it is exhibited. When attempting to establish a new behavior or to increase the frequency of an existing behavior, the teachers must reinforce that behavior as soon as it occurs.

3) During the initial stages of the behavior change process, the target behavior is reinforced each time it is exhibited. The behavior that is not

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habituated cannot be sustained if it is not reinforced after it exists. The consistency of the reinforcement is essential during the initial stages of the students’ behavior.

4) When the target students’ behavior reaches a satisfactory level, reinforce it intermittently. It will maintain the behavior in satisfactory level. If a student whose behavior is changed does not know when his teacher gives him reinforcement but he knows he will perceive it, he will continue at that satisfactory level.

5) If the tangible reinforcers are applied, the social reinforcers are always applied with them. If the tangible reinforcers such as gifts, stars, points, good reports, they must be followed by other social rewards such as a smile, a pat on the back or praise. After the tangible and social reinforcers can increase the desired students’ behavior, the teachers should eliminate the tangible ones so there will be left the social reinforcers only.

McNamara (2000) adds the idea of a schedule of reinforcement. To increase the desired behavior showed by students, they need to be reinforced immediately, consistently and frequently.

According to Turney, et al_{. (1973), they share the understanding on the} principles in the use of reinforcement. They state four points based on his idea. These are the following general principles of reinforcement skill.

1) Warmth and enthusiasm. Rosenshine (1970,1971), as cited by Turney, et al_{., states that both components play an important role when the teacher}

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deliver reinforcement. A reinforcer that is given enthusiastically can give more effective quality compared to expressionless and boring one.

2) Avoidance of negative reinforcement. As cited from Lipe and Jung (1971), even though negative reinforcement and punishment are effective methods but this is still controversial in psychological study. Meacham and Wiesen (1969) suggest using positive rather than negative reinforcement because its effect is more predictable. The emphasis is on the positive reinforcement to students’ correct or appropriate performance.

3) Variety of usage. The teacher should provide the flexible and various manners to develop the reinforcement skill. A repetition of verbal or token (stars) can lessen the effectiveness of the reinforcement. The teachers can distinguish the reinforcement for the whole class group, sub-group or personal.

4) Meaningfulness to pupil. To reach an effective point, the teacher must know how to direct the reinforcement so the students can perceive and relate it to the behavior exhibited, also they find the reinforcement meaningful. Having wrong time and form in delivering reinforcement lead the students to interpret praise insincere and inappropriate rather than reinforcing.

Initiating discussion of the specified action to be reinforced, there is a term of student behavior. A lot of behaviors in the classroom are relevant to lesson activity during teaching and learning process. Turney, et al_{. (1973) cover the} behaviors that can be as target of the reinforcement as follows.

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1) Attention to teacher, peers and objects under discussion 2) Study behavior, book work, reading and chalkboard work 3) Work output (completed pages, assignment sheets)

4) Work quality (neatness, accuracy, aesthetic qualities, thought content) 5) Work improvement (in quality, output or appearance)

6) Behavior categories (task appropriate and inappropriate, verbal, physical and written)

7) Independent work (development of self-directed and managed behavior and self-initiated work activity)

B. Theoretical Framework

The researcher conducted research that aims to find out Microteaching students’ perception on the use of reinforcement skill in Microteaching class and their suggestions on the use of reinforcement skill in Microteaching class. The researcher used several theories as the base to answer those problem formulations. The first is the theory of perception. According to Altman (1985), perception is the way of an individual reacts to the stimuli from the surrounding environment and interprets it into a meaning to be understood.

Altman also describes the process of occurring perception through this figure.

Figure 2.1 The Perceptual Process Sensor’s

selection of stimuli

Perception, organization, and

interpretation of stimuli

Behavioral response

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The procedure is that an individual selects the stimuli from the environment by specifying the cues. Then he or she organizes and arranges the selected stimuli to be interpreted into the meaningful knowledge or information. Finally, it appears in a behavior response as the result of perceiving the information. Robbins (2001) states a similar idea that perception is a process that individuals organize and interpret the sensory impression to give a meaning to their environment. Those theories help the researcher construct a questionnaire to find out Microteaching students’ perception on the use of reinforcement skill in Microteaching class.

All of the Microteaching students have experienced to conduct the basic teaching skills including reinforcement. Each student is by turn assigned as a teacher, observer and student referring to the characteristic of Microteaching course in English Language Education Study Program. Before conducting teaching practice, Microteaching students have to construct a lesson plan and material then consult it to their supervisor for comments and revise for final (Suseno & Gilarso, 1986).

Allen and Ryan (Brown, 1978) define a cycle of Microteaching process as follows.

Figure 2.2 Original Microteaching Cycle

Based on that cycle, each cycle has to maintain one component skill such as set and closure, effective questioning, pupil reinforcement or participation as the exercise. After constructing the lesson plan and material, the teacher has to apply

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all what he or she prepares in limited time of teaching. The observer, meant to the student who is assigned as the observer, and the supervisor give comments and feedback what should be improved during the teaching practice. After having the comments and feedback, the teacher may revise it to re-plan another teaching practice until he or she has acquired the teaching skill.

The researcher specified one of the component skills, that is reinforcement, as the focus of research. For the implementation of reinforcement skill, the researcher used theory from Turney, et al_{. as the base to conduct} research as well as solve the problem formulations. According to Turney, et al_. (1973), (positive) reinforcement refers to (positive) response to a behavior to increase the probability of the behavior occurring again. There are two types in general. The first is the verbal form including praise, encouragement, comments and feedback. Another form is the non-verbal reinforcement consisting of gestural expressions, smiles, eye contact and material rewards. The positive response is to increase the expected students’ behavior. In Microteaching course, mastering this skill is one of the course objectives and criteria to pass the course. Microteaching students’ perception on the use of reinforcement skill is the main part of this research. The perception when Microteaching students are assigned as the teacher and student affects the result of this research.

29 CHAPTER III

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

This chapter is to describe the method used in this research to answer the problem formulations as stated in the introduction. This chapter consists of research method, research setting, research participants, instruments and data gathering technique, data analysis technique, and research procedure.

A. Research Method

The researcher intended to investigate Microteaching students’ perception on the use of reinforcement skill in Microteaching class. To gain the information, the researcher needed a sample of population for the data collection to answer the research problems. Since the research was to describe the characteristic of population, the method used was survey. It is proved by Fraenkel and Wallen (2009) that survey research is to gain information from a group of people to describe characteristics such as ability, opinions or knowledge through asking question and draw a sample rather than involve all the members of population. The research problems addressed to the quality of an activity that was being observed concerning with process as well as product and it is one of the characteristics of qualitative research (Fraenkel & Wallen, 2009). They add that the collected data tends to be in form of words rather than numbers. It was proved that the researcher got the data through the focused group discussion, comments and statements (questionnaire). So, the presented data would be reported in words.

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However, the researcher used score of percentage in the questionnaire result in order to determine the students’ perception.

The researcher had population of participants in order to solve the research problems. The selected population was Microteaching students who were taking Microteaching course in even semester of 2012. They were ELESP students of year 2009 that have experienced reinforcement as a teaching skill. Since this is a survey research, the researcher drew a sample for the representatives rather than used the population, as stated by Fraenkel and Wallen (2009). There were 108 members in the population. The researcher chose the sample randomly because the members have an equal chance of being selected (Fraenkel & Wallen, 2009). The participants were listed from number 1 to 108. There were 54 participants who belonged to the odd numbers in the process of sampling.

B. Research Setting

The research took place in the campus of Sanata Dharma University, English Language Education Study Program in particular. The researcher used the Laboratory of Microteaching, a room where the course took place, to deliver a brief presentation about the intention of conducting this research and to distribute the questionnaires. It was held on May 28th, 2012 up to May 31st, 2012 for collecting the written data and June 18th, 2012 for the focused group discussion.

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C. Research Participants

The research certainly demanded participants to obtain the information

needed. The participants in this research were the students of Microteaching class

in English Language Education Study Program of Sanata Dharma University from

year 2009 who were taking the course in even semester of 2012. The logical

reason for choosing them as the participants was because they have experienced

the process of teaching practice. They have learnt how to teach for professional

and master the teaching skills especially reinforcement skill as the focus of the

research. There were 7 classes to be surveyed, from class A to G. There were 145

students but only 108 participants who returned the questionnaires. Several

questionnaires did not fulfill the criteria to be analyzed because of the broken

(incomplete) pages and incomplete responses also comments for each question.

For the need of analysis, the researcher needed samples as the representatives of

the population. The samples were 54 participants as stated in the research method.

After having the result of the questionnaire, the researcher chose 19

participants for the focused group discussion. It is to gain more information that

was not provided in the questionnaire. The researcher chose those participants

based on their responses in the questionnaire (both negative and positive

response). They were as the representatives of each Microteaching class.

D. Instruments and Data Gathering Technique

There were two instruments used in this research to collect the data from

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researcher used focused group discussion rather than personal interview. Those instruments were commonly used in survey research. These are the descriptions of the instruments used.

1. Questionnaire

According to Fraenkel and Wallen (2009), questionnaire was used as one of the research instruments that commonly used in a survey to perceive the information of Microteaching students’ perception on the use of reinforcement skill in Microteaching class. It was divided into two parts. The first was close-ended part. It consists of multiple choices that allow the participants to choose the answer based on their perceptions. The close-ended part was separated into two subparts. The subject in the first close-ended subpart was designed to gain the information of students’ perception as the student (who was assigned as the student during teaching). Then, the second subpart was subjected to gain the information of students’ perception as the teacher (who was assigned as the teacher during teaching). The aim was to investigate the perception when Microteaching students delivered the reinforcement and oppositely as the recipient of reinforcement. Each close-ended subpart consists of 10 questions that have 2 scales of agreement and disagreement.

The last part was open-ended questions. It consists of three questions that provide spaces for the participants to state their reasons into words or paragraphs. The statement in form of words allowed them to convey their ideas of the

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intended topic without having the influence from the other aspects including the researcher.

2. Focused Group Discussion (FGD)

The second instrument was focused group discussion that was used to gain the further information of Microteaching students’ participation on the use of reinforcement skill in Microteaching class. In a survey research, one of the procedures applied to solve the problems is interview (Fraenkel & Wallen, 2009). However, Fraenkel and Wallen (2009) add that the weaknesses of conducting personal interview are that quite longer in the time allocation and difficult to contact the participants. So, in this research, the researcher used focused group discussion rather than personal interview. It is similar to questionnaire that has a set of questions to be answered by the participants.

The researcher chose FGD because, according to Morgan (1998), it has a same principle as an interview. Morgan (1998) says that focused group discussion means group interviews. It is rather a discussion than an interview. Irwanto (2006) defines the focused group discussion (FGD) as a process of collecting data and information about specific issues through a discussion (not personal interview), group (not individual) and focused (not broad). This is a follow-up activity after distributing the questionnaires. There was a moderator who leads the discussion. The researcher was assigned as the moderator who presented an issue to be discussed with the participants. The issue was Microteaching students’ perception on the use of reinforcement skill in Microteaching class.

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Morgan (1998) says that the moderator is to maintain the continual communication between the moderator and participants as well as among the participants themselves to avoid the domination. This condition allowed the moderator and participants to probe the information or statement that might be unclear or ambiguous. Each participant had chances to express the idea and the others might state the same or different opinions. There were 19 students chosen for FGD as the representatives from 7 classes. There were 2-3 representatives for each class.

The researcher arranged the data gathering technique after set the instruments. First of all, the researcher put the interest in Microteaching course because it has an environment that imitates a real classroom condition. According to Suseno and Gilarso (1986), there are five basic teaching skills that are possible to be learnt, one of them is reinforcement. The researcher has experienced this skill when taking the course in the previous semester. Then, the researcher asked the information whether the basic teaching skills are introduced in Microteaching class to a lecturer who was responsible for the course. After having the evidence that this skill is taught in Microteaching course, the researcher asked Microteaching lecturers for permission to conduct research on reinforcement as a basic teaching skill. The permission was to gain information from their students about the implementation of reinforcement skill in Microteaching class done by the students.

In the data collection, the researcher used mode of direct administration to a group. In this mode, the researcher had all the access directly to the participants

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without any intervention when collecting the data (Fraenkel & Wallen, 2009). They add, it allows the researcher to meet and communicate with the participants at the same time and place. By using the theories and information, the researcher set a questionnaire to investigate Microteaching students’ perception on the use of reinforcement skill during teaching practice in Microteaching class.

Then, the researcher distributed the copies of questionnaire to all the members of Microteaching class in order to get the further information about the implementation of reinforcement skill. This was the time schedule of distributing the questionnaires.

Table 3.1 The Schedule of Distributing Questionnaire

Date Class Number of

Questionnaire Activity

A 21 Distributing questionnaire May 28th, 2012

B 21 Distributing questionnaire! C 22 Distributing questionnaire! May 29th, 2012

D 19 Distributing questionnaire! E 21 Distributing questionnaire_! F 22 Distributing questionnaire! May 31st, 2012

G 19 Distributing questionnaire_! The process of distributing the copies of questionnaires took place in the Laboratory of Microteaching. The researcher delivered a mini presentation about the research. It was held before the students left the lab.

After calculating the result of the questionnaires and identifying the response, the researcher conducted the focused group discussion to get deeper information from the participants. There were 19 students involved in the

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discussion on June 18th of 2012 at K.10. K.10 is one of the classrooms in ELESP. The researcher chose the class as the place to conduct group discussion because it has facilities of tables, chairs, wide space and air conditioner. All of the participants have implemented five basic teaching skills including reinforcement. The researcher recorded the process of discussion in a video. It was to enable the researcher to make the transcription. Then, the transcription was presented and analyzed in the next chapter.

E. Data Analysis Technique

In the next chapter, the researcher would report and analyze the data. Here, there is a brief explanation of the steps to proceed the analysis. The close-ended part would be reported in the form of percentage and presented in a table. The researcher described the percentage into words as the interpretation. Firstly, the researcher selected the questionnaires that would be analyzed. It was because the researcher avoided the data that were invalid. It means that there were double answers or misunderstandings with the questions so it did not answer the research problems. This was one of the threats found in collecting the data. The close-ended part provided Likert scale of agreement and disagreement to help Microteaching students respond to the written statement. Likert scale is a form of ordinal scale to measure how perceptive a participant is toward a statement (Ary, Lucy & Christine, 2002). There are a lot of types of Likert scale. The researcher chose four levels from strongly disagree to strongly agree. The scales were strongly disagree, disagree, agree and strongly agree.

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!"

___ x 100% !n

The researcher reported the close-ended part of the questionnaire in form of numbers. The result of each statement needed to be calculated into percentage. The researcher used a formula to know the score of each scale in a percentage form.

The formula is

!" = the number of participants that choose same scale in each statement !n = total participants

Each statement had four scales to be measured. Each scale used that formula to show the students’ perception of the statement. The explanation of the percentage for each statement was in words. The last part in the questionnaire was open-ended questions. The researcher transcribed it into a table of data for the need of analysis. The transcription was to enable the researcher to classify into some points. The points were used to support the percentage (number) score of the close-ended part. Then, the complete data of raw open-ended data was put in the appendix (see Appendix C).

For the FGD result, the researcher needed to transcribe the statement from the participants to have a thorough understanding of Microteaching students’ perception about the implementation of the use of reinforcement skill. Then, it would be used in the next chapter to strengthen the result of the questionnaire and perceive the students’ suggestions on the implementation of reinforcement skill to find out what should be improved for the further development. The result of the score calculation of both questionnaire and transcription of FGD would help the

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researcher in the discussion and data analysis to answer the research problems on the use of reinforcement skill in Microteaching class.

F. Research Procedure

First of all, the researcher put the interest on Microteaching class especially the basic teaching skills that have been implemented. It would focus on the reinforcement skill. The researcher defined two research problems to be investigated. There was a need to compose a proposal addressed to the researcher’s supervisor describing the willingness to conduct the research on the use of reinforcement skill in Microteaching class to assure whether the research was possible to be conducted.

As stated in ELESP Academic Book (see chapter II), Microteaching is a further training of applying the concept and procedure of English language teaching (Tutyandari, et al_{., 2011), there are five basic teaching skills taught in the} course including reinforcement skill (Suseno & Gilarso, 1986). In the previous semester, the researcher also experienced the skill and the curiousity about the use of reinforcement skill was started from taking the course. The researcher collected the information about the reinforcement skill in Microteaching class from a lecturer who was responsible for the course. Microteaching students played the role as the teacher and student during the course. To gain the information related to their perceptions, the lecturer also suggested that the researcher had better investigate from both sides. From the information collected, the researcher arranged a set of instruments to collect the data. The instruments consist of

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questionnaire and focused group discussion. The questionnaire had two parts, close-ended and open-ended. The focused group discussion was designed to allow the researcher and all the participants to have discussion and not dominate other participants when exchanging their ideas.

The researcher chose Microteaching students of year 2009 who were taking the course in even semester of 2012. There were 7 classes chosen for the target of distributing the questionnaire. As this research using sampling to gather the data, the reason of choosing them was that the participants have implemented teaching practice demonstrating reinforcement within the basic teaching skills.

Before the distribution, the researcher needed to ask permission in order to conduct research in an institution, i.e. English Language Education Study Program of Sanata Dharma University. Furthermore, it was necessary to ask the lecturers of Microteaching course to have their students as the participants. There were 145 questionnaires ready to be distributed after the time of the class was over. The researcher allowed the participants who could not stay longer in the class to carry the questionnaires in other places to retain the reliability of the answer. Then, they were asked to return the questionnaires in the following day. There were 108 participants returning the filled questions on the following day. The total returns were reduced by the broken questionnaires and incomplete response for each statement. For being valid, the researcher took half of the total questionnaires as many as 54 participants.

After getting all the information needed, the next step was to analyze the data. The calculated score resulted in a table of percentage. It was used for further

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analysis. Each statement’s reason and explanation during the focused group discussion would strengthen the result of the questionnaire. Those results led into a deeper discussion to answer the problem formulations.

41 CHAPTER IV

RESEARCH RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

In this chapter, there are detail discussions about the research results, analysis and discussion related to the theories. In reporting the data, the researcher divides the data into two parts, based on questionnaire and focused group discussion (FGD) result. Then, it goes to analysis and ends up in a discussion to answer the first research question that is Microteaching students’ perception on the use of reinforcement skill. The last part presents the suggestions from Microteaching students on the use of reinforcement skill to answer the second research problem.

A. Microteaching Students’ Perception on the Use of Reinforcement Skill in Microteaching Class

This part reports the data from questionnaire and focused group discussion (FGD) results. There are two parts that will be discussed in this section. The first part is students’ perception as the student and the second one is students’ perception as the teacher. Both perceptions are intended to answer the first problem formulation.

1. The Result of Students’ Perception as the Student

This section presents the result of questionnaire data. There are two parts in the questionnaire. The first is closed-ended part consisting of 10 statements to

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perceive the scale of the participants’ agreement and disagreement and open-ended part to elicit information for detail explanation of their views of the use of reinforcement skill in Microteaching class. In addition, FGD result exists to support the information gained from the questionnaire.

In order to find out the perception as the student, there is a table that presents statements and also involves the percentage as the result of the research. There are ten statements in the table. Each statement has its own result in a form of percentage and number of participants.

Table 4.1 The Result of Students’ Perception as the Students (Close-ended)

Frequency No. Statement

SD D A SA

1.

The teacher praises the student who responds to a question in class discussion or question and answer session. 0 (0%) 2 (3.7%) 32 (59.26%) 20 (37.04%) 2.

The teacher gives brief response such as ‘Good’, ‘That is right.’, or

‘Excellent!’ to respond to the students’ comment in order to motivate them.

0 (0%) 1 (1.85%) 32 (59.26%) 21 (38.89%) 3.

The teacher praises the students to develop their confidence in learning activity. 0 (0%) 4 (7.41%) 33 (61.11%) 17 (31.48%) 4.

The teacher praises a group of students when they complete a difficult task in a group discussion to

encourage the other groups to perform expected student behavior. 0 (0%) 1 (1.85%) 33 (61.11%) 20 (37.04%)

! ! 89

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Moderator: Bukti bahwa reinforcement disampaikan secara natural terlihat dari mana?

Student A: tidak dibuat-buat , jujur, jika kita tidak tertarik pada suatu topik (bola) kemudian tiba-tiba komentar dengan berlebihan (lebay) , nada yang datar juga indikasi tidak natural bahkan tidak tulus

Student E: dari facial expression juga akan tampak, kita mencoba antusias terhadap tanggapan siswa

Student O: jika kita sudah memberikan reinforcement tapi anak tidak merasa terinforce sepertinya perlu ada yang diperbaiki, kita perlu lebih mengeksplore lagi keadaan kelas seperti apa, keadaan murid seperti apa sehingga kita bisa memberikan reinforcement yang tepat.

90

Appendix E

QUESTIONNAIRE

This is my questionnaire that aims to investigate the Microteaching Students’ Perception on the Use of Reinforcement Skill in Microteaching Class. There are two parts in this questionnaire. The first part focuses on your perception as the student and the second part focuses on your perception as the teacher candidate.

You need to put a tick (!) based on the degree of agreement (SD, D, A, SA) which corresponds to the statements related to the implementation of reinforcement skill during Microteaching class practice. Thank you.

A. Perception as the Student

SD= Strongly Disagree D=Disagree A= Agree SA= Strongly Agree

No Statements SD D A SA

1. The teacher praises the student who responds to a question in a class discussion or question and answer session.

2. The teacher gives brief response such as ‘Good’, ‘That is right.’ or ‘Excellent!’ to the students’ comment in order to motivate them.

3. The teacher praises the students to develop their confidence in the learning activity.

4. The teacher praises a group of students when they complete a difficult task in a group discussion to encourage the other groups to perform the expected student behavior.

5. The teacher helps the students understand the lesson by giving corrective feedback if they make mistakes. 6. Corrective feedback builds positive self-image in the

students after the students make a response. 7. When the teacher uses the students’ idea, the

!"# #

No Statements SD D A SA

8. When the teacher uses the students’ idea, it can draw the students into a discussion.

9. The teacher gives encouraging gestures such as smiling or nodding his/her head to indicate the response to the student’s idea.

10. The teacher shows facial cues such as eye contact and facial expression that aim to make the students become more attentive.

B. Perception as the Teacher

SD= Strongly Disagree D=Disagree A= Agree SA= Strongly Agree

No Statements SD D A SA

1. I praise the student who responds to a question in a discussion class or question and answer session. 2. I give positive comments to a group of students

when they complete a difficult task in a group discussion to encourage the other groups to perform the expected student behavior.

3. I give brief response such as ‘Good!’, ‘That’s right.’, ‘Excellent!’ to the expected students’ behavior so it can occur again.

4. I give corrective feedback to the students’ response to help them understand the material.

5. I use the students’ idea to increase the students’ participation for a further discussion.

6. I maintain eye contact with the students to indicate the interaction between the teacher and students during the lesson.

7. I nod when students share their idea to approve what they are saying.

8. When a student responds to my explanation, I direct my attention to the student to show my curiosity. 9. I deliver reinforcement to the students honestly and

naturally.

10. Reinforcement can lose its meaning for students if it is given too often.

!"# #

Please answer the following questions:

1. In general, do you think the teachers have implemented reinforcement skill? Why do you think so?

____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ 2. Do you think you have reinforcement skill or not?

Why do you think so?

____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ 3. What is/are your suggestion(s) to improve the practice of reinforcement

skill in Microteaching class?

____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ #




ABSTRACT

Stasia, Bella. 2013. Microteaching Students’ Perception on the Use of

Reinforcement Skill in Microteaching Class. Yogyakarta: Sanata Dharma University.

There is a similar aspect learnt in education and psychology field, i.e. behavior. The research deals with behavior of students in a classroom. The teacher needs teaching skills to maintain classroom condition. One of them is reinforcement skill.

There are two problems proposed in this research. The first is what Microteaching students’ perception on the use of reinforcement skill in Microteaching class is. The second is what the suggestions of Microteaching students on the use of reinforcement skill in Microteaching class are.

To solve the problems, the researcher conducted a survey research. Survey research is to gain information from a group of people to describe characteristics such as ability, opinions or knowledge through asking question and draw a sample rather than involving all the members of population (Fraenkel & Wallen, 2009). The samples were Microteaching students who have implemented reinforcement skill in Microteachingclass. The instruments used in this research were questionnaire and focused group discussion (FGD). The participants were Microteaching students who were taking Microteaching course in even semester of 2012.

From the research results in the first problem, it was concluded that Microteaching students had positive perception on the use of reinforcement skill in Microteaching class. The teacher candidates have implemented reinforcement skill in their teaching practice using verbal and non-verbal form. Still, there were teachers who tend to use verbal rather than non-verbal. To solve the second problem, the researcher perceived two suggestions. The first is for the teacher candidates in Microteaching class and the second is for the implementation reinforcement skill in Microteaching class.




ABSTRAK

Stasia, Bella. 2013. Microteaching Students’ Perception on the Use of

Reinforcement Skill in Microteaching Class. Yogyakarta: Sanata Dharma University.

Ada kesamaan aspek yang dipelajari dalam bidang pendidikan maupun psikologi, yaitu tingkah laku. Penelitian ini mengenai tingkah laku siswa dalam kelas. Guru memerlukan ketrampilan untuk menjaga kondisi kelas. Salah satunya adalah ketrampilan penguatan.

Ada dua permasalahan yang diangkat dalam penelitian ini. Masalah yang

pertama apa persepsi siswa kelas Microteaching terhadap penggunaan

ketrampilan penguatan di kelas Microteaching. Masalah yang kedua apa saran- saran siswa Microteaching terhadap penggunaan ketrampilan penguatan di kelas Microteaching?

Untuk mencari solusi permasalahan tersebut, peneliti menggunakan metode survei. Survei digunakan untuk menggali informasi dari sekelompok orang untuk menggambarkan karakteristik seperti kemampuan, pendapat atau ilmu pengetahuan dan lebih menggunakan sampel daripada mengikutsertakan seluruh populasi (Fraenkel & Wallen, 2009). Penelitian ini menggunakan sampel siswa Microteaching yang sudah mengimplementasikan ketrampilan penguatan dalam kelas Microteaching. Instrumen yang digunakan adalah kuisioner dan fokus grup diskusi (FGD). Partisipannya adalah siswa Microteaching yang mengambil mata kuliah Microteaching di semester genap tahun 2012.

Dari hasil penelitian pada permasalahan pertama, dapat disimpulkan bahwa siswa Microteaching mempunyai persepsi positif terhadap penggunaan ketrampilan penguatan dalam kelas Microteaching. Para calon guru tersebut telah mengimplementasikan ketrampilan penguatan dalam bentuk verbal dan non-verbal ketika berlatih mengajar. Tetapi, ada beberapa calon guru yang cenderung

menggunakan bentuk verbal daripada non-verbal. Untuk mencari solusi

permasalahan kedua, ada dua saran. Saran yang pertama untuk para calon guru

(siswa Microteaching) dan yang kedua untuk implementasi ketrampilan

penguatan dalam kelas Microteaching.