Our Expertise

The early years of a teacher’s career are crucial to the formation of their professional identity—a complex process of reconciling their personal attributes with the demands of the profession. This study explores the identity formation of novice teachers in Indonesia and seeks to identify the various aspects that shape this process.

Despite government efforts to reform teacher professional development (TPD) in the past four decades, Indonesian teacher quality remains low. Why have the improvement efforts failed?

Cheating reduces the signal value of exam data and it might shift the focus of teachers and students away from learning. However, it is difficult to prevent cheating if it is widespread. We evaluate the impact of computer-based testing (CBT) on national exam scores in junior secondary schools in Indonesia, exploiting the phased roll-out of the program from 2015 to 2019.

Why is it so hard for Indonesia to recruit good teachers? We argue that the struggle to recruit good teachers are due to institutional, political economy, and social dynamics of the recruitment process. We will discuss three factors that underpin this issue. First, Indonesia’s dysfunctional teacher recruitment process as a byproduct of the country’s inchoate political and legal institutions.

Poor teacher accountability leads to poor education quality, especially in remotely-located schools that are costly to supervise. This paper reports the impacts of three interventions that linked community-based monitoring to a government allowance for teachers working in remote areas in Indonesia.