Exploring high school English teachers’ perceptions of implementing scientific approach and their beliefs in English language teaching in Indonesia

Abstract

The focal points of this study lie within teachers’ perceptions of the implementation of Scientific Approach (SA) as well as teaching text genres in English learning, and their beliefs in English language teaching. This study was aimed at shedding light on the addressed issues through in-depth information. The subjects of this research were 144 teachers of junior high school and senior high school in Lampung Province (2 cities and 4 regencies). The data obtained from the open-ended questionnaires were read over and over, and were grouped using vivo coding. The data were obtained from open-ended questionnaires. The data analysis results provide the following information: (1) 85 percent of the teachers applied SA. These teachers argued that they did that for the fulfilment of the requirements set by the applied curricula; (2) 122 (85%) of the teachers always taught text genres for the same reason, i.e. to meet the demands of the curricula; and (3) 142 (99%) of the teachers believed that communicative language teaching (CLT) was the best approach for the process of English learning. Taken together, the results suggest that teachers should be granted the freedom to determine the techniques for the learning processes as their beliefs are in perfect accord with the English learning intended to enable learners to communicate in English while dealing with various types of texts, as elaborated in Curriculum 2013.