Dealing with forty students: peer-assessment as an alternative for English teachers in Indonesia

Agus Sufyan,Didin Nuruddin Hidayat

doi:10.30595/lks.v14i2.7237

Abstract

English teachers in Indonesia typically teach in large classroom size, with high possibility to teach more than two classes. When it comes to assessing students’ work, most of them tended to rely on teacher assessment, for it is considered as part of their duties as professional teachers. However, when dealing with students’ work, students may also need superficial and substantial correction and feedback rather than receiving marks only. Nevertheless, to provide those corrections and feedback, English teachers need a considerable amount of time to complete the assessment process; estimated calculation has been provided in this paper. Therefore, this conceptual paper aims to provide an alternative way to assess students’ work through peer assessment. Some benefits and challenges have been discussed to give insights for English teachers in Indonesia. This paper agrees that peer assessment can help teachers regarding time efficiency and help students regarding increased learning engagement. Moreover, English teachers need to pay tackle to some challenges such as shifting from a traditional perspective towards teacher authority and addressing issues of validity and reliability from students’ marking results. This paper suggests that though teachers can minimize their workload, their presence is pivotal in assisting students during the assessment process.

Highlights

Teaching in large classroom size has been considered as one of English teachers‘ challenges in most of the Asian countries such as Indonesia (Dardjowidjojo, 2000; Kirkpatrick, 2007; Lie, 2007)
For those problems related to large classroom size, this conceptual paper aimed to justify peer assessment (PA) as an alternative for English teachers in Indonesia to reduce their workload when dealing with the assessment
We have addressed the first condition that emphasis on the presence of English teachers and their students in the process of defining success criteria

Summary

Introduction

Teaching in large classroom size (an average of forty students) has been considered as one of English teachers‘ challenges in most of the Asian countries such as Indonesia (Dardjowidjojo, 2000; Kirkpatrick, 2007; Lie, 2007). Tendency to become passive students, and feeling worried about being embarrassed by other students have been reported as the shortcomings of having a large class (Hammond & Gao, 2002; Ur, 1996) While those issues occurred only during the teaching and learning process in the classroom, English teachers are involved in other duties outside the class, for example, when they need to assess students‘ work. A combination of an excessive number of tasks assigned to teachers and lack of support would lead to teacher burnout—a psychological condition describing emotional exhaustion and reduced self-worth leading to decreased teachers‘ achievement (Brouwers & Tomic, 2000; Unaldi et al, 2013) For those problems related to large classroom size, this conceptual paper aimed to justify peer assessment (PA) as an alternative for English teachers in Indonesia to reduce their workload when dealing with the assessment. Leksika Vol 14, No., August 2020 : 78—82 and challenges when the students are given responsibility in the assessment process

Why Peer Assessment?

Time efficiency

Learning engagement

What challenges?

Validity and reliability

Conclusion