Teaching in Rural Indonesian Schools: Teachers’ Challenges

The Ministry of Research, Technology, and Higher Education of Indonesia has prioritized education in the disadvantaged, outermost, and frontier regions (3T) by implementing a program called Sarjana Mendidik di daerah Terdepan, Terluar, dan Tertinggal (SM-3T), which is a year program for teacher education graduates to devote their lives teaching in the rural areas of Indonesia. The government sees the importance of promoting education in rural areas as a shared responsibility that must be done as a form of devotion to the nation. Every year the government sends thousands of teachers of various subjects as an effort to meet the needs of teachers in rural areas, which is still far from enough. Teachers who in fact come from urban areas certainly experience many challenges when they teach in rural areas with lack of facilities. This paper aims at finding out the challenges faced by teachers, especially English language teachers in carrying out teaching and learning activities in rural Indonesian schools. Framed by a humanistic perspective, questionnaires and in-depth interviews were employed as data collection techniques in this narrative case study. Furthermore, this study is expected to contribute to the teacher professional development in the rural areas