A Survey on the Implementation of Authentic Assessment in Public Junior High Schools in Malang Municipality

ABSTRACT Lestari, Nadia Anggi. 2009. A Survey on the Implementation of Authentic Assessment in Public Junior High Schools in Malang Municipality. Thesis, Undergraduate Program in English Language Education, English Department, Faculty of Letters, State University of Malang. Advisor: Dr. Gunadi Harry Sulistyo, M.A. Key words: authentic assessment, English teachers, implementation, and teacher competency This study is intended to find out the implementation of authentic assessment in public junior high schools in Malang municipality in terms of the teachers’ characteristics, the teachers’ knowledge of authentic assessment, the implementation of authentic assessment, and the teachers’ opinions and obstacles in implementing authentic assessment. This study is a survey because it is designed to investigate the implementation of authentic assessment in public junior high schools in Malang municipality. Stratified random sampling is used to take the sample of this study. The schools are classified in terms of the schools’ quality based on the PSB online result in 2009. Each school classification is taken 30% from its stratum of schools as the sample. All English teachers who are teaching at the schools in the sample are directly taken as respondents totaling making up – 45 teachers as the sample of this study. Two instruments are utilized to collect the data, namely, questionnaires and a student informal interview. The findings of the study are follows. First, the standard of formal academic background has been accomplished by the English teachers. Second, the English teachers in Malang public junior high schools are lack the knowledge of authentic assessment. Third, the implementation of authentic assessment does not go smoothly in the class because of the unsuccessful preparation stage. Fourth, most of the English teachers face some problems in implementing authentic assessment. Those are the limited time in performing authentic assessment in the class, the big class that they have to handle, and the lack of knowledge of authentic assessment. Based on the findings, some suggestions are offered to the English teachers, the headmaster, the management in the Ministry of National Education, and the further researchers. The English teachers are expected to build a team consists of school’s stakeholders for the improvement of the implementation of authentic assessment. For the headmaster, it is suggested to conduct a kind of in-on-in training for the English teachers and make a change in assessing the students’ achievement. For the management in the Ministry of National Education, the regulation about the teaching load maximum that is 24 semester hours needs to be fulfilled because it causes the teachers’ insufficient preparation in administering assessment. And the last, for the further researchers, it is expected to observe in more specific English teachers in preparing authentic assessment as well as the process of grading the students