PERSPECTIVES OF INDONESIAN LECTURERS TOWARDS ENGLISH TEST FOR CERTIFICATION ON INDONESIAN HIGHER EDUCATION IMPROVEMENT: A NARRATIVE STUDY

As part of higher education quality improvement, the lecturers are
encouraged to take professional certification. Some assessments are used to
certify the Indonesian lecturers, such as a test of English. However, as more
lecturers are applying for getting certified and require English assessment,
the study of non-English lecturers’ pedagogical experiences toward the
English test has not been investigated until current times. By implementing
Sun (2023)’s theory on her study of lecturer’s English professionalization,
this study is to investigate the substance of lecturer professionalization
concerning EMI (English Medium Instruction) ability, the criteria of
lecturer professionalization and mode of English certification. This study
employed qualitative research with narrative inquiry design and used semi�structured interviews. Braun and Clarke’s (2006) thematic analysis used to
analyze the data. The outcome of this study reveals that the skill of English
is not relevant with lecturer certification. Furthermore, being certified
lecturers does not mean they fulfill the criteria of lecturer
professionalization. Besides, the English certification mode (TOEFL test) is
too general to measure the ability of lecturers’ EMI (English Medium
Instruction). The implication of this study is valuable for Indonesian
lecturers and policy makers of higher education in determining new
policies.