INTERNATIONALIZED EDUCATION THROUGH GLOBALISATION IN THE CONTEXT OF GORONTALO STATE UNIVERSITY (UNG) AND EDUCATION LEADERS CONCERN
Introduction
As people all across the globe perceived this world as one integral part, and information as well as expectations of what is qualified education and non-qualified education becomes much more unified and borderless, education cannot be viewed in its own as a free agent. This is also applied in leadership as people are now become more critical toward the leadership style and leaders’ decision. Expectation toward a good leader spreads from developed countries to developing countries. For example, when Barrack Obama first elected as the president of The United States, people across the globe expected that they will have a leader that can create change as Obama’s election slogan.
In relation to globalisation, education and leadership above, this essay would like to explain how globalised-education has taken effect in a smaller context of one education institute, Gorontalo state university (UNG), and will also try to explore how the leader of this institution concern toward this issue is. In order to answer this second issue, Kotter’s criteria of organisational performance (1996, as cited in Daft & Pirola, 2009, p. 4) -in this case how leaders improve the performance of this institute to answer the challenge of internationalised-education- will be used. Those five crucial areas are direction, alignment, relationship, personal qualities, and outcomes. This essay will also argued that the current leaders concern, as it is related to his leadership style, will not be able to answer the challenge of this internationalised education. This essay will propose that in order to answer the challenge of internationalised education, the current leader has to convert to sustainable leadership style.
Gorontalo State University is an education institute located in Gorontalo province, Indonesia. This institution was formerly a teacher training institute. For almost 38 years (1965 to 2003) this institute was a teacher training institute. Today, this university manages 8 faculties in which four of those faculties are non-education/non-teachers training faculties. The university accommodates around nine thousand students, 500 lecturers, about 200 administration staff and lead by a rector.
Like most of the ex-teachers training institute, most of the mindset of the leaders and lecturers in this university are guru-minded. The interaction that happened in classes of this university are mostly one way interaction, where lecturers give information and transfer the knowledge while the students are passive receivers. In the case of leadership, this university leadership tend to be bureaucratic leadership, where top-down decision making are being implemented. Therefore, based on my personal observation as one of the teaching staffs in this institution, the leaders in this institute tend to be transactional leaders. Transactional leaders are those who has defined by Daft and Pirola (2009, p.150) as people who engage in a process of exchange between the leaders and their followers, acknowledge the needs and purposes of their fellow members and creating the procedures in order to achieve those desirable stage.
However, time has changed and this institution is no longer a teacher trainings institute. The students and public expectation of this school are far more than just to produce teachers. The expectation shifted from producing teachers to producing professionals. Critical thinking in students now is better than the students in previous decades. Their ability toward the technology is also better compared to students few years ago. Information of knowledge and theories emerging from other part of the world are on their hand in the same day as the effect of globalisation. How can the teachers/lecturers in Gorontalo State University respond to this? Being resistant, keep applying the old method of teaching or upgrading their capacity to respond to this change? How is the leader in this institution cope with this change? Be bureaucratic leader as usual or change?
Discussion
As it has been discussed earlier that globalised education demanded the teachers to be more creative and active, since the influence of information and technology to education has created more critical and well-informed students. This is along with Wadham (2009, p.3) which mentioned that there are four trends in a globalised-education, namely:
1. Reshaping of teaching and learning through intercultural education
2. Education sustainability
4. The convergence of learning for work, study and leisure.
Narrowing down this globalised education in the context of Gorontalo State University, there have been some efforts done to answer this challenge, such as:
- Setting up long distance education centre, which is a collaborative teaching between the institute with some other institute outside the island and abroad universities, such as UKM, a university in the neighbouring countries.
- Upgrading the information technologies and facilities available within each faculty in the university.
- Training the lecturers on how to teach using up to date technologies, such as teleconferences, blogs, and using e-mails as means of communication between lecturers and student
- Inviting the guest lecturers from other countries to Gorontalo state university, through Foreign Language Teaching Assistant programs, held between the university and the US embassy.
Apart from those efforts above, some lecturers in UNG, also have had chances to upgrade their abilities through studying abroad and to some leading universities outside the island. This opportunity comes through foreign scholarship and scholarship provided by the Directorate of Higher Education of the Republic of Indonesia (DIKTI). But is this enough to answer the challenge of the internationalised education in their institute?
Those efforts above, however, are not enough to fit with this internationalised education. This is because the technology is developing as fast as the expectation of the public and students to the university.
As it is admitted by Uno (2007, p.9) in general education in Indonesia is still seen as education that chained the freedom of the learners rather than a process of freeing the learners. By saying this he meant that the education is still guru-centred, where like or dislike, agree or disagree the learners have to follow what have been instructed by the teachers/lecturers, as the delivery of education that happens there is top-down. This is also probably what causes many of the high school graduate students from Gorontalo prefer to study outside the region.
To link with the trends of globalised-education that Wadham have stated above, reshaping the teaching and learning process through intercultural education, the efforts of the institute has been quite moderate. Inviting guest lecturers from abroad to teach and live in the region for a year have given students and other lecturers, as well as the institute, chances to experience teaching and learning process that normally conducted in the western culture. It has to be noted as well that the lecturers in the institute also have to teach in a diverse culture since the background of the students are also diverse.
It might be a personal statement, but from the writer personal observation as one of the teaching staffs there, there seem to be a resistant to the efforts of shifting this teaching and learning process from guru-centred to students centred. This resistance usually comes from the senior lecturers. One example of this resistance happened in mid 2008 when the guest lecturers (native English speakers) reviewed the teaching materials of a topic called Integrated-Intensive English Course and found many mistakes in it, and then the English department decided that the materials were going to be replaced. Many of the teaching staffs agreed. However, some senior lecturers refused by saying that if the materials were going to be replaced then they will withdraw themselves from teaching the topic. Their reason was that they do not have time if they have to work together to fix the materials. Finally the project ended up cancelled and it left disappointment to the guest lecturers and to some junior lecturers who have agreed and have started to work on fixing the topic.
Reshaping this teaching in learning process is also linked with the second trend where education in globalised era has to be sustainable. In Gorontalo state university, sustainability in education is still hard to achieve. As the example above, efforts to reformulate the teaching and learning process which have been started by the guest lecturers have discontinued because they have limited time to stay and developed it in Indonesia and that most of the lecturers in the institute go back to the old way of teaching.
From the students side, it had caused lost and confusion. When they begun to learn and criticise what they have learned, suddenly they are thrown back to the reality that they have to receive merely what the lecturers taught them. This also caused disappointment from the students and often led them to confronting the lecturers in front of the class. Thus, these kind of critical students become the enemy of the lecturers. And by this, the critical thinking ability that started to grow began to fade away.
Related to the third trend, Information technologies, multi-literacies, and learning for the future, it seems that this trend has been positively shown in some parts of the university. As it has mentioned above, the university is in the process of providing information technologies facilities for all faculties and departments. For multi-literacies, the awareness seems to come from the students themselves, where on their own efforts they try to find other source of knowledge and information to improve their capacity in order to be able to compete in the globalisation. For example, many of the English department students are now learning other languages such as Arabic and Japanese, and also improving their knowledge in information technologies, browsing from internet for some new information of the development of the language that they are learning.
Some lecturers also updating their learning through IT, and if not trying to be multi-literacies, they are trying to master something else other than their major educational background. This is in order to give them extra capacities from others, so they still can compete in the globalisation. This trend, again, mainly emerge from junior lecturers or those who had just finished their study outside the university.
As familiarization of new things (in this case IT) takes time, it is quite hard for the senior lecturers to get themselves used to using this kind of technologies and being master pieces, as well as learning for their future. For them, their future has been clearly seen and written, that after teaching, they will retired and enjoy their old days. Of course, it can be generalised for all lecturers, however most of the cases shown that way.
The fourth trend is convergence learning for work, study, and for leisure. Dewantara (as cited in Uno, 2007, p. 34) reminded that convergence in Indonesian education context means that in order to improve Indonesian education, it is necessary to adopt the values from western culture, but in practices, this culture has to be filtered. Education in Gorontalo State University has to be able to mix those items above into teaching and learning process. The students come to the university, beside for study, they want it for their future carrier (work). In the process of achieving the knowledge for their future carrier itself, they want to have fun (leisure). So learning for the future has to be fun. And if university wants to keep attract students, the teaching and learning process has to be full of meaning (knowledge), and useful for their future (improving their capacity to compete in the job world), and has to be fun.
Now, let’s look at how the leader responds toward this internationalised education that is happening in their institution. As an organisation, Gorontalo State University in the globalised education has to be able to cope with global competition, in which as education provider, it has to compete in the “tightened economic competition” (Castells, 2000) with other universities. Leaders as persons responsible in leading the university shared a very important role to make their organisation survive this competition. This is because leaders are those who make decisions regarding to how the institute have to react to its fast changing environment.
Kotter’s argued that there are 5 ways to see the organisational performances; however, this essay will use Kotter’s criteria on how the leader improves his organisational performance. Once again it has to be noted that the leader here is a transactional leader.
The first criterion is direction. A good leader is supposed to know where the organisation is heading so it will enable him to direct the university toward that way. The leaders in UNG know that their target is to make the institute as one of the world class university as stated in the vision and mission of the university (UNG, 2008). In this sense, the leaders have a great concern toward the internationalised-education which is happening in their institution.
The second criterion is alignment. A good leader supposes to align all the resources, including people in the organisation toward the direction that has been set above. However, there are still in group and out group, where the allies of the leader are those in the in group and those in the out group consider being the opposition. Thus, alignment of power and resources toward the direction cannot be maximally achieved.
Related to the second criterion above is relationship as the third criterion. A synergic relationship is expected to be created by the leader in order to achieve the mission of the organisation. The leader has tried to create a synergic relationship through meetings and listening to feedbacks from different elements of the university. However, as people have already has a perception about whose opinion would be heard, this synergic relationship never comes to happen. Each group in the university behold on the things that they believe as the right way toward the world class university and consider other groups way of doing things as wrong. In one way, this sound positive, that people think of there are more than one way to achieve this mission, but this become bad when they start to think that their way is the best, and others are wrong. This kind of debate has lead the university to stagnancy, and many of the best people choose to flea out of the university, whether for study or for other reasons.
The next criterion according to Kotter is personal qualities of the leader itself. However, it can be argued that, no matter how good the quality of the leader if he/she cannot listen to the people and make people listen to him, this personal quality will not affect much. The leader can set mission and vision of the organisation, yet, the people that he/she leads is critical in determining whether those vision and mission can be achieved or not.
The last criterion is the outcome. How can a leader expected to bring about a good outcome for the university if he cannot move people in the university? A world class university as the vision of UNG will only be achieved if all elements in this institution work hand in hand to achieve this.
Conclusion
Gorontalo State University (UNG) is affected by the globalisation as education, which is one of their main products become borderless and more demanding. There have been many programs and policy set to meet up this challenge, however, as there is resentment to change from some of the elements in this university, these efforts to cope with internationalised education still far from its target. The leader of this institute, who is a transactional, so far has failed to bring the change to the university. He has set the mission for this university to be a world class university, but since there is in group and out group in the institution, the mission seems hard to be achieved in the near future. Nevertheless, hope is always be there, as long as the leader and all element in the university can work hand in hand to act fast, to put all the policies and plans that they have made into actions. It is almost positive that Gorontalo State University, as one united body can be one of the leading university in Indonesia, and provide the professionals output as expected by the market.
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