Investigating Indonesian Teachers' Experience, Motivation, and Confidence in English-Medium Content Teaching through a Professional Development Blended Learning Environment

A blended learning approach has been adopted in many English language learning environments in secondary and higher education because it is seen as having the potential to maximise the benefits of both face-to-face and online learning. This research investigated a blended learning approach for the professional development of teachers working at Indonesian vocational schools who learned English so they could teach their subject in that language. This research was prompted by the lack of preparedness and confidence among Indonesian teachers in vocational high schools to use English as a medium of instruction in the classroom, even though they had attended training courses in a face-to-face mode. The face-to-face training programme was a one-off brief course with limited capacity, able to accommodate only one teacher from one school. After the training programme was concluded, teachers returned to their home schools; were isolated from their peers in the training course; and consequently the learning interaction was not maintained. To understand the teachers’ learning and thinking in the blended learning programme, the conceptual framework for the research was developed based on social constructivist and adult learning theories that were applied in the blended learning course. The development of teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) in an English-medium teaching environment, the quality principles of a blended learning approach, and the concepts of motivation and confidence were considered to better understand the complexities involved in the blended learning model. As this research sought to discover the subjective experiences and multiple perspectives perceived by the teacher participants undertaking a blended learning course, a qualitative case study approach was adopted. A case study method allowed me to work closely with the teacher participants to obtain their perspectives and was helpful to understand complex phenomena such as motivation and confidence.