Journal of English Teaching, Applied Linguistics and Literatures (JETALL)
Vol 8, No 3 (2025): JETALL VOLUME 8 NUMBER 3 2025

TEACHER-LED PROFESSIONAL GROWTH: THE REALITY OF BOTTOM-UP TPD AMONG EFL TEACHERS IN INDONESIA

Caecilia Lucky Dewi Purnomo (Universitas Sanata Dharma)
Paulus Kuswandono (Universitas Sanata Dharma)



Article Info

Publish Date
14 Oct 2025

Abstract

English teacher professional development in Indonesia has been more top-down and oriented towards administrative fulfilment. However, a bottom-up approach is considered more capable of encouraging meaningful and sustainable professional growth, even though it is still underexplored in Indonesia contexts.  This research aims to explore the reality of bottom-up professional development among EFL teachers in Indonesia, focusing on their strategies to initiate and implement bottom-up TPD and the impact, in conjunction with the challenges and barriers that influence their efforts, especially from institutional and external factors. This research is qualitative employing open-ended questionnaires and semi-structured interviews to collect the data.  The results show that bottom-up TPD works through synergy between personal initiative, collaboration between teachers, technology support, and conducive school environment, which significantly influences changes in teaching practices and teacher professional development. However, teachers also face obstacles in the form of high workload, time constraints, and inconsistent institutional support, so that teacher resilience is an important factor in maintaining the TPD process. This research reveals that bottom-up TPD among English teachers brings more positive results on their teaching practice. In spite of that, the balance depth of narrating the success and failure of bottom-up TPD is still limited.

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Journal Info

Abbrev

jetall

Publisher

Subject

Education Languange, Linguistic, Communication & Media

Description

JETALL is published twice a year in the months of May and October. It publishes within the fields of teaching English as a second or foreign language, English language teaching and learning, English language teachers' training and education, and English language and applied linguistics and literary ...