Elementary Teacher Professionalism and Workload: Case Study at Palopo City Elementary School

Article Information ABSTRACT Received: April 16, 2021 Revised: June 21, 2021 Accepted: October 15, 2021 Online: November 15, 2021 This study describes teacher performance by quantifying every detail of teacher activity. This research results from a case study conducted for eight months in elementary school. The research focuses on the workload of primary school teachers. This research data collection through observation, interviews, and document review. This research was conducted at SD Negeri 18 Maroangin and SD Islam Terpadu Madan Insan Palopo City, South Sulawesi Province. The study results are as follows: (1) Based on the implementation time, to complete all tasks, the workload of elementary school teachers takes 17 hours a day. Therefore, it equates to 102 hours per week. In this case, the teacher experiences an "overload" workload. (2) The professionalism of primary school teachers is a challenge for education in Indonesia. In addition to the limited ability of teacher resources.


INTRODUCTION
Compared to countries in the Asian region, the quality of education in Indonesia is still of low quality (Leha, 2018). The low quality of education in Indonesia comes from students and includes teachers and education management. A study conducted by (Rosser nd) stated that the education system in Indonesia is of low quality. Rosser's research is certainly very surprising given the government's incessant efforts to improve the quality and quality of students, teachers, and the education system. Among the elements of education that are the focus of researchers are teachers (Tanang & Ash, 2014). There are two reasons why teachers are important and interesting; First, teachers are responsible for carrying out education at the school level because they deal directly with students. Second: The demand for teacher professionalism in carrying out their main tasks is bound by regulations, which are also related to the incentives they receive.
Since the issuance of a government policy on the benefits of teacher certification, teacher performance has become a prominent issue. One of the requirements for granting primary school teacher certification is that teachers meet the minimum number of teaching hours required, which is 24 hours a week and a maximum of 40 hours a week. The workload of teachers as regulated in various regulations is intended to achieve quality standards and the quality of education. Therefore, teachers are seen as one of the parties who are fully responsible for the implementation of various government policies in the field of education, especially for the practice and implementation of education at the school education unit level so that understanding the workload of teachers will provide an overview of teacher performance.
It is interesting to note that teachers' workload is high expectations. (Saebø & Midtsundstad, 2018). To achieve these expectations, teachers design various directed instruments to carry out IJAE Page 583 incentives they receive in their profession (Siahaan & Meilani, 2019;Creasy, 2015). There is an interesting thing in the study that the quality of teachers is the basis in determining the retention of their wages. Teachers who do not meet the qualification and service quality standards will be retained. The government's attention to teacher wages in Indonesia has received serious attention. In addition to receiving wages as State Civil Apparatus (ASN), teachers in Indonesia also receive additional wages in teacher and lecturer certification. Now the government has made efforts to realize the provision of performance allowances. Performance allowances are given based on the quality of the resulting performance. This effort is made to encourage the quality of teacher performance. The determination of retention of teacher wages may be relevant. In other words, if they do not meet the performance requirements, Measuring teacher performance leads to poor teacher performance or vice versa, good teacher performance. Poor teacher performance is indicated by the failure of students to achieve the expected goals. On the other hand, good teacher performance is shown by maximum results and achieving the expected goals. Therefore, the suitability between the plans that have been prepared with the results achieved reflects the good performance of teachers. In addition, teacher performance is also reflected through teaching activities in the classroom. Therefore, measuring performance through teacher activities in the classroom is important to continue to be evaluated. The study developed by Felipe Martinez, Sandy Tautb, and Kevin Schaaf shows how important it is to develop a teacher performance evaluation system in question. (Naz & Akbar, nd;Ghavifekr & Rosdy, 2015). The research of Martinez et al. supports this that in many countries, teacher performance evaluation has significant urgency for the development of the teaching profession (Ping et al., 2018;Vivanco & Delgado-Bolton, 2014).
It is alleged that low teacher qualifications are obstacles to teacher competence. This factor is a strong indication of errors in the teacher recruitment system in elementary schools. The factor of inadequate teacher training exacerbates this, so it can be expected that teachers will find it increasingly difficult to achieve the expected competencies. Several studies have even found that some teachers feel unsure of their competence. The results of this research indicate that teachers need to be equipped with knowledge, skills, and competencies that can support their main duties as teachers (Suharno, 2017;Rosser, nd). This study is intended to obtain information about: (1) teachers' workload based on regulations related to teacher duties, (2) the ability of teachers to work to achieve professional teacher standards. Later, two closely related aspects will be revealed: teacher performance as measured by the workload they carry, on the one hand, and teacher performance reflecting their professionalism in other tasks. It can be said that the implementation of teacher responsibilities in the form of professionalism is by competence, expertise, and working by their field of expertise. Professional teachers demonstrate through maximum performance in class in carrying out their duties.

METHOD
This research is field research that describes teacher performance by quantifying every detail of teacher activity. Researchers collected data using observation, interviews, and document review. Observations were made at two research locations, namely SD Negeri 18 Maroangin and SD Islam Terpadu Madan Insan Palopo City. Observations of learning activities in the classroom were carried out for approximately 14 weeks, namely observing the activities of classroom teachers in learning activities from grade 1 to grade 6 in two elementary schools. After that, the researcher used the interview method to collect information directly from the informant, the teacher. Interviews with teachers are intended to explore various experiences of teachers in completing basic tasks, starting from the beginning of the learning year to the end of the learning year. Other than that,

RESULTS
Based on the field of the task, the teacher's tasks that show teacher performance can be grouped into four components, namely (1) the preparation component before face-to-face, consisting of 8 items, (2) The learning implementation component consists of 5 items, (3) the evaluation and evaluation component, consisting of 12 items, and (4) a self-evaluation component consisting of 6 items. Four components are quantified on each item, and the estimated completion of each item is calculated.

IJAE Page 584
Meanwhile, teacher performance tasks are grouped into the daily, semester, and annual assignments based on the implementation time. Finally, it is explained through descriptive findings as follows: The description of the teacher's work document can be seen as follows.  From the data collected, the calculation of the teacher's duties is obtained based on the implementation time: Daily tasks = 13 Hours semester assignment = 18 Hours Annual Task = 4 Months Based on the documents that must be completed, a teacher will complete 14 agendas each day, including 13 in the form of documents.

DISCUSSION
Teacher performance in daily teacher assignments is carried out in three stages: semester and annual assignments. Daily tasks are teacher activities in preparing learning tools, and all learning needs every day or time they will teach. Semester assignments are teacher activities in preparing all learning needs used or launched every semester. At the same time, annual assignments are teacher activities in preparing all learning tools or activities related to teacher assignments in each learning year.
They refer to the categories of teacher assignments based on their implementation time, namely daily assignments, semester assignments, and annual assignments, indicating that these tasks are carried out outside of active learning hours at school. It means that the implementation of the task is carried out, not while at school. A simple formula for calculating teacher working hours in elementary schools, namely:

DT + HTS = Cumulative Teacher's Daily Assignments *)
Information: DT = Daily Tasks HTS = Hours at School *) = Assumptions for 1 learning theme There are interesting things that are analyzed, namely synchronization of teacher working hours at school and teacher working hours to complete daily tasks outside school working hours with the time needed to complete all daily tasks. Asset in (PP No. 19 of 2017, nd) explained that the number of working hours is calculated equivalent to 24 hours of face-to-face/weekly. If, on average, the working hours of elementary school teachers in schools is equal to a minimum of 24 hours in 35 minutes divided by six International Journal of Asian Education, Vol. 2, No. 4, December 2021 IJAE Page 587 days, which is equal to 2.33 hours per day, and a maximum of 40 hours x 35 minutes divided by six days which equals a maximum of 3.88 hours per day. A classroom teacher in an elementary school is present and teaches the class from 7.30 -12.00. classroom teachers in primary schools are assigned 4 hours and 30 minutes of class each day, indicating that classroom teachers receive the highest share of the compulsory teacher working hours. If the task is added to the daily tasks that the class teacher must do before and after teaching for 13 hours as stated in the previous study results, the result is that the number of teacher working hours per day is 16.88 hours, 17 hours per day. Heequivalent to 102 hours per week. In other words, classroom teachers in elementary schools have experienced excess working hours.
The amount of 17 hours routinely every day for an elementary school teacher should raise questions that must be studied carefully, such as whether the elementary school teacher can complete full working hours to the fullest. For example, the benchmark for teacher professionalism is to complete all learning tools and documents as regulated in various regulations. In this case, the number of 17 hours a day needed by the teacher to complete the task is very difficult because it means the teacher only has 7 hours to do personal activities and rest each day. Another aspect that needs to be considered regarding the tasks and demands of the teacher's performance is the psychological condition of the teacher who will be under pressure from work for a week, with only one day's rest can make the teacher depressed and stressed. The heaviness of the teacher's task can cause new problems, such as the quality of teacher learning programs that are not optimal. Some teachers will be indifferent to the details of their assignments; As a result, the quality of education is difficult to achieve optimally

CONCLUSION
The results showed that the calculation of teacher assignments was based on the implementation time, namely, 13 hours of daily assignments, 18 hours of semester assignments, four months of annual assignments, while in terms of documents that must be completed, a teacher would complete 14 agendas every day, including 13 in the form of documents. For the completion time of the workload of Indonesian elementary school teachers, elementary school teachers need 17 hours a day which equates to 102 hours per week. Therefore, the professionalism of elementary school teachers is a challenge for education in Indonesia. In addition to the limited ability of teacher resources, teacher professionalism is very difficult to do because of the heavy-duty of an elementary school teacher. Therefore, the government will think about wiser education policies through: 1. The class teacher policy was reviewed, by setting the number of class teachers made in the form of a Class Teacher Team, so that assignments could be completed together and distributed to several people. 2. Significantly increase the incentives of classroom teachers, without having to go through a teacher certification test, because what teachers need is the provision of teacher duties after being appointed as a teacher.

Funding and Conflicts of Interest
The author declares no funding and conflicts of interest for this research.