BEYOND THE LESSON PLAN: A QUALITATIVE STUDY OF CLASSROOM AND INSTITUTIONAL CHALLENGES IN INDONESIAN EFL TEACHING
Keywords:
EFL teaching; teacher challenges; learner engagement; teacher agency; Indonesian secondary educationAbstract
English teachers in foreign-language settings work at the intersection of learner needs and institutional demands. This qualitative descriptive study examined the challenges experienced by English teachers at SMAN 2 Banda Aceh, the conditions they associated with those challenges, and the strategies they used in response. Three teachers, identified as R1–R3, participated. Semi-structured interviews constituted the principal data source, supported by classroom observations and lesson-plan analysis. A question-oriented, semantic thematic analysis compared patterns across participants and sources. Six themes were identified. All three teachers reported low student motivation, limited self-confidence, and insufficient vocabulary. Individual participants also emphasized reduced instructional time, repeated curriculum adjustment, and a heavy workload. Contributing conditions included perceptions of English as difficult, fear of pronunciation errors, limited use of English beyond the classroom, weak vocabulary recycling, and mood or adjustment concerns among some boarding students. Teachers responded through individual motivational conversations, short games, supportive prompting, praise for effort, low-stakes speaking and presentation opportunities, vocabulary memorization and reuse, and independent projects followed by classroom review. The themes formed an interdependent system: restricted vocabulary reduced confidence, low confidence constrained participation, and limited exposure weakened retention and motivation. The findings indicate practical teacher agency but also show that curriculum and workload pressures require school-level support. Because the study involved three teachers in one school and relied substantially on reported experience, its contribution is analytic and context-specific rather than statistically generalizable.
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