Dissertation Highlight

Psychological, Social, and Spiritual Dimensions of Teachers' Personality
By Rohmat Mulyana

Background of Problem. Educational aim is directed to develop complete human personality. In the context of national education, a complete man means the man whose characteristic is faithful and devoted to the One God, and it is accompanied by other personality characteristics. But in fact, the efforts of formal education in developing students' personality have not yet yielded results as expected.

On a macro policy scale, one of the factors of lack of success of education is mainly caused by less attention of educational policies to empower our indigenous potentialities, including religious aspects. Educational policies are often much influenced by a la Western philosophies and theories that those are very humanistic, but they are lack of religious-ethics and tend to anthropocentric landscape. On a micro policy scale, the less success of education in developing complete students' personality has been possibly caused by the weakness of teachers' personality. Teachers, as educational actors, hold a strategic role and take responsible for developing students' personality. The quality of teachers' personality can all at once reflects their students' personal quality.

Based on the issues above, it is interesting to study the teacher personality profile in terms of psychological, social, and spiritual dimensions. The study in the three dimensions is purposed to formulate a total personality of teacher analyzed on its relation to biographical backgrounds and to teaching strategies.

Research Problems. This research is focused on the main problem formulated in the following questions: (1) What are the stronger aspects of teachers' personality? (2) What are the biographical backgrounds, which function as the important correlate of the stronger aspects of teachers' personality? (3) How high do the personality aspects influence on the teachers' ability in developing teaching strategy? (4) What are logical interpretations, which can be formulated from the empirical analysis that contributes further to a model of total personality dynamic and to a model of General Education for teachers?

Research Findings
First, the research findings show that the teachers, psychologically, have the need for order as the highest aspect, they, socially, have healthy interpersonal relations, and they, spiritually, have strong transcendental relation. They, however, are very weak in the aspect of need for autonomy and the critical thinking skill.

Second, the biographical backgrounds, which function as correlate of stronger aspects, are boarding school background, age, gender, and subject matter discipline.

Third, based on the ability of the teachers in developing teaching strategy, it is clear that they teach tend to the content-centered rather than to the student-centered. It means that they teach on a teaching process in which the class is organized upon their authority. Meanwhile, their positions in teaching strategy generally occupy the strategy I (in which the students do not really want to learn but they will respond to the strong direction and control created by teacher). By considering the influence of the personality aspects on the possibility of teaching strategy shifts to the more meaningful one, this research finds seven important aspects that contribute to improvement for teacher professionalism. The seven aspects are namely: need for achievement, the need for autonomy, critical thinking skill, need for order, social relation, transcendental relation, and religious intellectualism.

Fourth, from inter-correlation analysis among all complete personality aspects, it is resulted that the transcendental relation places a central position of all aspects, whereas the level of the relation is still in confirmative level (feel the presence of God on whatever they sense) and in responsive level (believe that God always answer their wants and their complaints).

Discussion. The hierarchical order of the aspects that places transcendental relation on the central and the highest position confirms that theistic values can be taken account as the first and the foremost motivator of acts. It, in turn, emphasizes again the importance of religious moral values in the context of teacher education and training. These values are necessary to educate through a supported setting and to integrate with other scientific values. Likewise, the teacher education and training should be able to improve the weak aspects like need for achievement, need for autonomy, and critical thinking skill. It also should function all the high aspects such as need for order, social relation, transcendental relation, and religious intellectualism.

Based on the thought above, it is important to develop a model of General Education in in-service training. The model is to focus on: (1) creating much Islamic nuance in a training setting; (2) developing moral and emotional education; (3) developing various models of good and correct behaviors; (4) developing mathematical reasoning skills; (5) developing inter-disciplinary insights; (6) improving problem solving abilities; and (7) practicing some democratic approaches in teaching.

Implications. Those research findings imply on philosophical, psychological, and social ideas, and on practical efforts in education. On the first three implications, the findings, in which transcendental relation is placed as the central of all aspects, means that the theistic values must be added into the content of philosophy, psychology, and social theories constructed by humanists. Practically, the finding implication means that the Islamic moral values must be functioned fully into all educational efforts, particularly, the efforts done by general subject matter teachers (IPS, IPA, Bahasa). More specific, the findings imply on response to a part of spiritual quotient (SQ) ideas proposed by Zohar & Marshall (2000) on which they cite "SQ has no necessary connection to religion". In this case, the implication means that the idea is rejected.

Recommendations. The proposed recommendations of this research are concerned with two issues. First, it is necessary to change educational paradigm to a new one in which spiritual values are placed as a center of education or training for teacher/prospective teacher. This recommendation, of course, will involve macro scale policies in education. If the first recommendation is hard to carry out, the second one can be taken for alternative. The second recommendation proposes that teaching theistic values, moral/emotion, mathematics reasoning, inter-disciplinary insight, critical thinking, and problem solving can be inserted into available curriculums or into training materials. This second way looks more realistic!