THE EUROPEAN PROFILING GRID (EPG) PRE-SERVICE TEACHERS’ LEVEL IN LESSON AND COURSE PLANNING COMPETENCE

The quality of teachers significantly influences student performance, making it crucial for educators to possess the necessary competencies to be effective. This study assesses the competencies of prospective teachers from the English Department at Media Nusantara Citra University using The European Profiling Grid (EPG), which mandates that graduates achieve at least the beginner teacher level. The research aims to evaluate these prospective teachers' abilities in lesson planning and teaching according to EPG standards. Using a qualitative descriptive method, the study involved 17 students undergoing Field Practice (PKL), with data collected from their lesson plans and interviews. Results reveal that 13 prospective teachers were at the beginner level, while 4 reached the experienced teacher level. The findings indicate that all participants met the minimum graduation requirements based on EPG, specifically in lesson planning and teaching competencies.


Introduction
Teacher is one significant element in learning English that existence cannot be neglected.Kaur (2019) describes that in classroom management, a teacher has master how to control the class, encourage all students to participate in the activities, find suitable resources for learning, assess students learning progress, organize the classroom, and guide the students.Moreover & Rani (2017) explain that teacher have to play various role in teaching learning such as learner, manager, facilitator, assessor, and evaluator.By possessing and implementing those roles, the teacher can be declared as an ideal teacher.
Since teaching is communicating with students, teachers must have communicative competence.Not only be knowledgeable in the language they teach, but they have to able to communicate effectively.Teachers must also master the subject they teach.Therefore, they can make a useful decision related to who will be taught, what to be taught, and how it be taught.Mosha (2014) finds that low students' performance in English class is affected by English teachers' shortage, absence of teaching-learning activities, and low quality of learning materials.Untrained and under-qualified teachers usually skip the class because they cannot teach some difficult topics in the syllabus.Theophile et.al, (2020) mentions that one of the factors affecting students' academic performance is teachers' quality Furthermore, it is also found that unqualified teachers negatively impact the student's academic performance although there are some factors such as motivation from both teachers and students, parents' support, socio-economic problems and capacity in the use of teaching-learning medium.
In Indonesia, teachers can be categorized as qualified if they master four competencies as mentioned in Law No 14 2005 about Teachers and Lecturers.The first is pedagogic competence or the ability to manage Scientia: Jurnal Hasil Penelitian Vol. 9, Nomor 1 (2024) EISSN: 2655-3716 the class, the learning, and the students.The second is personal competence or possessing strong personality abilities, noble character, wise and authoritative as well as can be a role model for students.The third competence is social competence.This competence is the teacher's ability to communicate and interact effectively and efficiently with students, fellow teachers, parents/guardians of students, and local communities.The last competence is professional competence.Professional competence is the ability to master learning material broadly and deeply including curriculum, knowledge substance, as well the structure and methodology of science.
Although pedagogic competence is a fundamental aspect of teaching, not all teacher in Indonesia possesses it.The result of the Ujian Kompetensei Guru (UKG) or Teacher Competency Test in 2021 reveals that the highest score is achieved by teachers from D.I. Yogyakarta Province with average score 62.99.On the other hand, the lowest score is 33.41 as the average score of teachers from Lanny Jaya Regency, Papua.The overall score concludes that Indonesian teachers have low pedagogical competence.Tuah et al (2021) in research that involves 232 vocational teachers find that the pedagogical competence of vocational teachers is at a low level.The indicators to assess teachers' pedagogical competence are the mastering of area expertise, the ability to develop curriculum, lesson plans, as well learning material, the ability to implement learning model, the mastering of students' characteristics, the ability to implement ICT in teaching-learning, the ability to evaluate learning and the ability develop students critical thinking.Therefore, it is suggested that the government needs to conduct various training and approaches to develop teachers' competence.Emiliasari (2018) discovered that teachers of MGMP SMP Majalengka are lacking the ability to master the basic theory of teaching principles and developing students' potential.In addition, it is also found that junior teacher is better in pedagogical competence in terms of material development and ICT use than the senior teachers.
Mastering skill to develop a lesson plan is a part of the requirements to be a teacher.Unfortunately, the situation is far from satisfying.Kumalasari et al (2017) state that the components of lesson plans developed by teachers of SMK Negeri 6 Surakarta still do not correspond to the regulation in Permendikbud No. 22, 2016.Mauliate et al (2019) in an evaluation of lesson plans in a school in Jakarta reveals that the majority of teachers have not optimally applied the principles in developing their lesson plan.Turi et al (2017) in an analysis of lesson plans developed by teachers in Kendari finds that the ability of teachers in preparing lesson plan is very low.Moreover, the teachers said that the lesson plan they write is for administrative needs only.The main source of their low skill in developing lesson plans is the absence of guidelines to develop a lesson plan.Nor et al (2022) shows that 72 teachers in their research are not ready with their skill in developing lesson plan and material.The findings open our eyes that not all in service teachers can develop proper lesson plans.
English Education of MNC University is one of the educational institutions that objects to graduate English teachers.National and international competence standards are served to equip students to be professional teachers.This department employs The European Profiling Grid (EPG) as a framework to evaluate language teaching competencies and teaching quality.The graduates of this department have reached at least the level of novice teachers.This instrument has been used by language teachers from 64 countries and is available in 13 languages to help schools, universities as well educational institutions to assess professional needs.EPG descriptors cover four key categories.The first area is training and qualifications.The second is teachers' core competence.The third is enabling the skill and the last is professionalism.The descriptors are grouped into three main development phases.They are novice teacher (1.2 and 1.2), experienced teacher (2.1 and 2.2), and expert teacher (3.2 and 3.2).Each development phase consists of can-do descriptors as the assessment indicators.
In EPG, lesson and course planning competence belong to key teaching competencies.For the novice teacher, the grid emphasizes the ability to link the given material with learning activities, find the supplement activities from textbooks, confirm the coherence activities on the previous and adjust the lesson plan by taking account of the learning outcomes and customizing it as instructed.For the experienced teacher, the grid emphasizes the ability to use syllabus and particular materials to develop lesson plans, plan the different objectives of the lesson plan, plan the objectives by comparing learners' needs, plan a course based on the syllabus, available material and different learning need, design tasks to explore communicative and linguistic part of the materials and design tasks to meet individual needs and course objectives.For the expert teacher, the grid emphasizes the ability to carry out a thorough needs analysis and use the result to develop, recycle and revise a detailed course plan, design different tasks based on the same source material for different needs, use learner difficulties analysis to decide the next lesson, design specific courses that integrate communicative and linguistic context, guide colleagues to assess students individual needs to plan the lesson and review the curriculum and syllabuses for different courses.
In this research, the researcher tries to find students' level in lesson and course planning competence based on EPG.As the EPG is the standard used by the English Department of MNC University to refer professional teachers, the students have to minimally meet the novice teacher criteria.The students in this department have equipped with the ability to develop lesson plans in curriculum and syllabus development course in semester 5 and then they use the skill in the microteaching course because before performing teaching in front of their peers, they have to prepare lesson plan.This skill is also used in teaching practice in semester 7 where they have to conduct real teaching at school.
In English education, the teacher is regarded to be one of the factors affecting learning success.Sirait (2016) finds that there is a correlation between teachers' competence and student achievement in Indonesia.teacher-related variables must be considered as the factor factors of students' achievement.Previous studies reveal that pre-service teachers find various challenges in developing lesson plans (Oktafiyani et al,2021;Fakhrunnisa, 2021;Fitriani & Budiarta'2021).Therefore, this study is needed to conduct to ensure that the graduates have good qualities of knowledge, ability, and skill.

Methods
This research aims at finding the students' level of lesson and course planning competence based on EPG.This is descriptive qualitative research that implements in the English Department of Media Nusantara Citra University.This study involves 17 students in the Teaching Practice at School.The reason for choosing this class is because the researcher is the supervisor of this course.In the previous course called curriculum and syllabus development, students have learned how to develop suitable lesson plan.Then in microteaching course, they have to develop a lesson plan that will be implemented in teaching practice with their colleagues.And the last, they use this skill to develop lesson plan and course planning in teaching practice at school.
The main data is taken from the lesson plan developed by the students.Those lesson plans are analyzed qualitatively by determining the level of student's competence in lesson and course planning based on the EPG Grid.There is three distinguished level on the checklist; 1) novice teacher, 2) experienced teacher, and 3) expert teacher.Every level has its descriptor indicating the ability in lesson and course planning as it is shown in the following table.The interview is also employed to get more information regarding teachers' competence in the lesson and course planning as well as to validate the data.The type of interview is semi-structured interview.This is conducted after the researcher analyzes the lesson plans.Twenty five interview items are given to the students in the interview session.The interview is conducted online by using Zoom Meeting.

Result and Discussion
Based on the analysis of lesson plans and the interview with 17 pre-service teachers from the English Department of MNC University, it is found that all of the pre-service teachers have achieved the novice teacher criteria of the lesson and course planning.The competence level of every pre-service teacher involved in this research can be seen in the following table:  Table 2 shows that 13 pre-service teachers are in development phase 1.2 or the novice teacher level and 4 pre-service teachers are in development phase 2.1 or the beginning level of experienced teachers.
The result of the analysis indicates that 13 out of 17 or 76% of pre-service teachers are in development phase 1.2.Teachers at this level possess the competence to link the material and learning activities.It is recognized that the use of appropriate material helps the teacher to conduct effective teaching-learning.Using proper material will also help language learners to improve their performance (Ajoke, 2017).Therefore, material selection cannot be neglected in lesson and course planning.The analysis of the lesson plan indicates that 17 pre-service teachers clearly stated the material on their lesson plan.The materials they put on the lesson plan are very various.Texts, pictures, audio, and the video.For the material taken from the internet, the pre-service teachers write the sources and links to help the students find the material easily.The pre-service teachers include the digital material in their planning.This is very beneficial because the use of digital material can present positive effects on learning motivation and learning outcomes for language learners (Lin et all,2017).And From the interview conducted by the researcher, it is found that the pre-service teachers do not find big challenges in developing lesson plans.They follow the structure of lesson plans as given by the lecturer in the Curriculum and Syllabus development course.The material is determined based on the Core Competence and Basic Competence of the Curriculum and the learning objectives.15 pre-service teachers state that they compose the teaching activities first and then search the suitable material, but 2 pre-service teachers do vice versa.When the researcher asks them about the challenge of finding material all of them answer that they can find material easily from textbooks or the internet.
The Level development phase 1.2 also must possess the ability to find the supplement activities from textbooks.In the interview, all pre-service teacher mention that they do not only rely on one textbook to develop activities.They find the material from various textbooks they got from supervisor teacher, library and their colleges.Although the use of textbook can help students in learning English, the pre-service teachers have to pay attention to the material appropriateness.The previous research finds out the books provided by government are not supported by adequate recording for listening activities (Anshar, 2014).The finding also reveals that most of the English textbook lacks of authentic material (Hanifa, 2018).Therefore, teacher have to have ability to find proper material materials according to learners' needs and learning outcomes.
In the development phase 1.2, the teacher also has to be able to ensure the coherence activities on the previous and next lessons.All pre-service teachers in this research have achieved this level.The activities arranged by the pre-service teacher are divided into three group; pre activities, main activities and post activities.In the interview, researcher summarizes that all pre-service teachers mastering the flows of activities.They also choose fun activities such as game, listen to music, watching video and record their performance.Fun learning English makes students enjoy learning and avoid boredom in the classroom (An-Nisa & TSuwartono, 2020).Before determining the activities, they always consider to the previous teaching.They say that they try to avoid redundant activities by checking the previous lesson plan that implementing in the previous teaching.Moreover, after finishing the lesson plan, the pre-service teachers always try to figure what they will do on the next teaching such as steps they need to take if the learning outcomes are not achieved and how to correlate the topic to be learnt in the next meeting with the current topic learn by students.
The ability to adjust lesson plan by taking account on the learning outcomes and customize it as instructed is also competence possessed by pre-service teacher in the development phase 1.2.The preservice teachers in this research have possessed this competence.This is showed when the researcher analyzes the different lesson plan, they create them with different learning outcomes.When researcher asks them the obstacle in adjusting lesson plan based on the learning outcome, all of them mention that they do not find any obstacle since they have develop various lesson plans in the previous courses.
The next phase is development phase 2.1 or experienced teacher.There are 4 pre-service teachers or 23 % are in this phase.Based on the interview, it is found the fact that the four pre-service teachers in development phase 1.2 are also work as teachers in the English courses.No wonder that they obtain competence as experienced teachers.The ability of use syllabus and particular materials to develop lesson plans as well plan the different objectives of the lesson plan are possessed by all of them.The teachers used to develop lesson plan by using particular material.They show the lesson plans they developed for their English Course.The courses have different objective and materials.There are lesson plans for speaking competition preparation, lesson plan for teaching vocabulary for young learners, national examination preparation and speaking for business.
In development phase 2.2 it is also mentioned that teacher in this phase have to be able to plan the objectives by comparing learners need.No one of the pre-service teachers possessed and implement this competence.They explain before teaching the students, they usually conducting interview to find what students want and need.But, they do not maximumly use the result to determine the learning objective for each student because the objective of the course has to be the same.
Although they do not have this competence, the learning objective they develop consist of A (audience), B (behavior), C(condition) and D (degree).Thomlinson and McTighe (2006) state the objective does not have to be arranged ABCD order but it have to have all of these elements.And the result of the analysis finds that objectives compose by pre-service teacher are proper and contain measurable operational verb.
In development phase 2.2 teacher have to be able to plan a course based on the syllabus, available material, and different learning needs.None of the teachers have reached this competence.Although they are EISSN: 2655-3716 able to develop course by available syllabus and material, they do not consider the different learners need in developing the plan because they do not conduct need analysis before developing lesson plan.The next competence in development phase 2.2 is the ability to design tasks to explore communicative and linguistic parts of the materials and design tasks to meet individual needs and course objectives.Unfortunately, no preservice teacher is at this level.They do not design the task to the students, but they rely on available course book.
In development 3.1 and 3.2 or expert teacher level, teacher have to be able to carry out a thorough needs analysis and use the result to develop, recycle and revise a detailed course plan, design different tasks based on the same source material for different a need, design specific courses that integrate communicative and linguistic context, guide colleagues to assess students individual needs to plan the lesson, and review the curriculum and syllabuses for different courses.These competences are not possessed by the pre-service teacher that involved in this research.The most visible reason is that they are now the pre-service teacher, not the teacher yet.Although in teaching practice they act as teacher, but there are many limitations on their role.They don't have their own class.Therefore, they have not explored and implemented this competence yet.

Conclusion
Based on the result of the analysis of lesson plan and interview, it is sum up that the 17 pre-service teachers of English Department of MNC University are in the level of novice teacher where they possess competence to link the given material with learning activities, find the supplement activities from textbooks, confirm the coherence activities on the previous and next lessons and adjust lesson plan by taking account on the learning outcomes and customize it as instructed.Moreover, 4 pre-service teachers are at the level of experienced teacher where in this level they have ability to use syllabus and particular materials to develop lesson plans, plan the different objectives of the lesson plan, and plan the objectives by comparing learners need.The result indicates that all of the pre-service teachers that involved in this research has achieved minimum requirements of graduated based on EPG especially in lesson and course planning competence.

Table 1 .
The Descriptor of Lesson and Course Planning Competence in EPG