School appreciation and teachers competence: Are they correlated?

Teacher appreciation is one of the most important components that may impact teachers’ competency. This article aims at finding out to what extent school appreciation for English teachers correlates with their competency. This is a quantitative study that used a correlational research design. This investigation was conducted in the Pidie district, Aceh, Indonesia, with a total sample of 92 senior high school English teachers from different senior high schools and vocational schools (SMA and SMK), who are both civil servant and non-civil servant English teachers. To collect data, the modified questionnaire of Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) from Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) was used as the instrument, particularly to figure out the frequency of how teachers feel being appreciated by headmaster, teachers and people in school, and other people outside the school, as well as the frequency of how teachers develop their competence in various professional development activities. Statistical calculation was done to find out, if any, the correlation between the two variables. Based on the results, it was found that appreciation of teachers and teachers’ competence have a positive and significant correlation (r=.66). This suggests that relevant parties in and outside of schools should increase their appreciation for English teachers in order to improve English teachers’ competency, which will further enhance students’ achievement.