Several studies have recorded the increasing number of teachers who left the profession in the first year of teaching in recent years. The main cause is the difficulties over the first year of teaching and the unsatisfactory construction and growth of professional identity. This qualitative study attempted to reveal the struggles faced during their first year of teaching by EFL novice teachers working in Nusa Tenggara Timur, Indonesia and how they coped with those struggles regarding their development of professional identity. The struggles are split into internal and external struggles based on the result. The internal struggles are linked to how teachers controlled their emotions self-efficacy, and ability to teach, their jobs and their personal opinions. The external challenges related to the management of the classroom, the abilities, and attitudes of the students, the lack of resources and facilities in the school, the relationships with their colleagues and their salaries. This research is intended to provide more insight into the realities of teachers working in an underdeveloped province like East Nusa Tenggara, in particular how they establish their professional identity in a lack of facilities and learning resources.Keywords: East Nusa Tenggara; Novice Teachers; Professional Identity; Struggles and Strategies

Type Undergraduate thesis writing necessitates EFL students to self-regulate themselves, particularly in overcoming the difficulties they encounter and maintaining their motivation. To date, there has been little research on EFL undergraduate students’ self-regulation, help-seeking, and motivation-regulation in thesis writing, especially in Asian context. Under explanatory mixed-method framework, this research aimed to investigate how Indonesian EFL undergraduate students self-regulated their thesis writing process and to what extent their self-regulation assisted them to seek help and regulate their motivation. The results showed that the students generally demonstrated a high level of self-regulation, help-seeking, and motivation-regulation. Furthermore, it was revealed that self-regulation had a positive, significant, and moderate correlation with help-seeking (r=.461), and a positive, significant, and high correlation with motivation-regulation (r=.648). The findings suggested that self-regulation, help-seeking, and motivation-regulation were important for students to finish their challenging undergraduate thesis. However, even when the overall measured results were good, the support from other people including from the university staff were needed, especially in cultivating students’ self-regulatory mechanism. This research offers implications for the university and thesis advisors.

Self-regulation is an ability that helps the students to maintain their effort in achieving their goals. In self-regulation, students can plan, monitor, and evaluate their learning process. Self-regulation encompasses many aspects. One of them is motivation. Motivation is considered as one of the important aspects of the learning process. Concerning the educational context in Indonesia, thesis writing course is a compulsory course. However, students are required to do the task independently. Therefore, students have to be self-regulated learners during the process of thesis writing. This study aims to investigate students’ motivation-regulation strategies in thesis writing. There were 9 participants involved in this study. The participants were students of English Language and Education Study Program of Sanata Dharma University. This study belongs to mixed-method research. Questionnaire and interview were used as instruments to collect the data. The results of this study revealed that the participants used some motivation-regulation strategies, namely, self-consequating, environmental structuring, goal-oriented self-talk, interest enhancement, and attribution control. Additionally, the majority of the participants were apt to procrastinate writing their thesis. The implications are provided for undergraduate students, thesis advisor, and future researchers.

Critical thinking is explicitly mentioned in many school and university curricula around the world including in the Indonesian education curriculum but it is rarely promoted inside the classrooms. Lack of agreement on its definition and clarity of instruction in the curriculum, the unfavourable culture and the teacher-centered teaching arguably prevent critical thinking to grow. Therefore, more research needs to be undertaken on students’ understanding of and engagement in critical thinking in reading. To fll the gap, this study was conducted, which aimed to investigate Indonesian learners’ critical thinking in reading. One research question was postulated, i.e., How critical are Indonesian EFL learners’ thinking in reading? To answer the question, a mixed method approach was undertaken. The participants of this study were 55 semesters four students enrolled in two classes of Critical Reading and Writing II (CRW2) of the English Education Study Program, Sanata Dharma University, Yogyakarta in the even semester of 2014. The instruments employed were a Likert-scale questionnaire and students’ reflections. Results from both quantitative and qualitative data analyses suggest that most of the students had sufficient declarative knowledge of critical thinking in reading. However, their procedural and conditional knowledge about critical thinking in reading were insufficient. Overall, students indicated some level of critical thinking in reading, but to become critical, they need to be in a learning environment where their critical thinking in reading could be regularly and intensively nurtured. The findings of the research are expected to inform English teachers, lecturers and researchers in Indonesia and other parts of the world about the importance of designing and carrying out the teaching-learning processes that can enhance learners’ declarative, procedural and conditional knowledge about critical thinking in reading.

Critical thinking is explicitly mentioned in many school and university curricula around the world including in the Indonesian education curriculum but it is rarely promoted inside the classrooms. Lack of agreement on its definition and clarity of instruction in the curriculum, the unfavourable culture and the teacher-centered teaching arguably prevent critical thinking to grow. Therefore, more research needs to be undertaken on students’ understanding of and engagement in critical thinking in reading. To fll the gap, this study was conducted, which aimed to investigate Indonesian learners’ critical thinking in reading. One research question was postulated, i.e., How critical are Indonesian EFL learners’ thinking in reading? To answer the question, a mixed method approach was undertaken. The participants of this study were 55 semesters four students enrolled in two classes of Critical Reading and Writing II (CRW2) of the English Education Study Program, Sanata Dharma University, Yogyakarta in the even semester of 2014. The instruments employed were a Likert-scale questionnaire and students’ reflections. Results from both quantitative and qualitative data analyses suggest that most of the students had sufficient declarative knowledge of critical thinking in reading. However, their procedural and conditional knowledge about critical thinking in reading were insufficient. Overall, students indicated some level of critical thinking in reading, but to become critical, they need to be in a learning environment where their critical thinking in reading could be regularly and intensively nurtured. The findings of the research are expected to inform English teachers, lecturers and researchers in Indonesia and other parts of the world about the importance of designing and carrying out the teaching-learning processes that can enhance learners’ declarative, procedural and conditional knowledge about critical thinking in reading.