Lecturers’ Professionalism in Shaping Students' Perceptions and Commitments

The (LPTK) have some following strategic issues: (1) teacher graduates who perform poor professionalism, (2) LPTKs that do not meet quality standard, (3) the insufficient education of the teacher students that fails to create professional teachers. The research was carried out at a Faculty of Teacher Training and Education/ Fakultas Keguruan dan Ilmu Pendidikan (FKIP) in West Jakarta. The research subjects were the lecturers and senior year active students, consisting of 191 students, who were selected through saturated samples. This research employed a mixed-method design using causal survey. The data were collected in the form of a questionnaire. The results of the study showed that the lecturers’ professionalism has impacts to the development of the students' perceptions and profession commitments.


Introduction
The Indonesian government has set up several significant regulations to fully support the LPTK's strategic role in establishing professional commitments of the FKIP students, namely: (1)  LPTK is also expected to focus on the students' characters i.e. to make them be committed teacher candidates since they commence their studies at FKIP. This is a crucial step because there is a tendency of most of the students at FKIP who show lack of meaningful function and role of teacher profession. For instances, students pay less attention in the importance of giving proper models in their way of speech, dress code, discipline, academic mastery, unpreparedness, worries, and complaints during practice teaching program (PPL). The complexity of such issues reveals that FKIP students do not have optimal efforts for the development of their soft and hard skills, competence, and self-stability to pursue their future profession and career path to become teachers.
The professionalism of lecturers becomes a variable that forms the students' perspective on their lecturers. For examples, the phenomenon of lecturer's professionalism as described by Effendi (2010) in the journal of Higher Education and Lecturer's Performance, which reveals about sexual involvement between lecturer and student in Papua (Retrieved July 3, 2010, from tabloidjubi.com); a plagiarism case that has involved a Professor of International Relations Department at Parahyangan University Bandung (Tempo Interaktif Bandung, February 11, 2010). Moreover, Ambarwati (2009) mentions about an example of lecturer's poor presences in the teaching and learning process at one university in Ambon city. It was found out that from 18 meetings in a semester the lecturer only fulfiled 11 times face-to-face attendance.
Based on daily observations, interviews and dialogue blended with reflective attitude of 122 teacher students in DKI Jakarta Province, Indonesia, it was identified that there are 4 major groups of factors comprising of ten reasons indicating their commitments to work as teachers (Table 1). From these findings, out of four factor groups with ten indicators showing quality of the student teachers' commitment for the profession, the Other factors scored 57%; students tend to choose long holiday, not received in other majors, large allowances and following friends that have influenced their commitments to become teachers. Meanwhile, 43% is due to several sub factors, such as: Self factor (11%), Educator factor (16%), and Family factor (16%). Based on this preliminary study, it can be identified that the commitment to the student teachers profession should be formed from the very beginning since they have registered at the FKIP. As an LPTK FKIP is strongly required to design fundamental factors for the students through perception, which can lead them to have high commitments to work, and the role of the dominant factor for lecturers' capability, which can give good impact on the perception and role of the family, especially the students' parents. This will eventually boost the nationwide teacher education achievement and enhance the resources as well as develop the nation's competitiveness.
Based on the challenges, the reality and the existing problems in education, this research becomes the pioneer study that can give beneficial contributions to capture the whole picture through the analyses of professionalism of the lecturers and students' perception on the commitments to work as teachers.

Literature review 1. Commitments to Profession
Commitment to work is the intensity of a person in identifying himself and his level of involvement to work (Mowday, 2010. Identifying an agreement in morals and ethics includes: (1) conviction in accepting the goals and professional values; (2) Willingness to play a role according to the profession; (3) The desire to defend himself in the profession. Professional commitment is also interpreted as the level where individuals can adopt the characteristics and perspectives of the profession. The commitment to work is one of the most decisive indicators in human development in life and in his career as it sets the groundwork for how one can work with integrity and effectiveness. Commitment to profession refers to the characteristics of the profession that include: (a) Working to achieve the best results by using the knowledge and skills one possesses, (b) Having the needs to develop skills by training, (c) Having the adherence to the values of the profession, (d) Showing esponsible for the work, (e) Obeying set of work ethics (Pauver, 2012).
The commitment to the profession is interpreted in the affective dimension of an individual's belief in accepting the values of a job or the path of work to which he or she chooses, and the willingness to maintain the existence of his or her membership (Vandenberg & Scarpello, 2014: 535). According to Allen & Meyer (2015), the development of a professional commitment dimension is developed in three components, which are equivalent to organizational commitment, namely: (1) affective professional commitment or emotional involvement, such as feeling happy or excited with the job; (2) continuous professional commitment is a commitment in which the individual feels he/she has a loss risk when leaving the profession or job path chosen and will lose the opportunity of the profession, and (3) normative professional commitment that is the feeling and responsibility for the profession one has chosen. As the results, a person who has a strong commitment to a high profession then will strive to stay in the path of the profession he chooses, is able to participate actively in self-development, is adhered to professional values and ethics, and carries out the job duties and functions as well as possible. Conversely, individuals who have low commitment to their professions will not perform well in all their roles, functions and tasks. In such a case, they will think their profession as a burden and will highly have a tendency to leave the profession because they do not enjoy it. A professional worker will identify himself/herself in his/her interest and pleasure while doing the job task by obeying the norms, rules and professional code of ethics in solving the problem. In the previous research, Norris & Nelbuhr (2014) elaborated that the commitment of the accountants to their profession will have an impact on higher professionalism.
Understanding the profession means that it is a job or position that requires expertise and responsibility to the job. Teaching is a profession that is done by people who are trained and educated through the LPTKs to carry out the function and process in the work service as teachers. Commitment to the work is characterized by an effort to have competencies in the teacher's profession comprises four competencies, which include: (1) pedagogic competence, i.e. understanding of the learners, designing and learning, evaluation of learning outcomes, and developing potential learners; 2) professional competence, i.e. mastery of learning materials widely and deeply based on curriculum, scientific substance and methodological structure, (3) social competence, which includes the ability to communicate and interact effectively with learners, educators, parents and communities, and (4) ) personality competence, which correlates with the ability of a teacher to become a role model and show steady or stable personality, mature, wise, authoritative and so forth.
The LPTK's effort is to facilitate a convenient environment or condition so that students can develop a commitment to work in order to become professional teachers who are ready to face any challenges of future needs. In this research, the commitment to work is synthesized as attitudes that the student teachers must have so that they are able to adopt professional values since they started becoming registered students at FKIP; these attitudes consist of affective, normative, and continuous dimensions.
The framework of thinking in this variable is the higher students' commitment to work the higher the readiness in understanding the professional task as teachers, and the more they can make efforts to identify themselves to the function and role of the teacher profession optimally. In the end, these will affect all variables in this study directly and indirectly.

Professional Lecturer
Lecturers are teachers in universities. The word lecturer comes from the Latin word daceo, which means to teach, explain or prove. Lecturers have the same understanding with the teacher, who in Sanskrit also means leader, teacher, or scholar. Lecturers are professionals according to the Law of Teachers andLecturers Number 14 Year 2005. Tampubolon (2012) states that as professionals, lecturers must be able to perform the following obligations: (1) to implement the tridharma of higher education, namely: education, research, and community service; (2) to make plan, implementation and process; and (3) to develop and enhance qualifications and competencies, (4) to show objective and non-discriminatory action towards learners, (5) to uphold laws, codes of ethics, religious and ethical values, (6) to maintain and foster the unity of the nation (173-175). Besides that, lecturers have to obey normative obligations, for instances: (1) to create an active, meaningful, fun, inspirational, creative, dynamic and dialogical educational environment; (2) to keep professional commitment in order to improve quality of education, (3) to set an example and maintain the reputation of the institution, profession and position in accordance with the belief. (Dirjendikti, 2009: 102-103). The elements of professional lecturer formation consist of: (1) knowledge of technical and special issues, laws, environment, social, economy and culture, (2) attitudes including ethics, morals, integrity, responsibilities, and accountability, and (3) skills, namely: technical skills, communication, interpersonal skills, quality of consciousness, organization, business, management and leadership.
Professionalism of the lecturers will happen in a conducive academic atmosphere that supports academic activities, interaction among lecturers and students, among fellow students and among lecturers in optimizing the learning process, with one goal, namely to give better education. Tampubolon (2012) contends that professionalism of the lecturers covers: (1) obedience to the ethics integration, which includes the dimension of relationship and interaction of lecturers with educational community, among lecturers, students and supporting staff in the scope of universities, including how lecturers manage the teaching preparations (the Semester Learning Plan), attendance fulfillment, the responsibility in managing, evaluating and feedback process and learning outcomes (2) implementation of the standards of academic culture, such as: the learning process on the value of scientific truth and objectivity, the use of various learning methods that provide forecasting of learning to students of various forms, problem-based learning, project-oriented, individually or in groups that engage students actively in learning. Not to mention, professional lecturers need to be wholeheartedly involved within integrated research through reading, researching and scientific writing, conducting design practice and field observation. Also, they must devote their time to give insightful contributions to the community through the Community Service Program or Kuliah Kerja Nyata (KKN).
Based on the aforementioned elaboration, the professionalism of lecturers in this study is synthesized as: levels of ability in implementing the University Tridharma, with dimensions of fulfilling teaching obligations, creating a convenient academic atmosphere, following the academic culture, and becoming good models. Thus, the framework of thinking in this research is the variable of the higher the level of proficiency of the lecturers in implementing the University Tridharma, the more professional the lecturers are; they directly and indirectly influence other variables in present research.

Student's Perception
Robbins & Judge mention that perception is an individual process, which involves of organizing, interpreting things, and giving meaning to them (2016: 103). Perception becomes very important because it affects action. The perceptions of each individual can be different though to a common object. This is because perception-forming factors can come from: (1) the individual self as the perceptor or the assessor, (2) the characteristics of the target being observed or perceived, and (3) different situations.
Perceptions can be formed because of these three factors. As mentioned previously, perceptions are formed by factors of the individual ownself as a perception or appraiser of the same object can make the same or different perceptions depending on the similarities or differences of internal factors of the self, either attitude, motives, interests, past experiences or expectations. Perception is often identified with one's view of everything and how he gives meaning or value to the object.
The second factor that can affect perception is the target or characteristic of the observed object. The similarities of things observed, whether people, objects, or events similar to each other tend to be grouped together. In this case, if the self-assessor factors such as past experience in interacting with the teacher during the schooling period will be perceived in the same group when perceiving the figure of the lecturer in the lecture. The greater the similarity of experience in perceiving the figure of teachers and lecturers, the tendency to perceive them as a group will be more and more the same. Elements in target factors that may affect perception are novelty, motion, sound, size, background and proximity.
The third factor is the situation. Different situations can give different perceptions. Components that exist in the situation factors and can affect perceptions consist of time, circumstances/places and social circumstances.
In this study, the study of student's perceptions focused on students' perceptions of the profession of lecturers. The view of perception of the person as an object will be different to the perception of inanimate objects because the living thing has belief, motive or purpose (Mullins, 2011: 543). This perception provides feedback on action. The perceptions of teacher students on the profession of their lecturers can be interpreted as students' understanding of the role of educators. If the student teachers have positive perceptions of the teaching profession, then they will be able to understand matters related to the teaching profession and will try to do proper things related to the profession. In this study, students' perceptions are synthesized as positive or negative attitudes toward the profession of lecturers based on the dimensions of self, target and situation. The thinking framework of this research is the more positive the perceptions of the students to the profession, the higher commitment that they will have toward the profession. Research Hypothesis 1. There is an influence of the lecturer to student's perception. 2. There is an influence of student's perception on the commitment to the profession.

Research Method
This research employed a mixed-method research that used a survey method and causalapproach. The data collection technique was questionnaire. The subjects of this research were 25 lecturers and 191 senior year students at FKIP in DKI Jakarta Province, West Jakarta. Meanwhile, the respondents were 191 FKIP students who were using saturated sampling The research was conducted at FKIP for duration of 3 months. The formulations of the problems posed in the research are: (1). What are the profiles of the lecturers' profession?
(2). How is the student's perception of the profession of the lecturer? (3). How is the commitment to work of the FKIP students described? (4). Is there any influence of the lecturers' professionalism on students' perceptions? (5). Is there any influence of the students' perceptions on the students' commitment to the profession? Professional Lecturer (X): "Ability in implementing the university tridharma"   As for t=the regression equation, it can be stated that this model can be used for the equations in this study, which means that: 1. Professional lecturer variables (X1) have a positive contribution to the student's perception of 52.450 and each one of professional lecturer's treatment unit will increase student's perception (X2 or Y1) that equals to 0.05. 2. Student's perception variable (Y1) has a positive contribution to the commitment to work of 47.031 and each one of the student's perception treatment unit will increase the commitment to the profession (Y2); it equals to 9.204.     Ho: Significant 2 tails> α = 0.05; data comes from the normally distributed populations H1: Significant 2 tails <α = 0.05; data comes from the abnormally distributed population.

Normal Data for Estimated Error
Homogeneity Data Table 7. Test of homogeneity variances of the professional lecturers with student's perception.

Students' Perception
Levene Statistic df1 df2 Sig. 2.016 a 33 156 .002 a. Groups with only one case are ignored in computing the test of homogeneity of variance for students' perception.  Based on the data presented in the table, it can be described that professional profiling of the lecturers are, as follows: (1) professional level of the lecturers is at the level of professional enough, either in the dimensions of learning or in the academic culture, (2) aspects of: (a) improvement efforts scored 3.62 (professional), (b) community service scored 3.62 (professional), (c) planning scored 3.47 (professional enough), (d) paikem (active, innovative, creative, energetic and fun process) scored 3.47 (professional enough), (e) teaching obligations scored 3.47 (professional enough), (f) diverse methods scored 3.32 (professional enough), (g) evaluation scored 3.29 (professional enough), (h) reading, writing and researching scored 3.29 (professional enough), (i) feedback scored 3.22 (professional enough), (j) improvement efforts scored 3.62 (professional enough) and (k) objective attitude scored 3.21 (professional enough).
These conditions can be illustrated in the following graph: Figure 6. Professional lecturer level. Based on the data in the table, it can be described that the level of students' perception is at the positive level, as follows: (1) Table 11. Level of commitment to the profession Based on the data displayed in the table, it can be described that the commitment to the profession is placed at high level, namely: (1) affective commitment in a form of emotional involvement, i.e. individual feeling of liking the work; it got a score of 3.55 (very high), (2) continuous professional commitment where the individual feels a risk of loss when they leave the profession or job path chosen, and will lose the professional opportunity; the score was 3.28 (high commitment), and (3) normative professional commitment that is the feeling and responsibility of the chosen profession; it was scored 3.26 (high commitment). The average commitment for the profession of the teacher students is 3.36 (high commitment). The description of the commitment for the teacher profession is illustrated in the following graph. Figure 8. Level of commitment to the profession. The relationship between the professional variables of the student's perception and the lecturers is shown by correlation score of 0.783, which shows a positive and strong relationship. The significance test of the correlation coefficient of the lecturer professional variables with student perceptions is shown by the t-test = 6.021. The t-table score with df = 189 and the significance level α = 0.05 obtained value equals to 1.650 because t-test = 6.021> t-table α = 0.01 equal to 1.970 and t-table α = 0.05 equal to 1.650 hence Ho is rejected and H1 accepted. These mean that there is a very significant correlation between professional lecturer and students' perception. On the other hand, the coefficient of determination (R2) between variables (rY1X) 2 shows that: (1) (rY1X) 2 = 0.613, which means that the variance of students' perceptions (Y1) can be explained by the professional lecturers variables, i.e. 61.3%, whereas the remaining 38.7% is explained by the other factors that are not investigated in this study.

Ratnawati Susanto / Professionality of Lecturers In Establishing Students 'Perceptions and Commitments
The Effect of students' perception on commitment to work. The strength of the relationship between student's perception variables and commitment to work is shown by correlation of 0.870, which shows a positive and very strong relationship. The significance test of correlation coefficient of student's perception variable and the commitment to profession is shown by tct = 6.831. score t-table with df = 189 and significance level α = 0.05 obtained value equal to 1.650 and at α = 0.01 obtained value equal to 1.970. Because = 6.831> ttable α = 0.01 equal to 1.970 and ttable α = 0.05 equal to 1.650 hence Ho is rejected and H1 accepted; these show that there is a very significant correlation between students' perception and commitment to the profession. Whereas the coefficient of determination (R2) between the variables (rY2Y1) 2 shows that (1) (rY2Y1) 2 = 0.757 that means that the variance in commitment to profession (Y2) can be explained by the students' perception variable of 75.7% and the remaining 24.3% that is explained by the other factors is not studied in the present research.