TEACHER EDUCATION PROGRAM QUALITY

The need for qualified teachers of the higher current positively must be addressed by the management of teacher education. This positive response must be shown to constantly improve the quality of educational programs it offers. Improvement of education quality in higher education is clearly going to bring a positive impact on the creation of qualified teachers later in life.
To be able to create a quality teacher education, based on several studies Darling-Hammond. and Bransford (Ed.) (2005: 394) states that there are at least three important elements in the design of teacher education programs should be improved (made different from the current state). The third element is as follows.
1. The content of teacher education, with regard to the material should be given to the students, how to give, how to combine various materials so that meaningful, as well as how its expansion so that students have a cognitive map that will help them to see the relationship between teacher knowledge domains with its use as a practical in the field to encourage students to learn.
2. The process of learning, in terms of curriculum development that is consistent with the fundamental readiness of students and learning materials and practical process that is able to generate student understanding through active creativity in the classroom.
3. Context of learning, with regard to the creation of contextual learning process in order to develop practical skills of students. Context of this study should be applied both in the domains of teaching materials as well as through professional learning communities (schools).
Sekait with the above opinion, Lang and Evans (2006: 3) is more clearly stated that the creation of quality education programs can be based on the essentials of teacher education programs as follows.
1. significance theory with practical experience.
2. Cooperation between universities and other educational community.
3. Theory and practical in generic skills and reflection and discussion about the effectiveness of these skills.
4. Giving emphasis on the process of how students learn to promote creativity and critical thinking skills.
5. Ability to organize learning.
6. Application of a constructivist approach to learning.
7. Application of alternative assessment and motivation theory.
8. Building a research-based professionalism.
Based on these two views, quality educational programs on dasarnnya is a teacher education program that always consider the question of what a teacher and what teachers can do. The question of what a teacher will encourage the teacher education program has always taught contextual material to the students. Contextual material is of course not only theoretically presented practical but are presented so that the prospective teachers to acquire two thoughts at once the concept and practical. In other words, it can be said teacher education programs should be able to educate prospective teachers in learning the basic assumptions about the practical concepts in practice.
The second question about what to do teacher will encourage the implementation of teacher education programs leading to the excavation potential and needs of the students adapted to the real conditions of the teacher's performance in the field. Thus, teacher education program will continue to focus on the creation of hard skills and soft skills that teachers should possess. This means that the teacher education program must be able to provide the professional skills of the graduates while creating graduates who have a high thinking skills that will be very useful to develop professionalism when they've become a teacher someday. Therefore, the implementation of the educational process in teacher education programs should be geared towards introducing and play as a student teacher during his studies he leads.
Teacher education programs are not qualified teacher education programs that provide knowledge of various models and strategies of learning to students but are able to apply various models and strategies to students so that students gain an overview of theoretical concepts and applications simultaneously. Through this real experience, complaints over the ignorance of teachers on a variety of models and learning strategies as well as the inability of teachers to implement various models and strategies will be able to ditepiskan. In addition, by applying various models and strategies to students, student creativity will increase and the prospective teachers will understand that becoming a teacher is basically an attempt to always be professional learners.
Professional development of teacher education can also be formed through increased research-based learning process. This means that since the beginning of the student should have been invited to conduct a simple research on any subject. Through this kind of learning style, the teacher candidates are expected to find esesi actual teacher as well as build their competence to carry out skilled research when they later became a teacher. In addition, research-based learning can also be interpreted to mean that the learning process is carried out in universities is always based on the latest research results in line with the scientific vision and market signals so that graduates will have a number of skills that are really needed in the field.
In the end, the creation of a quality educational program will be highly dependent on the quality awareness of the managers. Sekait with this, the managers of higher education institutions teacher already should run educational process based on a clear quality assurance. The teacher education program managers are required atmospheres provide excellent service to the students so that the entire program is performing students to be able to deliver quality. In addition, the impact of the quality of their attention to this will lead also to the people's trust in the teacher education institutions so keberlangsung teacher education programs will be guaranteed in the future.