Strengthening Teacher Competencies in the Era of Independent Curriculum through the Implementation of Change Management

: This community service aimed to strengthen teachers' competencies in dealing with curriculum changes from the 2013 curriculum to the independent curriculum through training in the application of change management. This service activity is carried out using an asset-based community development (ABCD) approach, strengthening participants' potential for responding to change. The training participants were 35 elementary school teachers in Samarinda City. Training activities were conducted at SD Negeri 007 Samarinda Ulu, Samarinda City. This activity was carried out on Saturday, July 29, 2023. The activities involved providing training to strengthen teacher competencies by explaining the application of change management in dealing with curriculum changes. Data on training outcomes were obtained through the Teacher Attitudes Towards Change Scale (TATCS) questionnaire and questions regarding participants' perceptions of the training. Participants' answers were analyzed using keywords and word co-occurrence analyses. The training strengthened teacher competence in the era of an independent curriculum by increasing teacher belief in the importance of curriculum change, confidence in applying the Merdeka curriculum, and support for curriculum change. These results indicate the urgency of conducting similar training periodically to strengthen teacher competence in the adaptation process using an independent curriculum.


INTRODUCTION
The curriculum is one of the crucial components in determining the success of education.Conventionally, the curriculum is designed to guide managing school curricula and implementing learning activities in schools (Hermawan et al., 2020).The curriculum serves as an essential tool in realizing educational programs, both formal and non-formal.It functions as a means to develop students' intellectual abilities, facilitate their growth and development according to their potential and talents, equip them to become creative and innovative members of society and facilitate their acquisition of knowledge to adapt to the changing times (Pane & Aly, 2023).Indonesia has undergone at least 11 revisions of the education curriculum, including in 1947,1952,1964,1968,1975,1984,1994,1999,2004,2006,2013, and finally in 2022, known as the independent curriculum (Iskandar, Rosmana, Nurhuda, et al., 2023).Social and economic development, cultural traditions, educational advancements, and even international trends drive these curriculum changes (Cui et al., 2018).
Governmental transitions always follow frequent changes in the curriculum, resulting in a stigma within the education sector (Puspitasari et al., 2022).Curriculum changes often lead to the loss of the essence of governmental policies as a means of problem-solving (Hidayah et al., 2022).Understanding the essence of the curriculum is necessary for teachers so that they can professionally and proportionally respond to curriculum changes.These changes inevitably entail several consequences for teachers, especially in terms of adapting to the latest curriculum, namely the Independent Curriculum.Curriculum changes can decrease the effectiveness of learning if teachers are not prepared for them (Fitriyah & Wardani, 2022).Therefore, teachers must understand change management and be able to handle changes so that their performance in implementing the Independent Curriculum can achieve a high level of success.
The Independent Curriculum is expected to enhance competencies and character in accordance with the Pancasila student profile (Sulaeman et al., 2022).However, implementing the independent curriculum is not as straightforward as anticipated.Implementing this latest curriculum has pros and cons because it still requires many processes, readiness, solidarity, and time for implementation (Iskandar, Rosmana, Alifah, et al., 2023).When planning and implementing the Independent Curriculum, there are often undesirable attitudes from both schools and teachers.Some teachers show resistance to the implementation of the Independent Curriculum (Camellia et al., 2022).Therefore, change management is needed for teachers as individuals implementing the curriculum to have awareness, willingness, knowledge, abilities, and reinforcement to reduce resistance to curriculum changes.Change management can be defined as a process or action undertaken by someone to organize, work on, and implement all kinds of changes within an organization to achieve better results than before (Tampubolon, 2020).In the application of change management, teachers must be aware of the need for change, willing to participate in and support change, knowledgeable about how to make changes, able to implement changes and behaviors, and reinforced to maintain change.
Continuous changes in the curriculum necessitate the enhancement and strengthening of teacher competencies.This improvement and reinforcement can be achieved through various activities such as training sessions, workshops, seminars, and mentoring (Sulaeman et al., 2022;Wildan, 2019).Competencystrengthening training is an effort to provide insights and enhance teachers' professionalism in implementing teaching and learning processes (Asnawi et al., 2023).Training sessions aimed at strengthening teacher competencies in the era of the Independent Curriculum are highly necessary (Wahira et al., 2023), as they can raise awareness among teachers about the importance of embracing change and adapting to curriculum changes for the enhancement of education quality in Indonesia.Therefore, efforts to address this issue involve providing training sessions to strengthen teacher competencies through the implementation of change management within the context of the Independent Curriculum.

METHODS
This community service activity is carried out by providing training to strengthen teacher competencies through an explanation of the application of change management in facing curriculum changes, especially the Independent Curriculum currently in use.This community service activity is conducted using the ABCD approach, strengthening the potential already possessed by participants in responding to curriculum changes.The ABCD approach is a strategy for building communities that strives to create a social pattern of life where the community becomes the main actor and determinant in development efforts in its environment, often referred to as community-based approaches (Hairani & Faizah, 2023;Prayitno & Fadly, 2022) Data from the training outcomes were obtained through a questionnaire adapted from the TATCS (Kin & Kareem, 2017).TATCS encompasses three crucial aspects: cognitive, affective, and behavioral reactions to change (Khaw et al., 2022).The questionnaire framework can be seen in Table 1.Cognitive reaction to change (CRC) refers to individuals' beliefs about the necessity and importance of change and their preference for outcomes, namely how much change will personally and organizationally benefit them (Rafferty & Minbashian, 2019).Affective reaction to change (ARC) pertains to individuals' feelings associated with satisfaction or anxiety about a change (Kin & Kareem, 2017).Behavioral reaction to change (BRC) measures the extent to which someone will take action to support or initiate a change (Kark Smollan, 2006).Questionnaires were filled out before and after the training.Training participants completed the questionnaire based on their opinions regarding statements related to their response to curriculum changes.
In the questionnaire, participants determined their level of agreement with a statement by selecting one of the five Likert scale options ranging from "strongly disagree" to "strongly agree."The statements in the questionnaire before and after the study were the same, but in the post-study questionnaire, participants were asked to write their opinions on the benefits of the training they had received in strengthening their competencies to face curriculum changes.Participants' responses to the statements in the questionnaire were then averaged to determine the readiness score of teachers for curriculum changes.A keyword analysis of participants' responses to their opinions on the training was conducted.To analyze the potential relationship between words in participants' responses, word cooccurrence network analysis was employed in this study.Word cooccurrence analysis of the 35 participants' responses to the questions was conducted with a minimum term frequency (TF) of 50 for nouns and adjectives.Node size indicates word frequency, line thickness indicates the strength of the relationship between word pairs, and color indicates the presence of word communities determined by the random walk method (Tussyadiah, 2016).Word co-occurrence analysis was conducted using KH Coder 3 Beta 07 software.Overall, the flow of the community service process can be seen in Figure 1.  for change is known to increase one's self-confidence in dealing with that change (Carroll et al., 2020).Furthermore, the increase in the BRC aspect indicates that participants' support for curriculum changes is growing.
Teacher support for curriculum changes is crucial because teachers are key factors in curriculum implementation (Achruh, 2016).

Figure 3 Scores of the TATCS
To identify frequently occurring phrases in the responses of training participants regarding their opinions on the benefits of the training received in strengthening competencies to face curriculum changes, keyword analysis was conducted (DePaolo & Wilkinson, 2014).Figure 4 shows the keywords obtained from the responses of training participants.Based on the results of the analysis, the most frequently used keywords are teachers, beneficial, competencies, changes, and curriculum.This indicates that participants agree that this training is considered beneficial in strengthening teacher competencies when facing curriculum changes.Peerrelated words such as colleagues and friends also appear frequently.This is related to participants' statements that, in addition to themselves, they believe this training is also beneficial for other fellow teachers who also participated in the training.
This demonstrates the participants' awareness of collectively improving their competencies as teachers.It also serves as an endorsement of the training to peers because they consider it highly beneficial.Additionally, the appearance of several positive verbs such as improving, assisting, facing, motivating, adding, producing, and updating indicates participants' positive perceptions of the training they have undergone.These positive perceptions make it easy for participants to accept and adjust their attention to the material presented (Affiani, 2021).The relationship between words in participants' responses was analyzed using word co-occurrence.A word cooccurrence analysis of 35 participant responses using nouns and adjectives with a minimum term frequency (TF) of 50 can be seen in Figure 5. Node size indicates word frequency, line thickness indicates the strength of the relationship between word pairs, and color indicates the presence of word communities determined using the random walk method (Tussyadiah, 2016).It should be noted that word co-occurrence shows some isolated word communities with weak connections.There are four major word communities visible in Figure 4, namely communities colored teal, red, blue, and yellow.(Siregar, 2017).Increased knowledge positively affects how knowledge is applied (transfer of learning) in daily tasks.
The yellow-colored word community is related to the training content on strengthening competencies in facing changes in teaching and curriculum and transitioning to the independent curriculum.This assures that participants understand the content of the training they have undergone.The blue-colored word community is indicative that participants feel that the training they attended strongly supports their profession as teachers.This aligns with the increasing awareness among participants regarding the importance of improving the quality and standards of education in accordance with changing times.Curriculum changes are one of the efforts undertaken by the Indonesian government to enhance the quality of education.The role of teachers is crucial in carrying out their duties and roles as drivers of the curriculum itself, thus ensuring the government's efforts to improve the quality of education in Indonesia proceed smoothly (Amelia et al., 2023).

CONCLUSION
. Participants in this activity are 35 elementary school teachers in Samarinda City.The method used in this training activity is lecture and discussion.Lectures are conducted when providing knowledge about change management in the implementation of the Independent Curriculum, and discussions are held at the end of the activity through question and answer sessions.The topics covered in this training activity include the definition of management, the definition of change, the definition of change management, types of change management, change management strategies, self-change management, and the implementation of change management in relation to curriculum changes.

Figure 1
Figure 1 The flow of community service activities

Figure 2
Figure 2 Documentation of the training session

Figure 4
Figure 4 Keyword analysis of training participants' responses

Figure
Figure 5 Depicts the word co-occurrence analysis of training participants' responses The training on strengthening teacher competencies through the application of change management in the context of the Independent Curriculum has been successfully conducted as planned.This training effectively strengthened participants' competencies regarding curriculum changes.After attending the training, participants became more convinced that curriculum changes are essential for educational progress, felt confident in implementing the Independent Curriculum, and supported curriculum changes for the advancement of the quality of education in Indonesia.The emergence of positive action verbs in participants' responses to questions about their perceptions of the training indicates that participants have a positive outlook on the training conducted.Word cooccurrence analysis indicates that participants found the training they attended highly beneficial, supporting them in facing curriculum changes and reinforcing their profession as teachers.Based on participants' feedback after the training, it can be concluded that the change management training conducted was able to enhance teachers' competencies in the context of implementing the Independent Curriculum.A suggestion for this training is to ensure its continuation so that in-depth guidance can be provided to teachers when facing curriculum changes.

Table 1
The questionnaire framework for TATCS