A Study on Teacher’s Absenteeism and Performance in Underdeveloped Areas of West Kalimantan Province

This research aims at examining whether critical psychological states have an effect on teacher’s absenteeism and performance in underdeveloped areas of West Kalimantan Province. The research employed a survey approach involving 200 participants which were selected from 3058 total population. The participants were selected using a two-stage sampling technique. Questionnaires were distributed as the primary instrument of the research. The data then were analyzed by SEM (WarpPLS) analysis. The results indicated that (1) critical psychological states had a significant effect on absenteeism, (2) critical psychological states had a significant effect on performance, (3) critical psychological states did not have a significant effect on performance when mediated by absenteeism, and (4) critical psychological states did not significantly affect teacher’s performance in underdeveloped areas of West Kalimantan Province.


INTRODUCTION
There are four primary gaps in the theory of teacher absenteeism, particularly in Indonesia. First, recent works of literature, either national or international, merely reviews teacher's absenteeism at a primary school level (Gaziel, 2004;Ejere, 2010;Suprastowo, 2013;SMERU, 2011;. Studies that investigate this issue across educational levels are considered insufficient. Second, research in teacher's absenteeism currently focuses on urban and rural schools. Current studies that were conducted either abroad (e.g. Adelabu, 2005;Kadzamira, 2006;Guerrero et al., 2012;Okurut, 2012) or in Indonesia (Laslo, 2013;Suryahadi and Sambodho, 2017) concern with schools located in rural and urban areas. In Indonesia, although a large number of studies has investigated teacher's absenteeism in urban and rural areas, there seems no study that specifically examines teachers who work in underdeveloped areas, because this term has just been introduced by the Indonesian government in 2010 by the President Regulation No. 5 of 2010 on RPJMN 2010RPJMN -2014 In Indonesia, 122 (one hundred and twenty-two) regencies, so-called Kabupaten of 23 provinces are categorized as underdeveloped. One of which is West Kalimantan Province (President Regulation No. 132 of 2015) which has 8 regencies to be classified underdeveloped. The regencies cover Sambas, Bengkayang, Landak, Ketapang, Sintang, Kapuas Hulu, Melawi, and Kayong Utara (the President Regulation no.132 of 2015).
Third, although the variable of critical psychological states has been frequently researched by earlier scholars (Hackman and Oldham, 1975;1980;Ali et al., 2013;Patrick and Bhat, 2014;Kumari and Jeyapalan, 2015), they solely used office workers and employees (non-teaching profession) as the research object. There seems no research focusing on teacher's critical psychological states.
Four, an individual's factor (personal characteristic) has a significant effect on teacher's absenteeism. Despite the inconsistency in the results of previous studies, some of them revealed that the teacher's character had no significant effect on This Journal is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License absenteeism (Rosenblatt and Shirom, 2005;Guerrero et al., 2012). However, other studies claimed reversely (Scott and Wimbush, 1991;Usman and Suryadarma, 2007).
Five, it is indeed reported that some studies find out a relationship between absenteeism and performance. Nevertheless, the results are not yet consistent. Although some reports highlight that there is no significant effect between teacher's absenteeism and performance (McGalla, 2009;Pranab and Pallavi, 2016), other research indicates contradictory results (Suprastowo, 2013;Malik and Narang, 2015). Hence, the effect of teacher's absenteeism on performance should be reviewed more profoundly. Based on the research gaps above, this research is entitled a study on the effect of critical psychological states on teacher's absenteeism and performance in underdeveloped areas of West Kalimantan Province.

Performance
Several authors and research reports define performance according to behavioral perspective (Colquitt et al., 2009;Murphy and Cleveland, 1991), outcome or work achievement (Schermerhorn et al., 1991;Robbins and Judge, 2015), and the ability to perform something (Sinambela, 2007;Rivai, 2009). Based on these three perspectives, performance can be defined as achievement or output in quality or quantity which is reached by an individual at a certain period in running his/her duties based on his/her main responsibilities in accordance with prerequisite working standards and output level in order to perform certain duties (Simanjuntak, 2005;Dessler, 2009). Working standard refers to an organization's goal which is broken down into functional duties. Working standards possessed by a teacher might be different from the working standards of those who work in the industry because each profession has different specifications of duties or work. A teacher, for example, should be able to show his/her competence including pedagogical, personality, social, and professional competencies that are obtained from President Regulation No. 74 of 2008 and The Ministerial Regulation of National Education No. 16 of 2017).

Absenteeism
Plenty of research defines absenteeism as a condition where a teacher is absent when they suppose to be present at school (Gaziel, 2004;McGuirk, 2013;ACER and SMERU, 2014). In this research, what we mean by teacher's absenteeism is a teacher who is not present at school or class to carry out his/her duties as prescribed on the schedule given to the teacher. Mostly, this absence is caused by personal matters rather than school duties. Two components of teacher's absenteeism are teacher's absence at school or class on prescribed schedule either intentionally or unintentionally. A teacher is considered absent if he/she cannot be found at school or whenever he/she has a class to teach at school (President Regulation No. 19 of 2017; SMERU, 2014).

Critical Psychological State
Critical psychological state refers to a condition possed by a teacher to carry out his/her duties, including (1) a job should be experienced as something meaningful or crucial, (2) employee should be responsible for his/her job's outcome, (3) the employee should ascertain the job's outcome regularly and he/she should ensure if the outcome is satisfactory or not (Hackman and Lawler, 1971;Hackman and Oldham, 1975;1980;Boonzaier et al., 2001;Hadi and Adil, 2010;Ali et al., 2013).
Three critical psychological states that an employee has are (1) how far an individual believes that his/her job is important, valuable, and useful for himself and others experienced meaningfulness of the work, (2) how far an individual knows and understands his capacity of doing his/her job (knowledge of the result), and (3) how far an individual is responsible for his/her work outcomes (experienced responsibility for work outcomes) (Hackman and Oldham 1975;1980).

The Relationship Between Critical Psychological State, Absenteeism, and Performance
A number of reports (Gomes, 2003;Winter, 2004) explain that one of the indicators of teacher's performance is the efficient use of time at work, i.e. level of absenteeism, lateness, and lost effective work hours. It is quite reasonable because some teachers are frequently reported to skip classes which lead to a decreasing number of face-to-face meetings and learning process. Hence, it is believed to affect the student's learning . In other words, the serious effect of teacher's absenteeism is regarding their performance. Some scholars (Suprastowo, 2013;Malik and Narang, 2015) exemplify how teacher's absenteeism affects negatively teacher's performance. Those who frequently skip the classes tend to have a low implication on their performance. When the level of absenteeism is high, the performance will get lower (Suprastowo, 2013). Hackman and Oldham (1975;1980) and other subsequent scholars (Boonzaier et al., 2001;Hadi and Adil, 2010;Ali et al., 2013;Patrick and Bhat, 2014;Kumari and Jeyapalan, 2015) posit that critical psychological state of an individual makes the individual make meaning of what they are doing (experienced meaningfulness of the work), takes responsibility (experienced responsibility for outcomes of the work), and understand the outcomes of the work (knowledge of results of the work activities). This critical psychological state will not only affect the employee's absenteeism but also their performance. Research has shown that critical psychological state affects employee's absenteeism (Hackman and Oldham, 1975;1980;Renn, 1995) and high-quality work performance (Hackman and Oldham, 1975;1980;Ali et al., 2013;Kumari and Jeyapalan, 2015).
In accordance with the explanation above, the research, therefore, proposes the following thesis: H 1 : Absenteeism has a significant effect on performance H 2 : Critical psychological state has a significant effect on absenteeism H 3 : Critical psychological state has a significant effect on performance H 4 : Critical psychological state has a significant effect on performance if mediated by absenteeism

Sample and Procedure
This research involved 200 teachers who held a civil servant status. These teachers were chosen from 3508 accessible population who work in underdeveloped areas in West Kalimantan province. The sample selection used a two-stage sampling technique. The first stage was begun by dividing the population into groups/clusters. After that, the sample was taken out from the groups (convenient sampling). In the second stage, of each group, choose a sample from a number of stratified elements (stratified random sampling) (Manoj and Singh, 2013;Dilip and Aditi 2011;Lukman, 2012;Szabó et al., 2015;Lanlege et al., 2013).
Because the population was spread in geographically wide locations, the sample could not be selected directly. Thus, the sample was selected by considering the accessibility and availability of the data (Ferdinand, 2014;Robert, 2015;Gilliland et al., 2015).

Variables and Instruments
Variables of critical psychological state involved three indicators, (1) experienced the meaningfulness of work, (2) experienced the responsibility of the work's outcomes, and (3) knowledge of the results of the work activities, developed by Hackman and Oldham (1975). The variables were measured by using a likert scale between the interval of 1-5, i.e. Very Disagree (score=1)

Characteristics of Participants
Participants in this research consisted of teachers who worked for underdeveloped areas in West Kalimantan Province. 65.5% of the participants were male, while the rest was female (34.5%). The majority of the participants were under 40 years old (75%) and the others (25%) above 41 years old. Most of them taught at elementary school (SD) by 63%, followed by junior and senior high schools by 25.5% and 11.5% respectively. The work experience of most of the participants were 1-10 years (82.5%), followed by 21-30 years (8%), and 11-20 years (7%). 157 participants held an undergraduate degree (78.5%), diploma (15.5%), and senior high school degree (6%).

Evaluation of Measurement Models (Outer Model)
The evaluation of the measurement model or outer model was undertaken to find out reliabilities (indicator reliability and internal consistency reliability) and validities (convergent validity dan discriminant validity). Of three constructs in this research, one of which was reflective, i.e. critical psychological state (CPS). Two others were formated, i.e. absenteeism and performance (Tables 1 and 2).

Evaluation of Structural Model (Inner Model)
The evaluation of the structural model or inner model is used to find out/examine predictive relevance and the Goodness of Fit (GOF) of the research model. By using WarpPls 6.0., the results of the three were presented in the following Table 3.

Hypothesis Testing
Four hypotheses were tested in this research, three of them were direct effect hypothesis and the rest was an indirect effect hypothesis. Each hypothesis was accepted if P-value 0.05. The  Valid (Ghozali, 2008;Ghozali and Latan, 2014;Kock, 2014a; (Ghozali and Latan 2014;Kock, 2018;Sholiha and Salamah, 2015;Utomo, 2018)   Based on Figure 1 and Table 4, the critical psychological state contributed a significant effect on absenteeism and performance. Nevertheless, it did not significantly affect performance if mediated by absenteeism. Absenteeism had no significant effect on performance. It indicates that a critical psychological state could explain absenteeism and performance yet was unable to explain performance through absenteeism. It means that the high rate of absenteeism and performance of teachers in underdeveloped areas in West Kalimantan Province was partly caused by a critical psychological state. The result in this research is in line with earlier studies highlighting the effect of critical psychological state on employee's absenteeism (Hackman and Oldham, 1975;1980;Renn, 1995) and employee's performance (Hackman and Oldham, 1975;1988;Renn, 1995;Ali et al., 2013;Kumari and Jeyapan, 2015). However, this result explains that absenteeism did not affect performance and it was congruent with other reports indicating no significant effect of absenteeism, on the performance (McGalla, 2009;Pani and Kishore, 2016).

Conclusion
Of four hypotheses tested in this research, two of them were significant, i.e. the effect of critical psychological state on absenteeism and performance. Meanwhile, two others were not significant, i.e. the effect of critical psychological state on performance if mediated by absenteeism and the effect of absenteeism on performance. The results show that teacher's absenteeism in underdeveloped areas in West Kalimantan Province was partly caused by critical psychological state although it did not affect their performance.

Limitation
This research was specifically conducted in two regencies of eight underdeveloped regencies in West Kalimantan. Factors of demography, geography, and economic condition of these regencies were different from other 122 underdeveloped areas across Indonesia. As a consequence, the result is not generalizable over other contexts in Indonesia. Further research could be directed to use a larger-sized sample in several different regencies and provinces in Indonesia.