Teachers’ Strategies in Developing and Measuring Students’ Communication Skills

A good communication skill is one of the capabilities that must be mastered by students to be able to socialize, adapt, and compete with others in the scope of school and social life in the 21st century. The purpose of this type of descriptive qualitative research was about to describe the teachers' strategies in developing and conducting an assessment related to the communication skills of elementary school students in Indonesia. Data were obtained through interviews with 10 elementary school teachers in Yogyakarta Province. Data analysis was performed through applying data analysis steps proposed by Bogdan and Biglen. The results showed that an effective strategy that teachers could use to develop students' communication skills was through discussion and presentation methods. Meanwhile, the assessment of students' communication skills is integrated to cognitive, affective, and psychomotor assessments both in terms of instruments and time of assessment. This was resulted from various limitations originating of the teacher and the availability and completeness of school facilities and infrastructure that supports the implementation of various kinds of assessment. communication skills. The results of the two studied indicate that students' mathematical communication skills can be improved through the application of learning models such as PBL, discovery learning and discussion. Xie, Ding, Wang, & Liu (2013) also conducted research related to the communication skills of nursing students in China. The results of these studies indicate that to improve communication skills, nursing students need communication skills training (CST). Jin et al., (2019) from Korea also found that communication skills training (CST) can affect the skills, attitudes and confidence level of pharmacy students regarding communication and patient counseling skills. M any other countries have concerned in for their research. However, the studies

having great communication skills, researchers intend to conduct research that discusses teachers' strategies in developing and measuring students' abilities are in terms of communication skills. The research aims was about to describe effective strategies that teachers can use to develop and measure students' communication skills. The information obtained is expected to be helpful for teachers and policy makers as input so that they can be more serious in preparing students to have provisions and ready to deal with the 21st-century challenges. One type of ability that must be possessed is good communication skills.

METHODS
The method of this research is descriptive qualitative that aims at describing the teacher's strategy in developing and measuring students' communication skills. The collected data comes from the first source, which are from 10 teachers (4 male teachers and 6 female teachers) of public elementary school in Yogyakarta City, Bantul, Kulon Progo, Sleman and Gunung Kidul of Yogyakarta Province who makes a direct assessment to the students. The samples were done randomly without limiting the age and working period of the respondents.
The identity of the participants in this research are not published so that it will not affect their Hery Rosdianti, Wury Wuryandani, Heri Retnawati, Teachers' Strategies in Developing and Measuring… Al Ibtida: Jurnal Pendidikan Guru MI, Vol. 7 No. 2, October 2020 241 profession in the future. The research was done in public schools that implement half day schools in cities and districts.
The data were collected through semi-structured interviews. To obtain valid data, researchers first triangulated the data. The interview guidelines used in this study include: (1) (1) teachers' knowledge of communication skills, (2) the benefits of communication, (3) the strategies to develop students' communication skills, (4) the implementation of assessment, and (5) the teachers' obstacle in assessing students' communication skills.
The technique of data analysis used was the qualitative data analysis technique proposed by Bogdan & Biklen (2007) through reducing the data, categorizing the data into themes and sub-themes, and making conclusions as a result. Interview data were recorded using audio recording and notes. The notes and recordings are reduced to simpler forms and grouped based on similar themes. The next step is to determine the relationship or linkages contained between themes to gain understanding and conclusions related to the findings of teacher strategies in developing student communication skills.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The results of the interviews are grouped into five themes and reduced into sub-themes to get a conclusion. The compiled theme in the discussion about the teachers' strategies in  The ability to understand the information, transfer knowledge and experience to others Communication skills are the ability to understand and provide responses or feedback on the information obtained in both oral and written form.

2.
The ability of confirming a problem, expressing, interrupting, asking questions, interacting, and providing feedback relate to the students' understanding on learning 3.

The Benefits of Communication
The various teachers' answers regarding the benefits of communication are presented in the following table.  (2014) which says that communication skills are not only needed in the sphere of learning but also very necessary in the sphere of the social environment. So it can be concluded that communication is an important and absolute thing in our lives. Furthermore, without communication, we will not be able to interact with other people.

The Strategies in Developing Communication Skills
The strategies undertaken by the teacher in developing communication skills of elementary school students are as shown in table 3 below. The teacher designs learning to the model of role-playing method and PBL 3.
The teacher builds students' trust, doesn't blame, and gives the same opportunities to all students 4 The teacher designs individual assignments that require students to be independent in learning  (2014) mention that the approaches and methods that teachers applied in learning is one cause of students' low communication skills. In this context, the teacher is expected to choose a learning strategy that is suitable for developing those skills.

The Process of Assessing Communication Skills
To see the extent of the capabilities of the students in communication can be proven through assessment. The various teacher responses related to the assessment of students' communication skills are presented in the following table. The assessment process is carried out simultaneously with other assessments through the students' daily lives in expressing opinions, presentations, discussions and defending arguments The process of evaluating students' communication skills is done through observation and student activity in the classroom 2.
The assessment process is done through the daily lives of students in communicating with teachers, friends, and adapting to the environment.

3.
The assessment process is done by observing the fluency of speaking, IQ and the ability to ask questions during learning takes place. Table 4 shows that the assessments made by the teachers regarding communication skills were not carried out in a structured and specific way but integrated with learning that develops communication skills such as in Indonesian language subject, civic education, social studies, and other subjects relate to obeservation of students' daily communication. To find out the level of student communication skills, educators need to measure these abilities through assessment. The assessment is intended to determine the success of learning objectives that have been implemented or comprehended by students, the appropriateness, and the effectiveness of the use of teaching methods (Nuriyah, 2014).
The assessment of communication skills is not enough to be done in just one period.
Van der Vleuten, van den Eertwegh, & Giroldi (2019) asserted that the communication skill assessment requires time and is carried out continuously over a fairly long period. Elementary school teachers in Yogyakarta said that the assessment of students' communication skills is integrated with cognitive, affective, and psychomotor assessments both in terms of time and assessment instruments used. The assessment is not carried out optimally because there are several obstacles experienced by the teacher. This is caused by various limitations both from the teacher and the availability of the school facilities and infrastructures that support the implementation of various kinds of assessment.

The Teachers' Obstacle in Conducting Assessments
Based on the results of the interviews, there are several teachers' obstacles related to the assessment implementation of students' communication skills; they are presented as it follows: Assessment is considered to be too complicated and teachers tend to be technologically illiterate The obstacle of the teachers in conducting the assessment is caused by various factors such as the lack of understanding and readiness of the teacher both in terms of knowledge, time, and support from the school.

2.
Time available for the learning and the assessment is not enough 3. Teachers have lack of training.

4.
The administration that must be completed by the teacher outside of learning are too much

5.
Teachers o not understand the related assessment benchmarks.

6.
There are too many aspects of the assessment.

7.
There are too many new terms and types of assessment used in the 2013 curriculum Table 5 shows some of the obstacles faced by the teachers in the elementary school of Yogyakarta Province. There are some obstacles in making assessments, among them: too complicated assessment, limited learning time and assessment, too much administration that must be done by the teacher, too many aspects are assessed, teachers have lack of understanding related to the assessment and the lack of school support related to facilities and infrastructure that support the implementation of various types of assessments in the 2013 curriculum. Retnawati, Munadi, Arlinwibowo, Wulandari, & Sulistyaningsih (2017) mentioned that many teachers gave negative responses to the implementation of the 2013 curriculum. This was revealed by the teachers in the interviews that had been conducted. All respondents thought that the assessment applied in the curriculum 2013 were too complicated, difficult, and the assessment process carried out in the curriculum often disrupted the teachers' focus on teaching.
Furthermore, these obstacles are also experienced by senior teachers who were unable to innovate and keep up with the times including in the scope of learning, assessment, and technological development. The senior teacher complained about many new terms and found it difficult to determine the types of assessments appropriate to use in every lesson in the 2013 curriculum. Besides, teachers also are used to assess the students by applying the previous curriculum assessment format that is considered easier and simpler. Therefore, teachers need special habituation and guidance related to correct assessment. Assessment is a vital aspect of implementing education (Retnawati, Hadi, & Nugraha, 2016). The assessment process is one of the problems that many teachers complain about. Elementary school teachers in Yogyakarta Province are experiencing difficulties and claim to be unfamiliar with new terms and types of assessment. Therefore, the difficulties or obstacles experienced by the teacher need to be overcome.
Teachers' understanding of curriculum implementation both in the scope of learning and assessment influences the implementation of an education system. Retnawati (2015)  Furthermore, teachers need awareness to develop their competence independently or in groups. Kamiludin & Suryaman (2017) also confirm that individual and collective strategies in the form of a working group can be formed to strengthen teacher understanding related to learning and assessment processes carried out in each education unit. In line with Kamiludin & Suryaman, Retnawati (2015) also mentions that other ways teachers can take to overcome difficulties in learning and assessment can be done by developing teacher professionalism and mentoring senior to junior teachers. In this context, teacher's self-awareness to develop and ask help from teachers who have a better understanding and knowledge is important to be done. Too much administration charged to teachers, especially civil servant teachers also greatly affects the concentration and quality of teachers in preparing the learning. So, the government needs to reduce the administrative burden.

CONCLUSION
The conclusions obtained based on the result of the data analysis conducted are that 1).
the teacher's understanding of communication skills is sufficient but needs to be developed because communication skills are not only limited to oral communication only.
Communication skills also include the ability to interact, interpret concepts, thoughts, and so on in the form of oral, written, and body language; 2) communication skills are important things that students must have to make it easier to understand learning, support life, and broader social relationships that will be lived in the future; 3) discussion and presentation are type of learning strategies that is suitable for use in developing the communication skills of students. Both are effective learning strategies that can be used to train students' skills to communicate; and 4) communication assessment is not specifically done both related to time and instruments used because of some obstacles and difficulties experienced by the teacher.
Therefore, assessment of students' communication skills is integrated to cognitive, affective, and psychomotor assessments. The results of this study are expected to be taken into consideration in the form of input / suggestions and references for schools and policy makers to improve teaching practices, especially in developing student communication skills.