Innovative Teacher Professional Development within PMRI in Indonesia

Rooselyna Ekawati, Ahmad Wachidul Kohar

Departement of Mathematics, Universitas Negeri Surabaya, Surabaya 60231, Indonesia

International Journal of Innovation in Science and Mathematics Education, 24(5), 1-13, 2016.

Abstract

The urgency of improving Indonesian mathematics teachers lead to the consideration of developing innovative Teacher Profesional Development (TPD) within PMRI (Pendidikan Matematika Realistik Indonesia) or Indonesian version of realistic mathematics education. PMRI as a promising mathematics learning approach developed in Indonesia has been disseminated through a number of stratified workshops (local and national levels) which regards to the requirement of a good TPD. In this paper, we argue that innovative TPD within PMRI provides a model of sustainable professional program. In particular, we describe some experiences from PMRI workshops to investigate the unique characteristics of TPD within PMRI. It considers the characteristics of PMRI such as considering teacher as active learners instead of passive receiver, facilitating teachers in designing and implementing PMRI lesson, and organizing sustainable follow up workshops to strengthen mathematics teachers’ community. The analysis shows that there are some improvements on teacher’s conception toward mathematics teaching, practical teaching, mathematics content knowledge, and the use of learning media.

Keywords: PMRI, Realistic Mathematics Education, Innovative Teacher Professional Development

Introduction
There is a general consensus on the importance of Teacher Professional Development (TPD) to develop students’ mathematics learning. To facilitate teachers’ learning towards this goal, there is a growing interest among educators in many countries to work with in-service teachers to develop their mathematics teaching including Indonesia. Generally, Indonesian teachers do not participate in international assessment study such as TEDS-M (Teacher Education and Development Study in Mathematics) so that teachers’ performance could not be described in detail, however some independent study results such as by Ekawati & Lin (2014), Ng (2011), Siswono, Kohar, Kurniasari & Astuti (2015) and Wijaya, van den Heuvel-Panhuizen & Doorman (2015) each of which respectively point out the weakness of teachers’ mathematics knowledge, problem solving knowledge, and teaching practice, as well as as studies on reflecting students performance such as PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) and TIMSS (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study) imply the urgency of improving professional teaching through Teacher Professional Development (TPD). Indonesian government also supported these movements through teachers’ Law in Undang-Undang Guru dan Dosen (UUGD) no 14 year 2005 that stipulates teachers’ duties as professional. To enhance teachers’ professional teaching and certified in-service teacher competence with considering UUGD, there has been a number of teacher professional development (TPD) conducted by both national government, local government, and independent institution. Among those TPDs, there are likely still a number of TPDs which apply the conservative pattern in training teachers…..

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