Professional Development in Maths
Promoting Algebraic Thinking Skills
Professional Development for Secondary School Mathematics Teacher to Promote Students’ Algebraic Thinking Skills in the Bogor Area
By Deshinta Puspa Ayu Dwi Argaswari (Sampoerna University)
The improvement of mathematics education is centralized on teachers. Experience and opportunities for the students in learning mathematics are built by the teacher. The design of the lesson and the teacher’s values will impact the students’ learning. Despite the importance of the teacher’s role in mathematics education, they did not have enough help to develop their skills and needs in practice teaching.
The teacher must have a comprehensive and meaningful understanding of the content that s/he going to teach in the classroom. The teacher must be able to master the mathematics content deeply into the teaching and able to exploit the knowledge with adjustability. The indication of the research over these 25 years shows that teachers do not able to exploit the knowledge and connected knowledge of mathematics. Mostly junior high school teachers have to deal with the students that face difficulties to understand algebra for the first time. While the teachers cannot exploit the meaningful learning about the algebra.
The construction of the deeper content understanding is usually done by the teachers’ development. In the process of professional development as a teacher, they develop the wider and deeper knowledge of their students’ mathematical thinking. This teacher development instantly provides the community to collectively explore ways of improving teaching. So, teachers are able together to re-learn the concept of algebra and design meaningful learning together. This strong community that established by the teachers’ development further will contribute to instructional improvement and school reform.
The central task for the early teachers’ professional development must orient on 1) deepening and extending subject matter knowledge for teaching, 2) extending and refining one’s repertoire, and 3) strengthening disposition and skills to study and improve teaching. The first central task link to the needs of teacher development in algebra to promote the teacher’s skills in algebraic thinking.
The aim of this research is to explain the teachers’ professional development program that promotes algebraic thinking skills. The research starts by conducting the teachers’ development program for a junior high school teacher that is appropriate with the teachers’ development program theory. The program consists of a one-day workshop “Workshop teaching and learning algebraic thinking skills for junior high school teachers in Bogor”, teachers practice in the classroom, then report and reflect through the online platform. This program is chosen because mostly the participants are professional teachers who experienced in teaching for more than 3 years. The skill of algebra is chosen due to the needs of the participants. Participants are teachers from Junior High Schools that struggle with algebra as the first thinking skills faced by the students while enter junior high school.
Literature Review
Teachers’ Development is part of professional development. Professional development helps the in-service teacher to develop their skills and knowledge to become a professional teacher. The teachers’ professional development will promote more powerful students learning, and then it will help teachers to transform schools. The central task of this teachers’ development consists of 1) deepening and extending subject matter knowledge for teachers, 2) extending and refining one’s repertoire, and 3) strengthening disposition and skills to study and improve teaching.
Algebraic Thinking Skills. Algebra is a topic which students start learning in junior high school. Many students struggle when they start transitioning from arithmetic to algebra. This is because learning algebra means learning a new way of thinking – algebraic thinking. To think algebraically, students must be able to recognize and generalize patterns, understand the concept of variables through exploring ideas using concrete and visual learning tools, and have proportional reasoning skills. Unfortunately, schools today only teach algebra as x and y without meaning. While different students learn differently.
Method and Results
The methods of this research follow the research methods done by H. Borko and J. Frykholm in “Preparing Teachers to Foster Algebraic Thinking”. The methods of research will be focused on professional development by analyzing the program and teachers’ reflection. Secondly, as the addition, the deepen analysis is conducted by analyzing chosen teachers’ implementation teaching practice and their report and evaluation.
At the end of the program, teachers wrote a reflection about the practices or implementation of the skills they got from the teachers’ professional development. There are three questions: 1) What is the successful implementation of the lesson plan made after the one-day workshop? 2) Is there any difficulty with the implementation of the lesson plan? 3) Is there any development or revision for the next teaching and learning process?
The teachers’ reflection from 20 teachers stated that 25% success implementation of the lesson plan is the active learning, 25% stated that the lesson becomes easily understood, 20% stated the lesson boosted students to think algebraically such us generalization by a pattern that and the relation of both sides in algebra equations. It is no longer moving one side to the other side but both sides divide/subtract/add/multiply by.
A total of 20% of teachers stated that the lesson succeeds in increasing the students' score, changing the mindset of students (algebra is meaningful and fun). Interestingly, 10% of the teachers stated that toward the teaching, they are able to develop their skills in explaining algebra to the students.
For the second question, the teacher explaining the difficulties in the teaching practice. 20% of them stated there are no difficulties, 25% stated the media preparation and activities need more time allocation, 35% of the teachers stated that they need to learn more about the concept because they feel difficulties in explaining the concept. The rest 20% of the teachers face difficulties to build the students’ algebraic thinking skills. The students able to draw the generalization but then when it comes to the formula, students still get confused.
On the third question, 35% of the teachers feel that they need to develop the teaching media to teach, 20% of teachers stated they need to develop methods in teaching. 15% of the students mention that they need personal or professional development to understand more. (this has become obvious because the workshop was only done in one day, while the teachers need more development on teaching algebra).
The result of the implementation of professional development promotes algebraic thinking skills shows that the program of professional development can promote content knowledge, teaching methods, and media and community.
The teachers’ professional development is important to promote algebraic thinking skills. The program provides room for discussion on the meaning of algebra and how to teach algebra to the students. This also builds a community to support each other. Several adjustments to make the betterment of the professional development have been discussed on this paper and shall become a reference to hold other professional development.
Deshinta Puspa Ayu Dwi Argaswari (Sampoerna University)
Deshinta Puspa Ayu Dwi Argaswari studied mathematics education major both in bachelor and master’s degree. She got bachelor’s degree from STKIP Kebangkitan Nasional and master’s degree from Universitas Sebelas Maret (UNS). Deshinta is interested in field of history of mathematics and mathematics development skills, especially in geometry. Deshinta begin her career as educator by teaching secondary level students at BINUS International School Serpong and Focus Independent School Surakarta. After pursued her master’s degree, Deshinta started to teach students in university level at Sampoerna Univesity handling courses such us Calculus, Calculus for Business, Mathematics for Business, Linear Algebra, and others.
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