Innovative Teacher Professional Development within PMRI in Indonesia

Abstract

The urgency of improving Indonesian mathematics teachers lead to the consideration of developing innovative Teacher Profesional Development (TPD) within PMRI (Indonesian Version of Realistic Mathematics Education). PMRI as a promising mathematics learning approach that has been being developed in Indonesia was 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. The investigation indicate the characteristics 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. Analysis of result of TPD within PMRI also indicated some improvements on teacher’s conception, practical teaching, mathematics content ability, and the use of learning media.