PMRI’s journey in Surabaya

Reflection Paper

PMRI’s journey in Surabaya

Researcher : Siti M.Amin, Gatot Sulanjono

Translation and adaptation by Annelies Gijse

Introduction

In July 2001, the staff meeting in the Department of Mathematics of University of Surabaya (UNESA), Professor R. Soedjadi announced an important project that we were going to involved with. He explained that a group of mathematicians including him, had committed themselves to innovating the quality of the existing mathematics educational system of Indonesia especially in primary school. They introduced Realistic Mathematics Education (RME) principle, they believed that this mathematics approach was suitable to the situation in Indonesia mainly to students in primary school. To realize the noble cause, Mrs. Siti Khabibah was invited to join the team. The team start with three primary school in Surabaya, that is Jambangan Islamic School, Unesa Lab School, and Al Hikmah Primary School. They choose Islamic primary school because they want to change their style in mathematics instruction, because they thought that public Islamic primary school have different learning methods, specifically in mathematics,

For the purpose of the experiment, the team was ask to decide upon particular topic for each school level (grade 1, 2 and 3)which would be experiment within limited measures. They choose topics : non- standard measurement (inch, feet, etc)for grade 1, non-standard measurement (stick, beads) for grade 2, and fraction for grade 3. The topics for grade 1 and 2 were composed by Siti M.Amin and for Grade 3 by Siti Khabibah, and Mr.Ilham assisted in the development of the experimental material. 

The first pilot

Between October until November, after an agreement had been reached between the team from Unesa and the representatives of affiliated schools, a pilot was conducted at the three schools to implement the material that already had been developed. The pilot was supervised by observers from Unesa in each class. They were observing the learning process in the classrooms.

They observed some interesting facts during the learning process. For example, usually the students of grade 3 always wanted to check whether they had found the right solution or approach to open-end equations after they had solved the problem, whereas his behaviour was not found among students of grade 1 and 2. During the lesson, they found that most of students enthusiastic and happy during lesson. The students performed excellently in stating their own opinion or presented their ways when solving the problems. But  on the other hands, teacher impatient to wait the students initiative or answers and also in posing question to guide students with.

After learning process in the class, they made the reflection session for every lesson. The teachers generally admitted that they were impatient to wait the students to come up with initiatives to solve the problems using their own method. The teachers of grade 3 classes presumed that their students kept on asking which method or answer was right because they have been conditioned to solve problems with the one single method or solution that was provided by teacher. But now the teachers had started to tell the students to use other method to solve their problems, however the students  were still confused.

In the reflection session discussed about issues such as the presentation of probing questions, class management matters, and comprehensive study of materials, also teacher shared their experience in the lesson process. In general, teachers appeared to rather good at class management but they needed improvement on respecting the different opinions of the students an their different ways of thinking and they certainly needed some more patience too.

Further experimentation and implementation

At the First National Wokshop in August 2001 in Bandung , the RME team decided that the program being experimented required a name. The team agreed on the name “ Pendidikan Matematika Realistik Indonesia (PMRI)”. The core team conclude that each Teacher Education College was subject to implement the experiment in comprehensive manner and decided that the experiment was to be performed in phases, beginning from grade 1 classes.

The comprehensive experiment for grade 1 started in 2002-2003, it was conducted one single class at each affiliated school of the teacher education college, and the experiment performed on the grade 1classes was subsequently followed by implementation of the program into grade 1 classes in following school year 0f 2003 – 2004. While grade 1 conducted PMRI in implementation phase, students of grade 2 began their experimental phase. This cycle continued, in which experimentation and implementation were applied continuously.

Unesa had already composed instruction material for Semester 1 of grade 1 in 2001, grade 3 in 2003 and in 2007 we received the task to composed instruction material for grade 5. In 2007 was when the team begun to understand how to write proper PMRI material, because was not easy to make context and the team needed to focus not only on mathematical progress but on developing the students thinking too. So, 2007 was momentous in that the team were finally able to make proper materials.

Result

The team found that the teachers experienced the unexpected outcome from their students during the lesson they were happy to teach according to the PMRI approach. Most of students were able to state how they had discovered methods to solve problems appropriately, and they were able to communicate their ideas clearly. The teachers expressed that PMRI has made teaching more enjoyable because found unexpected abilities in their students which they had never seen before.

By : Wuli Oktiningrum

Posted in: reflection paper, rme