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Teachers’ teaching practices and beliefs regarding context-based tasks and their relation with students’ difficulties in solving these tasks

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Abstract

In this study, we investigated teachers’ teaching practices and their underlying beliefs regarding context-based tasks to find a possible explanation for students’ difficulties with these tasks. The research started by surveying 27 Junior High School teachers from seven schools in Indonesia through a written questionnaire. Then, to further examine teachers’ teaching practices related to context-based tasks, four teachers were observed and video recorded in two mathematics lessons in which they were asked to deal with context-based tasks. The questionnaire data revealed that the teachers had a tendency toward a view on teaching and learning mathematics which includes encouraging students to be actively involved in solving problems in various contexts. Although this finding suggests that the teachers may offer opportunities to learn context-based tasks to students, the questionnaire data also revealed that the teachers saw context-based tasks as plain word problems. Furthermore, the observations disclosed that their teaching was mainly teacher-centered and directive, which is not considered to be supportive for learning to solve context-based tasks. Combining the findings of this study with the results from our earlier study on Indonesian students’ errors when solving context-based tasks, we found a relationship between how Indonesian teachers teach context-based tasks and the errors Indonesian students make in solving these tasks. These findings support the conclusion that insufficient opportunity-to-learn to solve context-based tasks offered by teachers is a possible explanation for students’ difficulties in solving these tasks.

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Notes

  1. The total number is more than 27 because some teachers taught in two grades.

  2. Although Grade 9 students (the 15-year-olds) are the target group of the PISA studies, we did the observations in Grade 8 because that is where the basis for the performance in Grade 9 is laid. Moreover, the schools did not give permission to do observations in Grade 9 classes due to their preparations for the National Exam.

  3. In total, 233 ninth-graders were involved in this previous study that was carried out in school year 2011–2012. The students came from the same schools as the teachers in the present study which took place in the school year 2012–2013 and involved teachers from Grade 7 to Grade 9. The test that was administered contained 34 questions distributed over four different booklets. Every student made 13 tasks. The analyzed data consisted of 3027 responses (students × tasks). Of these responses, 1,855 were correct, 346 were missing and 826 were incorrect which included 934 errors (because of the multiple coding, the number of errors is larger than the number of incorrect responses).

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the Indonesian Ministry of Education and Culture under the project of Better Education through Reformed Management and Universal Teacher Upgrading (BERMUTU) IDA CREDIT NO.4349-IND, LOAN NO.7476-IND.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Freudenthal Institute for Science and Mathematics Education (FIsme), Utrecht University, Princetonplein 5, 3508 AD, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Ariyadi Wijaya, Marja van den Heuvel-Panhuizen & Michiel Doorman

  2. Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences, Utrecht University, Heidelberglaan 1, 3584 CS, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Marja van den Heuvel-Panhuizen

  3. Mathematics Education Department - FMIPA, Yogyakarta State University, Kampus Karangmalang, Yogyakarta, 55281, Indonesia

    Ariyadi Wijaya

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  1. Ariyadi Wijaya
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Correspondence to Ariyadi Wijaya.

Appendix

Appendix

Table 5 CoMTI Questionnaire for measuring teachers’ beliefs and practice regarding context-based tasks
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Wijaya, A., van den Heuvel-Panhuizen, M. & Doorman, M. Teachers’ teaching practices and beliefs regarding context-based tasks and their relation with students’ difficulties in solving these tasks. Math Ed Res J 27, 637–662 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13394-015-0157-8

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