Project News

The 4th MGMP Facilitator Trainings in new Lesson Study sites (North Minahasa district, Banjarbaru district, and Padang City) were conducted from the end of April through the beginning of May.

In these new sites, different from the reference sites, JICA has not yet advised them to have open classes by the same teacher on the 1st and 2nd days to give opportunities for as many teachers as possible to open their class. Thus, the subject and contents of the open class vary based on the progress of their curriculum at each school. However, JICA experts noticed that teachers had intentionally selected the easy contents such as “nature of the rectangular” or “surface area of a cube and a rectangular parallelepiped” for their open lessons. Probably, their fear of being failed in the open class had made them choose the easy contents. In Indonesia, the volume of curriculum in each year is very huge, thus, it is very difficult for teachers to finish all contents as scheduled. Nevertheless, they chose very easy contents for open classes and used 80 minutes. In addition to this, teachers cautiously prepared for open classes, taking much more time than usual classes, and that means Lesson Study is something special not related to their daily teaching activities. Knowing that, JICA experts advise teachers, “even if you jump very high in an open class with perfect preparation, if you land at the same point, you cannot make progress. Lesson Study is a daily process in which you learn from reflection of daily classes to improve daily classes”.

In the reference sites in Java Island, there were also similar misunderstandings that Lesson Study is something special and in Lesson Study experiments and LKS (students’ worksheet) are the must, and JICA experts held a Workshop to Facilitate the Understanding on Lesson Study in 2009 to clear up these misunderstandings. Thus, in the new sites, JICA experts explain these matters in trainings and monitoring to resolve the misunderstandings at earlier stage.

On the other hand, the quality of reflection has been improving. Some teachers came to be able to give fruitful comments based on students’ learning situation in the class, and some are also good as a moderator, facilitating all participants to give their opinions.

JICA expert, Mr. Suzuki, a former teacher, explaining how to plan a lesson based on the target that the teacher wants students to learn.

A biology class, observing flowers to study each part of a flower. Contrary to teacher’s intention, some students fill in the worksheet, searching the answer from the textbook, not actually observing flowers.