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Project News

2009-12-24

MGMP Activities in New Sites of PELITA

PhotoTeachers observing an open class in Kab. North MInahasa

PhotoA Chemistry class in Kota Padang

The new sites of PELITA; Kabupaten(district) North Minahasa in North Sulawesi Province, Kota (city) Banjarbaru in South Kalimantan Province, and Kota Padang in West Sumatra Province, have introduced Lesson Study activities at their Math and Science MGMP (Subject Teacher Training Forum) in July 2009. During the first term of the school year 2009, these three Kabupaten/Kota have implemented ten times of MGMP at each place(*).

MGMP has two kinds of activities; one is the Plan session to design a lesson together, and the other is the session of open class and its reflection. JICA Experts mainly monitor the open class and reflection session to give technical comments and advice in new sites.

Lesson Study activities in these new sites have just started. Teachers attending MGMP are full of energy to implement Lesson Study, the activity something new that seems to be beneficial to their students. In Kab. North Minahasa, the initiative by Dinas P&K is strong. There is an official who used to be a teacher, and he always accompanies JICA Experts to monitor MGMP, observes the open class and reflection, and comments on the class and reflection. In Kota Banjarbaru, there is a LPMP (Institute for Quality Assurance for Teachers) trainer who can observe students’ learning very well, and his advice during the reflection is very useful to teachers. In Kota Padang, even after the devastating earthquake in October which damaged many school buildings, the motivation among officials of Dinas P&K and teachers is high enough to continue MGMP without any delay.

Lesson Study is not the activity that brings a drastic improvement immediately. Through this half a year activity, the fundamental rules of reflection such as “Reflection is not to attack the model teacher, but to discuss whether students were learning, if not learning, why, and what was learned from the open class for the next class” and “Participants have to speak not only what teacher did, but also what students did” have been understood by most teachers. However, needless to say, teachers cannot implement high quality reflection from the first time. Still, many teachers do not exactly grasp the view point of observing a class, what to observe from students’ activities or appearance, and how to comment on what they have observed. Many can comment on who participated in the group work actively and who were quiet, but many still cannot comment on what was learned through that active participation or why the specific student could not learn. In reflection, it is important for each participant to express the opinion from their own perspective even if it seems the same opinion, but still many are silent in the reflection. Also, there is an issue of participation rate, especially teachers from private schools. In public schools, teaching schedule is arranged so that Math and Science teachers do not have to teach on the date of MGMP activities to attend MGMP, but in private schools, such arrangement is rare and teachers have difficulties in attending MGMP.

In PELITA, there are three reference sites in Jawa Island and three new sites in three different islands. JICA Experts have been making great efforts to monitor each site as many times as possible, travelling every day, but still their monitoring is very limited. The trial process goes on to continue Lesson Study activities with sufficient reflection quality.

* In Indonesia, schools have two terms; the first term from July to December, and the second term from January to June

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