Hasil Revisi setelah SSS

Tulisan ini saya kerjakan kemarin sore hingga larut malam dan dilanjutkan sekitar 1 jam pagi hari. Dan ini sebenarnya telah dibangun dari beberapa draft atau free writing sebelumnya. Akhirnya, lumayanlah ada draft yang lebih bagus hari ini. Saya yakin, ini pun masih butuh waktu banyak untuk membangunnya.

Artinya sekarang saya sudah mengerjakan C1, C2 dan C3.
nah berikut C3 hasil revisi 22 Feb 08

6.1.3 PD should be student-oriented

In Chapter 2, it has been discussed that one characteristic of effective teacher PD is that it takes into account the characteristics of that teacher’s students, that it is student oriented. Every teacher urgently needs to develop his/her professionalism to be able to improve student learning. In other words, a teacher’s PD is aimed to develop better learning by students. Unfortunately, it has been cited in many references that many traditional PD programs fail to meet this requirement [Ref]. The argument was including the incompatibility between the programs promoted and the authentic students' characteristics/environment [Ref]. A similar issue has happened in many ICT PD programs [ref]. While many influential voices argue that the Internet is powerful to enrich students’ learning, many ICT PD programs have failed in bringing teachers to integrate what they have learned in the program into the classroom [ref]. In relation to this issue, this section is aimed at examining two main issues: (1) whether Ann, a HUI teacher, being able to use the Internet for her PD lead her to facilitate better her students’ learning, and (2) whether I took the characteristic “student-oriented” into consideration in conducting my research on Jack, the LUI teacher, and examining whether this helped teacher’s professional learning.

In the first case, Ann used the Internet for her professional development which was student-oriented. Since the Internet provides different learning resources (e.g. consisting virtual manipulatives, visualisation of mathematical concepts, a variety of representations of mathematical concepts, and mathematical games), Ann took advantages of this to cater for her students’ different needs. Ann occasionally gave free choices to her students with Internet activities and this often resulted in a better engagement of students in learning. Another finding is that Ann often achieved a better insight of her student’s mathematical understanding from facilitating students’ learning using the Internet

In the second case study, the Internet PD model I offered to Jack very much considered the students’ characteristics and aimed to develop a richer learning process. The researcher observed what Jack’s students were learning, the patterns/characteristics of their learning, student’s learning style, their strengths, and their difficulties. These observations helped me to identify different online learning resources for students and to organise them into blogs for Jack’s use, or e-mailing the online resources to Jack. This effort was to allow Jack to see the potential of the Internet to cater for a variety of students’ needs. This attempt resulted in considerable positive signs at some stages, not only for some students, but also often stimulating Jack’s curiosity to explore the potential of the Internet as a learning tool. Indeed, on some occasions, it was evident that this strategy often worked well in attracting Jack to explore the potential of the Internet for his students' learning. For example, when I noticed that students were very heterogeneous and the teaching was limited in dealing with this issue, I searched for websites that offered different levels of difficulties and different representations, such as websites about time, measurement, and place value.

Despite some positive signs as a result of taking a “student-oriented” approach, I discovered many inhibitors in optimising the uses of the internet for students’ learning. Even though the researcher was carefully guided by the “student-oriented” characteristic, Jack’s responses to this determined whether the plan could be implemented. For example, student enthusiasms for using the Internet were not catered for since Jack gave them little opportunity to do this. Another finding was, when Jack indicated his willingness to engage students in learning with the Internet, another factor seemed to inhibit him such as his limitation in managing students in the learning process and the lack of courage to take a risk of changing the classroom routine. Jack’s view on his students' responses on the Internet as a disruption in his teaching organisation and his preferences on the whole teaching approach resulted in an inhibitor to continue the uses of the Internet for student learning.

These problems with implementations of the PD programs with Jack illustrates the value of doing this research in students’ authentic learning rather than taking teachers outside of the classroom like many other studies have done (one exception is the study by Borko using the students’ work in developing the assessment rubric[Ref]). However, my study has raised another issue, on the one hand, it was beneficial to conduct the research in the students’ authentic learning environment, but the ideas offered in this environment could compete with other priorities in the classroom. Offering new ideas to the teacher might be a new challenge for teachers and this possibly lead teacher to stick on his/her initial plan or reluctant to change.

In conclusion, paying a lot of attention on the aspect of effective PD, “student-oriented”, resulted many positive signs on the embracement of the Internet as a tool for learning, but other factors could inhibit the effectiveness. Zone theory in the next section will help us to gain a better insight of factors inhibiting Jack from using the Internet for his students learning.