INDONESIAN MATHEMATICS TEACHERS’ KNOWLEDGE OF CONTENT AND STUDENTS OF AREA AND PERIMETER OF RECTANGLE

Abstract

Measuring teachers' skills and competencies is necessary to ensure teacher quality and contribute to education quality. Research has shown teachers competencies and skills influence students’ performances. Previous studies explored teachers’ knowledge through testing. Teachers' knowledge of the topic of area-perimeter and teaching strategies has been assessed through testing. In general, items or tasks to assess mathematics teacher knowledge in the previous studies were dominated by subject matter knowledge problems. Thus, it seems that the assessment has not fully covered the full range of teacher knowledge and competencies. In this study, the researchers investigated mathematics teachers’ Knowledge of Content and Students (KCS) through lesson plans developed by the teachers. To accommodate the gap in the previous studies, this study focuses on KCS on the topic of area-perimeter through their designed lesson plans. Twenty-nine mathematics teachers attended a professional development activity voluntarily participated in this study. Two teachers were selected to be the focus of this case study. Content analysis of the lesson plan and semi-structured interviews were conducted, and then data were analyzed. It revealed that the participating teachers were challenged when making predictions of students' possible responses. They seemed unaware of the ordinary students' strategies used to solve maximizing area from a given perimeter. With limited knowledge of students' possible strategies and mistakes, these teachers were poorly prepared to support student learning.

Keywords

• knowledge of content and students
• mathematics teacher
• area and perimeter
• teachers’ skills and competencies