My reflection: Globalisation and education

Coming from Indonesia as a mathematics educator to study in Australia has raised a number of critical issues for me. Comparing the situation of education in Indonesia with that in Australia immediately leads to a recognition of the huge disparity of resources. Students in both countries may be highly motivated, smart, active learners, but there is a huge gap in terms of access to all kinds of learning resources. The question arises then about how the global ideal of equitable access to education for all can be realized.

In addition, we have to ask ourselves: what is the essence of education and what is its role in an increasingly globalised world? There is a danger that the philosophies and models proposed in educational research based in countries like Australia and the USA focus too narrowly on their own socio-economic context, and are too exclusively oriented towards such values as maintaining their own prosperity and their own position of advantage in relation to other countries.

What can help people see their situation as part of a bigger global picture and respond in a way that expresses the values that will be essential for our common human future? What kinds of collaborative projects between teachers and students in Indonesia and Australia, for example, could be developed in order to enrich each other and to build new understandings of the role of education? These questions are as relevant for mathematics teachers as for any others.

My reflection: Being a researcher

In terms of my own professional development, my experience of being a researcher has been invaluable in a number of ways. In my choice of research topic and design I took a great risk, but was convinced that this was a golden opportunity to learn from schools in a developed country. Going through all the challenges which the project presented enabled me to develop new personal and professional skills and insights, which will be of great benefit in the future. It also convinced me of the value of such processes for learning and the need to support teachers to conduct research.

Having the Internet as the focus of my research created an additional space in my new learning context. Continuously researching about its educational potential of the Internet meant that I was learning how to use it more effectively myself as a research tool. This experience helped me to realize what important skills our learners needed in order to work effectively in an increasingly digitalized world.

During this journey I faced many challenges. A key one was simply being able to accept that the actual involvement in field work would shape the process of the research, and that it would be impossible to see the full picture in advance. Another was understanding a very different school system. Then there was the huge challenge of working in another language and trying to understand and express complex ideas in it. The first six months was a very critical time especially in terms of how to fit in and engage in study across the gulfs of language and academic culture, and how to deal with the enormous volume of resource material compared with what I had had access to previously.At least three things helped me. Reading ethnography really helped me to deal with the cross-cultural dimension of my study experience. Realising that others had successfully undertaken research in contexts very different from their own gave me a sense of confidence that I could do the same. The other contributing factor was my belief in what I was doing, my confidence in asking questions, and my determination to make the most of the experience. Yet another significant source of assistance that helped me survive in this new and tough academic life is my supervisors.

Reflection: Being a facilitator in PD activities

I was involved as a facilitator in many teacher professional development activities in Indonesia prior to my study in Brisbane. My aim was to promote some new teaching strategies by engaging teachers in contextual teaching and learning concepts. I witnessed many positive outcomes based on the participants’ oral and written reflections and through informal conversations. I also witnessed the enthusiasm of many teachers. However, I also found myself concerned about the struggles they had to implement new ideas in their actual teaching context.

Furthermore, in my experience as a lecturer with pre-service student teachers, I found that they were very enthusiastic about planning, designing and demonstrating teaching using new teaching approaches or more innovative methodologies. However when they returned from their practicum of several weeks at a time, many reported that they found that the most effective way of teaching was direct instruction, in other words, the established pedagogical approach. What they were learning in their teaching education programme at the university was perceived to have very little relevance to the actual classroom context in practice. My study about teacher professional development has really given me a much better insight into why this process was happening, and how it could be addressed.

Reflection of being a teacher

Initially my opinion about being a teacher was very simple. This was based on my observation of my father, who was highly respected village teacher, who had virtually no training. I was motivated to be a teacher in a little village.

My initial ideas about teaching began to change when I compared the jobs of teachers and university lecturers in my region in 1990. The former worked six days a week while the latter might be expected to deliver a lecture only once every week or two. So I began to aspire to be a lecturer, hoping that I would have an interesting job which I could combine with household responsibilities which were typical domain of women in my region. I could see that as a lecturer I would be able to continue working if I were to marry and raise children. This idea persisted right up to the time I completed my teacher education programme at the most well-known institution in my home region of Sulawesi.

Since I was awarded a scholarship, I was able to do my master’s degree in mathematics education in Java. That was the time I began to realize that being a mathematics teacher was not simply about having mathematical knowledge. It required deeper insight into a range of other disciplines, especially pedagogical content knowledge. My interaction with teachers in Indonesia and my observation of teaching enhanced my understanding about the complexity of the teaching role. It was my experience, however, of working with two teachers in Australia that really gave me a much more comprehensive understanding of what the teaching profession really involves. In contrast to the popular image in Indonesia that teaching is a job for those who can’t find something better to do, and hence is very poorly paid, I became convinced that a serious effort needs to be made to raise the profile of teaching and establish its professional status. In order for the standard of teaching to be improved teachers need support, investment, opportunities for concentrated programmes of professional development.