The Implementation of Modified Lesson Study Integrated with PCK

to Optimize the Professional Competence of Elementary School

Teachers

Andhin Dyas Fitriani, Effy Mulyasari, Harsa Wara Prabawa and Rosiana Mufliva

Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia, Bandung, Indonesia

andhindyas@upi.edu

Keywords: Modified Lesson Study, Pedagogical Content Knowledge, Optimization of Teachers’ Professional

Competence.

Abstract: This research was focused on the use of modified lesson study integrated with pedagogical content knowledge

(PCK) to optimize elementary school teachers’ professional competence. Professional competence expects

teachers to acquire comprehensive knowledge of the subject matters they teach, know teaching methodology

in the sense of acquiring theoretical and conceptual knowledge, and able to choose and apply the appropriate

method to the teaching process. To solve the teachers’ limited knowledge and skills in exploring subject

matters, modified lesson study integrated with PCK framework was implemented in order for them to be able

to do thematic instruction. Modified lesson study is aimed to optimize the process and the achievement of

every phase by analyzing the content knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, and PCK. The present study was a

qualitative-descriptive research. The study involved three teacher-mentor in the Program of Professional

Education of Teachers (PPG) of elementary school and 35 students. The result of the study indicated that the

teacher mastered the material, the concept, and the interrelations between different materials within a

particular theme. The teacher was able to develop teaching materials and their interrelations, develop

integrated assessment, and develop the reflective action ability. Also, increase students achievement in the

teaching and learning process.

1 INTRODUCTION

Jones and Jones (1998) mentions school failures

as one of critical obstacles at school. School failures

were described as the difficulty in carrying out an

effective teaching-learning process. Jones and Jones

(1998) point out that school had a difficulty to

determine the influencing factors of an effective

teaching-learning process in achieving students’

academic and social gains.

Teachers as professional educators and as parts of

the school educational system are required to possess

some teaching basic skills, one of which is

professional competence. Professional competence

refers to the ability of teachers to perform their duties

as mentors, educators, and instructors. Professional

competence can be perceived as teachers possessing

comprehensive knowledge of the subject matters they

teach, know teaching methodology in the sense of

acquiring theoretical and conceptual knowledge, and

able to choose and apply the appropriate method to

the teaching process.

In practice, teachers’ professional competence

should be improved in order for the teaching-learning

process to be carried out effectively. Based on the

data previously collected, teachers still have some

difficulties in designing an integrated thematic

instruction. Since the introduction of the school-based

curriculum (KTSP) in 2006, there has been an

educational paradigm shift, from centralistic to

decentralist curriculum, including in elementary

schools. The shift occurs in the teaching approach in

lower grades, from subject matter approach to

integrated thematic approach. Thematic instruction is

one of integrated teaching techniques that links

concepts of different subject matters within the same

unifying theme. This way, the students will be trained

to relate various information to one another, so that

they can deal with cross-environmental situations,

cross-knowledge, or cross-devices in a fun manner

and at the same time make them learn to be actively

and directly involved in the real-life situation. This

Fitriani, A., Mulyasari, E., Prabawa, H. and Muﬂiva, R.

The Implementation of Modiﬁed Lesson Study Integrated with PCK to Optimize the Professional Competence of Elementary School Teachers.

In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Educational Sciences (ICES 2017) - Volume 1, pages 349-353

ISBN: 978-989-758-314-8

349

paradigm shift influences the school readiness to

administer the teaching and learning process using the

thematic approach, especially the readiness of the

teachers as the instructors (Pudjiastuti, 2010).

2 PROFESIONAL COMPETENCE

OF PRIMARY TEACHERS

Based on the Regulation of the Minister of National

Education of the Republic of Indonesia No. 16/2007,

there are at least five sub-competences of

professional competence of primary teachers: 1)

mastering the materials, the structure and the concept

of the subject taught, 2) mastering standard

competency and basic competencies of the subject

taught, 3) developing the learning materials

creatively, 4) developing professionalism in a

sustainable manner by doing reflective actions, and 5)

utilizing information and communication technology

for communication and self-development.

Meanwhile, the Australian Institute for Teaching

and School Leadership (AITSL) establishes the

Australian National Professional Standards for

Teachers which essentially outlines seven key

elements for effective teachers as follows (Celik,

2011):

 Standard 1

Know the students and

how they learn;

 Standard 2

Know the content and how

to teach it;

 Standard 3

Plan for and implement

effective teaching and

learning;

 Standard 4

Create and maintain

supportive and safe

learning;

 Standard 5

Assess, provide feedback

and report on student

learning;

 Standard 6

Engage in professional

learning;

 Standard 7

Engage professionally

with colleagues,

parents/carers and the

community.

3 LESSON STUDY WITH

PEDAGOGICAL CONTENT

KNOWLEDGE

Based on these conditions, the researcher attempts to

intervene the learning process by applying the

modified lesson study integrated with PCK

framework. This is to solve the teachers’ limited

knowledge and skills in exploring subject matters and

in order for the teachers to be able to do thematic

instruction.

Lesson study is a teacher professional

development model through collaborative and

sustainable teaching analyses based on collegial and

mutual learning principles to establish a study group

(Hendayana, 2006). Lesson study is defined as

teachers’ assessment and development through the

professional and pedagogical aspects (Rock and

Wilson, 2005); and as learning approach to develop

students’ learning experiences (Meng et al., 2012). It

is a long-term and collaborative in-service teacher

training program. Through lesson study activities, the

teaching process is developed collaboratively. One of

the teachers will be selected to perform teaching

activities with other teachers observing students’

learning activities during the lesson. At the end, the

teachers confer about the lesson, revise it and design

the next teaching program based on the result of

discussion. Lesson study encourages the teachers to

be lifelong learners, to develop and improve the

classroom teaching.

According to Lewis (2011), lesson study can be a

professional development program for the teachers in

which they analyze a research-based teaching

practice to bring about teaching innovations. Lesson

study is indeed a long-term teacher professional

development that has origins in Japanese education

and has then been adopted and developed in many

developing countries, one of which is Indonesia.

Generally, lesson study has the following phases:

collaborative planning, teaching and observing,

analytic reflection, and on-going revision (Curcio,

2002; Lewis, 2011). The focal point is the

optimization of teaching and learning process, where

teachers are expected to always be involved in the

effort to improve the teaching material mastery

through effective pedagogical practices (Chia and

Kee, 2010).

The addition of the term “modified” in “modified

lesson study” is oriented to the optimization of the

process and the achievement of every phase by

analyzing the content knowledge, pedagogical

knowledge, and PCK. Content knowledge is able to

ICES 2017 - 1st International Conference on Educational Sciences

350

differentiate both general and specific content

knowledge; Pedagogical Knowledge is able to (a)

acquire how to assess students’ ability and learning

mastery, (b) choose teaching pattern towards

students’ needs and to the various students’ ability,

classroom, (d) know which student who already

understand and not, (e) organize the teaching and

learning process in the classroom; Pedagogical

Content Knowledge is able to (a) know in choosing

suitable learning approach and method, (b)

differentiate which learning material that quite easy

and hard for the students, (c) know how to deliver the

suitable learning material that easy to be learned by

students (Herring et al.,2014; Schmidt, 2009). The

relation between lesson study and PCK in terms of

main goal of lesson study, there are: Content

Knowledge correspond with Improvement of

learning material knowledge (plan); Pedagogical

Knowledge and Pedagogical Content Knowledge

correspond with improvements on learning

knowledge, improvements in observing learning

activities in the classroom, improvements through the

quality of learning plan.

Pedagogical knowledge refers to ‘how’ of

teaching, and content knowledge is ‘what’ of

teaching. In Shulman (1986) perspective, PCK is the

practical knowledge used by the teacher to orchestrate

the teaching process. PCK can be defined as a

teacher’s understanding about a particular concept to

help students understand a particular subject matter

using various teaching strategies, representations, and

assessments even with some contextual, cultural, and

social limitations in the learning environment

(Hurrell, 2013).

In Shulman (1986) perspective, PCK is the

practical knowledge used by the teacher to orchestrate

the teaching process. Such practical knowledge

includes (a) knowledge to structure and simplify

material delivery, (b) knowledge of general concepts,

students’ difficulties and misconceptions about a

particular material, and (c) knowledge of teaching

strategies relevant to what students need in certain

conditions (Shulman, 1986). Hurrel (2013) argue that

despite the fact PCK has been widely used, it has yet

to be clearly defined in order to be correctly

implemented. Hurrel (2013) then conducted a study

that essentially attempted to reframe the concept of

PCK with more emphasis on 'knowledge in and for

teaching’ than 'on the teacher's profile'.

Generally, the concept of PCK can be illustrated

in the following figure 1:

Figure 1: Network of PCK (An et al., 2004).

4 RESULT AND DISCUSSION

This study used paired t-test and Analysis Tools menu

on the Microsoft Excel 2010. The result showed that

significance (α) 0.05 (see Table 1). Moreover,

students’ average scores pre-treatment is lower than

post-treatment. The calculation by using normalized

gain Hake (1999) shows that the highest average

comes from the students in the high group, which is

0.734 (the high category). Meanwhile, the middle

group and below group are in the score of 0.662 and

0.544 which belong to the middle categories.

According to the Table I, it could be stated that the

changes of teaching pattern and teachers’

understanding (after implementing lesson study

integrated ith pedagogical content knowledge) give

positive feedback towards the students’ improvement

to the learning material.

Table 1: The comparison between before and after

treatment.

Variable 1

Variable 2

Mean

55.9150323

87.8261867

Variance

247.107308

168.670932

Observations

t Stat

10.116902

P(T<=t) one-tail

1.0982E-14

t Critical one-tail

1.4509812

P(T<=t) two-tail

2.8721E-14

t Critical two-tail

1.9400812

t-Test: Paired Two Sample for Means

The Implementation of Modiﬁed Lesson Study Integrated with PCK to Optimize the Professional Competence of Elementary School

Teachers

351

Furthermore, the findings show that teachers’

development and experiences in participating lesson

study activities helps them to select the most suitable

learning content, process, product, and environment.

In terms of content knowledge, the observation was

conducted to find out if the teacher had adequate

prerequisite knowledge, if he had adequate

knowledge about teaching materials, if he could link

the materials of different subject matters within a

single theme, if he could tell general knowledge

(acquired from textbooks) from specific knowledge

(usually acquired from experience) available in the

teaching materials. In terms of pedagogical

knowledge, the observation was conducted to find out

if the teacher could adjust the teaching pattern to the

students’ knowledge, if he could accommodate what

students need, if he could execute the lesson plan, if

he could organize the classroom activities, if he could

implement the integrated thematic instruction, if he

could carry out an authentic and integrated

assessment of students’ achievements. In terms of

PCK, the observation was conducted to find out the

teacher’s selection of teaching method and approach

relevant to the materials, if the teacher could tell the

content students had a difficulty with from that they

find it easy to understand, and if the material delivery

was appropriate and student-friendly.

However, even though the findings present that

the development and experiences have not seen in all

indicators, but teachers show that the teacher

mastered the material, the concept, and the

interrelations between different materials within a

particular theme. The teacher was able to develop

teaching materials and their interrelations, develop

integrated assessment, and develop the reflective

action ability. The students were asked to identify

some objects in the classroom that related with the

current learning topic.

5 CLOSING REMARK

The study shows that modified lesson study

integrated with PCK gives positive impact in the

teacher’s development, ability towards some thematic

content and students understanding ability. The result

indicated that the teacher mastered the material, the

concept, and the interrelations between different

materials within a particular theme. The teacher was

able to develop teaching materials and their

interrelations, develop integrated assessment, and

develop the reflective action ability.

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