Reflective Learning

Teachers’ Failure in Choosing Learning Method is One Source of Students’

Learning Problem and Misconception

Sandi Budi Iriawan

Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia, Jl. Dr. Setiabudi No. 229, Bandung, Indonesia

iriawan.sandi@yahoo.co.id

Keywords: Students’misconception, Students’learning Problem, Reflective Learning.

Abstract: Reflection is a meta-cognitive activity performed by teachers after learning process has finished. Through

reflection, teacher can re-evaluate the learning process, in terms of whether or not the learning objectives are

achieved. The achievement of learning objectives is inseparable from teacher’s intervention in implementing

appropriate and suitable teaching method based on the characteristics of the subject, the structure of the

material, and the students’ characteristics. Every subject has its own unique characteristic, which requires

different methods for teaching the materials and topics of the subject (Subject-Specific Pedagogic). In

addition, the structures of materials are also unique. The characteristics of these structure includes factual

knowledge, conceptual knowledge, and procedural knowledge. All these knowledge requires teacher to

implement suitable methods (Pedagogical Content/Knowledge). Teacher’s error in selecting and

implementing teaching method will affect students’ achievement. Such error may cause students’ difficulties

in learning and results in students’ misconception. Ideally, before teaching, a teacher should know the

students’ characteristics first, particularly concerning their prior skills and knowledge of the material to be

taught. Students’ difficulties of learning and their misconception about the pre-requisite materials will cause

further misconception on future materials. It is because topics or materials of a subject are intertwined. A

professional teacher will implement many teaching method during the lesson, because he realizes that the

structures of materials the students need to master vary. Therefore, in planning a lesson as a form of pedagogic

didactic anticipation, teacher should consider the characteristics of the material and the suitable teaching

method for that material.

1 INTRODUCTION

Reflection is an important activity to be conducted

after a lesson ends. Through reflection, teacher can

obtain valuable information concerning the activities

and difficulties of learning, as well as the

effectiveness of teaching method implemented during

a lesson. Continuous reflection will provide the

teacher with information and knowledge about how

students should learn, what teachers should do during

a lesson, and what teaching method best suits the

students’ characteristics and the structure of material.

Teacher cannot obtain this knowledge from formal

education. It can only be acquired from daily teaching

experience, forming a tacit knowledge for the teacher.

Tacit knowledge represents your reflection on what

works in your classroom, discovered over time and

through personal experience (Borich, 2011). Through

everyday experiences such as observing other

teachers, working with learners, lesson planing, and

testing and grading, you will accumulate tacit

knowledge and reflect on new ways of doing things

that can guide your actions as effectively as

knowledge from texts and formal training (Borich,

2011). This knowledge, if you take the time to reflect

on it, will add to the quality of your planning and

decision making by bringing variety and flexibility to

your lessons, leading to revisions and refinements

that can improve your unit and lesson planning

(Borich, 2011).

Every subject or discipline has its own unique

characteristics and structure of learning materials.

The structure of learning materials in each subject

generally consists of facts, concepts, principles or

generalizations, and procedures. According to

Shulman (1986), teacher needs to possess three kinds

of knowledge; the subject matter knowledge, the

326

Iriawan, S.

Reﬂective Learning - Teachers’ Failure in Choosing Learning Method is One Source of Students’ Learning Problem and Misconception.

In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Educational Sciences (ICES 2017) - Volume 1, pages 326-332

ISBN: 978-989-758-314-8

curricular knowledge, and the pedagogical content

knowledge (PCK). He further explains that PCK is

teacher’s knowledge about how to teach certain

content of material so that it can be understood by the

students and embedded in their mind for a long time.

He considers PCK as The most useful forms of

content representation, the most powerful analogies,

illustrations, examples, explanations, and

demonstrations in a world, the ways of representing

and formulating the subject that makes it

comprehensible for others (Shulman, 1986).

The ways that teacher chooses and implements to

teach students are called teaching (or learning)

methods. Teaching methods vary in every subject;

they depend on the characteristics of the students and

the structure of the learning material. Teaching

methods includes observation, experiment,

discussion, demonstration, lecture, discovery, study

trip, role playing, expository, assignment, modeling,

presentation, simulation, and others.

Kurniawan (2014) notes that “method is way or

technique to achieve certain specific objective; since

in learning there is more than one objective, there

should also be more than one method of teaching.”

He further states that teaching method is closely

related with learning objective to be achieved. The

learning objectives is formulated in the form of basic

competencies the students have to master at the end

of the learning. The Decree of Indonesian National

Education Ministry No. 41 Year 2007 on the Standard

Process of Education regulates that “basic

competencies are a series of skills the students have

to master in any given subject as the reference to

formulate competencies indicator for that subject.”

Basic competencies are the description of the

standard competencies set by the Ministry of National

Educaion. Standard competencies are the minimum

qualification of students that represents their mastery

of knowledge, attitudes, and skills expected to be

acquired by the end of each class and/or semester.”

Students achievement of standard competencies are

measured using the competencies achievement

indicators.

Competencies achievement indicators are

formulated by teachers in operational action words

which can be observed and/or measured for the

purpose of evaluating students’ learning result

(achievement) and evaluating the effectiveness of the

learning. A competency achievement indicator

consists of action verb/attitude and learning material

that students have to master. Teacher needs to analyze

the materials contained in the basic competency or

achievement indicators before designing lesson plan.

By doing so, teacher ensures that the materials (the

facts, concepts, principles, and procedures) can be

identified and presented in sequential,

interrelated,and gradual way to determine the

appropriate teaching method for the material.

Learning material analysis is necessary to

formulate pedagogic didactic anticipations about how

students should learn and how teacher should teach.

Through such anticipations, teacher predicts students’

difficulties in learning certain material delivered with

certain teaching method. This prediction will allow

teacher to formulate and implement other teaching

method to overcome students’ difficulties of learning.

Implementation of unsuitable teaching method for a

certain topic may cause students’ difficulties in

learning the topic; which ends with the students have

misconception about the topic. Since topics or

materials of a subject are ideally intertwined,

students’ misconception about a certain topic will

cause further misconception about the related topics.

Hence, teacher’s anticipation and intervention in

selecting and implementing teaching method is

important to prevent students’ difficulties in learning

and students’ misconception about certain topics.

Therefore, teacher has to develop his knowledge

about various teaching methods and structures and

characteristics of materials. Teacher also needs to

adjust the teaching method to suit the structure of

material. In other words, teacher has to develop his

knowledge about the pedagogy of material for every

subject (Pedagogical Content Knowledge/PCK).

2 MANUSCRIPT PREPARATION

Learning is a process of finding out and developing

knowledge conducted by students with the help of

teacher to achieve the learning objectives. Learning is

more than mere information transfer from teacher to

students; it is an active process involving students’

body and mind to acquire the knowledge they need.

This is in line with Vargas (2009) that unfortunately,

presenting is not teaching. You could present a

brilliant lecture in an empty room. Explaining and

demonstrating is often part of the teaching process.

The process of learning consists of a series of stages,

phases, or syntax of students’ activities, from the

beginning to the end of the lesson, to achieve certain

learning objectives. This process is called the learning

model. In a learning model, teacher can implement

various ways or methods; called the learning method;

to ensure that the students master the material

presented.

Teacher plays a very important role in learning

process. Teacher’s intervention in learning

Reﬂective Learning - Teachers’ Failure in Choosing Learning Method is One Source of Students’ Learning Problem and Misconception

327

determines the effectiveness of the learning process.

Thus, a teacher should always re-examine and

evaluate the learning process he has delivered. This

activity is often called reflective teaching. Ryan and

Cooper (2010), notes that Ideally, rather than relying

on authority, impulse, or unexamined previous

practice, teacher will continually examine and

evaluate their attitudes, practices, effectiveness, and

accomplishments. This process of examination and

evaluation is often called reflective teaching.

On the same note, Orlich (2010) states that

reflection is an active mental process that master

teachers use consistently as they interact with

students and the curriculum. Curriculum is everything

related with learning, so that the objective of learning

can be achieved and students can master the

competencies.

Teacher’s reflection is a process to solve learning

problems and to make strategic decisions integrated

in teacher’s professional activities to ensure that

learning processes in the future can be better.

Reflective teaching (or learning) may begin with

teacher’s reflective questions; the ‘what’, ‘why’, and

‘how’ of the learning process he has conducted.

 “What have I done during the lesson?”;

 “What have the students done during the

lesson?”;

 “What difficulties do the students find during

the lesson?”;

 “Why do the difficulties occur?”;

 “How should the teacher teach and the students

learn in this kind of lesson?”.

These questions will guide the teacher to plan a

more effective lesson; for example, by selecting more

appropriate learning methods and strategy is based on

students’ characteristics and the materials. Thus, a

reflective teacher will always analyze the lesson he

has delivered to improve future lessons. Orlich (2010)

suggests that the characteristics of reflective teachers

include:

 Care about students;

 Understand the social context of schooling;

 Curious and always question assumptions;

 Know content;

 Identify problems or issues;

 Collect relevant data;

 Construct a plan of operation;

 Use many instructional strategies;

 Practice problem-solving strategies;

 Think prospectively and retrospectively;

 Realize that reflection is cyclical;

 Evaluate the results and processes used.

Based on these statements, the process of

reflective teaching (or learning) is highly influenced

by the teacher’s knowledge of curriculum, content of

the material, and pedagogy (pedagogical content

knowledge/PCK). The lack of this knowledge will

prevent a teacher to effectively reflect about lessons

and to develop learning. A third type of knowledge

shown by effective teachers is pedagogical content

knowledge, the knowledge that bridges content

knowledge and pedagogy (Ryan and Cooper, 2010).

Pedagogical content knowledge represents the

blending of content and pedagogy into an

understanding of how particular topics, problems, or

issues are organized, represented, and adapted to the

diverse interests and abilities of learners, and

presented for instruction (Ryan and Cooper, 2010).

According to Ryan and Cooper (2010), PCK is

teacher’s knowledge about how to deliver certain

topics, problems, and issues so that students can

understand them. Teacher who lacks PCK tends to

find it difficult to implement teaching methods, which

causes him to err in selecting the appropriate and

suitable learning method based on students’

characteristic and materials. This error leads to

students’ difficulties in learning the topic which, in

turn, results in students’ misconception about the

topic, and the future related topics, as illustrated in the

following diagram in figure 1.

Figure 1: The effect of unsuitable teaching methods.

The diagram illustrates how a teacher’s error in

determining and implementing appropriate and

suitable teaching method for a certain topic may

cause students’ difficulties in learning the topic;

which ends with the students have misconception

about the topic. Since topics or materials of a subject

are ideally intertwined, students’ misconception

about a certain topic will cause further misconception

about the related topics. Cockburn and Littler (2008)

note that you feel that simply knowing the

misconceptions children hold is not enough and are

intrigued to delve further into why children

experience these particular difficulties. Teacher’s

follow up to handle students’ misconception may be

ICES 2017 - 1st International Conference on Educational Sciences

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translated into actions to investigate the underlying

causes. They further states that “we will now illustrate

each stage of the theory to help you develop your

teaching strategies to enable children gain a deeper

mathematical understanding and, in so doing, lessen

the chance of them developing misconceptions”.To

lessen students’ misconception about a certain topic,

teacher has to construct a strategy and develop a

suitable teaching method so that the students can have

deeper understanding of the topic.

Ideally, reflective teaching of a teacher should

focus not only on the learning process and materials

he has delivered, but also on the students’

characteristics and students’ interaction with the

material. Orlich (2010) notes that “teachers

sometimes forget about the learner and concentrate on

the teaching process or on what is being taught; if

lesson planning is to be a useful task; it must always

focus on the interaction between what is to be learned

and the learner”. This means that before a teacher

teaches, he should know the students’ characteristics

first, particularly concerning their prior skills and

knowledge of the material to be taught.

Reflective teaching may begins with what the

teacher finds after the lesson; including students’

achievement. Then, the teacher reflects the learning

process he has delivered, in terms of what he finds

after the lesson. He then should reexamine the

learning objectives to ensure that the learning process

is suitable to achieve those objectives. In short,

reflective teaching is a reciprocal activity; from

formulating learning objectives, implementing

learning, to evaluating students’ achievement. The

following diagram illustrates the process in figure 2.

Figure 2: Reflective teaching process.

Concerning experienced teachers, Stringer (2009)

argues that They understand the need to take into

account the diverse abilities and characteristics of

their students, the complex body of knowledge and

skills that students must acquire, and the diverse

learning activities that need to be engaged. An

experienced teacher will begin the lesson by

identifying students’ skills, knowledge, and

characteristics, to ensure that the learning process is

not merely a transfer of teacher’s knowledge, but also

a process through which students can acquire the

information and knowledge they need.

The types of knowledge students need to master

or acquire, according to Anderson, include factual

knowledge, conceptual knowledge, procedural

knowledge, and metacognitive knowledge. This

paper will focus its discussion on the factual,

conceptual, and procedural knowledge. Sapriya et al.

(2009) defines facts as information that

exists/happens in daily life, which is guaranteed to be

true. Facts are the foundation of concepts, principles,

and theories. Facts represent the truth or nature of

things. Since facts are obtained from observation,

they reflect observable phenomena or objects.

Concept is an abstraction of events, objects, or

phenomena that have certain characteristic or symbol

or label which help people to recognize, understand,

and comprehend the events, objects, or phenomena.

Principles are the result of generalization of

relationship among concepts. Procedures are related

with how to do or conduct certain activities.

An experienced teacher will choose his teaching

method based on the characteristics of the material to

be taught. Joyce (2009) argues that teaching and

learning have two main targets; the material target

and the process target. Material target includes

information, concepts, theories, mindset, values, and

other materials students need to learn. The process

target includes students’ way of learning, facilitated

by the teacher, to actively and effectively participate

in the lesson. In addition, Joyce (2009) notes that

learning process is inseparable from the material

target that the students need to master. The following

table 1 contains the overview of relationship between

teaching/learning methods and the characteristics of

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329

learning material or knowledge the students are

expected to acquire.

Table 1: The overview of relationship between

teaching/learning methods and the characteristics of

learning material or knowledge the students are expected to

acquire.

Teacher need to analyze the learning material

contained in a basic competency, so that no important

material is missed in the lesson. Arends (2009) states

that “...choosing content can only be done after

careful analysis and inquiry into students’ prior

knowledge, the teacher’s understanding of the subject

matter, and the nature of the subject itself”. Students’

prior knowledge concerning certain topic may be pre-

requisite competencies to master a basic competency;

which is the minimum competency students have to

master after learning. The achievement or acquisition

of pre-requisite competencies and basic competency

is indicated by competency achievement indicators.

Teacher needs to implement appropriate and suitable

learning method, by considering the indicators and

pre-requisite competencies, so that students can

acquire certain basic competency. Salend (2011)

suggests that “When choosing methods to

differentiate instruction, you should address students’

learning style and preferences”. Students’ prior

knowledge about certain topic determines teacher’s

success in implementing appropriate teaching

methods.

Figure 3: Different prior knowledge about any given topic.

In figure 3 illustration shows that students have

different prior knowledge about any given topic. An

experienced teacher will identify students’ prior

knowledge first before beginning the lesson about the

core topic of the basic competency. This is necessary

so that teacher knows exactly where to start the

lesson. In the illustration above, the acquisition of the

basic competency (BC) at the top-most ladder

depends on the acquisition of its pre-requisite

competencies (PC 1, PC 2, and PC 3). Students’

learning begins at the lowest step and ends at the

highest step. It goes through several stages of

teaching (or learning) model. The steps are teaching

method; the activities of teacher to facilitate students

achieving the BC. Concerning this, Borich (2011)

states that some of the characteristics of your learners

that will influence your instruction are their specific

abilities, prior knowledge, learning styles, and home

and family lives. These are the “windows” through

which you will see the special needs of your learners

and begin to plan for them (Borich, 2011). Planning

with respect to your learners begins by consciously

noting their unique abilities and experiences that can

provide you the opportunity to select content,

materials, objectives, and methods that match

theircurrent level of understanding and meet their

special learning needs (Borich, 2011).

The following is an example of the

implementation of basic competencies analysis

process until it becomes anticipatory learning

experience. In this example, the subject is

Mathematics and the topic is Characteristics of

Simple Geometric Shapes of Cube and Cuboid. The

Basic Competency for this topic is ‘understanding the

characteristics of simple geometric shapes of cube

and cuboid’.

Before the teacher begins the lesson about

Characteristics of Simple Geometric Shapes of Cube

and Cuboid, he has to realize that students will not be

able to master the characteristics if they do not know

cube-shaped and cuboid-shaped objects, and their

building blocks; including sides, edges, and corners.

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This means that the teacher will have to think about

the pre-requisite competencies the students have to

master before they learn about this basic competency.

The following figure 4 illustrates the relationship

between the dimensions of knowledge and the six

dimensions of competencies in this topic.

Figure 4: The relationship between the dimensions of knowledge and the six dimensions of competencies in this topic.

Each indicator, in pre-requisite competencies and

in basic competencies, is facilitated by a package of

learning process consisted of teacher’s and students’

activities. A learning process for an indicator consists

of several learning methods. The sequence of learning

process, from the pre-requisite competencies to basic

competencies, is the learning model that facilitates

students to master the minimum competencies (basic

competencies). The learning model consists of

observation, question and answer, lecture, and

discovery methods.

The learning activities for the basic competencies

above can also be done through observation and Q

&A (question and answer) activities, as illustrated

below:

 Teacher: “Could you give me an example of

cube object in this classroom?”

 Student: “The box of chalk “

 Teacher: “Observe! Which part is the sides of

this box?”

 Students: “the flanks”

 Teacher: “Now, tell me, how many sides does

this box of chalk have?”

 Students: “six”

 Teacher: “What is the characteristic of this

box?”

 Students: “it has six sides”

 Teacher: “Now, could you give me an example

of cuboid object in this classroom?”

 Student: “Pencil case”

 Teacher: “Observe! Which part is the sides of

this pencil case?”

 Students:“the flanks”

 Teacher: “Tell me, how many sides does this

pencil case have?”

 Students: “six”

 Teacher: “What is the characteristic of this

pencil case?”

 Students: “it has six sides”

 Teacher: “So, what is the characteristic of cube

and cuboid shapes?”

 Students: “they have six sides”

 And so on.

Both series of activities can be used to guide the

students until they are able to find the characteristics

of simple geometric shapes of cube and cuboid; i.e.

they have six sides, twelve edges, and eight corners.

Teacher’s error in determining and implementing

the appropriate learning method in this topic, for

instance only lecturing the class, may result in

students’ difficulties in learning the topic. For the

instance of the characteristics of cube and cuboid

shapes, the knowledge may not be well-structured in

students’ minds, which leads to their misconception

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about the topic. For example, students may think that

“cube-shaped objects are NOT cuboid,” while the

correct concept is “cube-shaped objects ARE also

cuboid-shaped objects.”

3 CONCLUSIONS

Reflecting about learning (lesson) is an important

activity for teachers in their efforts to improve the

quality of learning process. Teachers’ finding

concerning students’ achievement or learning result

will be examined in a series of continuous, reflective

activities. For instance, if a teacher finds that students

have misconception, he can review the students’

difficulties in learning, and review the learning

process that causes students’ difficulties and

misconception about certain subjects. The quality of

learning process is determined by teachers’ accuracy

in implementing learning method based on students’

characteristics and teaching materials. Teachers’

error and failure in selecting and implementing the

appropriate learning method is the source of students’

difficulties and misconception in learning.

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