A Study of Teachers’ Perceived Beliefs Regarding Teaching Practice

Abstract

This study aimed to explore the perceived beliefs of the teachers regarding teaching practice in the con- text of a three year professional development project implementing lesson study incorporating Open Ap- proach conducted by the Center for Research in Mathematics Education. The teaching practice set under the cycle of lesson study were as follows: 1) collaboratively designing research lesson at least once a week; 2) Collaboratively observing their friends teaching the research lesson taken 3 - 4 hours per a week; 3) Collaboratively conducting post-discussion or reflection on teaching practice conducted once a week. From these three phases, Open Approach was used as an approach such as how to change teachers’ roles to be more facilitator and the like. The data were collected through questionnaire distributing to teachers in three schools in the project. In addition, the qualitative data were collected by participatory observation on teaching practice of one teacher twice a week throughout one academic year, interviewing the con- cerned teacher and other teachers in the lesson study team. The findings, where teachers’ perceived be- liefs regarding teaching practice were classified into three categories and these were: 1) about mathemat- ics teaching; 2) about students’ learning mathematics; 3) about social context.