Inquiry-Based Learning Practices in Lower-Secondary Mathematics Education Reported by Students from China and the Netherlands

Inquiry-based learning (IBL) emphasizes learning through experiencing and constructing. Where IBL is often applied in science education, the conceptualization of IBL practices in mathematics education is less obvious. We compared students’ reports on IBL practices in two different teaching cultures as an attempt to better understand IBL practices in connection with overarching teaching cultures. In this study, we investigated IBL practices in lower-secondary mathematics lessons in the Beijing area and the Netherlands through a survey about the experiences and preferences of 858 Chinese students and 441 Dutch students. Results show that students from the Beijing sample reported experiencing IBL activities in most mathematics lessons, while students from the Dutch sample reported them in some lessons, and both preferred the same amount of IBL activities as they experienced. The Dutch sample reported little experience with posing questions to tackle. The study also suggests a correlation between IBL experience and IBL preference of each class: students with more IBL experience are likely to show a higher preference for IBL activities. Results of this study do not confirm expectations based on stereotypes about the two teaching cultures. The students’ perspective in both samples suggests that providing complex problems and organizing group work have potential for further encouraging IBL in mathematics.

Teaching Culture: The Prevailing Stance of Indonesian EFL Teachers

The view of culture in EFL learning is growing from modernist to postmodernist perspective (Kramsch, 2013). Such growth gives impacts on the view and implementation of EFL learning. Accordingly, this study investigated the prevailing stance of Indonesian EFL teachers regarding teaching cultures. The stance in this sense was explored from the teachers’ paradigm to practice. This study engaged 17 English teachers with a variety of experiences, and they were purposively selected from different schools. This study revealed evidence that although the nature of Indonesian people were multicultural, and the essence of English as an International language was as a mediator of cross-cultural communication, dominantly Indonesian EFL teachers, the subjects of this study, still stood on modernist perspective and had not incorporated the nuance of multiculturality and interculturality as an important part of EFL learning. Only few of them did otherwise with postmodernist perspective. As an implication, this study really supported Indonesian English teachers to take a stance on postmodernist perspective in executing EFL learning to meet the students’ nature and that of English as a global language. The contribution offered by this study is to give evidence prevailing to Indonesian EFL learning and insights promoting its development in order for the curriculum can help systemize the nuance of multiculturality and interculturality in EFL learning. Keywords: Indonesian EFL learning; EFL teachers’ stance; teaching culture; English as an international language