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group of 10 third grade students of state-run elementary school SDN Serayu Yogyakarta looked to be really enjoying a math class that was being taught to them by a Malaysian teacher on Wednesday, as a number of other teachers observed the class.

Language did not seem to bother the teacher or the students as the class was held in English. Jokes were often heard as the teacher gave assignments and the students did what they were asked to do.

They learned about the square, which involved several games and teaching and learning tools. It was as if they were not being taught math at all, but were craft making instead. “It’s exciting. It makes math easier to understand,” said Arviani Fayzaila Ramadhanti, one of the participating students.

Arviani and tens of other elementary school students were part of a math teaching course offered to elementary school teachers from 11 Southeast Asian countries, comprising 10 ASEAN member countries and Timor Leste.

The three-week course in Yogyakarta is provided by the SEAMEO Regional Center for Quality Improvement of Teachers and Educational Personnel (QITEP) in Mathematics and is under the Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization (SEAMEO).

“This is one of our seven full scholarship courses, namely the course on developing lesson studies in a mathematics education course,” QITEP’s math research specialist Wahyudi told The Jakarta Post on the sidelines of the course on Wednesday.

The other six courses are teaching aids, fun math learning, differentiated instructions, utilization and the development of IT-based math learning, clinical supervision and Southeast Asian realistic math education.

Lesson studies, according to Wahyudi, originated in Japan and developed into a well-known approach for action research in classrooms by teachers, and was used to develop and implement the curriculum, improve innovative teaching approaches and facilitate teachers’ professional development.

“It’s an effective model for teachers to improve their teaching skills and classroom management,” Wahyudi said.

Twenty four teachers have enrolled in the course, to be finished by this weekend, 14 of which are from Indonesia. The rest come from other countries across the Southeast Asian region.