Mathematics Teacher’s Perceptions on Flipped Classroom towards the 21st Century Learning and Innovation Skills

Abstract

A Vast innovation has immersed in the field of education, including the learning-teaching process in the 21st- century. Therefore teachers should be aware of new technological teaching methods while addressing 21st-century competencies since they are the pioneers in guiding students towards the future of our nation. Among them, the flipped classroom approach (FC) is a popular pedagogical practice providing opportunities for students to encounter self-learning experiences in the technological era. The main purpose of this study was to find out the perceptions of the mathematic teacher about FC towards 21st-century skills. In order to collect data,the survey research design was used and the questionnaire was administrated to 244 mathematics teachers, from the Galle education division . Data were analyzed quantitativelyby using SPSS (Version 25) software. It was revealed that 75.8% of the sample were in the view that the FC approach can monitor students’ creativity when learning mathematics. In addition, 82.1% of teachers stated that FC can promote students’ communicative skills and 75% stated that students acquire critical thinking skills by sharing knowledge with their peers through Smart Computing. Also, 81.7% of the teachers agreed that FC enhanced face-to-face discussions for actual collaborative applications for students. The findings also revealed that no statistically significant differences at (α≤ 0.05) on the total degree of perceptions of FC towards the 21st-century skills due to gender since (0.125) is more than (0.05). On the other hand, many teachers (61.2%) disagreed that students become independent from the teacher in the flipped classroom, as students acquire a (a lot of data ) large amount of information through technology and engage in critical thinking before entering the classroom. The study results demonstrated that the sample was well aware of the importance of the FC approach. However, weak internet connection, ignorance of social platforms, insufficient technological resources, negative attitudes of teachers and lack of teacher training were identified as barriers to implement the flipped classroom approach in Sri Lankan schools. Therefore, practice-oriented strategies should be used to improve mathematics teacher implementation of the flipped classroom approach in Sri Lanka.