Customized on-site professional development: empowering a primary math teacher to teach mental math skills

In today’s rapidly evolving educational landscape, efforts to drive change or improvement in education, whether through educational reforms or school improvement plans, underscore the critical importance of professional development. Accordingly, this study aimed to support a primary school math teacher in teaching mental math skills to class 5 students in a low-cost private school in Karachi, Pakistan. The study employed action research and focused on customized professional development with on-site support and collaborative teaching opportunities. The process of data collection in this study entailed three stages: reconnaissance, intervention and post-intervention. In the reconnaissance stage, the data were collected through classroom observations, semi-structured interviews, mental math tasks, and document analyses to explore the existing perceptions and practices of the teacher towards teaching and learning of mental math skills. Based on the findings from the reconnaissance, an intervention was designed to provide the teacher with one-on-one support to develop her understanding of content and pedagogy related to mental math skills. The intervention stage included working sessions, demonstration of lessons, and opportunities for reflection. A collaborative teaching approach was adopted to help the teacher connect theoretical concepts with real classroom situations. In the post-intervention stage, the data were gathered through classroom observation and semi-structured interview of the participant teacher. The findings indicated that in low-cost private schools, assigning teachers to subjects beyond their area of expertise presents considerable challenges, including gaps in content knowledge and pedagogical skills, and underscores the critical need for targeted, context-responsive professional development support. The study emphasized the value of context-specific and customized on-site professional development, reflective practices, and collaborative support in empowering teachers to overcome challenges and improve instructional quality of teaching of mental math. These results highlight the need for professional development models tailored to address the unique challenges of resource-constrained educational settings.