Experiences through background

　　　　　　Well, I am from Phnom Penh, the capital city of Cambodia. Through the history, Cambodia has been famous for Angkor Wat temple, titled the Kingdom of the world. It was built by the Khmer King Suryavarman II in the early 12th century in Yaśodharapura (Khmer calls present-day Angkor), the capital of the Khmer Empire, as his state temple and eventual mausoleum. Breaking from the Shaiva tradition of previous kings, Angkor Wat was instead dedicated to Vishnu. Unfortunately, Cambodia had been colonized by French for almost a century. Moreover, the Cambodian Genocide refers to the attempt of Khmer Rouge party leader “Pol Pot” to nationalize and centralize the peasant farming society of Cambodia virtually overnight, in accordance with the Chinese Communist agricultural model. This resulted in the gradual devastation of over 25% of the country’s population in just three short years. Fortunately, Cambodia survived from that black Genocide through a great Khmer National Compatriot, Samdech Akeak Moha Sena Padey Techo Hun Sen. However, this country has still encountered many difficulties and problems to be solved.

As for me, I earned bachelor degree of Mathematics from Royal University of Phnom Penh (RUPP) in 2004. I have taught mathematics at high school level for 9 years. The dream I always had in life is to go to study abroad because I need oversee experiences from developed countries like Japan, Australia, USA, and so on to develop and to improve educational system; especially, in the field of mathematics. My great desire is to explore how mathematics education contributes to the society. There is will, there is way. I finally passed JDS scholarship to study in Japan as my wish.

Teaching task and research are my passion and my goal is to get Khmer's children out of poverty because of the darkness of their illiteracy. I am going to improve my teaching tactics and skills of Mathematics; especially, probability field which has been very much adored by me. I strongly hope I know how to lead and to target students to approach the key points of lessons. I am going to bring my home country the ability and competencies from my study and experiences I earned in Japan to push prosperity and growth for our nation. Moreover, I deeply believe I can produce useful and potential human resources to effectively and efficiently compete with local areas; especially, ASEAN community in order to edify our whole country fame.

Comparing to other courses in mathematics, probability and conditional probability are unique and difficult for students and teachers to understand. Students perform poorly on probability for the national examination and teachers lack meta-cognitive and professional skills for teaching this subject. More interestingly, most teachers not only in Cambodia, but also around the world try to avoid the teaching of this subject. Therefore, research interest is: “Students’ and Pre-service Teachers’ understanding of Conditional Probability in Cambodia”. In the 21^st century, mathematics educators pay much attention to probabilistic and statistical literacy which is much more focused on real life problems. So in this study, I want to investigate and to explore how students and teachers’ understanding of conditional probability contribute to the society.

In conclusion, Japan is a developed, peaceful, and civilized country with very naturally beautiful landscape. Japanese people are friendly, helpful, and critical. The weather is good and comfortable and the food is very secure and safe which I loved them very much. Living here benefits me two things. First, I gain life skills. I live lonely in my apartment that I feel stronger than I did in my home country. I know a lot of Japanese culture because I have many Japanese friends. More interestingly, I joined many international ceremonies like camping, cherry blossom flower, and ASEAN festivals. My second thing is academic life which much interests me. I can work individually and collectively. I individually work hard on research and some coursework.  I can work in group with international students.  I will bring these good experiences and great knowledge to develop my home country. I like living in a challenging, competitive, and innovative world.