My Abstract on Icriems 2018

Investigating Vocational School Students’ Difficulties in Solving Basic Mathematics Problems as Their Prior Knowledge

Irham Baskoro^{1, a)} and Wahyu Setyaningrum^{2, b)}

¹Graduate Program of Mathematics Education, Yogyakarta State University, and ²Mathematics Department, Faculty of Mathematics and Science Yogyakarta State University, Jl Kolombo No 1, Karangmalang, Depok, Sleman, Yogyakarta, Indonesia.

^a)Corresponding authors: irham.baskoro@gmail.com,
^b) wahyu_setyaningrum@uny.ac.id

Abstract. This research aimed to investigate vocational students’ difficulties in solving basic mathematics problems. Qualitative research was conducted to describe the result. This research involved a rich collection of data to gain a deeper understanding of students’ difficulties, including their opinions about the questions. For this purpose, the author took five basic mathematics topics as students’ prior knowledge that are actually learned from primary until secondary school. They were cube net, integer operations, flow rate, velocity, and scale. Then 5 questions were constructed to represent those 5 topics. The questions’ sheets were applied to 108 vocational school students. These were the students’ percentage who answer the questions accurately each topic: cube net 65.74%, integer operations 87.96%, flow rate 52.78%, velocity 77.78%, and scale 62.96%. There were some difficulties can be identified, such drawing more or less than 6 congruent squares in constructing cube net; ordering operations (integer operations); time conversion, calculation, formula (flow rate & velocity);length conversion (scale). Most of students (48,81%) said that cube net problem was the easiest because cube net could be imagined and didn’t involve any formula. In contrast 34,17% of students said that velocity was the hardest problem to solve because they forgot the formula. This research will help and give an idea to mathematics educator in measuring their students’ basic mathematics knowledge or prior knowledge.

Keywords: prior knowledge, vocational school students, basic mathematics, qualitative research