Last modified: 2018-07-07
Abstract
The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) is an international assessment coordinated by the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to measure the performance of 15 years-old-student in mathematics, science and reading literacy. In PISA 2012, Indonesian students’ mathematics performance ranked in 64th place among 65 participating countries. Therefore, this study aims to analyse students’ difficulties in solving PISA mathematics problem. PISA 2012 put the mathematics questions in four categories based on its content area namely ‘change and relationship’, ‘space and shape’, ‘quantity’ and ‘uncertainty and data’. The questions are also classified into four types of task based in its context, they are: personal, societal, occupational and scientific. Another classification is also done based on its mathematical process which divides the questions into three types of task: formulate, employ and interpret.
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Hence, for this research, 12 tasks were selected from PISA 2012 released mathematics question. The selection of the task was based on its content area, context and mathematical process underlying the task. Four research questions then derived from the propose of this research, they are: 1) What error does students make when solving mathematics problem from PISA 2012? 2) In which type of task based on its mathematical content area do students make error the most? 3) In which type of task based on its context do students make error the most? And 4) In which type of task based on its mathematical process do students make error the most?
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The participant of this research is 28 students from grade IX A Mts Assaadah 2 Bungah-Gresik with their ages range from 14-15 years old. The participants were asked to solve the PISA mathematics problem in 90 minutes. To gather the data of student’s error, only incorrect or partially correct answer were analysed using Newman’s error categories namely comprehension, transformation, processing and encoding. The unknown’ category was added for responses which provide too limited information to be analysed.
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In total, 201 incorrect and partially correct answer was gathered from 336 responses. The analysis result of the incorrect and partially correct answer shows that 49.3% of error is located in comprehension, 42.7% in transformation, 7.2% in processing, and only 0.7% error is located in encoding. For the distribution of incorrect and partially correct answer in mathematics task based on its content area, context and mathematical process can be seen in the table below
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Type of task
Percentage of correct answer
Percentage of incorrect answer
Percentage of incorrect answer
- 1. Based on its content area
Change and relationship
10.7%
3.6%
85.7%
Space and shape
42.9%
4.8%
52.4%
Quantity
45.2%
0
54.8%
Uncertainty and data
61.9%
20.2%
17.9%
- 2. Based on its context
Personal
39.3%
3.6%
57.1%
Societal
77.4%
0
22.6%
Occupational
16.6%
25%
58.3%
Scientific
27.4%
0
72.6%
- 3. Based on its mathematical process
Formulate
34.8%
17.8%
47.3%
Employ
24.1%
3.6%
72.3%
Interpret
61.6%
0
38.4%
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The table above indicates that among four types of mathematics task based on its content area, students had most difficulties in the problems which content area is change and relationship. For type of mathematics task based on its context, students found it most difficult when dealing with occupational and scientific problems. As for type of mathematics task based on its mathematical process, students encountered most difficulties when solving employ problems. In addition, the Newman’s error analysis result indicates that the most difficult stage in solving PISA problem for students is in understanding the meaning of the problem and transform the word problem into appropriate mathematical model.