BANDUNG, unpas.ac.id – Mathematics is still a subject which is considered to difficult to study; it is even disliked by most students.
Applying mathematical concepts is not effective if it only relies on theory and abstract learning. It needs tools or simple examples to achieve the objectives of the material being taught.
Teacher of FKIP Universitas Pasundan Dr. Siti Maryam Rohimah, M.Pd. reviewed that the emergence of this mindset is because most mathematics teachers in Indonesia do not apply a realistic approach when teaching.
Students are directly taught theories from mathematicians, without being given examples related to everyday life. In fact, teachers can take advantage of the Realistic Mathematics Education (RME) approach which is easier to understand.
“RME comes from real things and emphasizes on the skills of process of doing mathematics, so, students will not consider mathematics as something abstract, but will considered it as thing related to their lives,” she explained on Wednesday, 2 November 2022.
From the results of his dissertation and short study at Utrecht University Netherlands, he sees that RME can change the difficulty and stigma of mathematics, because right here, students will understand the roots and processes, not directly on the results and theory.
RME and Daily Life
Generally, RME consists of five characteristics, including using of real context as starting point of learning mathematics, putting the solution of problems informally before formally (equation), correlating the topics within mathematics, using interactive method and appreciating various answers from students.
“RME has four concepts, namely horizontal mathematization, didactic phenomenology, models, and reinvention,” she said.
Horizontal mathematization turns contextual problems into mathematical problems. For example, the concept of 2x+2y in a linear equation of 2 variables can be compared to 2 different objects.
“Second, didactic phenomenology. The phenomena we do are linked to mathematics. For example, to climb the stairs, how much time or how many stairs that must be passed. In mathematics, this phenomenon turns out to be related to series,” she added.
And so do with the concept of model and reinvention. Reinvention helps students to apply and complete mathematical processes. Students are helped to maximize their abilities, to achieve maximum understanding.
“After coming home from Netherlands, I tried to conveyed this method of RME to the primary teachers; they are really interested since it is very contextual. I asked them to count the number of paving blocks without ‘counting on it’ one by one,” she explained.
However, before combining the science to the actual facts in the field, teachers need to find out students’ characteristics first.
“I really want to develop RME learning materials, because when I made the last previous materials, it certainly has shown a lot of improvements and results, motivation and students’ learning interest. I combined the context and materials, and made the module to be taught to students in order to make them enjoy and not consider that math is hard,” she concluded. (Reta)**
