Increasing The Students’ Ability Of Rationalizing And Representation Through Open Ended Learning Approaches In Islamic Vocational School, Al Qomar

Abstract

Learning approaches which are often used by teachers in the classroom are more likely to use ordinary learning, hence very few students are given the opportunity to actualize the ability of rationalizing and representing problems in Math. The ability of rationalizing and representation is an ability needed by students in learning mathematics, to get student learning outcomes to be optimal. Therefore, the teacher can choose and apply an effective learning approach to improve students' rationalizing and representation abilities.

This study implemented mathematics learning with the Open-Ended approach. One of learning approaches which can effectively improve rationalizing and representation ability. This study aimed to determine the increase in students' rationalizing and ability through mathematics learning with the Open-Ended approach, to find out the differences of students’ rationalizing and representation ability between the students who got mathematics learning with the Open-Ended approach and ordinary mathematics learning, and the students’ responses who were taught by Open –Ended learning approach. The population of this study was the 10^th grade students of AL Qomar Islamic Vocational School. The method used was an experimental method randomly selected two classes to be used as an experimental and control class. The data obtained in this study were quantitative and qualitative data. This study obtained a pretest and posttest design which could be seen the differences of students’ rationalizing and representation ability for the two classes.

 Based on the results of the study concluded that the ability of rationalizing and representation ability of students who got mathematics learning with Open-Ended was better. And the data processing with level of 5% students’ rationalizing and representation of experimental class, who were taught using learning with the Open-Ended approach was higher than ordinary learning, with an average of experimental class 33.79 and control class 29.07. From the results of the questionnaire it can be concluded that the students' responses were very positive towards mathematics learning with the Open-Ended approach. Therefore mathematics learning with the Open-Ended approach can be used as an alternative to improve students' rationalizing and representation abilities.