Analysis of student’s understanding about Newton’s laws, in terms of perceptions to learning in senior high school

Abstract

The results of student’s analysis of physics mastery of class X in several high schools in the city of Padang, showed the lowest value found in Newton‘s laws of motion. This shows that students experience various obstacles in mastering this material. One of them is the factor of the perception of students towards learning physics. This study aims to reveal the tendency of students’ perceptions of learning physics in Newton‘s law material, student mastery, their relationship and the factors of difficulty in learning Newton’s laws of motion, in terms of student perception. This study included descriptive correlational study in high school in Padang city in semester from January to June 2019. With stratified random sampling technique obtained by 60 students as samples to represent a clever student, medium and less, which is derived from 4 SMA and one private school. The instrument used to obtain data, in the form of 60 items of perception questionnaires and 24 items of mastery of material compiled based on a grid combination of 4 dimensions of knowledge and 6 levels of cognitive processes refers to Bloom’s revised taxonomy. The instrument used has fulfilled its validity and reliability. The results showed that a) the perception of students towards learning the laws of Newton at the high category, b) mastery of physics students are on the low category, c) There are positive correlation between the perceptions of teaching physics with students mastery to the material laws Newton‘s motion, with 36.2% contribution. b) The proportion of understanding dimensions of students’ knowledge: factual, conceptual, procedural, and metacognitive respectively, are 51.42 %, 36.88 %, 13.96 %, and 4,54 %. c) the proportion of mastery of cognitive process levels for the ability to remember, understand, apply, analyse, evaluate and create are: 54.44 %, 33.56 %, 38.75 %, 14.44 %, 13.19 % and 5.81 %. d) study difficulties were found in learning Newton’s law materials according to the perceptions of students, in terms of factors: students individual; properties inherent in physical matter; and student learning conditions created by the teacher.