Cognitive Competence of Prospective Elementary Teachers on Realistic Mathematic Education through Cooperative Learning

Abstract

Having cognitive competence in mastering learning theory and designing learning is one of the important competencies for prospective teachers to have. The description of prospective teacher competence is important for lectures to follow up. One approach to learning in mathematics is Realistic Mathematic Education (RME). RME is a student-centered approach to learning mathematics adopted from the Netherlands and holds to the principle that mathematics is a human activity. This learning approach has been implemented massively in the last few decades in Indonesia and has had a positive impact so this approach is important to teach. However, there are still many prospective elementary teachers who do not know and understand what and how to implement RME itself. Because of the importance of the cognitive competence that prospective elementary teachers must have regarding this RME approach, further research is needed on this matter. The aim of this study is to describe how the cognitive abilities of prospective elementary teachers on RME approach with the application of cooperative learning. The method used in this study was descriptive qualitative with observation and survey data collection techniques which were analyzed using cognitive levels according to PISA and Anderson on 50 prospective elementary teachers in Yogyakarta State University or in Bahasa Universitas Negeri Yogyakarta (UNY) 4th semester students. The results of this study were that most students had a fairly good theoretical understanding of RME. Although to apply it in learning mathematics requires more training, especially in designing contextual problems and how to evaluate them with various other approaches in learning mathematics.