Development of basic physics experiments based on science process skills (SPS) to enhance mastery concepts of physics pre-service teachers in Melde’s law

Abstract

This study aims to develop basic physics experiment (BPE) to improve the mastery concept in the Melde’s law. Research and development (R&D) was conducted by involving physics pre-service teacher as many as 18 students in the first year and 15 students in the second year as the research sample. Experiment were developed through the development of Science Process Skill (SPS)-based student worksheets which has been reviewed and judgment by expert, which included observing, communicating, classifying, measuring, inferring, predicting, identifying variables, constructing hypotheses, operationally defining variables, designing experiment, acquiring and processing data comes to a conclusion. The results of the first-year study showed that student’s SPS had not been trained optimally, students were still having difficulty in observing, determining experiment variables, inferring and hypotheses. This results in a low mastery of the concept in the Melde law material with a mean class score of 55.56. In the second year, the development of experiment activities was carried out by emphasizing the basic practice of SPS in the beginning of the lecture through simple experimental topics to a more complex. Based on the data processing of the second-year research showed an increase in student process science skills (SPS) and there was an increase in mastery of concept with a mean grade of 73.22. Based on the results of the study, it can be said that the development of basic physics experiment based on SPS that have been carried out can improve the mastery of the concept of in Melde’s law.