Mapping of Students’ Learning Progression Based on Mental Model in Magnetic Induction Concepts

Abstract

The progress of student learning in a learning process has not been fully optimally observed by the teacher. The concept being taught is judged only at the end of learning as a product of thinking and does not assess the mental processes that occur in students' thinking. Facilitating students' thinking through new phenomena can reveal students' variation in thinking as a mental model of a concept so that students who are assimilative and or accommodative can be identified in achieving their equilibrium of thought as well as an indicator of progressivity in the students' thinking stages. The aim of this study is to mapping the student’s learning progression based on mental models in the magnetic induction concept. This research data is obtained from the written documents and interviews of students who were learned about the concept of magnetic induction through the Constructivist Teaching Sequences (CTS) model. The results of this study indicate that facilitating the students' thinking processes on the concept of magnetic induction contributes to increasing the number of students thinking within the "progressive change" category to be more dominant (76%). In addition, there are also 12% of students who think in the category "change more randomly ", 8% of students are consistent with the basis of the analogy of thinking, and only 4% are consistent in the scientific concepts they understand since the beginning of learning. Thus, it can be said that the progress of student learning is more progressive after the ideas are facilitated through new phenomena by teachers.