Self-concept of pre-service mathematics teachers who gets a pedagogic approach suggested by APOS theory and direct learning as a comparison

Abstract

The aim of this study was to investigate the difference between pre-service mathematics teachers’ self-concept who gets a pedagogic approach suggested by APOS theory and direct learning in terms of students overall and their mathematical initial ability group. The pedagogic approach is Activity-Class Discussion-Exercise (ACE) teaching cyclic, whereas direct learning is a traditional approach. This study used a quasi-experiment method with post-test-only control design. The research subjects were 120 pre-service mathematics teachers from two universities in Palembang, Indonesia. They were divided into experiment and control class which 62 students were placed in a learning atmosphere that applied ACE teaching cyclic, whereas 58 of them were given direct learning. Instruments that used in this study were self-concept questionnaire, observation, and interview. Data analysis tests used in this study were t-test and Mann-Whitney U test. The results of data analysis descriptively showed that pre-service mathematics teachers self-concept in experiment and control class are categorized very positive in terms of students overall and their mathematical initial ability group. From inferential statistical analysis, the result showed that there is no significant difference between pre-service mathematics teachers’ self-concept who gets ACE teaching cyclic and direct learning in terms of overall and mathematics initial ability group. Based on the result, we concluded that ACE teaching cyclic and direct learning influent pre-service mathematics teachers’ self-concept very positively and there is no significant difference between two approaches in this study.