Pembelajaran multikultural fisika di smu

 
Method 
 
Thirty 3rd-graders of three elementary schools in Indonesia served as the 
participants of the study. Two of the schools were in Jakarta and the other school 
was in Yogyakarta. Of which, 15 were abacus learners who are enrolled in an 
outside-school abacus course (Level 3) and formed the experimental group. They 
have mastered the rules in using an abacus. For addition, most of them can do 
until 2 digits mentally. For multiplication, most of them can do 2-digit times 1-
digit mentally.
The experimental group was given additional abacus training for 10 
meetings, lasting 45 minutes each session. The Nonequivalent Comparison Group 
Design (Shadish, Cook and Campbell, 2002) was used. It is a design that consists 
of giving an experimental and a control group a pretest, followed by a posttest, 
after the experimental treatment condition (i.e. teaching of the abacus) has been 
administered to the experimental group. Data gathering was through the pretests 
and posttests administered to the two groups about addition (until 3 digits) and 
multiplication (until 2-digits times 2-digits and 3-digits times 3-digits) based on 
the prescribed Indonesian curriculum. The researchers also utilized observation 
and interview to gain more insight into the thinking and errors committed by the 
students. The instruments used in this research consist of the addition and 
multiplication pretests and posttests, modules (or syllabus) for abacus teaching 
and learning, and interview guides. For data analysis, Microsoft Excel was used to 
compute for the means, variances and standard deviations of sets of values. The 
same software was also used for the following tests of hypothesis: F-test and 
Student’s t-Test. For the analysis of qualitative data from the observations and 
interviews conducted, content analysis was utilized in an attempt to relate the 
responses of the students to their test performance and errors committed.