Pembelajaran multikultural fisika di smu

 
 

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IJIET
Vol. 2, No. 1, January 2018 
50 
Findings and Discussion
For the quantitative data derived from the pretests and posttests, the goal 
was to find out if there was a significant difference between the scores and the 
finish time of the experimental and control group, and between the pretest and 
posttest data of the experimental group, both at 0.05 level of significance. 
Student’s t-test was utilized, since the sample size was only 15 (i.e. less than 30).
Comparison Between Control Group and Experimental Group 
Addition Scores in Pretest
The F-test reveals that the variances are not equal since 0.0253 < 0.05; thus, 
Student’s t-test for unequal variances is used. With a p-value of 0.4363, which is 
more than 0.05, the Student’s t-test shows that there is no significant difference 
between the mean pretest scores of the experimental and control groups in 
addition. Based on this result, we established that the students’ ability in the basic 
mathematics skill for addition was considered to be similar for both groups.
Students in experimental group was using mental abacus for simple addition that 
involved one to two digits while for two to three digit numbers they was using 
abacus. For the control group, most of them can use mental arithmetic for the 
simple addition and the rest using a pen-and-paper method.
In the pretest, the researchers chose to include only a few large numbers.
This likely required direct addition without using any rules of abacus for the 
experimental group; in the case of the control group, there was no need for 
regrouping. However, it should be noted that in the posttest, most of the items 
involved larger numbers for both addition and multiplication. The number of 
incorrect answers in the pretest from the 15 students in the experimental group 
were 56 items in total, compared to 73 in total for the control group. For simple 
addition that involved one- and two-digit numbers (i.e. lessons from Grades One 
and Two), students in the experimental group committed 7 wrong answers, while 
the control group incurred 13 incorrect responses. For the more complex addition 
questions that involved more digit span, students in the experimental group made 
49 mistakes, while those in the control group had 60 wrong answers.The contents 
of the pretest were familiar for students of both groups, as these were already 
taught in the first three grade levels. Hence, this also might have contributed to no 
significant difference between the pretest scores of both groups. As supported by 
Piaget (in Woolfolk, 2007, p. 29), children who have existing schemes in their 
minds can make use of these to make sense of events in their world – in this case, 
their statistically similar performance in addition, regardless of method used. The 
pretest results show that both groups have significantly similar ability for addition 
at the beginning of the study, with addition being familiar to the students since the 
schemes related to this operation has been formed by grade one or even 
kindergarten.