ANALYSIS OF UNDERSTANDING OF ALGEBRA CONCEPTS OF VII GRADE STUDENTS OF LEARNING STYLES

Abstrak

There are some students who feel it difficult to understand Algebra materials which finally make their understanding in Algebra concepts weak. Moreover, Algebra is a new material for them since in Elementary School they only knew that Maths is a science which only talks about numbers, but now in this Algebra materials they will find out that Maths does not only talk about operation of numbers, but also operation of letters that can be found in Algebra. For the seventh grade students, Algebra is very important since it is basic material that they can use for the further materials which are more complicated. Thus, students should have good understanding in Algebra concepts. One way that can be use to optimize students' conceptual understanding is to know their learning styles. The aim of this research is to describe students' conceptual understanding in Algebra based  on their learning styles. The approach used in this research is qualitative and it is a study case of the seventh grade. The data are collected by giving questionnaire of students' learning styles, conceptual understanding test, and interview. To analyze the data, there are some techniques used. They are data reduction, data presentation, and conclusion.  The results of this research are: 1) Students who have visual learning style are able to meet the indicators of understanding multistructural concepts. They can identify elements of Algebraic forms and do operations of addition and substraction in Algebraic forms correctly. 2) Students who have auditory learning style are able to meet the indicators of understanding unistructural concepts because they are only able to identify elements of Algebraic forms correctly. Furthermore, students still do some mistakes when they operate negative numbers in Algebraic forms. 3) Students who have auditory learning style are able to meet the indicators of understanding unistructural concepts. Students are  able to identify elements of Algebraic forms correctly, but they have some problems in doing operations of addition and substraction in Algebraic forms.