Increasing Junior High School Students' Mathematical Comprehension with Realistic Mathematics Education (RME) Approach

Abstract

Mathematical understanding is an important basis for thinking when
solving mathematical problems. Mathematical understanding is also the basis of
thinking in learning mathematics to find out the results of mastery learning. This
can be seen in the results of the test scores of students with mathematical
understanding abilities that are still below the level of mastery learning, therefore
the importance of mathematical understanding abilities is increased by using the
Realistic Mathematical Education (RME) learning approach. This study uses mixed
methods where the research strategy combines qualitative and quantitative methods
simultaneously. The results of the research conducted the average score was still
low, namely 62.5% below the average and 37.5% above the average, but after
applying the RME learning method, it showed that the average student score
increased to 21.9 % below average and 78.1% above average. Based on the results
before and after the test, students' mathematical understanding ability increased by
40.6% after applying the RME teaching method, thus proving that RME had a
positive effect on increasing mathematical understanding.