As Mathematics Education Student, We are Proud !

Friday, May 13th, 2011, I and my friend got our English course. In our English course, Mr. Marsigit, our lecturer, told about anything. In that meeting, he said that in his point of view, we should be very happy as mathematics education student. Why?

Then, he told us the reason : We should be very happy as mathematics education student because only few of young people who concerning to the mathematics education. However, as mathematics education student, we need to empower ourself. We should not to be hesitate and disappointed. We had to wake up and make sure that we’re in the right track. We should support our competence. We could use many facilities thats’s available to support our competence. To gain our goal as the mathematics teacher, we also need support from our family. And the most important’s getting understand. We should understand ourselves and everythings around us. If we didn’t understand, we could be blind and empty. Blind meaned there’s no destination. To know our life destination, we had to know the inside of ourselves and the world outside. Then, we could find the destination of our life. Whereas, empty’s, we had not anything in our life. So, we had to fill it by hard struggling in our life. Then, we would not get blind and empty.

Mr. Marsigit said that life could be defined as a character. For example, “What are you?” he asked. “You are a character who want to transform yourself to a certain characteristic. You are aware of characteristic, again and again.”
Continuing his explanation, Mr. Marsigit said, “As the adult student, you must not depend on your lecturer. Doing anything by understanding and self-awareness, not by other influence and other compulsion. You can do some exercises by your self as the adding supplement to support your goal beside the lecturer teaching. Because there are various source in learning English. Even, you can benefitted the internet facilitate that provide youtube as the video provider. From youtube, we can download many learning material video that is usefull for you.”

We, as the candidate of mathematics teacher should be proud. We had an important role to break the old paradigm about the old way on teaching. We had to renew our paradigm. Because the most difficult thing’s to show the different function of traditonal teacher and modern teacher. As the modern teacher, we had to know the different thingking of younger student and the adult student. It could be explained from the nature of mathematics iceberg. It showed some grade of mathematics learning types. They’re formal mathematics for adult student (learning postulates), model, scheme, and physics for younger student.

Teacher should prepare something to teach. The preparation of teacher could be Lesson Plan (RPP) and Student Work Sheet (LKS). Teacher also need to know the role of interaction. Interaction could make transformation from subjective knowledge of mathematics to objective knowledge of mathematics. This meaned that teacher should guarantee to improve their knowledge about mathematics from the subjective mathematics to objective one.

That’s all Mr. Marsigit explanation about mathematics education generally.

In Deep Thinking About Mathematics Education

In my English course meeting last Friday, April 8th, 2011, Mr. Marsigit, my English lecturer, told us (me and my classmates) about “In Deep Thinking About Mathematics Education”. He said that, “All of you should be very happy in studying mathematics. Why? Because you can develope your mathematics ability by making the best anything that is available in this faculty, Mathematics and Natural Sciences Faculty, especially is Mathematics Education Study Program which is your study program. Studying in this program, you get more lesson subjects about mathematics, and it is continuously until higher semester. “

Mr. Marsigit continued his explanation by making us understand about the student position in Mathematics Education Department. He asked us about the difference of study program in the Mathematics Education Department. They’re Mathematics Study Program and Mathematics Education Study Program. Then he continued. “Mathematics Study Program and Mathematics Education Study Program are two different study program. Firstly, the lesson. In Mathematics Education Study Program, you will be teached how to teached mathematics well, whereas in Mathematics Study Program you will study mathematics subject which is very complex, so you can hold the complex mathematics. Secondly, the people of the Mathematics Study Program and Mathematics Education Study Program have different background. As Mathematics Education Study Program person, you will face younger student, which is pre-elementary, kindergarten, primary school, junior high school, senior high school, or university student. How it can be a problem? In learning mathematics, older people and younger people are different. Psychologically, they are different. For example in facing problem as like below :

•A plastic ball radius is 7 centimetres. The ball being broken after it’s falled from certain place (height 15 metres). Find the volume of the ball!
•Given a teak from Blora (Central Java), colorful painted, has radius 20 centimetres. Find the area of the teak!

From two problems above, we can test younger people and older people to answer. Most of the younger people will find the solution of those problems by material thinking. Whereas, the older people will do that by abstract thinking.According to the older people, mathematics is only a thinking object, not factual/material object. Clearly, this is explained as below :

•Given two numbers 4 and 7. 4 is written in bigger size than the 7 number. Then, which is the bigger number?

To solve this problem, the younger people will think materially. They will answer that 4 is bigger than 7, because it looks like that. Whereas, the older people will think abstractly. They will answer that 7 is bigger than 4, because of the value.
From the explanation above, we can conclude that in abstractional thinking, people just take certain properties which is interesting for them, and they want to study more about it. They are also idealize, think that all properties in mathematics are perfect. There is not ‘agak’ (Indonesian language) word in mathematics.
Because of the different thinking ability of younger and older people, mathemathics divided in three, they are University Mathematics, School Mathematics, and Pure Mathematics.

a.University Mathematics, contains proving problem, axiom/postulate, and other.
b.School Mathematics, contains concret and factual problem.
Ebutt and Straker (1995) define School Matemathics as follows:
1)Mathematics is a search for pattern and relationship, enlarge the student to
seacrh pattern and relationship.
2)Mathematics is problem solving activity.
3)Mathematics is investigation activity.
4)Mathematics is a mean of communcation,
c.Pure Mathematics is studied by pure mathematicians.

That’s all about three kinds of mathematics level study based on thinking ability”.
Ending the course, Mr. Marsigit explained one more lesson. That’s the characteristic of the student who learned mathematics as follow :
•The student will learn effectively if the student have a good motivation and a good perception.
•The student learn mathematics individually, the nature of individual creature.
•The student learn mathematics in collaboration with others, the nature of social creature.
•The student learn mathematics in context.