Student's learning obstacle on understanding the concept of prism surface area

Abstract

This study was a preliminary study to develop a didactic design of the concept of a prism surface area. This study aimed to identify the learning obstacle experienced by students on the material of a prism surface area. The learning obstacle was obtained based on the ability test of the respondents, interviews, and documentation to students who had studied the material of the prism surface area. The method used was a qualitative method with data triangulation. This study involved 52 students in the 9th grade at one of Junior High Schools in West Bandung Regency and a teacher as a participant. The learning obstacle found in this study were an ontogenic obstacle, epistemological obstacle, and didactical obstacle. The ontogenic obstacle found was that students had difficulty in determining the names and elements of the prism, in which the difficulty was caused due to forgetfulness, doubt, and misconception of the prism surface area. The epistemological obstacle found was that students tended to memorize the definitions and formulas of the concept of the prism surface area, so they did not understand the concept as a whole. The didactical obstacle found was that the learning process was procedural and did not consider the difficulties and misunderstandings experienced by students while learning, as well as the lack of experience to construct geometric shape models, such as prisms.