What are The Difficulties in Learning Percentages? An Overview of Prospective Mathematics Teachers’ Strategies in Solving Percentage Problems

Abstract

Many studies showed that teachers and prospective teachers have difficulty solving percentage problems. This research is a qualitative descriptive study that aims to investigate the prospective teachers’ strategies in solving problems on the topic of percentages. A total of 250 students majoring in Mathematics Education and Primary Education at IAIN Syekh Nurjati and IAIN Pekalongan were purposively selected to participate in this study. The results showed that only less than half of the participants (40.1%) could give the correct answer. Qualitative data on the strategies used by prospective teachers on the percent question show that (1) teacher candidates ignore the importance of the % symbol and consider the % symbol only as a unit of measurement, (2) teacher candidates ignore the essential role of the reference quantity in the percent question, (3 ) teacher candidates are not used to solving percent problems related to determining initial values before discounts and assume that any percent problem can be solved using multiplication or division.