The identification of visual representation ability of junior high school students in solving geometry problems

Abstract

The student's visual representation ability is the ability to create geometrical drawings in order to clarify the problem and complete it easily. The use of visual representation facilitates students to solve problems. It plays a vital role in mathematics education in terms of developing students' understanding. This study aims to identify the visual representation ability of students in solving geometry problems. The descriptive qualitative method was employed and the research subjects were 33 students from grade 8th of Muhammadiyah 1 Surakarta Junior High School. Data were collected through mathematical representation ability tests and interviews. Data analysis showed that 27.27% of the students were found to possess high visual representation ability. Meanwhile, 33.33% of them had medium visual representation, and 39.40% with low visual representation. Based on the mentioned results, it is obvious that most of the students have low visual representation abilities. This is because they still face difficulties in representing questions in the form of drawings, they are not given the opportunity to represent their own ideas, what made them unable to answer questions that differ from the examples given by the teacher.