Profile of Mathematical Communication Skills of Prospective Mathematics Teachers

Abstract

Mathematical communication ability is an important ability for prospective mathematics teacher students to have. The purpose of this study was to describe the profile of mathematical communication skills of prospective mathematics teachers when working on high school problems on derivatives and integrals, trigonometry, and geometry topics. This type of research is qualitative descriptive research. The subjects of this study were 36 prospective mathematics teacher students who took a high school mathematics learning design course at the mathematics education study program at Sanata Dharma University, Yogyakarta. The data collection technique is using a mathematical communication ability test. The test result data was analyzed by adding up the student scores and determining the category, besides that the percentage of each indicator of mathematical communication ability was also analyzed. The qualitative data analysis process is done according to Miles & Huberman's analysis techniques namely data reduction, data display, and drawing conclusion. The results showed that the average student communication ability was 47.82 in the moderate category. There are 94% of students in the moderate category and 16% in the low category. The average achievement of mathematical communication indicators is 49.19%, in the moderate category. The best indicator is “use math language to express mathematical ideas appropriately” with 66.67% achievement, while the indicator that needs to be improved is “organizing and consolidating mathematical thinking through communication” with 31.94% achievement.