An analysis of students' problem-solving ability on acid-base topic

Abstract

This study aimed to analyze problem-solving ability of students on acid-base. Problem-solving ability of students was measured by three major aspects including understanding the problem, planning and applying the strategy, then checking the answer. The population of this study was all students in the public senior high school in Yogyakarta City. There were three schools with 150 students as the total of samples which were selected through the purposive sampling technique, focused on analyzing the high category of public senior high school. The level of the category was obtained using The Data of National Exam of Indonesian Students named PAMER 2016. The fact showed that the samples have already achieved the required level of thinking skills. This study was a sequential explanatory design; the quantitative data at the first phase were collected using problem-solving tests while the qualitative data were recorded through observation sheets during the learning process, and interviewing teachers and students after test were also performed to support the qualitative data. The results showed that problem-solving ability of the students is at the moderate category which means the students' chemical problem-solving ability need to be upgraded as they are not yet in line with what is expected.