Efektivitas Pendekatan Pembelajaran Kontekstual Terhadap Kemampuan Pemahaman Konsep Matematika Siswa

The student's concept of understanding is the ability to understand the subject matter which can be seen from the students after their extensive tests. One of approach in learning that can make students understand the concept so well is contextual learning approach. This research is a quasi experimental. The population has been taken for eighth grade students of SMP Negeri 8 Bandar Lampung TP 2012/2013. Through purposive random sampling technique, VIIIH and VIIIF class are selected as samples. The design of this research is a pretest-posttest control design. The results of hypothesis test showed that (1) the average value of mathematical concept understanding of the students who took lesson with contextual learning approach was lower than the average value of student’s concept understanding who took lesson with the conventional approach, (2) a gain in the average value of student’s concept understanding who took lesson with contextual learning approach was lower than students who took lesson with the conventional approach, (3) the percentage of students who passed the study on the class that used contextual learning approach did not reach 65%. So, contextual learning approach was not effective in terms of students' understanding of mathematic concept. This was caused the students in the control class had readiness to learn better than the experimental class. In addition, the control class was easily conditioned to teach than the experimental class.Keywords: effectiveness, contextual approach, the understanding of the concep