MOTIVATING STUDENTS IN LEARNING MATHEMATICS BY USING CONTEXTUAL TEACHING STRATEGIES
Abstract
In fact, in supporting students and improve their motivation towards science especially mathematics, the authors believes that there is a correlation between the roles of teacher and students’ motivation. If the teacher designs an adequate teaching and learning activity for the learning process, the students’ interest will increase. Thus, using a good context, which is selected by contextual teaching strategies, can be a good starting point in that mathematics classroom activities. The contextual teaching strategies which are proposed by Crawford (2001) consist of relating, experiencing, applying, cooperating, and transferring. Furthermore, the high motivation will lead to a more conducive situation for improving the students’ understanding to a higher cognitive level. However, further studies are needed to flesh out this idea, for instance to explore more the technical aspect of choosing a good context to be used in a classroom.