Exploration of the Influence of Learning ELPSA (Experiences, Language, Pictures, Symbols, and Applications) on the Understanding of Mathematical Concepts

The ability of students to understand the concept of learning varies, it is very necessary to know the level of understanding of students' concepts in learning mathematics, so that it becomes a rationale in determining the appropriate learning approach. This study aims to determine the effect learning approach of the ELPSA eighth grade students of SMP Negeri 6 Makassar. The type of research used is experimental research. The design of this research is the One-Group Pretest-Posttest Design. The population in this study were students of class VIII SMP Negeri 6 Makassar in the 2019/2020 academic year and the research sample was determined by the Cluster Random Sampling technique. The instrument in this study was an essay test on understanding mathematical concepts. The data analysis used was descriptive and inferential. The descriptive research results show that there is an increase in understanding of the mathematical concept after the application of the ELPSA learning approach; the score of concept understanding after the application of the ELPSA learning approach met the completeness criteria, namely more than 80; and completeness of students' conceptual understanding after being applied classical ELPSA learning approach is 97% complete. The inferential hypothesis testing results show that the application of the ELPSA learning approach affects the understanding of mathematical concepts in class VIII students of SMP Negeri 6 Makassar.


INTRODUCTION
The development of science and technology which is increasing rapidly has implications for changes in the world of education. The world of education is closely related to students as learners who are the main subjects in education. According to (Umar, et all, 2020) students must be equipped with knowledge, skills, and attitudes that allow them to be independent so that they can make useful contributions to the development of the nation and state. According to Law no. 20 of 2003 that: "Education is a conscious and planned effort to create an atmosphere of learning and the learning process so that students actively develop their potential to have religious spiritual activities, self-control, personality, intelligence, noble character, and skills for themselves, the community, the nation, and country". Education has a very important role in the development of the Indonesian people as a whole. Therefore education needs to be developed from various sciences because quality education can improve the quality of a nation. Education is an important part of the national development process that helps increase a country's economic growth. Education is also an investment in developing human resources in increasing skills and abilities as a supporting factor for human efforts to navigate life. One of the knowledge in education that can develop human thinking is mathematical knowledge. According to (Syahrir & As'ari, 2019) Mathematics is universal Indonesian Journal of Instructional Media and Model Volume 2, Issue 2 (2020), pp 113-125 www.journal.univetbantara.ac.id/index.php/ijimm p-ISSN: 2686-0708 e-ISSN: 2686 114 knowledge that underlies the development of modern technology, has an important role in various disciplines, and develops human thinking. Meanwhile, according to (Kaharuddin & Hajeniati, 2020;Zetriuslita, Wahyudin, & Dahlan, 2018) by studying mathematics, students are expected to think logically, analytically, critically, and creatively and are expected to be able to solve all the problems faced, both problems related to lessons. mathematics, as well as those related to everyday life. The 2013 curriculum demands that the learning process of mathematics is directed at learning to find mathematical concepts, learning from real problems by the principles of constructivism learning using a scientific approach (scientific approach) where students gain learning experiences through the 6M process (observing, asking, exploring or trying, reasoning or concluding, communicating or networking, and creating or making creative work). In line with one of the general objectives of learning mathematics at level Primary and secondary education according to (Arifin & Aprisal, 2020), namely: understanding mathematical concepts, explaining the relationship between concepts, and applying concepts or algorithms in a flexible, accurate, efficient, and precise way to solve problems.
By the demands of the curriculum, the objectives of learning mathematics, and the facts that occur in school, after the learning process students are expected to understand mathematical concepts so that they can use their abilities in dealing with mathematical problems. According to (Kartika, 2018) in mathematics education, understanding mathematical concepts is an important basis for thinking in solving math problems and real-life problems. So it can be said that understanding the concept is the most important part of learning. This is as stated by (Herawaty, Widada, Nugroho, & Anggoro, 2019;Magfirah et al., 2019;Sadikin & Kaharuddin, 2019) that mathematics subjects emphasize concepts, meaning that in studying mathematics students must understand mathematical concepts first to be able to solve problems and be able to apply the learning in the real world. By understanding a concept students can know, explain, describe, compare, differentiate, classify, give examples and not examples, conclude and reexpress an object in its language by being aware of the processes it goes through (Pasnak et al., 2016;Young & Shtulman, 2020). To observe mathematical concepts, students need to read and interpret information, express their thoughts orally and in writing, listen to others, and think critically about ideas and have the ability to solve problems, both problems in mathematics lessons and problems in everyday life. day.
To improve students' ability to understand mathematical concepts, they must be supported by an appropriate learning approach. One learning approach that can improve conceptual understanding is the ELPSA learning approach which contains five components,  (Kaharuddin, 2013) that the ELPSA framework makes an individual develop meaningful mathematical concepts. Meanwhile, according to (Wulandari, 2017), it shows that the component application in ELPSA is a learning activity that seeks to understand the significance of the learning process by applying new knowledge in solving problems in a meaningful context. Furthermore, according to (Syahdan, 2017) learning the ELPSA approach (Experiences, Language, Pictures, Symbols, and Applications) intends to provide free-thinking space for students to seek concepts and problem-solving related to the material taught by teachers at school. Then according to (Lowrie & Patahuddin, 2015) mathematics aims to make students understand mathematical concepts and their relation to everyday life, have the skills to develop knowledge about natural processes around them, be able to apply various mathematical concepts to explain natural phenomena, and be able to use technology. simple to solve problems found in everyday life.

METHODS
This research is experimental research conducted at SMP Negeri 6 Makassar. This research aims to determine the effect of the ELPSA learning approach (Experiences, Language, Pictures, Symbols, and Applications) on the understanding of mathematics concepts in grade VIII students of SMP Negeri 6 Makassar. The research design used was the One-Group Pretest-Posttest Design. Source: (Kasiram, 2010) The population in this study were all class VIII students of SMP Negeri 6 Makassar for the 2019/2020 academic year and then one class was selected as the research sample, namely class VIII who were given treatment using the ELPSA learning approach with the technique Cluster Random Sampling. The reason the researcher chose class VIII as the research sample was because class VIII was a transition period from class VII to class IX and class VIII was a period of students who were always curious and wanted to try new things, during which students had to be given skills and understanding of material concepts to move up to class IX.
The instrument used in this study was the learning implementation observation sheet which aims to determine how well the ELPSA learning approach is implemented and the mathematics concept understanding test refers to the basic competencies and indicators of understanding mathematical concepts which aim to measure students' conceptual understanding skills after the application of the ELPSA learning approach. The indicators of learning outcomes in understanding mathematical concepts in this study are a) The average score for the posttest is The data collection technique in this research is the observation sheet of the implementation of the ELPSA learning approach and the test of understanding the concept of mathematics which is given after the application of the ELPSA learning approach to the eighthgrade students of SMP Negeri 6 Makassar.
The analysis technique in this research is using descriptive statistics and inferential statistics. The descriptive statistical analysis aims to determine the understanding of the material by describing the characteristics of the distribution of students' achievement of mathematics understanding through the ELPSA learning approach. Meanwhile, inferential statistics aims to generalize which includes estimation (estimation) and hypothesis testing based on data obtained from scores on pretest and posttest understanding the concept.
The data obtained from the results of the pretest and posttest were analyzed to determine the increase in students' mathematical understanding abilities. The amount of increase before and after the application of the learning approach used the normalized gain formula.
The formula to determine the increase in learning outcomes is as follows: For normalized gain classification can be seen in the following table.

Table 2. Normalized Gain Classification
Gain Classification g 0,3 0,3 g 0,7 g 0,7 Low Medium High Source: (Kaharuddin, 2018) Criteria used to determine the category of student learning outcomes in this study are presented in the form of a frequency distribution as follows. Source: (Puspitasari & Ratu, 2019) The criteria for a student is said to be complete if the score of concept understanding and problem-solving is more than 80. Meanwhile, classical completeness is achieved when more than 80% of students in the class are complete. To find out the percentage of each indicator of understanding the concept of mathematics, the following formula is used: % After that, the calculation of the percentage of the ability to understand the concept as a whole is carried out using the following formula: % Furthermore, the percentage of students' concept understanding ability is categorized as several levels of understanding using the modified score interpretation criteria by the author. Source: (Ng, Ting, Lam, & Liu, 2020) The criteria for assessing the understanding of mathematical concepts are as follows.  Prepare to study and pray together led by one of the students 2. Inform students about the material to be studied, namely the SPLDV concept material (Experience) Listening to / paying attention to the teacher's explanation (Experience) 3. Communicating the learning objectives that will be achieved by each student.
Listening to the learning objectives conveyed by the teacher 4. Exploring students' initial knowledge by asking questions related to the SPLDV concept (Language, Pictorial, Symbol) Raising hands to answer questions (Language, Pictorial, Symbol)

Core Activity No
Teacher Students The results of the analysis show that the implementation of learning with the application of the ELPSA learning approach at the first meeting is 3.37 in the very well implemented category, the second meeting has obtained an average of 3.58 is in the very well executed category, the third meeting has obtained an average of 3, 68 were in the very well executed category, the fourth meeting has obtained an average of 3.63 was in the very well executed category, the fifth meeting has obtained an average of 3.63 was in the very well executed category, and the sixth meeting was obtained on average an average of 3.68 is in the very well performed category. Based on this description, it can be concluded that in the learning process by applying the ELPSA learning approach the teacher's ability to manage learning for 6 meetings was carried out very well. 120 Furthermore, the learning outcomes of students' understanding of mathematical concepts after applying the ELPSA learning approach to class VIII students of SMP Negeri 6 Makassar. Based on the table above, it can be seen that the mean posttest understanding of students' concepts is 91.33. This shows that in general, the scores posttest are in the very high category, thus there is an increase in the mean value of students from pretest to posttest (from very low to very high categories). The median score of the posttest students was 92.00 indicating that there were about 50% of the students who obtained the highest score of 92.00 or the lowest score of 92.00. The mode score of 95.00 indicates that the post-test understanding of the concept of students with the greatest frequency is 95.00. Based on the slope coefficient of -0.31 and paying attention to the mean, median and mode values, it can be said that in general the results of the posttest students' understanding of the concept are above the average with a very high category. From the table, it can be seen that 32 students are in the high category with a percentage of 97% and 1 student is in the medium category with a percentage of 3%. None of the students scored in the low category. This indicates that the students' conceptual understanding increases after the ELPSA learning approaches are applied in class VIII.9 SMP Negeri 6 Makassar is in the high category with a percentage of 97%. Based on the description above, it can be concluded that descriptively the increase in students' understanding of concepts after implementing the SMP Negeri 6 Makassar is in the high category with a percentage of 97%. ability to understand mathematical concepts in the material of the two-variable linear equation system for class VIII.9 SMP Negeri 6 Makassar is categorized as very high with the overall percentage of each indicator of concept understanding reaching 91.66%.
Based on the research results it has been described that the results of students' understanding of mathematical concepts after applying the ELPSA learning approach are increasing. The increase in students' understanding of mathematical concepts is the effect of the application of the ELPSA learning approach. So, in this discussion, the effect of the components of the ELPSA learning approach on each indicator of conceptual understanding is described.
The ELPSA approach which includes experiences, language, pictures, symbols, and application affects every indicator of concept understanding, namely: Experiences are learning activities that explain or bring up previous experiences that students have and relate them to new knowledge and experiences or information that will be obtained or learned. At this stage, students can restate a simple concept based on experience and knowledge that has been studied or experienced contextually, namely: being able to name the object, model, or shape of the object related to the subject matter of the two-variable linear equation system. However, at this stage, it is still weak in terms of students' ability to provide According to (Arifin & Aprisal, 2020;Baharun, 2018)  According to (Herawaty et al., 2019) language is used to encourage understanding. In mathematics, the language of mathematics can be general or specific and is needed to present mathematical ideas. It can happen that students do not understand a mathematical concept not because the concept is too difficult for them but because the teacher who presents it uses words or sentences that the students cannot understand.

c) Pictures (P)
Pictures ( According to (Lowrie & Jorgensen, 2011) that the application stage describes how the knowledge and understanding of concepts that have been obtained can be applied in various situations. Thus, in the application component students use the ability to understand concepts in solving a problem.
In general, it can be said that the application of the ELPSA learning approach is an active process in which students build their ways and understand things through independent processes and interact socially with other students, and can construct their ways of understanding things through individual thought processes and social interactions. In ELPSA learning, students learn more systematically and are oriented towards finding concepts from their knowledge experience and can involve students' activeness directly in constructing their