CORRELATION BETWEEN CONCEPT UNDERSTANDING AND ATTITUDES TOWARDS PHYSICS AND LEARNING

Abstrak

This study aims to analyze students' understanding of Newton's laws and their Belief Attitude Towards Physics and Learning (BAPL) in terms of gender and school type. This study also analyzes the correlation between students' understanding of Newton's laws and their BAPL in physics learning. This study used a survey method on students in the even semester of the 2024/2025 academic year. The research population consisted of all 11th grade physics students in eight high schools in the Malang and Batu City areas. The sample consisted of 329 students, comprising 162 male students and 167 female students, selected through cluster random sampling. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, difference tests, and correlation tests using SPSS software. The results indicate that students' understanding of Newton's laws is still low based on both gender and school type. Students' BAPL results show moderate performance with variations based on gender and school type. The correlation between the two variables is very low and not statistically significant. The novelty of this study lies in its simultaneous analysis of conceptual understanding and BAPL based on gender and school type among high school students in Malang and Batu City. These findings suggest that improving students' conceptual understanding cannot rely solely on positive belief attitudes, highlighting the need for more structured and concept-based learning strategies in physics education.