Contribution of pedagogical and professional competence of teachers in special regions to students interest and attitude toward science concepts

The purpose of this research is to identify the correlation between student's interest and attitude that are affected by differences in pedagogical and professional competence of teachers in special regions. The concepts analyzed are science concepts in the 7 and 8 grades. This study applied a comparative causal method with the number of samples involved l09 students consisting of 3 school levels, namely the upper, middle and lower group schools with 2 schools respectively. Samples were randomly selected from all classes in each school. There were six teachers in special regions involved as participants, each of whom comes from the schools in the 3T (least developed, frontier and outermost) regions. The research data were obtained using 3 types of instruments in the form of teacher pedagogical and professional competence scale instruments, interest scale and attitude scale instruments. The data that had been obtained were analyzed using a non-parametric scale technique using the Chi Square statistical test of one sample. Based on the results of statistical tests, it was found that the teachers had a high pedagogical and professional level with dk=2 and α=0.05. There was a positive contribution of teachers pedagogical and professional competence to the student's interest and attitude toward science concepts. In addition, from this study, it was also found that the contribution of teachers pedagogical and professional competence to the student's interest and attitude fell into a high category on science concepts and students had a strong interest in science concepts (57%) contained in the curriculum. Thus, it can be concluded that teacher's high level of pedagogical and professional competence has a positive effect on student's interest and attitude toward science concepts.