An Analysis of Students’ Creative Thinking Skill in Creating Open-Ended Mathematics Problems Through Semi-Structured Problem Posing

Abstract

This study aims to analyze how students of Mathematic Education study program in one of tertiary education providers in Salatiga Regency, Indonesia, creates open-ended problems via semi- structured problem posing. A qualitative descriptive method was employed to study a population of research subjects that had been selected through a stratified random sampling based on their academic ability level. As many as 30 students were categorized into Upper Level Academic ability (AA), Average Level Academic Skill (AS), and Lower Level Academic Skill (AB). Three students from each category: AA, AS, AB, were randomly selected as the research subjects. Their creative thinking skills were measured by the number of problems, strategies, and variations of open-ended problems and its solutions that had been created by students as representations of creative thinking aspects: fluency, flexibility, originality and elaboration. Results show that AB students had under developed creative thinking skills, while AS students began to develop their creative thinking skills, and AA students demonstrated their developed creative thinking skills.