Argument Mapping to Improve Student's Mathematical Argumentation Skills

Abstract

This study aims at investigating the difference in students' mathematical argumentation skills before and after the implementation of argument mapping in learning mathematics. It is a quasiexperiment with a quantitative approach. The population was the students of class X Natural Sciences Program in a state senior high school in Pasuruan, East Java, Indonesia. 36 students were involved. The instrument was a mathematical argumentation skills test. Several components were established, adopted from the Revised Bloom's Taxonomy, namely identifying (C1), explaining (C2), drawing conclusions (C3), reducing/adding premises (C4), deducing (C5), and developing/constructing (C6). Students' mathematical argumentation skills were analyzed using the Wilcoxon signed-rank test at 5% level of significance (∝ = 0.05). The findings of this study indicate that students' argumentation skills after the implementation of argument mapping is better than prior treatment (p = 0.002). It can be claimed that argument mapping is effective for improving such skills.