Relational Thinking Skills of Junior High School Students and Their Relationship with Creativity in Solving Mathematical Problems

Abstract

Relational thinking skills are the ability of children to see and use possible variations between numbers in one number sentence. This study aims to describe relational thinking skills and their relationship with the creativity of junior high school students in solving mathematical problems. This research uses quantitative and qualitative descriptive research methods. The subjects of this study were several 8th grade students in one of junior high schools in the city of Surakarta. Data collection methods used are test and interview methods. Analysis of the data used is quantitative and qualitative descriptive analysis. The results of the study showed that the relational thinking ability of junior high school students was less than 12,5 %. Most students only use computational thinking to solve math problems. From the interview results show that the low ability of students’ relational thinking, because the students have never been taught the use of relational thinking to solve mathematical problems. After giving several examples of the use of ways of thinking in solving problems, students can solve this problem in more than one way. The interview results show that students have creativity in solving mathematical problems.