Students’ critical mathematical thinking process based on their cognitive styles

Abstract

Students’ critical mathematical thinking skills are relatively low. Efforts to improve these skills can be made through specific strategies that require information about the critical thinking processes based on students’ cognitive styles. This study is qualitative research that aims to describe students’ mathematical critical thinking process based on their cognitive styles. The subjects were two students, one field-dependent student and one field-independent student. These students were selected based on the cognitive style test (i.e., GEFT) considering their ability to communicate well. The data obtained from the interview were analyzed to describe the students’ critical mathematical thinking process. The results showed that the students with both cognitive styles committed a process of convincing. They tried to reason why they arrived at the solution and convinced others either orally or in writing that every step of the solution was done correctly through a systematic way. Besides, the field-independent student carried out a specializing process in which he investigated the problem carefully, identified the information given, and recognized the information required to solve the problem. In the process of selecting learning methods, teachers need to consider students’ cognitive styles so that mathematical critical thinking skills of students with different cognitive styles will increase.