The analysis of student’s combinatorial thinking skill based on their cognitive style under the implementation of research based learning in the total rainbow connection study

Abstract

Combinatorial thinking skill is one of the skills that someone should have. Combinatorial thinking process provides the systematic steps in solving a problem. The purpose of this research was to analyze the level of the students’ combinatorial thinking based on their cognitive styles. This research used a mixed method that combined qualitative method and quantitative method. The research subject consist of two classes, namely control class with 41 students and experimental class with 43 students. The data collection techniques in this research used GEFT (Group Embedded Figures Test), combinatorial thinking tests (pretest and posttest), and interview. After solving the problem, we analyzed the students’ level of combinatorial thinking skill, namely low, good, and high while the cognitive style we categorize into Field Dependent and Field Independent and we applied research based learning to improve the level of combinatorial thinking skill. The research results showed that based on the results of the implementation of research based learning, 12% of students were categorized in the level of low combinatorial thinking skill, 53% were categorized in the level of good combinatorial thinking skill, and 35% in the level of high combinatorial thinking skill. The inferential statistical results of the independent sample t-test on the posttest results showed that the sig (2-tailed) value was 0.006 (p ≤ 0.05) so that it was significant. This showed that there was a significant difference between the control class and the experimental class from the results of students’ test after the implementation of research based learning. It can be concluded that the application of research based learning can improve the students’ combinatorial thinking skills based on their cognitive styles in solving the total rainbow connection problem.