Abstract
One of the factors affecting the students’ mathematical problem-solving ability is the mathematics anxiety. It was commonly believed that the higher anxiety a student feels, the lower performance the student does. This research aims to describe the students’ problem-solving performance on fraction operation within three levels of mathematics anxiety – the high, the moderate, and the low anxiety. In this research, we selected six subjects by administering a questionnaire. The subjects – representing each of the anxiety levels – engaged in a problem-solving test on fraction operation and then being interviewed about their problem-solving process based on Polya framework. After a number of triangulations and discussions, we found that the students with high anxiety tended to ruin their problem-solving process due to somatic symptoms. We also found that the students with moderate anxiety developed a good care such that the process going well. Interestingly, the students with low anxiety did not carefully solve the problems and made some mistakes in calculation. A simple question might be addressed for future research. Does anxiety sometimes develop a good alert that makes the student careful about their problem-solving steps?
Highlights
Despite the common consideration that problem-solving is an important skill in mathematics learning (Polya, 2004; Hadi & Radiyatul, 2014), many challenges are faced by mathematics educators to make their students perform well in mathematics problem-solving process (Syafri, 2017; McIntosh et al, 2000)
We introduced the mathematics anxiety as it was found in the students
We presented the findings based on the level of mathematics anxiety as follows
Summary
Despite the common consideration that problem-solving is an important skill in mathematics learning (Polya, 2004; Hadi & Radiyatul, 2014), many challenges are faced by mathematics educators to make their students perform well in mathematics problem-solving process (Syafri, 2017; McIntosh et al, 2000). Problem-solving makes the students motivated to seek the solution to reach certain goal (Nurrizbaeni & Setiawan, 2019) It requires the students’ readiness, knowledge, and creativity to deal with daily life problems. Polya (2004) said that a problem-solving generally follow certain steps – understanding the problem, devising a plan, carrying out the plan, and looking back at the process and the result of the problem-solving. These steps, sometimes, are difficult to see in the students’ work if the instrument does not explicitly require them to write the details of the steps. If a teacher needs to look at their students’ ability to solve problems according to Polya, the instrument should accommodate the way to see it
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