Increasing Students’ Mathematical Creative Thinking Abilities through Realistic Mathematics Education Using ICT and Deduction

Abstract

Mathematics courses should be given to all students especially those in the elmentary school. It is vital to equip the students with the ability to think logically, analytically, systematically, critically, and creativelly as well as the ability to cooperate. Mathematics learning in the classroom is believed to be less able to increase mathematical creative thinking abilities among students, as shown in the International Student Assessment (PISA) results in 2009. Indonesia’s Mathematics education ranked 59 out of 65 countries. Other results released by the Trends in Mathematics and Science Study (TIMMS) in 2007 showed Indonesian students obtaining an average score of 397, far below Singapore and Malaysia where both countries had both obtained the average scores of 593 and 474 respectively. Due to the above reasons, the need to carry out the research was felt necessary. In realistic mathematics education, students are required to create their own modeling, and develop existing knowledge, thus find new knowledge that will be useful in the learning process. This approach requires students to interact, both with the teacher and other students in order to enable them to exchange ideas and knowledge. In the process of doing that, it is hoped that the mathematical creative thinking abilities will be formed. Learning in this context is supported by the use of ICT as a learning media that displays a real-world context for students. Deductive approach will be used as the comparison group in this study. Based on the results of the processing and analysis of data, it is shown that the mathematical creative thinking abilities of students taught using the ICT-assisted approach to realistic mathematics education is different from students who were taught using the deductive approach. Students taught using the ICT-assisted realistic mathematics education have higher averages. In other words, realistic mathematics education in ICT-assisted is suggested to be better than the deductive approach in improving students' mathematical creative thinking abilities.