How Students Build Their Mathematical Dispositions towards Solving Contextual and Abstract Mathematics Problems

Abstract

Mathematical dispositions affect students' performance when studying mathematics. Teachers should have high awareness of students' mathematical dispositions when solving mathematical problems. This research identifies students' viewpoints about problems in mathematics. Understanding students' viewpoints would assist teachers to elevate students' mathematical dispositions by developing more efficient test items. This is a case study research using qualitative method, of which students who have high motivation in learning mathematics were asked to answer questions related to their mathematical dispositions. Three main focuses observed on this research were students' perceptions, attitudes, and efforts. The data show that the students build their mathematical dispositions through some process. Although they have mathematical dispositions, their preference in mathematics problems is different. Most of the students prefer solving abstract problem while others prefer solving contextual problems. This difference affected their performance in solving mathematics problems. This means that teachers should pay more attention to the form and level of problems given to the students, so that students would have less effort to understand the problems and emphasize their works by thinking more deeply when solving problems.