The abstract thinking ability of mathematics education undergraduate students in doing proving or disproving problems

Abstract

The learning process in university is different from high school, especially mathematics learning which needs abstract thinking patterns with various deductively argumentations. Moreover, in general, mathematics problems in university level requires solutions such as proving or disproving which is rarely faced by students when they learned in high school. This study aimed to describe abstract thinking ability which consisted of reflective abstraction, empirical abstraction, and theoretical abstraction. This study used a narrative descriptive approach which involved 22 mathematics education undergraduate students which took the course of Algebra Structure I and the data were obtained from two essay tests. The results found that in doing disproving problem mostly of mathematics education undergraduate students showed high performance in reflective abstract thinking ability but low performance in empirical abstract thinking ability, while in doing proving problems mostly of these students showed low performance in both reflective and theoretical abstract thinking ability.