A study of junior high school students reasoning skill in mathematics

Abstract

Mathematical reasoning skill is an ability that must be possessed by each student because it involves the ability to think logically and systematically. There are two types of tests to measure students' skills in mathematics TIMSS and PISA. The purpose of this study is to investigate students reasoning skills to solve the tests that are similar to TIMSS and PISA model. The data were collected using 6 questions similar to TIMSS and PISA test from 27 Junior High School students. The data were analyzed through data reduction, data presentation, and data verification, to comprehensively measure students' abilities for analyzing, generalizing, synthesizing, justifying, and solving a non-routine problem. The results show that there are students have good reasoning skills to analyze, to generalize, to synthesize, to justify, and to solve a non-routine problem (62.69%, 66.67%, 48.15%, 24.07%, and 3.70 respectively). There are some factors influence the different level of students reasoning skills including their ability to identify information in the question, use mathematical arguments to explain the answer and identify the strategy to solve problems.