Profile of Students’ Strategy in Senior High School with Cognitive Reflective and Impulsive Style in Solving the Combinatorial Questions

Abstract

Abstract The goal of this research is to describe the strategies used by the Senior High students with the reflective and impulsive cognitive style in solving combinatorial questions. The strategy is seen from three aspects, namely: formulating, representing, and solving aspect. The subject of the research is the eleventh grade students based on the test of MFFT (The Matching Familiar Figures Test), to determine the reflective and impulsive cognitive style and also the communicative of research subject. The data is collected by giving the combinatorial questions and identifying the subject’s strategy in solving the questions through interview. The validation used is time triangulation. The data analysis used is data reduction, data representation, and conclusion. The result shows that the students with reflective type are different from the students with impulsive type. When it is in the formulation stage, student with reflective cognitive style (RCS) reads the question slowly with strong intonation and gives the information by using his own words. In the representation, RCS draws four parallel boxes as many as the representation of the digits. In solving the question, RCS chooses the strategy based on the question rule, by memorizing and using strategy, RCS ways checks each step. While, in the formulation, ICS reads the question first, then makes parts of the questions by not using his own words. In the representation, student with impulsive cognitive style (ICS) uses the mathematics symbol. In solving the questions, ICS chooses a strategy fast without seeing the question rules overall and uses the strategy spontaneously without rechecking so that there are many mistakes found.