Improving Mathematical Students’ Creative Thinking Skill and Representation Through the PjBL Model

Abstract

This study aims to analyze the increase of students' creative thinking skills and mathematical representation ability. Mathematical representation ability is the ability of students to transform notations, tables, diagrams, or other mathematical expressions into new forms. This skill helps students develop ideas for solving problems (creative thinking skills). Through the PjBL learning model, students can represent data in the form of bar and line graphs, which makes it easier for them to develop ideas for solving problems. This study was conducted in one of the public elementary schools in Yogyakarta. The subjects of this study were fifth grade students with a total of 26 children. The research method used in this study is classroom action research with an instrument in the form of a descriptive test. The results showed that students' creative thinking and mathematical representation skills improved by using the PjBL model. Students' ability to think mathematically creatively has an initial percentage of 49%, which increases to 56% in Cycle I and 75% in Cycle II. Students' ability to represent mathematically also increased from an initial classical percentage of 47% to 70% in Cycle I and 83% in Cycle II. Therefore, it can be concluded that the PjBL learning model can improve fifth graders' creative thinking and mathematical representation skills in learning mathematics.