Leveling Students’ Creative Thinking in Solving and Posing Mathematical Problem

Many researchers assume that people are creative, but their degree ofcreativity is different. The notion of creative thinking level has beendiscussed .by experts. The perspective of mathematics creative thinkingrefers to a combination of logical and divergent thinking which is basedon intuition but has a conscious aim. The divergent thinking is focusedon flexibility, fluency, and novelty in mathematical problem solving andproblem posing. As students have various backgrounds and differentabilities, they possess different potential in thinking patterns,imagination, fantasy and performance; therefore, students have differentlevels of creative thinking. A research study was conducted in order todevelop a framework for students’ levels of creative thinking inmathematics. This research used a qualitative approach to describe thecharacteristics of the levels of creative thinking. Task-based interviewswere conducted to collect data with ten 8thgrade junior secondary schoolstudents. The results distinguished five levels of creative thinking,namely level 0 to level 4 with different characteristics in each level.These differences are based on fluency, flexibility, and novelty inmathematical problem solving and problem posing. Keywords: student’s creative thinking, problem posing, flexibility,fluency, novelty DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.22342/jme.1.1.794.17-40