Cognitive conflict strategy to the improvement of students’lateral mathematical thinking ability

Abstract

Challenges of lateral thinking in basic geometrical concepts need to provide adequate opportunities for students to make observations, exploration, investigation, and experiment to see and suspect the existence of a truth and then test it before completing a geometry problem. The research aims to analyze: the improvement of mathematical lateral thinking ability between students who are exposed to cognitive conflict strategy and those taught by expository as seen from overall students as sample, prior mathematical knowledge of students. The interaction between learning types and categories of prior mathematical knowledge, and the difficulties encountered by students in completing lateral thinking questions. This study used a mixed-method of experimental pre and posttest control group design that involved 73 student teachers education at university in Bandung Indonesia as samples.The findings show that: The overall and prior mathematical knowledge of students average value of experimental group which belongs to high category, higher than of control group which belongs to medium category. Conclutions: The mathematical lateral thinking ability of students who are exposed to cognitive conflict strategy has higher improvement level than students who are exposed to expository teaching based on overall students as sample and prior knowledge mathematics of students. There is an interaction between learning types and prior mathematical knowledge of students, thus students difficulties in completing the lateral thinking questions can be minimized.