Analysis of Students’ Creative Thinking in Solving Arithmetic Problems

It is aimed at analyzing students’ creative thinking in solving arithmetical problems in State Junior High School 11 Malang, Indonesia. It is a qualitative approach with the type of case study where the number of the subjects were 6 students consisting of two students with high ability, two with moderate ability and two with low ability in mathematics. The results showed that the subjects under the category of high ability in mathematics did not show problems dealing with fluency, flexibility, and originality aspects, except in elaboration aspect. Students with moderate ability in mathematics still had difficulty in understanding mathematical problems, it may be seen from their steps in their less structured, detailed, and systematic solutions especially for the first problem. When they solved the problems given, their computation process was less careful, and trial and error strategies were mostly adopted in solving them. Students with low ability had difficulty in understanding the problems. Their ideas appearing in their mind were still trial and error in nature, not well structured, less systematic and detailed so that in solving and arranging the solution steps, they still encountered a lot of obstacles.