Yulia Maftuhah Hidayati, Cholis Sa'dijah, Subanji, Abd. Qohar
The objective of this study is to formulate the combinatorial thinking stage in college students in solving distribution and partition type of combinatorial problems. This study is a grounded theory. The subjects are the first year students of Department of Elementary School Teacher Education (PGSD) Universitas Muhammadiyah Surakarta, Indonesia. There are 40 (forty) college students where they are then reduced to 5 (five) students to be chosen as the research subjects by using the purposive sampling method. This method randomly chooses with a condition that the students already finished the Mathematical Basic Concept (for Elementary School) course. The result of this study is the 4 combinatorial thinking stages in solving the distribution and partition type of combinatorial problems, such as identifying, distributing/partitioning, concluding, and reflecting. Identification appears when the students learn the information in the question, understand the question given in the problem, and write the information of the problem. Distributing is the main characteristic of the distribution type of combinatorial problem, whereas partitioning is the main characteristic of the partition type of combinatorial problem. In this stage, students make possibilities of object order based on the criteria of the problem, distributing or dividing the object order based on the specified criteria, representing the answer in form of table and diagram, and also arranging, dividing, and choosing the information in the problem. Concluding is the third stage in combinatorial thinking in solving the selection type of combinatorial problem. The students in this stage count the amount of possible sets of order formed in the previous stage and making a conclusion from the given problem. The fourth stage, reflecting, is where the students re-check the object order based on the criteria of the problem. © 2020 Primrose Hall Publishing Group.
Universitas Muhammadiyah Surakarta, Indonesia; Universitas Negeri Malang, Indonesia
