Probabilistic Thinking Ability of the Students of Mathematics Education Bachelor’s Degree in Terms of Their Cognitive Style

Abstract

Probabilistic thinking is one of the internal factors which are very influential towards the students' ability. However, research regarding the probabilistic thinking has not been massively done. The students' cognitive style, which is defined as the individual trend to retrieve, to process, to construct, and to represent information based on their experiences, needs attention from the lecturers in higher education. The purpose of this research is to find out the percentage and the description of probabilistic thinking ability of the students of mathematics education bachelor degree. This research is a descriptive qualitative research. We measured 58 students regarding their probabilistic thinking. The data were grouped into some levels. Then, we identified their cognitive style by using the instrument of Group Embedded Figure Test (GEFT).This research resulted in the descending order of percentage of probabilistic thinking ability as follows: 51.724% of Level 1 (subjective), 17.241% of Level 3 (informal-quantitative), 17.241% of Level 2 (transitional), and 8.621% of Level 4 (numerical). While the descending order of the percentage of students' cognitive style is as follows: 50.000% of mobile FD and mobile FI, 29.310% of fixed FD, and 20.690% of fixed FI.