DIAGNOSTIC PROFILE OF ELEMENTARY SCHOOL STUDENTS’ MATHEMATICAL CREATIVE THINKING IN PROBLEM SOLVING THROUGH NEWMAN ERROR ANALYSIS

Source abstract

Mathematical creative thinking is essential for problem solving because it enables students to generate multiple solutions, apply diverse strategies, and develop relatively novel approaches. However, classifying students’ creative-thinking levels does not indicate where difficulties occur during problem solving. This study aimed to describe the diagnostic profile of elementary school students’ mathematical creative thinking in problem solving through Newman Error Analysis (NEA). A qualitative multiple-case study was conducted with 29 sixth-grade students at St. Clara Catholic Elementary School in Tomohon. Students completed an open-ended problem-solving task assessing fluency, flexibility, and novelty and were classified into MCTL levels 0–4. One student representing each MCTL level was purposively selected for semi-structured interviews based on the five NEA stages: reading, comprehension, transformation, process skills, and encoding. The findings showed that MCTL 2 was the most prevalent level (34.5%). Students at lower MCTL levels tended to experience difficulties in comprehension and transformation, whereas those at higher levels generally understood and transformed problems appropriately but still experienced procedural and encoding errors. Transformation emerged as an important intersection between mathematical creative thinking, particularly flexibility and novelty, and problem-solving difficulties. Integrating MCTL and NEA provides a more informative diagnostic profile for designing adaptive scaffolding based on students’ creative-thinking characteristics and problem-solving needs.