Keywords
word problems
Polya stages
brain-dominance tendency
How to Cite
Abstract
This study aims to describe variations in students’ problem-solving strategies for arithmetic sequence word problems using Polya’s stages and examined in relation to brain-dominance tendencies. A qualitative descriptive approach was employed. From 94 eleventh-grade science students at MAN 1 Palu, four participants representing different brain-dominance tendency scores were purposively selected: LBD 1, LBD 2, RBD 1, and RBD 2. Data were collected through an identification test, one problem-solving task, and semi-structured interviews, and were analyzed using Polya’s four-stage framework. The results showed that LBD 1 and RBD 1 completed all four stages through different strategies. LBD 1 used a formal-symbolic strategy, whereas RBD 1 used a nonformal-enumerative strategy. LBD 2 was able to determine the common difference arithmetically but did not complete the problem and did not check or verify the solution. RBD 2 understood part of the information but used operations that did not represent the structure of the sequence. The findings indicate variations in strategies within the same category and similar levels of success across different categories. The quality of the solutions appeared to be more closely related to conceptual understanding, strategy appropriateness, and verification activities than to brain-dominance labels alone.
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