Relational Thinking Process of Junior High School Students with Low Self-Efficacy in Understanding Mathematics Contextual Problems

The students' relational thinking process has a very important role in solving mathematics contextual problems. Relational thinking always exists in human cognition, which underlies the process of thinking about everything from the ordinary (simple) to something higher/complex (Doumas and Hummel, 2004). Students' thinking process can be influenced by students' attitudes, self-efficacy as a person's belief in his ability to perform actions in various situations (Bandura, 1997), will greatly affect his thinking process. This study aims to describe the relational thinking process of junior high school students with low self-efficacy in understanding mathematical contexts problems. The conclusions of this study are as follows. In building relationships based on elements of information in context or prior knowledge, subjects mention the elements of information that exist in matters related to mathematics, which are summations, numbers, and equals signs that they perceive as results. Male subjects are more concerned with the relationship between information obtained that is believed to be used to find answers. While the subject of women tends to bring problems to routine procedures, namely the way of elimination is called the two-variable equation.