Marine environment as a real life situation for mathematics problem-solving

Abstract

Problem-solving had been a major trend in mathematics education to implement skills such as critical and creative thinking, analyzing a situation and others which are very important when students are exposed to the world outside of school. Making problem-solving more realistic, application of real life situation during the task is adopted. It is important to provide a clearer picture on the issues used and mathematics that is related to it so that student will be able to see the relevance of mathematics in real life. Therefore, to assist the real life situation in classes, this paper will discuss the development of the problem-solving task with a marine environment as the background for the problem. In hope to give awareness to students, few characteristics of Realistic Mathematics Theory are adapted in the development and during the executionof the task. Five years experienced marine biotechnology lecturer from Universiti Malaysia Terengganu had validated the problems. Validation by the expert had indicated that the task of problem-solving are relevant in term of its presentation, content and context to the marine environment. The execution of the task and its recording are done to a pair of form five students from Sekolah Menengah Kebangsaan Ahmad Maher, Kelantan. The recorded data are then transcribed. Findings had indicated that the presence of the marine environment in the problem-solving task had attracted the students to focus on the problem and at the same time initiate the awareness of the students about current marine issues.