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Analysis of Students' Critical Thinking Skills in Solving Math Essay Problems Using Think-Aloud Protocol Strategy in Elementary Schools

Critical thinking ability is one of the abilities that must be possessed by elementary school students in developing reasoning, including solving math story problems. This study aims to: 1) identify the results of students' critical thinking skills in solving math essay problems, 2) find out the common obstacles that hinder critical thinking skills, and 3) solutions in developing critical thinking skills. The type of research used is descriptive qualitative research using the TAP (Think Aloud Protocol) strategy which is described in narrative form. The subjects of this study were fifth-grade elementary school students. Data collection techniques were carried out through observation, test questions, unstructured interviews, and documentation activities. The validation process uses triangulation of methods and data sources. The analysis technique was adopted from Miles and Huberman through four stages, namely data collection, data reduction, data presentation, and concluding. The results showed: 1) The cumulative percentage of critical thinking skills of students was very religious were as many as 20% of students completed the given questions with fairly low abilities, 2) The obstacle was the lack of mastery of calculation concepts, especially in numbers with large numbers, as well as confusion in understanding and interpreting the relationship between questions, 3) The solution is that teachers can teach math learning concepts that are close to students' lives, and provide more practice questions to develop reasoning activities for students. The conclusions in the study show that the process of students' critical thinking skills in solving questions tend to focus more on seeing problems and analyzing related answers written in the questions, then solved to determine answer choices using the appropriate formula based on what is known and asked in the question.