Why am I confused? Commognitive Conflict in Non-ordinary Question About Number Division

Abstract

In the 21^st century, learning requires students’ creativity in developing questions to understand more of the concepts they had. The ordinary questions are expected to encourage students' skills and creativity to solve unusual questions. Meanwhile, the non-ordinary questions cause cognitive conflict and trigger commognitive conflict in students. Material division of integers can be used to investigate the source of these conflicts. By employing descriptive qualitative research, three numbers of questions consisting of two ordinary questions and one non-ordinary question wasaskedto 40 participants, students of Mathematics Education from several universities in Indonesia. Two research subjects were selected based on the results of their works which indicated a commognitive conflict. The results of their works were then clarified by usingsemi-structured interviews to dig deeper into the causes of conflict in the components of words use, visual mediators, narratives, and routines. Confusion and doubts about their answers lead to commognitive conflict. The conflict occurs in the remaining negative quotient in terms of the word use. The subjects’ visual mediators describe the commognitive conflicts that occur. Meanwhile in narratives and routines, commognitive conflict occurs sincethe subject’s comprehendingare low regarding the remainder of the division which must be non-negative, leading to a commognitive conflict. Therefore, increasing the students' understanding of the concept of dividing integers is needed to reduce these conflicts.