Educational Research and Reviews

  • Abbreviation: Educ. Res. Rev.
  • Language: English
  • ISSN: 1990-3839
  • DOI: 10.5897/ERR
  • Start Year: 2006
  • Published Articles: 2009

Full Length Research Paper

How to classify the diversity of seventh grade students’ mathematical process skills: An application of latent profile analysis

Chanapat Kaosa-ard1*
  • Chanapat Kaosa-ard1*
  • 1Department of Education Research and Development, Faculty of Education, Mahasarakham University, Mahasarakham, Thailand, 44000.
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Waraporn Erawan1
  • Waraporn Erawan1
  • 1Department of Education Research and Development, Faculty of Education, Mahasarakham University, Mahasarakham, Thailand, 44000.
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Suntonrapot Damrongpanit2
  • Suntonrapot Damrongpanit2
  • 2Department of Education Research and Development, Faculty of Education, Chiang Mai University, Chiang Mai, Thailand, 50200.
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Poonpong Suksawang3
  • Poonpong Suksawang3
  • 3College of Research Methodology and Cognitive Science, Burapha University, Thailand, 20131.
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  •  Received: 22 December 2014
  •  Accepted: 28 May 2015
  •  Published: 10 June 2015

Abstract

The researcher applied latent profile analysis to study the difference of the students’ mathematical process skill. These skills are problem solving skills, reasoning skills, communication and presentation skills, connection knowledge skills, and creativity skills. Samples were 2,485 seventh-grade students obtained from Multi-stage Random Sampling. Each student was measured by the mathematical process skills test which consists of 44 items in total. The research results indicated that the students can be categorized into three groups: the high mathematical process skills students (2.74%), the moderate mathematical process skills students (40.48%), and the low mathematical process skills students (56.78%). Moreover, from the research results, it also shows that the creativity skills seem to be the problem in every group of students. The detail of the research findings has been discussed in this paper.

Key words: Latent profile analysis, mathematical process skills, problem solving skills, reasoning skills, communication and presentation skills, connection knowledge skills, creativity skills.