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Based on its context, the mathematics problems are
grouped into four types of problem; personal,
scientific, occupational and societal. As for its
content area, the categories of the problems are
space and shape, quantity, change and relationship,
and uncertainty of data.
PISA results analysis shows that the skill
measured by PISA predicts students’ later success
better than the competencies indicated by students’
academic performance (Schleicher, 2007).
Therefore, many countries including Indonesia use
PISA surveys as reference when they reform their
educational and educational practice (Grek, 2009;
Liang, 2010). Indonesia’s first participation in PISA
was in 2000 (the survey was completed in 2002).
The result was quite shocking as among 41
participating countries, Indonesia ranked in 38
th
place far below Thailand, a neighbourhood country
(OECD, 2004). This result indicates that the
education quality of Indonesia was low by
international standard (The World Bank, 2015). The
result of PISA 2000 evoked Indonesian government
to invest massively for Indonesia’s education system
(The World Bank, 2015).
Despite the huge investment, there was no
significant increase of Indonesian school children’s
performance in the next PISA, especially in
mathematics literacy. In PISA 2012 where
mathematics is the major domain, Indonesian school
children mathematics performance ranked in 64
th
place among 65 participating countries lower then
Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam (OECD, 2013).
2012 was not the only year Indonesian students
performed poorly in mathematics. In PISA 2009
only one third of Indonesian school children could
solve mathematics task involving daily life context
despite all the information needed to solve the task
was given and the questions was clearly defined
(OECD, 2010).
The poor performance in mathematics literacy by
Indonesian students in PISA should become concern
of Indonesian government and educators as
mathematical problems presented in PISA are
related to everyday life where various contexts are
involved. These problems require students to apply
some fundamental mathematical capabilities such as
communication, mathematising, representation,
reasoning and argument, devising strategies to solve
the problem, using symbolic, formal and technical
language and operations, and using mathematical
tools. These capabilities also become the focus of
newest mathematics curriculum in Indonesia
(namely curriculum 2013) as mentioned in the 3
rd
and 4
th
mathematics core competencies which reflect
the qualities that must be mastered by students when
they finish their education in primary and secondary
level (Kementrian Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan
Republik Indonesia, 2013) stating “understanding,
applying and analysing factual, conceptual, and
procedural knowledge…” and “experimenting,
processing, reasoning, and presenting knowledge in
concrete and abstract domain…”. That being said,
Indonesian students’ constant poor performance in
mathematics domain in PISA may suggest that
school education failed to help students in achieving
those competencies.
Considering the poor performance of Indonesian
students in PISA, especially in mathematics domain,
it is necessary to investigate students’ difficulties in
solving PISA mathematics problem. Hence, this
study aims to analyse students’ difficulties to solve
PISA mathematics problem. Four research questions
are derived from this aim:
1) What errors do students make when solving
mathematics problem from PISA 2012?
2) Based on the mathematical content area, in
what type of task do students make error the
most?
3) Based on the context, in what type of task do
students make error the most?
4) Based on the mathematical process, in what
type of task do students make error the most?
2 METHODS
2.1 Participant
The participants of this study were28 students from
grade IX in MTs Ma’arif Assa’adah II Bungah-
Gresik-Indonesia with the age ranged from 14 to 15
years old (21 students were 14 years old, and 7
students were 15 years old). The selection of the age
range of the subjects aimed to have the subject of
this research close to the age range of PISA target.
The gender of all participants was female as the
school where the data was collected is a junior high
school for girls.
2.2 Instrument
The mathematics problem used for this study was
taken from released mathematics items by PISA
2012. The problems were selected such that each
process, context, and content distributed equally in
the questions given to the participant. In total, 12
questions were selected with each process consists
of four questions, each content consists of three
questions and each context consist of three
questions. The selected questions then translated into
Bahasa Indonesia, and then the researcher consulted
the mathematical questions to experienced teacher to
The Analysis of Students’ Difficulties in Solving PISA Mathematics Problems
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