The Role of Open-ended Tasks in the Development of Student Activities and Creative Thinking

Abstract

This research deals with open-ended tasks whose importance is reflected in them enabling different approaches to reaching various possible solutions appropriate for different levels of student understanding. The basic importance of these tasks lies in the fact they can be used to learn different strategies, deepen students' mathematical knowledge and develop their creative mathematical thinking. The approach to solving open-ended tasks is a step closer to connecting students' mathematical literacy and real-life situations. This paper aims to investigate the effects of open-ended tasks in teaching mathematics on the outcome of learning mathematics and the opinion of students and teachers about it. By comparing the students’ answers, no statistically significant difference was found between the test results of the experimental group solving open-ended tasks and the control group in which students solved closed tasks. This is justified by greater experience that the students have gained in solving closed tasks. By analysing the activity in solving the tasks, a statistically significant difference between the experimental group and the control group was found.

Keywords: class activity; communication; levels of student knowledge; open-ended and closed tasks.