Designing Metacognitive Scaffolding for Mathematical Creative Thinking in Graph Theory Learning

Mathematical creative thinking is an essential competency in higher education mathematics learning, especially in graph theory courses that require students to analyze structures, generate alternative solutions and construct logical arguments. One strategy that can support the development of these abilities is metacognitive scaffolding, which encourages students to plan, monitor and evaluate their thinking processes while solving problems. This study aims to design a metacognitive scaffolding model to support students’ mathematical creative thinking in graph theory learning. The study employed the ADDIE development model involving analysis, design, development, implementation and evaluation stages. Participants were undergraduate students enrolled in graph theory courses at a private university in Indonesia. Data were collected through mathematical creative thinking ability test. Research findings show that the metacognitive scaffolding design developed for graph theory learning consists of five important components: understanding the problem, planning a strategy, implementing the plan, evaluating and reflecting. The integration of scaffolding in Problem Based Learning supports students in identifying problems, producing various strategies, solutions and evaluating alternative answers. The validity results show that metacognitive scaffolding in the form of Textbooks and Student Worksheets, reached the "Very Good" category in terms of suitability of content, construction and linguistic aspects. In addition, the implementation of metacognitive scaffolding provides a real positive influence compared to learning without metacognitive scaffolding. Thus, metacognitive scaffolding is suitable for application in graph theory learning.