Strategic flexibility and performance of students in solving open problems

Introduction. Strategic flexibility is a person's ability to utilize several strategies, switch to other strategies, and use strategies appropriately to get an appropriate solution. Strategic flexibility requires a person to think outside the box, thereby improving critical and creative thinking skills. This is very important, especially in fields that require innovation. In today's rapidly changing world, characterized by technological advances, strategic flexibility is essential to adapt to unforeseen circumstances, and ensure competitiveness in both personal and professional contexts. So that someone with high strategic flexibility is able to take advantage of emerging opportunities with agility and confidence. This study aims to see the relationship between performance and students' strategic flexibility in solving open-ended mathematical problems. Material and methods. This research is qualitative research, with 72 participants from two universities in East Java, Indonesia. While the research sample consisted of 13 people, seven students from UNESA and six from UMM. The instrument used was an open mathematical task. Participants' answers were analyzed descriptively qualitatively based on strategic flexibility indicators. Then categorize the mistakes they made. To determine the significant relationship between the level of strategic flexibility and performance, Chi-squared test was used. KEYWORDS performance, solving problem, strategic flexibility Results. The findings of this study suggested that students with low performance did not propose strategies and could not produce solutions. Therefore, these students were categorized into the non-flexible category. If given the order to re-understand the problem presented, students with basic performance could produce several strategies and switch to another strategy when the first strategy did not find a solution. In addition, students with high performance and moderately flexible could not propose a unique strategy. However, students with high performance who were very flexible could propose and produce a unique strategy and solution. A significant relationship existed between performance and students' strategic flexibility in solving open mathematical problems with p value of Chi-Squared test was found to be 0.006 which is smaller than 0.05. Conclusion. This research was found that high ability students produced several unique strategies. So this unique strategy can be added as an indicator of strategic flexibility. Apart from that, it can be used to see students' strategic flexibility based on differences in learning styles, gender and difficulty of task.