STUDENT’S DIFFICULTIES IN SOLVING PROBLEM OF REAL ANALYSIS

Main goal of learning mathematics is students able to solve mathematics problems. Students acquire high order thinking, e.g. critical and creative thinking, by solving mathematical problems. Students also acquire habits of persistent and confidence in unfamilitar conditions (NCTM, 2000). Actually, university students of mathematics education had difficulties to solve a problem to prove of Real Analysis. Subjects of the lecture can help students to have ways of mathematical thinking. The aim of this research was to describe difficulties of students to solve a Real Analysis problem. Three students had solved a problem while being interviewed by the researcher. The interview was based on Polya’s heuristic of problem solving. The activities was recorded by audiotape. The results were all students understand the problem. They could determine what is known and target/unknown of the problem. One of the students also had known concepts in the problem, but she could not synthesize the concept to make a plan. Students lack in having problem solving scheme. It is interwining between concepts in the problem and strategy of previous solved problems