Learning Approach and Soft-skills Contribution toward Mathematical Higher Order Thinking Skill of Junior High School Students

Life skills such as social skill and emotional quotient recognized as soft-skills. Indonesian students soft-skills such as generous and helpful tends to decrease time to time which considered to threat nation character. Meanwhile, many researchers reported soft-skills is a dominant factor to determine one successfulness in life. Moreover, many hypothesize that it contributes much on mathematical higher-order thinking skills (MHOTS). Therefore, this research took place to help students keep and enhance their aspects of soft-skills. This quasi-experiment research applied constructivism-based learning at a public junior high school. Instruments used to collect data on soft-skills were questionnaire, interview, and observation. An essay test was administered to get data on students MHOTS. The data then analyzed using t-test and variance analysis. The findings showed that: (1) Learning approach contribute significantly toward student mathematical high order thinking skills as much as 57.4%. Constructivism learning approach gives more influence to the students student mathematical high order thinking skills than direct instruction, (2) Student soft-skills contributed only 29.9 % (categorize low) toward mathematical high order thinking skills. However, student soft-skills in the guided discovery classroom is better than its counterpart in the direct instruction classroom, (3) Learning approach and soft-skills simultaneously influence significantly toward student mathematical high order thinking skills. Therefore, it is recommended that teachers not only focus on the cognitive development of students but must care about the development of affective aspects as well.