Ninth-Grade Students’ Mathematical Communication Skills in Solving Statistics Problems: An Indicator-Level Analysis
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Mathematical communication enables students to express mathematical ideas through explanations, symbols, and representations. In problem solving, however, students may be able to organize mathematical ideas without being equally able to communicate their reasoning coherently and precisely. This study aimed to analyze the mathematical communication skills of ninth-grade students in solving statistics problems. A quantitative descriptive design was employed with 34 ninth-grade students from SMPN 1 Tempuran during the second semester of the 2025/2026 academic year. Data were collected through a four-item written essay test developed based on four mathematical communication indicators. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, including mean, standard deviation, percentage, and classification based on the mean and standard deviation. The students’ overall mathematical communication performance was moderate, with a mean score of 49.45 (SD = 19.846). Most students (73.53%) were classified in the moderate category, followed by 14.71% in the high category and 11.76% in the low category. Indicator-level analysis revealed an uneven pattern of achievement. The highest achievement was found in organizing and consolidating mathematical thinking through communication (76.47%), whereas the lowest was found in using mathematical language to express mathematical ideas accurately (33.09%). These findings indicate that students were more able to organize mathematical ideas than to communicate those ideas through precise mathematical language and coherent written explanations. The study provides an empirical profile of students’ mathematical communication in statistics problem solving and highlights the need for instruction that explicitly develops explanation, justification, and accurate mathematical expression.
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