Relationship Between Learning Motivation and Students’ Critical Thinking Skills of Mathematics Operations Concepts: A Quantitative Study in Timor-Leste

Learners’ motivation is fundamental to the development of mathematics learning, especially to their critical thinking skills. This study aims to understand the correlation between learning motivation and students' critical thinking skills for operations in mathematics education. This study used a quantitative research method with a correlational design. The main data collection involved sixty-three students as a sample for main data collection. Sixty-eight students, as 15% sample of the total population of 455, for the empirical validity test of the instrument. Data were collected using the questionnaire survey method to measure the relationship between student learning motivation and critical thinking skills. The validity, reliability, and normality tests were used for guaranteeing the valid, reliable and normal distribution of the data. The main data was analysed using the Pearson correlation technique to examine the relationship between learning motivation and students’ critical thinking skills. Therefore, p-value is 0.602, consequently hypothesis H1 is accepted that learning motivation has strong correlation with the students’ critical thinking skills. This result indicates that a student who receives internal and external motivation tends to achieve satisfactory learning outcomes and enhance critical thinking skills in mathematics education. This study contributes to the improvement of mathematics learning for basic education in Timor-Leste