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This study aims to determine the improvement of student-s critical thinking abilities through a contextual approach with scaffolding. This study is a quasi-experiment in a senior high school in Ciamis, Indonesia. The sample is class XI taken by cluster random sampling technique to get the experimental class and the control class. The improvement of students mathematical critical thinking skills is obtained by doing pretest and posttest in the experimental class and the control class. The test used is a matter of mathematical critical thinking skills that were previously tested. The results showed that the comparison of the increase in student-s critical thinking abilities through a contextual approach was better than the students in the control class. The novelty of this research is the contextual approach that presents problems in the context of student life combined with scaffolding that adapts the zone of proximal development to students. These actions have an impact on improving the mathematical thinking ability of the majority of students in the high category.