Representation Skills of Students with Different Ability Levels when Learning Using the LCMR Model

Abstract

The current study aimed to assess the representation skills of biology students with varying degrees of academic ability when they learn using the Learning Cycle Multiple Representation (LCMR) model. The study employed a quasi-experimental design with a pretest-posttest control group, at March to August 2020 at Universitas Pendidikan Mandalika and Universitas Nahdlatul Wathan in Mataram, Indonesia. The study involved 62 sixth-semester students from the Department of Biology Education. The data were collected using eleven essay questions on Plant Physiology. Before administration, the essay questions were subjected to a validity and reliability check. ANCOVA was used to analyze the data at a 5% significance level. The analysis results showed that: a) there was a significant difference in representation skills between students learning using LCMR and those engaged in Learning Cycle (LC); b) students with high ability levels performed better than students with low ability levels in terms of representation skills; c) the interaction between learning model and academic ability levels affected students’ representation skills, where the highest score of representation skills was reported by LCMR students with high academic ability, followed by LCMR students with low academic ability, LC students with high academic ability, and LC students with low academic ability. These findings imply that adding MR to the LC teaching model can improve the representation skills of students with varying degrees of academic ability compared with the LC teaching model alone.