Promoting male and female students' scientific literacy skills through RICOSRE learning model

Abstract

Scientific literacy is one of the 21st century skills that need to be developed in students. Scientific literacy skills can be improved through the implementation of applicable learning models. This study aimed to investigate the effects of RICOSRE, Problem Based Learning (PBL), and conventional learning models on male and female students' scientific literacy skills. This study involved 80 male and 82 female students from Senior High School Number 1 (SMAN 1) Malang and SMA Senior High School Number 8 (SMAN 8) Malang, Indonesia. A pretest post-test non-equivalent control group design was employed in this study. Data on the students' scientific literacy skills were collected using eight essay questions. ANCOVA analysis was performed at a 0.5% (p 0.05) level of significance, and a 5% LSD test was run to test the hypothesis. Even though no significant difference was found in the interaction between the learning models and gender variables, the students' scientific literacy skills improved by 72.64% through RICOSRE, 70.08% through PBL, and 19.82% through a conventional model. RICOSRE showed the highest percentage in scientific literacy increase; therefore, it can be used as an alternative learning model to promote students' scientific literacy skills.