STUDY OF THE ROLE OF MULTIPLE REPRESENTATIONS IN BUILDING MENTAL MODELS AND SELF-EFFICACY OF BIOLOGICAL STUDENTS

Abstract

The concept of biological studies is divided into four levels of representation, namely macroscopic, microscopic, molecular, and symbolic levels. The interconnection of these four levels makes a major contribution to the development of students' mental models in building the meaning and conceptual understanding of biological materials. Mental models are ideas in the minds of students that are used to develop, explain, and predict a phenomenon. The formation of mental models is influenced by the experiences they have, their confidence or selfefficacy, and the problems they face. Multiple representations are believed to influence the formation of mental models and students' self-efficacy. For this reason, an in-depth study of the role of multiple representations in building mental models and students' self-efficacy is needed. This research is qualitative research with descriptive analysis techniques and a literature review (library research). The analysis is carried out by reviewing articles that are relevant to the study being discussed. In the search for articles, four keywords were used, namely: multiple representation learning, biology learning, mental models, and self-efficacy. The articles used in this study were 25 international articles obtained from Google Scholar and ERIC. From the results of the study, it was found that learning multiple representations is very effective in building mental models and self-efficacy in biology students. From the results of this study, it is recommended for lecturers and teachers to use multiple representations learning in the learning process to build mental models and self-efficacy in students.