EMPOWERING STUDENTS’ METACOGNITIVE SKILLS THROUGH NEW TEACHING STRATEGY (GROUP INVESTIGATION INTEGRATED WITH THINK TALK WRITE) IN BIOLOGY CLASSROOM

Abstract

Metacognitive skills play an important role in various students’ cognitive activities. Metacognitive skills can make the students become self-regulated learners. Metacognitive skills in biology teaching can be empowered through the implementation of the appropriate teaching strategies. This research was a quasi-experimental research designed to compare the effect of Group Investigation (GI) strategy, Think Talk Write (TTW), Group Investigation integrated with Think Talk Write (GITTW), and conventional teaching strategy on the students’ metacognitive skills empowerment in biology teaching. Sample of this research were 162 students of the first year natural science class of senior high schools in Surabaya, Indonesia, academic year 2014/2015. The students’ metacognitive skills were measured using essay questions test, given at the beginning and at the end of the research. The results of the research showed that the implementation of teaching strategies had an effect to empower students' metacognitive skills. GITTW learning strategy had the biggest effect on the metacognitive skills empowerment. TTW learning strategy could improve students’ metacognitive skills higher than GI and conventional teaching strategy. This proves that GITTW is one of the teaching strategies that teachers should use to maximise the students’ metacognitive skills empowerment. Key words: biology teaching, teaching strategy, group investigation, metacognitive skills, think talk write