Improving students’ reflective thinking skills and self-efficacy through scientific learning

Abstract

The learning process with scientific learning focuses on students’ abilities in observing, questioning, associating, experimenting, and communicating. This current study aimed to determine the effectiveness of scientific learning in terms of Problem Based Learning (PBL) and Guided Inquiry Learning (GIL) in improving students’ reflective thinking skills and self-efficacy. This research was an experimental study with the subject population of all eighth-grade students of junior high school in Bandar Lampung. The samples of the study were students from two selected schools representing high-rank schools and middle-rank schools. The sample was chosen by purposive random sampling technique. The research design is a pretest-posttest control group design. The data were obtained through mathematical reflective thinking skills test and self-efficacy scale. The data were analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively to obtain a comprehensive description of the impact of learning on improve in both skills. The results showed that (1) student’s mathematical reflective thinking skills in PBL and student’s mathematical reflective thinking skills in GIL were higher than student’s mathematical reflective thinking skills in conventional learning, (2) student’s self-efficacy in PBL and student’s self-efficacy in GIL were not different from student’s self-efficacy in conventional learning. Therefore, it can be concluded that scientific learning effective to improve students’ mathematical reflective thinking skills but it has not meaningful contributions to improving students’ self-efficacy.