Animal Diversity The ability asking of students is very important in learning to empower student's problem-solving. The aim of this research is to determine the student's asking ability in Islamic senior high school and Muhammadiyah senior high school at Batu City during Biology learning. The research type is survey method with the descriptive qualitative approach. The sample of this research were students at both of those schools. The sampling method was used homogeneity test. The results showed 23.30% of the all students have been asked a question. In 100% question quality at the level of C1-C3 but there is no question at the C4-C6 level. It means that asking ability in the senior high school of Batu city on Biology learning was in Low Order Th inking Skills (LOTS) and needs to be improved.

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Abstract:Activities of teacher's working memory in representing a picture are important in the teaching and learning process. This study aimed to reveal the tendency of teacher's mental representation and teacher's teaching styles in biology class using convention pictures. This research used descriptive method. The research was conducted by involving four high school biology volunteer teachers of grade XI from four schools in Lebak, Banten, Indonesia. Teacher's teaching styles were measured by questionnaires and rubrics adapted from Grasha and teacher's mental representations were measured using worksheets and rubrics developed based on the Causal Network Elicitation Technique (CNET) model. The data obtained were analyzed qualitatively. The results showed two dominant teacher teaching styles; there were expert style and facilitator style. The mental representation of teachers when reading convention picture was in the category of good (2 teachers), adequate (1 teacher) and inadequate (1 teacher). A teacher with expert teaching style tends to have a good mental representation compared to a teacher with facilitator teaching style.

This study aimed to investigate the differences between: 1) low-ability students' critical thinking skills and high-ability students' critical thinking skills, 2) male students' critical thinking skills and female students' critical thinking skills. This research was a survey conducted in some public Senior High Schools (SMAs) in Batu, East Java, Indonesia. An essay test which examined students' critical thinking skills in biology was distributed to 245 participants. The results of the test were analyzed using a critical thinking skills rubric. Data analysis was performed using ANOVA technique. Research findings showed that 1) high-ability students' critical thinking skills were higher than low-ability students' critical thinking skills, and 2) female students' scores on the critical thinking test were higher than male students' scores. These results suggest that it is necessary to implement learning strategies which can promote students' critical thinking skills in the biology classroom.