The difficulty index of biology topics in Indonesian Senior High School: Biology undergraduate students’ perspectives

Abstract

Biology is a subject that contains of many difficult concepts to study. This study aimed to identify Biology topics taught in Senior High School (SHS) which were considered as difficult materials by undergraduate students. The data were gathered by means of a web-based survey from 198 Biology students of 25 universities and 51 Biology education students of nine universities in Indonesia. The biology students graduated from SHSs in 97 regions/municipality, while the biology education students were graduated from 34 regions/municipality. The data were analyzed using two formulas: 1) Biology Difficulty Index (BDI) to determine the difficulty index of Biology subject, and 2) Topic Difficulty Index (TDI) to examine the difficulty index of each Biology topics. The results showed that the highest value of TDI was Genetics. There was no significant difference of BDI between Biology students and Biology education students. The lower of the students’ BDI, the higher the level of their interest in Biology subject. The primary cause of difficulty encountered by the students in studying various topics of Biology was the complicated characteristics of the materials. The findings of this study can be followed up by designing diagnostic tests and instructional designs in biology topics which consider students’ difficulty.

Students’ Knowledge and Attitudes toward Science: Its Correlation on Students’ Disbelief in Non-Scientific Misinformation

“…Items related to a topic about the stomach as the central spot for the digestive system were the items attaining the highest frequency of incorrect answers. In fact, students' low score achievement in Biology knowledge was congruent to previous research findings demonstrating that many students felt hard when learning numerous Biology concepts (Ozcan et al, 2014;Fauzi et al, 2021). Unlike BK, despite being less maximum, students' ATS score achievement was better.…”

“…The indication corresponded to previous research that unveiled student's low understanding and high misconception rate on genetics (Kılıç et al, 2016;Queloz et al, 2017) and evolution (Queloz et al, 2017;Karataş, 2020) topics. Similar to it, Genetics and Evolution were reportedly considered the two most difficult subjects for most Biology students (Fauzi et al, 2021).…”

“…Regarding biology concepts, vaccination was studied through virus and immune system topics. Unluckily, the latter was also deemed one of the most complicated subjects for the students to study (Fauzi et al, 2021). Undoubtedly, many students acquired less satisfactory input about the topic, making it easy to believe in a vaccine conspiracy.…”

Learning Biology Using Real Object, ICT, and Blended Learning to Improve Factual and Conceptual Knowledge

“…This finding was reliable with the Fisher model, where learning biology originated from the living world. The finding was also in line with experiential learning theory and constructivist learning theory of biology learning (Mostyn et al, 2013;Fauzi et al, 2021;Yapici & Karakoyun, 2021). When the students learned about Plant Diversity, they observed many plants growing in the schoolyard.…”

Factor and Rasch Analysis on COVID-19 Genetics Literacy Assessment Instrument

“…Genetics is often considered the core of biology. However, even though it is positioned as a branch of biology that underlies various other branches, Genetics is included in the material that is the most difficult for students to understand, both high school students and college students (Fauzi et al, 2021). Genetics also be a biological concept that more often have misconception when compared with other (Nurse & Hayles, 2019).…”