Students Understanding of Ecology: Identifying Interaction between Ecosystem Components Puti Siswandari (a*), Farhah Nadhif Tsalist (a), Sinta Atsmari Khomsah (a), Nazwa Noor Hidayah (a), Risa Meidawati (b)
(a) Biology Education Study Program, Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia, Indonesia
*puti.siswandari[at]upi.edu
(b) UPI Laboratory Senior High School, Indonesia
Abstract
Ecology learning in school should go beyond explaining isolated concepts, it should also involve visual representations to help students comprehend the complexity of ecological systems. This study aims to analyze high school students understanding of the interactions among ecosystem components using student-generated drawings. Sixty-three 10th grade students participated in the study. This study employed a pretest and posttest design by collecting student-generated drawings at two time points: before the instructional intervention to establish a baseline and after the intervention to assess its impact on students understanding. The students drawings of river ecosystems were analyzed and coded based on three system levels: biotic-abiotic (BA), micro-macro (MM), and components-mechanisms-phenomena (CMP). Results from Wilcoxon Signed-Rank (p<0.001) indicated significant improvements in students understanding to represent interaction across these system levels. Effect size calculations revealed large effects between BA:MM and BA:CMP, suggesting substantial learning gains. A moderate effect was observed between MM:CMP. While students showed a clear improvement in describing BA:MM interactions, their depictions of CMP remained limited. These findings highlight the importance of teaching strategies that explicitly integrate abiotic mechanisms at multiple biological organisations. Such approaches can support students visualizing ecological processes as interconnected system, rather than fragmented components.
Keywords: ecology learning, ecosystem, system thinking, visual representation
