Levels of Inquiry and Reading-Questioning-Answering (LoIRQA) to Enhance High School Students' Critical and Creative Thinking

Abstract

It has been demonstrated that Levels of Inquiry (LoI) can enhance students' critical and creative thinking skills. However, time constraints make LoI less practical for high school biology classes. LoI can be integrated with the Reading, Questioning, and Answering (RQA) strategy to overcome this problem. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the LoI and RQA integration (LoIRQA) impact on high school students' critical and creative thinking skills. This study employed a quasiexperimental design with three treatment groups: LoIRQA, LoI, and RQA. The study's population involved all eleventh-grade students at a public high school in Mojokerto, Indonesia. The sample was determined using a random sampling technique, and 144 students participated in this study. The research data were collected using an essay test and examined using the ANCOVA and LSD tests at a 5% significance level. On the critical thinking post-test, LoIRQA students achieved a higher mean score (79.972) than LoI students (77.315) or RQA students (73.071). Similarly, on the creative thinking post-test, LoIRQA students showed the highest mean score (83.195), followed by LoI students (78.528) and RQA students (73.471). These findings indicate that LoIRQA was more effective in enhancing' students' critical and creative thinking skills than LoI or RQA.