Fatchur Rohman

The Potential of Cooperative Integrated Reading and Composition in Biology Learning at Higher Education

The implementation of CIRC learning is expected to increase the academic achievement in biology of pre-service elementary school teachers. Cooperative learning is based on positive interdependency, face to face interaction, individual responsibility, communication between members in group and process evaluation in group. The research aimed to study the influence of CIRC on academic achievement in biology in Course of Basic Concept of Biology for Elementary School. The research was conducted for one semester to all students of Primary School Teacher Education Program in Faculty of Teacher Training and Education, Pakuan University, Indonesia consisted of 59 students. The research was quasi experiment with randomize factor. Research variables consisted of learning model and academic achievement in biology. Indicators used in academic achievement in biology referred to the cognitive domain of Bloom’s Taxonomy level. Data used was the result of pretest and posttest of academic achievement in biology. Ancova and descriptive data statistic were used as data analysis. Ancova test resulted in significance level of 0.000 less than alpha of 0.05. It can be concluded that CIRC gave better influence on academic achievement in biology compare to conventional learning. It was suggested that lecturer and teacher could implement CIRC to increase biology achievement. Active learning with CIRC is able to make students reconstruct biological material, thus the knowledge could be in long term memory.