IMPLEMENTATION OF INQUIRY LEARNING STRATEGY IN PLANT ANATOMY LECTURE TO IMPROVE THE COMPREHENSION ABILITY AND CONCEPT RECONSTRUCTION FOR BIOLOGY TEACHER CANDIDATES

The purpose of the research was to study the effect of inquiry learning strategy toward the comprehension ability and concept reconstruction of plant anatomy to the students. The subject of the analysis was students of biology education at 3 rd semester Faculty of Education and Teaching, Syiah Kuala University. The method used in the research was experiment design of Pretest-Posttest Control-Group. Inquiry learning strategy was done by giving students structured task, question answers and discussion. Comprehension of the concept was measured by a written test, an objective test which has been validated. Concept reconstruction ability of students measured by comparing the ability of comprehension ability concept before and after lecture. Comprehension concept data obtained was then analyzed using normalization of gain calculation method. To compare comprehension ability and concept reconstruction between groups of student which were equipped with inquiry learning and control groups, they were tested with Independent Sample t-Test. The research finding shown that there was significant improvement toward concept comprehend of students equipped with inquiry learning compare to students not with inquiry learning. Concept reconstruction ability of students with inquiry learning was higher (62%) compare to students not with inquiry learning. Therefore, inquiry learning strategy was effective to improve comprehension ability and reconstruction concepts of plant anatomy.