The Relation of Cognitive Activities and Students Comprehension to Spatial Isomorphism Diagram of Plant Anatomy in Senior High School
Studying complex and abstract plant anatomy, the use of isomorphism diagram is one way to help students to understand the concepts. When studying diagram, students surely involve complex cognitive activities. One of The students’ successes in understanding the various concepts contained in the diagram, can be determined by cognitive activities that occur in working memory. This research is a descriptive study which includes 10 senior high school students in Bandung. The research aims to analyze the relation between cognitive activities and students’ comprehension towards spatial isomorphism diagrams of plant anatomy. The students are asked to analyze the spatial isomorphism diagrams of plant anatomical structures. Then, the students will be given questions to measure the level of comprehension after learning spatial isomorphism diagrams. The result shows that there are five kinds of cognitive activities when students study spatial isomorphism diagram. Those are activating prior knowledge, identifying images, comparing images, interpreting symbols, and drawing conclusion. Hence, there are several students who have low abilities, they only have two kinds of cognitive activities. This is in accordance with the level of students’ understanding of plant anatomy in the medium to low categories. The result shows that the type of cognitive activities that students have contributes the students’ conprehension of plant anatomy.