Effectiveness of the PRO-CARLO learning model on students’ scientific literacy and creative thinking

Abstract

This research investigates the effectiveness of the PRO-CARLO instructional model in enhancing junior high school students’ scientific literacy and creative thinking within science learning contexts. The first stage is initial stimulation, which involves presenting real phenomena or problems to stimulate curiosity, to foster the ability to explain scientific phenomena, and foster students' fluency in thinking. The second stage is problem description, which helps students identify and analyze problems, fostering flexibility in seeking alternative solutions. The third stage is constructing a plan, where students creatively design solutions, hypotheses, and scientific investigations. The fourth stage is synergizing knowledge by connecting relevant concepts and information to strengthen understanding and elaborate ideas. The fifth stage is elaboration of learning products, where students present their ideas in the form of work, reports, or projects in greater detail and structure. Finally, the sixth stage is the delivery of evaluation and reflection, which aims to help students evaluate their learning outcomes and to reflect on and refine their developed ideas. The research was conducted using a quasi experimental framework in which students’ performance was measured before and after the intervention. A total of 112 junior high school students participated and were assigned to two different instructional conditions. Data on scientific literacy and creative thinking were collected through validated assessment tools. Data were analyzed using MANCOVA with students’ prior knowledge treated as a covariate. The results indicate that the PRO-CARLO learning model has a statistically significant simultaneous effect on students’ scientific literacy and creative thinking skills. Moreover, significant effects were found for each dependent variable after controlling for initial ability, with effect size values classified as high. These findings suggest that instruction integrating character education and local wisdom can enhance the quality of science learning by providing structured, contextual, and meaningful learning experiences. This study contributes to instructional research by providing empirical evidence of an instructional model that effectively supports the development of scientific literacy and creative thinking skills. The PRO-CARLO model is an alternative approach to support students’ 21st-century skills in science learning.