Biology-Critical Thinking Skills of High School Students in Terms of Gender and School Location

. Students' critical thinking skills (CTS) in Indonesia are still relatively low. This study describes students' and the relationship between CTS and their gender and school location. The research was conducted using a cross-sectional survey method. The sampling technique was convenience sampling involving 91 men and 134 women from 7 public high schools in Bener Meriah district which are located in rural areas and 4 are located in urban areas. Students' CTS were measured using essay tests collected via google form and the results were analyzed descriptively. Furthermore, a correlation test was carried out between gender and students' school location on CTS with the Pearson correlation in the SPSS 25 program. The results showed that the value of students' CTS who attended urban areas had an average score of 48.6, while those who attended rural areas of 36.6. The average score of the boys was 39.4, while the average score of the girls was 50.3. The relationship between gender and CTS shows a value of 0.217, while the relationship between school location and CTS shows a value of -0.117. It was concluded that students who attend schools in urban areas have superior CTS compared to those in rural areas and female students are superior to male students. The relationship between school location and gender on students' CTS is low.


Introduction
In the 21st century, humans are faced with unexpected problems, even uncontrollable ones (Kocak et al., 2021).The education system is required to emphasize individuals be lifelong learners, able to manage complex ways of thinking and working, creative problem solvers, use the knowledge and skills they gain to new situations, analyze new information and ideas, communicate, collaborate, make decisions, continue to learn and develop, to position themselves in a world with the flow of globalization, technology, information, and communication are developing very rapidly (Sahin, 2009;Schleicher, 2012;Sturner et al., 2017).
These very comprehensive 21 st -century skills are a demand for students, namely, students must have high-order thinking skills one of which is critical thinking skills (Brookhart, 2010;Sturner et al., 2017;Sun et al., 2022).The education system in Indonesia through the implementation of curriculum has emphasized the learning process that can create human resources who have 21st-century competencies and skills, namely critical thinking skills (CTS) (Kemdikbud, 2013;Kemdikbudristek, 2022).
Critical thinking is an individual's skill in interpreting, analyzing, inferring, evaluating, explanations, and self-regulation (Facione, 2011).Critical thinking gives students' CTS in learning biology in Aceh, especially in Bener Meriah Regency.From various factors, researchers are interested in looking at the picture of students' CTS and seeing whether students' CTS are related to the gender and location of students' schools (rural and urban).It is based on a learning environment that has a role in learning and determines performance in student studies.Because the location of rural and urban schools is related to facilities and quality of learning, previous research results show an uncertain relationship (Darmaji et al., 2020;Kurniawan et al., 2023;Sari et al., 2019;Tamam et al., 2021;Tanti et al., 2020).Research on critical thinking based on gender has also been conducted (Darmaji et al., 2021;Harun, 2021;Iyus & Bustami, 2022;Rahman, 2018;Supriyati & Djukri, 2021;Tamam et al., 2021).Gender has also been associated with students' academic task performance in various studies but without definite and inconsistent conclusions (Ibrahem et al., 2022).Some research results show that the female sex has higher CTS than the male sex (Arslan et al., 2014;Kurniawan et al., 2023;Mawaddah et al., 2018).In other studies, it shows that the male gender has advantages in critical thinking (Ibrahem et al., 2022), and other studies do not show a relationship between gender and critical thinking (Liu et al., 2019;Sahanowas & Halder, 2020).
Based on the explanation above, critical thinking is very important and can determine students' success in learning and their future.Research regarding the level of students' critical thinking abilities must continue to be carried out.This research aims to describe students' critical thinking abilities in terms of gender and school location as well as the relationship between students' critical thinking abilities and students' gender and school location at Bener Meriah District Public High School, so that it can be used as evaluation material for teachers, practitioners and education policy makers.to implement strategies to increase students' critical thinking.

Methods
This study is an analytical survey research using a cross-sectional design, which aims to find information on how students' CTS are based on gender and school location and study the correlation between gender and the students' with CTS.Data collection was collected at a single point in time and was not repeated (Cohen & Morrison, 2011;Patricia, 2017) by online via google form from December 1-15, 2022.
Research samples were taken using non-probability techniques, namely techniques that do not provide equal opportunities for each member of the population to be selected as a sample (Sugiyono, 2017).The sampling technique used is convenience sampling, where researchers choose participants who are willing to be studied (Creswell, 2015).The participants who were willing to be studied were as many as 225 grade XI science students from 11 public high schools in the Bener Meriah district, Aceh.Students are then categorized by gender, i.e., female and male, and by school location, i.e., local locations in rural and urban area (see Table 1).The determination of the demographic category of school locations (rural and urban), is based on the Regulation of the Head of the Central Statistics Agency Number 120 of 2020 concerning the classification of Urban and Rural in Indonesia (Heriyana et al., 2020).Based on classification regulations, this study was followed by 7 schools located in rural areas and 4 schools located in urban areas.The measurement tool for students' CTS uses a written test in the form of an essay test of 6 questions with Biology question material adjusted to the basic competencies of the 2013 curriculum, namely the human excretory system, human respiratory system, human coordination system, environmental changes, ecosystems.The essay test instrument was then developed by referring to indicators of CTS according to Facione (2011), namely interpretation, analysis, inference, evaluation, explanation, and self-regulation.The research instruments that have been developed are then validated by 2 experts to obtain suggestions and criticisms to improve the quality of question items.Furthermore, the question items were tested for validity and reliability through the SPSS 25 program.Item validity tests are tested using Pearson correlations.The results show that each question item has a r count greater than the r table (0.131), so it can be concluded that all CTS question items are valid (Table 2).Reliability tests are checked using Cronbach's alpha ().The result is 6 items of CTS questions have a Cronbach's alpha () value of 0.835.If the value  > 0.8, it is concluded that CTS have high reliability (Ekolu & Quainoo, 2019).The results of the student's CTS essay test were then analyzed descriptively by looking at the average scores of students' CTS based on gender and school location obtained from the data.The average score results are classified based on five levels of CTS criteria (Sari et al., 2019) shown in Table 3.Furthermore, to find out whether there is a relationship between gender and student school location on their critical thinking abilities, the data was analyzed with Pearson correlation in the SPSS 25 program.The results of data analysis are then classified according to the correlation category (Schober & Schwarte, 2018) shown in Table 4.The condition that must be carried out is that the data must be normally distributed and homogeneous, so that the data must be tested for prerequisites first, namely for the normality test and homogeneity test.

Results and Discussion
The results of CTS in terms of school location and gender, in general, can be seen in Table 4.The results showed that CTS in terms of school location and gender had different average scores and standard deviations.Students who attended school in urban areas (mean= 48.6, standard deviation= 21.7) had higher CTS compared to students who attended rural schools (mean= 36.6,Std.Dev= 32.0).Based on the average score, it represents that the level of CTS of students who attend schools in cities is in the medium category and students who attend schools in villages have a low level of CTS.This result is from the research of Darmaji et al. (2020) and Domike & Odey (2011) that the CTS of students who attend schools in urban are superior to students who attend schools in rural.Students in rural areas tend to obtain lower knowledge scores and perform compared to students in urban areas (Anlimachie & Avoada, 2020;OECD, 2013;Tangoa-Villacorta et al., 2017;Wagh, 2022).
The results of CTS in terms of gender, average scores, and standard deviations of CTS of women and men also showed differences.Male students' CTS (mean= 39.4, std.dev= 26.0) were lower than those of female students (mean= 50.3, std.dev= 22.9).The data represents that the level of CTS of male students is in the low category and female students have a medium level of CTS.This result is supported by other studies that say that women have higher abilities than men (Iskifoglu et al., 2022;Kurniawan et al., 2023;Perdana et al., 2019;Shubina & Kulakli, 2019;Tamam et al., 2021).This study measured six indicators of CTS according to Facione, namely skills in interpretation, analysis, inference, explanation, evaluation, and self-regulation in terms of school location and gender.From six indicators, it can be seen that students who attend urban schools have higher average scores than students who attend rural schools.Female students are also superior to male students on each indicator.In full, the results of the average score of CTS of each indicator in terms of school location and gender can be seen in Table 5.
Based on these results, it was concluded that female students seemed to be superior in every indicator of CTS to male students.This is to several previous studies that stated that female students are superior in terms of analytical skills (Arslan et al., 2014;Gunawan et al., 2020;Perdana et al., 2019;Prasadh & Titus, 2021), interpretation, evaluation, and self-regulation, explanation (Darmaji et al., 2020;Sari et al., 2018), and conclusion (Din & Ghani, 2019).The superiority of CTS of female students compared to men is also evident from the researchers' findings on their test responses.Female students show seriousness in giving ideas, indigently, complexly, and logically compared to male students in answering each question item.Meanwhile, the results of the study were based on a review of school locations that each indicator of CTS looked better in students who attended urban schools compared to rural areas (Darmaji et al., 2020;Din & Ghani, 2019;Turan et al., 2022).Students who go to rural schools tend to answer each question item unclearly, incompletely, and illogically and do not even give their answers to the question items given, which indicates that their CTS are low.Furthermore, prerequisite tests, namely the normality test and homogeneity test are used as conditions for the Pearson correlation test.In this study, the normality test used was the Kolmogorov-Smirnov Test to determine whether the data were normally distributed or not.If the significant value is greater than 0.05, then the data shows that the data group is normally distributed.Meanwhile, if the significance value is less than 0.05, then the data is not normally distributed.The results of the normality test on CTS group data in terms of gender and school location can be seen in Table 6.In the data, the location of the urban school has a significant value of 0.200 and the location of the school in the rural areas is 0.00 so it can be concluded that the sample of students from the urban comes from a normally distributed population while the sample of students with a school location from the rural does not come from a normally distributed population.The sample data for gender has a significance value of 0.094 in male and 0.200 in the female, which indicates that the sample data are both normally distributed.
The homogeneity test is then performed as a prerequisite test to see if the sample comes from a population that has the same or homogeneous variant.If the sample data has a significance value greater than 0.05, then the data comes from a homogeneous population.However, if the significance value is less than 0.05, then the data are not homogeneous.The results of the homogeneity test can be seen in Table 7.The results of the homogeneity test showed that the significant value in the school location group data was 0.000.This indicates that the school location group data is not homogeneous because the significant value is smaller than 0.05.While the significant value in the gender data is 0.080 which indicates that the value is greater than 0.05, so the sample of students by gender comes from a homogeneous population.Based on the results of these prerequisite tests, a person correlation test was then carried out to determine whether or not there was a relationship between gender and CTS (Table 8), and a Spearman's rho correlation test to determine the relationship between school location and CTS (Table 9).The Spearman's rho correlation is used because of abnormally distributed and inhomogeneous school location data (Mukaka, 2012).Based on Table 8, the value of sig.(2-tailed) obtained is lower than 0.05 which is 0.001.These results showed that the data were significant or there was a relationship between gender and students CTS.The results of the Pearson correlation test show a correlation coefficient value of 0.217.This indicates that the degree of relationship between gender and CTS has a low correlation (according to Table 10).Although the results of this gender difference show a low correlation number (Else-Quest & Hyde, 2021), further analysis is needed on this relationship, because the average data shows female students have higher scores than men.
It is assumed that female students have high curiosity and confidence compared to men and have different learning interests in each student (Rahman, 2018).High curiosity and self-confidence greatly affect the improvement of CTS (Sun et al., 2022).Verbal and analytical skills in women are superior to men so abilities such as vocabulary, analogy, reading comprehension, and essay writing are also mastered by women.Women are also more responsive to evaluative feedback than men (Tamam et al., 2021).Therefore, based on observing students' responses to CTS tests, female students tend to be able to answer, describe ideas, conclude, and evaluate problems precisely, logically, and complexly.Sig value.(2-tailed) the school location data shows a value of 0.080, which is higher than 0.05.The results showed that the data was not significant, namely the absence of a relationship between school location and students' critical thinking skills.However, if you look at the value of the correlation coefficient, it shows a value of -0.117 which indicates that the correlation between school location and students' CTS is low (Table 9).It is assumed that socio-economic factors can be the cause of differences in students' ability to think critically.In urban environments, students enjoy more socio-economic benefits, such as better educational facilities, and better living environments (OECD, 2013;Sun et al., 2022).Students who attend school in rural areas tend to be at lower poverty levels.This is a significant obstacle to rural education (Anlimachie & Avoada, 2020;Tangoa-Villacorta et al., 2017).These obstacles include the family's ability to support their children's education.Urban families with better socio-economic are better able to support children's schooling than families in rural areas (Anlimachie & Avoada, 2020).According to some studies, almost all students in urban areas discuss education plans after high school with their parents, while families in rural areas do not (Knoblauch & Chase, 2015;McCracken & Barcinas, 1991;Shreve, 2021).It is assumed that this can be the cause of weak student motivation in rural areas (Wagh, 2022).Student motivation is very positively related to improving students' CTS (Liyanto et al., 2021;Muwaffiq et al., 2020).
In addition, the effectiveness of biology teachers in schools also affects students' critical thinking skills.Teachers in urban areas are more likely to have a higher number of qualified teachers (OECD, 2013;Wagh, 2022).Teachers in urban schools tend to be more in their readiness, confidence, and self-efficacy.Another factor, it is assumed that educational resources and facilities are inadequate in rural schools (Knoblauch & Chase, 2015).Urban schools have adequate access to the use of technology in student learning, such as access to wider reference materials (Else-Quest & Hyde, 2021;Khanal, 2016) to support their CTS (Wagh, 2022).

Conclusion
Students' CTS in learning Biology are still not well-empowered and need to be improved.The results showed that there is a CTS gap between students who attend school in urban areas and villages and between male and female students.The results of the study concluded that the level of CTS of students who attend schools in cities and are female is in the medium category and students who attend schools in villages and are male have a low level of CTS.The results of the correlation test between school location and gender on students' CTS were low correlated.This study was limited by a cross-sectional design, so this study was unable to conclude causation.So, a deeper analysis is needed on the causes of the gap in CTS of male and female students in urban and rural schools in Bener Meriah Regency so that innovative solutions can be found to empower students' CTS in Bener Meriah Regency in biology learning.This research continues to be needed to see the condition of students' CTS so that teachers and education practioners can continue to find solutions to overcome these problems.

Table 1 .
Student demographic information by school location and gender

Table 2 .
The results of the validity test of the question items' CTS on each indicator of the question items

Table 3 .
The Student critical thinking skills category

Table 4 .
Category correlation coefficient

Table 5 .
The results of students' CTS on each indicator based on school location and gender

Table 6 .
Normality test results based on gender group data and school location

Table 7 .
The results of homogeneity test on group data based on gender and school location

Table 8 .
The results of the Pearson correlation test between gender and students' CTS

Table 9 .
The results of the Spearman' rho correlation test between school location and