Life-based learning: Two trajectories of students in biology education program

Life-based learning (LBL) offers new sight to conduct an effective way to engage with the 21st century education. As a pioneer of innovative learning university, Universitas Negeri Malang has been developing a new curriculum named Curriculum 2018 which is underpinned by life-based learning approach. This paper is a preliminary attempt to examine the perspective of students in biology education program who are in the twofold condition which is as a curriculum target and as a curriculum developer. In order to investigate the students’ perception on LBL, we employed students’ reflective essays about LBL approach which has been explicitly implemented in the innovation biology classroom module. In our replications, there are four elicited aspects of students as a curriculum target namely the students’ awareness, attitude, development and impact of LBL implementation. In same way, the students’ point of view as the further developer of LBL obtained four aspects that included interest, motivation and challenge to implement the LBL in their future classroom setting. The implication of our inquiry is to improve the enactment of current curriculum and to promote the implementation of LBL in the higher education or school context.