Life science literacy linking thinking skills to communication and collaboration among senior high school students in a biology interest class

Purpose This study examines how life science literacy and communication skills represent specific indirect pathways in the associations between thinking skills and communication and collaboration skills among senior high school students enrolled in a biology learning interest programme. Design/methodology/approach A quantitative cross-sectional survey involved 232 students at SMAN 3 Makassar, Indonesia. Data were analysed using partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) through two competing models. Model I included life science literacy and the hypothesised direct and specific indirect associations, whereas Model II excluded life science literacy. Thinking skills were specified as a reflective second-order construct represented by critical thinking and creative thinking. Findings Thinking skills showed their strongest association with life science literacy, whereas communication skills showed the strongest association with collaboration skills. All proposed specific indirect associations were statistically supported. Communication skills represented the strongest indirect pathway between thinking skills and collaboration skills, while life science literacy provided distinct disciplinary and serial pathways. Model I produced slightly higher explanatory power, whereas the predictive relevance of the two models was broadly comparable. Practical implications Biology instruction should integrate critical and creative thinking with the interpretation of biological evidence, evidence-based discussion, and collaborative inquiry. Curriculum and assessment should embed communication and collaboration within disciplinary biology tasks rather than treat them as content-independent competencies. Originality/value This study integrates thinking skills, life science literacy, communication skills, and collaboration skills within a second-order cognitive-disciplinary-interactional framework. It distinguishes literacy-mediated, communication-mediated, and serial indirect associations while comparing models with and without life science literacy.