Long-term retention of abstract chemistry concepts remains a persistent challenge in secondary education. This study examined the relationships between learning strategies and perceived representational contextualization with students’ retention of electron configuration concepts one year after instruction. A correlational research design was employed involving 100 11th-grade students from a public senior high school in rural Indonesia. Learning strategies and perceived representational alignment were measured using validated questionnaires, while delayed retention was assessed through a cognitive achievement test administered one year after instruction. Spearman correlation analysis revealed significant relationships between learning strategies and retention (ρ = 0.508, p < 0.001) and between perceived contextual alignment and retention (ρ = 0.501, p < 0.001). Hierarchical multiple regression analysis indicated that learning strategies (Model 1) explained 27.0% of the variance in retention (R2 = 0.270). When perceived contextual alignment was included (Model 2), the explained variance increased to 29.6% (R2 = 0.296), yielding an incremental contribution of 2.7% (ΔR2 = 0.027; F-change = 3.68, p = 0.058), corresponding to a small effect size (f2 = 0.038). These findings suggest that strategic cognitive engagement accounts for a substantial proportion of variance in delayed retention performance. Although the incremental contribution of contextual alignment was modest, its positive association indicates that representationally grounded instructional contexts may reinforce conceptual durability. The results support a pedagogical perspective in which learning strategies function as the primary predictor of sustained performance, while contextualized representational support operates as a complementary factor.
Sulaiman et al. (Tue,) studied this question.