DEVELOPMENT OF STUDENT CHARACTER THROUGH PROJECT BASED LEARNING FOR SOCIAL STUDIES SUBJECTS

DEVELOPMENT OF STUDENT CHARACTER THROUGH PROJECT BASED LEARNING

FOR SOCIAL STUDIES SUBJECTS

Naniek Sulistya Wardani

Study Program Elementary Teacher Training and Pedagogy

Faculty of Teacher Training and Education

Satya Wacana Christian University

ABSTRACT

The objective of this research was to give information about the urgency of providing character education for student Study Program Elementary Teacher Training and Pedagogy. In addition, it aims to construct project based learning (PBL) to developing of student character by social studies subject. This research is descriptive research. The data collection technique was an observation and focus group discussion (FGD). Data are analyzed qualitatively. Subjects of this research are student Elementary Teacher Training and Pedagogy semester 2. The research result showed that: (1) character education for student Study Program Elementary Teacher Training and Pedagogy is essential; (2) project based learning (PBL) is a learning model that is appropriate for developing student character

Keywords: development of student character, project based learning

INTRODUCTION

Education is the basis for preparing a quality human being. According to the National Education System of 2003 that education is a conscious and deliberate effort to create an atmosphere of learning and the learning process so that learners are actively developing the potential for the student have the spiritual strength of religious, self-control, personality, intelligence, noble character and skills needed them. Furthermore according to UNESCO, education should be built with the four pillars, namely learning to know, learning to do, learning to be and learning to live together. Education is not only oriented towards purely academic but also put it into practice to solve the problems of everyday life

Nowadays we know that globalization and developmental of information technology have positive impact on humans, but also cause negative impacts that need to be aware of Crisis of ethics and morals of the nation like corruption, integrity, and violence, or the emergence of conflicts originating from difference and conflicts of different cultures are the negative impacts.

Education as part of efforts to produces quality human recources should not only develop the aspect of knowledge and technology, but also teachers life morals and life values. According to Peterson and Seligman (2004) the values are mentioned character strengths. Park, Peterson, and Seligman (2004) told that character strengths can be defined as positive traits reflected in thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Wright and Huang (2008) define character as those interpenetrable and habitual qualities within individuals, and applicable to organizations both constrain and lead them to desire and pursue personal and societal good. Alwison (2006) said Positive character marked by behaviour that highlight the good and the true that is explicitly or implicitly. On the other said, Thomas Lichona (1991) said Children with positive character marked by moral knowing, moral feeling, and moral behaviour that continuously manifested either explicitly or implicitly.

Children with positive character require a fertile environ-ment intentionally created, thus allowing the potential for children to grow optimally into character. Through a variety of experien-ces since the early development of the child have a great influence in their lives later on. The experience various instrumental in bringing about the formation of the so-called personality intact, which cannot be achieve except by developing the potential of children from an early age properly. Family environment filled with love bonds, mutual help, and the warmth of the relationship with each other has a big hand in shaping the personality of children with positive character. Therefore, the role of communication and public information of parents of children with all the content and complexity in

Primary education has an important contribution to young children because it provides a major step for their adulthood and promotes their personal growth and achievement. It shapes the future of humanity. Therefore, empowering the primary education to grow the full potential of young children should become the commitment, passion, and effort of stakeholders.

Performing young generation should be started as early as possible including in the primary school. Since most of the educators are teachers especially in the primary schools, the teachers should be able to build character or insert values in every subject that they teach to students. In the Elementary Teacher Training and Pedagogy, the students should be able to build character or insert values in every subject like the social study subject that they teach to students with use project model.

The social study subject is the science that studies the relationship between human integrated approach. Thus, the development of character in order to become a harmonious relationship between human beings. Character development in formal education is done through a learning process that involves the student directly using project-based learning.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Development of Student Character

A character cannot be assessed in one time (one shot evaluation), but it should be observed and identified continuously in daily activities of a child at classroom, school, and home settings.

Character education is done by instilling core ethical values as the basis for a good character. The goal is the formation of good character. The indicators of good character consist of understanding and concern for the basic ethical values, as well as actions based on core ethical values, or purely ethical. Basic education for character development starts from the principle objective philosophy emphasizes that the basic ethical values or values which consist purely of caring, affection, to honesty, openness, responsibility, and respect. Character development leads to learning in order to understand the shape form of goodness, virtue and act based on the value of value goodness. According to Thomas Lickona (1991), character has correlation with the concept of moral knowing, moral feeling, and moral behavior. Based on these three components can be stated that the characters are well supported by the knowledge of the kindness, the desire to do the best, and do the artificial goodness. Completeness so that one has a moral component to form a character being superior

According to F.X. Wartoyo in Proceeding International Seminar “Be The Leading Entity in Education”, 2012, pp 180, values of character is:

1.   Value of character in relation to God

a.   Religious

2.   Values of characters in relation to self

a.   Honest

b.   Responsible

c.    Healthy life style

d.   Discipline

e.   Hard work

f.    Self-confidence

g.   Spirit of entrepreneurship

h.   Thinking logically, critically, creatively and innovatively

i.    Self-sufficient

j.    Curious

k.   Knowledge-minded

3.   Value of character in relation to others

a.   Awareness about rights and obligations of self and others

b.   Obey social rules

c.    Appreciate other’s work and performance

d.   Courteous

e.   Democratic

4.   Value of character in relation to environment

a.   Care about social and environment

b.   Values of nationalism

c.    Nationalist

d.   Respect to pluralism

Based on values of character, then the learning proses is designed to Project-based learning.

Project-based learning

Project-based learning is one approach of teaching that allows students to learn adult skills such collaboration, decision making and reflection. Collaboration is the core of the various activities and experients that involve students in the classroom or out in the field (Ellysa Aryani, 2012). According to Thomas, et al (1999) in Wena (2010) that PBL is a learning model that enables the teacher to manage classroom learning with work involving the project. Project work based problems and requires students to design, solve problems, make decisions, conduct investigations, and to provide opportunities for students to work independently.

Steps in Project Based Learning leraning as developed by The George Lucas Educational Foundation (2005) consists of:

(1) Starts With the Essential Question

Learning begins with the essential question, namely the question which can give students assignments in conducting a activity.

(2) Design a Plan for the Project

Planning is done collaboratively between teachers and learners. Thus learners are expected to be felt “Have” for the project.

(3) Creates a Schedule

Teachers and learners collaboratively construct a schedule activities to complete the project

(4) Monitor the Students and the Progress of the Project.

Teacher is responsible for monitoring the conduct activities for learners completing the project.

(5) Assess the Outcome

The assessment was conducted to assist teachers in measuring achievement standards, a role in evaluating the progress of each student, provide feedback on the level of understanding that has been achieved learners, assist teachers in developing learning strategies next

(6) Evaluate the Experiences.

Teachers and learners to reflect on the activities and results of the project was run. The process of reflection is done either individually or in groups.

Inside, conclution Heide Spruck Wrigley (1998) in his research: We all await research that can capture the many dimensions of learning that project-based learning addresses: gaining meaning from reading authentic materials; writing for an audience; communicating with others outside of the classroom; working as part of a team, and giving voice to one’s opinions and ideas, using literacy to affect change. In the meantime, we may have to take the project-based learning on faith and see it as a promising approach that are acts much of what we know about the way adults learn.

Research Methodology

This is a descriptive research. The data used are primary data, where researchers must collect data through observation and focus group discussion (FGD). Data are analyzed qualitatively. Subjects of this research are student Elementary Teacher Training and Pedagogy second semester student.

Results and Discussion

Measurement for development of student character through honor a friend for value of character in relation to God; discipline for values of characters in relation to self; democratic for value of character in relation to others; and respect to pluralism for value of character in relation to environment. Instrument used observation rubric. Stage is conducting a descriptive analysis by analyzing students attitude towards all the factors studied by the average value. To determine the average value of each of the student attitude items, it is done by adding up the value of the response divided by the respective number of items or indicators in each variable. To class by using the interval with the following formula: (Supranto, 2008: 74)

Note:

C        =   class interval

K        =   number of classes

Xn      =   the largest observed value

X1      =   the smallest observed value

From the class interval, it is known that the thresholds of each class and then the value of each student will be included as in Table 1

Table 1 Mean Categories of the honor a friend, discipline, democratic and respect to pluralism.

Elementary Teacher Training and Pedagogy student has character. The results of the student are presented in Table 2 below:

Table 2 Student Character

Based on table 2, student has character which has a total average value of 4,22 is included in the very good category, it means that students of Elementary Teacher Training and Pedagogy have character is verry good. Meanwhile, in detail, each of the indicators is as follows: Student has character for honor a friend which has mean of 4,43 is included in the very good category, it means that students of Elementary Teacher Training and Pedagogy have character is verry good. In addition, for discipline and democratic, which has mean value of 4,13 and 3,82 is included in the good category, it means that students have character is good. And respect to pluralism which has mean value of 4,49 is included in the very good category, it means that students have character is very good.

IMPLEMENTING PBL IN ELEMENTARY TEACHER TRAIN-ING AND PEDAGOGY

In PBL (Project Based Learning), teachers are facilitators who help students if they ask for it. A PBL teacher acts more as a resource, than a disseminator of information. PBL challenges students to solve problems, become decision makers and presenters rather than remaining passive listeners. Students learn teamwork, communication and collaboration as well as critical thinking and problem solving. Students will be able to present their ideas or results to their peers, parents and community.

PBL (Project Based Learning), allows students to learn not only the concepts involved in a project, but also to learn how to organize and present their thoughts, how to manage a complex project in a limited amount of time, and how to collaborate with members of a group. (http://darkwing. Uoregon.edu/-moursund/PBL/).

In the following I will introduce my concept of how to implement PBL in students of Elementary Teacher Training and Pedagogy in the second semester.

First step, think about the goals, what you want your students to know, to learn, and to be able to do. The goals are based on the curriculum is examine the interaction between humans and the environment. In this step the students were asked to formulate the problem the interaction between humans and the environment. The problem in terms of the arts, culture, technology, economics and law. From this activity, it appears the entire group can formulate the problem correctly. This is the first step in the PBL, is starts with the essential question. Learning begins with the essential question, namely the question which can give students assignments in conducting a activity.

Step 2 is design a plan for the project. Students makes planning for the project. Student makes instrument questioner for tourist, student makes observation sheet in Kraton Yogyakarta, student makes map tourist in Yogyakarta and soon. Planning is done collaboratively between teachers and learners. Thus learners are expected to be felt “Have” for the project. Then,

Step 3, students creates a schedule for field study. Teachers and learners collaboratively construct a schedule activities to complete the project for one day. The next step, monitor the students and the progress of the project. Teacher is responsible for monitoring the conduct activities for learners completing the project, and student construct the progress of the project is field study. So all the activities done by the students, always monitored by the lecturer and were scored as assessment materials.

Step 5 is to assess the outcome. The assessment was conducted to assist teachers in measuring achievement standards, a role in evaluating the progress of each student, provide feedback on the level of understanding that has been achieved learners, assist teachers in developing learning strategies next. In step 5, all groups can report progress in a timely and complete reports as a reference is given.

The final step is evaluate the experiences. Teachers and learners to reflect on the activities and results of the project was run. The process of reflection is done either individually or in groups. The results obtained from this final step is the student has gained a lot of experience, ranging from reading, to formulate the problem, make a plan of field studies, menyiapkkan instruments, collecting data, analyzing the data, create reports and make revisions. Although the results are not optimal in substance, but the spirit, motivation and curiosity of the students is very high. Basing on the above results, the PBL is implemented by the students well and smoothly.

CONCLUSION

It is argued that one of the most important thing for improving competency student, spesialy students of Elementary Teacher Training and Pedagogy is innovation in teaching. PBL can improve the character of elementary student teachers because for PBL steps include (1)Starts With the Essential Question; (2) Design a Plan for the Project; (3) Creates a schedule teachers and learners collaboratively construct a schedule activities to complete the project; (4) Monitor the students and the progress of the project; (5) Assess the outcome and (6) Evaluate the Experiences. As for the characters owned by students is very good.

REFERENCES

Ellysa Aryani. 2012. The Value of Project Based Learning in Primary School Indonesian Language. Proceeding International Seminar Faculty of Teacher Training and Education. Salatiga: Faculty of Teacher Training and Education Satya Wacana Christian University. 2012. pp 119

Sabar Nurohman. Pendekatan Project Based Learning Sebagai Upaya Internalisasi Scientific Method Bagi Mahasiswa Calon Guru Fisika. Diambil pada tanggal 6 Mei 2014 dari http://staff.uny.ac.id/sites/default/files/132309687/project-based-learning.pdf

Park, N., Peterson, C., & Seligman, M. Strengths of character and well being. “Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology”, 2004. pp.23, 603-619.

Peterson, C., & Seligman, M. Character strengths and virtues: A handbook and classification. New York: Oxford University Press. 2004. Retrieved 2-2-2010 from http://www.amazone.com/character-strengths-virtu-handbook-classification

Supranto, J. Statistika Teori dan Aplikasi. 7 th edition. Jakarta: Erlangga. 2008.

The George Lucas Educational Foundation.(2005).Instructional Module Project Based Learning. Retrieved July 10, 2007 from http://www.edutopia.org/modules/PBL/whatpbl.php

Thomas, J.W., dkk. Project Base Learning: A Handbook of Middle and High School Teacher. Novato CA: The Buck Institute for Education. 1999.

Wartoyo. Evaluation of Character Education: Proceeding International Seminar Faculty of Teacher Training and Education. Salatiga: Faculty of Teacher Training and Education Satya Wacana Christian University. 2012. pp 180.

Wena, Made. Strategi Pembelajaran Inovatif Kontemporer (Suatu Tinjauan Konseptual Operasional). Jakarta: Bumi Aksara. 2010.

Wright, T., A., & Huang, C. Character in organizational research: past directions and future prospects. Journal of Organizational Behavior. 2008, pp. 981-987.