Revisiting contextual teaching, learning methods

Totok Amin Soefijanto, Jakarta

Many concepts in education come and go in this land. While a few of them are worth our time, effort, and thoughts, the majority of these so called "breakthroughs" are just enterprizes of trial and error. One of them, however, can be considered a valuable topic for our discussion. The concept is CTL (Contextual Teaching and Learning), a well-known educational concept that has been implemented, or is at least in the trial stages, in many Indonesian elementary and secondary schools these days.

CTL is simple, but requires the teacher's creativity to make it work. The basic of CTL is to teach students to utilize their environment and background as much as possible. So, in CTL, the term "context" -- meaning surroundings, momentum, environment, and relevance -- is very important.

Indeed, context is one of the four factors in the learning process besides teachers, students, and lesson plans. Indeed, John Dewey, the father of constructivism, believes that a learner learns new things from his or her previous experience. In other words, the only way to make a learner learn is by passing on the knowledge in stages and pieces that the learner is familiar with.

An example is asking students to recite lyrics from a Peterpan song for a topic in the Bahasa Indonesia subject. Why not? This band is one of the students' favorites. This will create a familiar, if not comfortable, learning atmosphere in the classroom.

Later on in the process, teachers can insert more serious poems from Chairil Anwar or W.S. Rendra. We must also be aware of the students' attention span by chopping the topics into several pieces and breaking them up with hands-on activities or exercises. These breaks and exercises will refresh the students' minds and prepare them for next topic of the day. We should not leave our students exhausted, bored and eventually losing focus on the subject matter.

In a dysfunctional CTL classroom, students might listen to a pop song while the teacher is explaining a topic that started with that song but later on the subject matter quickly becomes unfamiliar to them. Teachers must know how to explain Chairil Anwar's poem using Peterpan's lyrics by comparing the two and asking students to express their theories and opinions about them.

Due to its complexity, many Indonesian teachers are jokingly said to practice a different kind of CTL -- Catat lalu Tinggal Lari or "write it down and run away". In fact, CTL should help teachers apply a teaching-learning strategy that appreciates the surroundings of both the students and the teachers. CTL is one of the constructivist approaches that considers learners' previous experience as the most significant factor in the process of learning new ideas.

The main purpose of education is to pass on our knowledge to our children and the generations to come, while realizing that much of this "knowledge" will later on become obsolete. We also expect that our education will make our children able to re-learn so they not only survive in this world, but also improve their lives.

How much have we achieved implementing the concept of CTL -- an idea that many teachers find difficult? We have a long way to go, it seems, with teachers still far from using all the tricks in CTL to keep students wanting to learn.

Teachers are giving up early because the handouts and "training materials" from their supervisors at the office of the National Education Ministry are as thick as their unfinished grading books. Add the handbook, and CTL will become a new syllabus monster that creates more problems than solutions for teachers.

Education reform will not succeed without teachers' participation. This is a key concept that does not need fancy research to prove. Indeed, educationalists must help formal CTL trainers by simplifying handouts and training to a functional level.

Nevertheless, we should also give teachers an option that allows them to learn about CTL in depth. This functional approach can be divided into two strategies: training-wheel and scenario- driven. The training-wheel strategy provides limited information and most of the basics of CTL practice in the classroom from A to Z and in a linear fashion.

Meanwhile, if the teachers have comprehended the subject matter and know how to implement it, then we can introduce the scenario-driven strategy that allows teachers to read and learn about the background, theory and philosophy of the CTL method. This strategy will open an important option for teachers to invent new kinds of CTL concepts that work in Indonesia.

The late Lev Semenovich Vygotsky suggests that learners must have a good base of knowledge and skills before learning at higher levels. He called this idea the ZPD, or Zone of Proximal Development. Using this approach, we should know how to select teachers who can implement CTL.

Teachers who have problems in teaching using regular methods should be trained with the training-wheel strategy. We can use the scenario-driven strategy for teachers who are succeeding in their regular teaching activities.

All attempts to implement seminal concepts in education like CTL are worth trying. Hopefully, we can create a genuine teaching and learning system that has sound roots in our country. We cannot just stop with the teaching manuals handed over by international aid agencies and donor countries.

We must invent or at least improvise. By creating our own methods and systems, we can contribute our own breakthroughs in education to the world. Our children, regardless their socio- economic background, deserve only the best from us.

The writer is a Boston University graduate and serves as a part-time faculty member of the International Undergraduate Program at Bina Nusantara University, Jakarta.