Revisiting contextual teaching, learning methods

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.