Getting the Students to Learn

By Sirdjanul Ghufron

The philosophy of one school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in
the next.
( Abraham Lincoln)

The kind of school that I envision is one that offers a special place for philosophers who ask why
questions. Nothing is more important to building culure of inquiry and a community of
learners……..In schools there are philosophers, usually the five and six-year olds. But very soon
they turn from philosophers into producers.
(Barth 1990 in Louis Stoll 2003).

How to get our class to this place?

Refering to permendiknas no 41 on Standar Proses, we are required to use “alam takambang

jadi guru” as one of the learning principles, which means that the environment can be used as
the source of learning. Tauhidi (2001) claims an instructional model which suggests that learners
can intuitively wonder, plan suitable strategy to answer the question, investigate, reflect, share
and act or apply what we have learnt.

Constructivism-based learning proposes the five-step teaching strategy to give students

maximum opportunities to develop metacognitive skills. The teaching procedure, which is
abbreviated to the 5-E’s, consists of Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate, and Evaluate. It is
suggested that teaching should start from getting the students engaged in the learning journey.
Posing an open question or showing a picture, for example, may arouse the students’ curiosity
and, thus, attract the students to get involved in learning. Once the students are tuned in, they
will develop an interest in doing exploration to find the answer to the question they have
developed in the earlier step. The new knowledge or concept they have gained during the
exploration phase stimulates the students to share with others. Facilitated with questions or other
related tasks, students are ready to be organized in discussions or other activities in which
students explain what they have learnt to their peers or teacher. To reinforce what the students
have learnt, more elaborated tasks can be given. This can be in the form of a problem to solve or
writing tasks so that related communicative skills can be developed. Finally, to confirm the
learning result, relevant assessment procedure is conducted. This is to see whether or not
students have attained the learning objectives.

The learning procedure stated above are based on the assimuptions that learners posses
intelectual capacity which enable them to actively learn and discover new concept from what
they observe around them. With teachers’ facilities, students are expected to explore, gather and
analyse the data and find new concept related to the subjects they are learning. This will provide
opportunities for the learners to develop metacognitive skills.

Similar to this teaching procedure, the permendiknas no 41 2007, suggests the three-phase
method of teaching which consists of: eksplorasi, elaborasi and konfirmasi, with the following
details:
 EKSPLORASI: Facilitate learners with varied teaching techniques, media and
learning resources. Get the learners to be active in interactive activities among peers,
with teachers and learning resources so that they can gain as much information as
possible to facilitate learning. This can be in the form of labwork, field work, library
reseraches, web researches etc. At this point students are expected to acquire new
concept based on the competence standard or teaching objective stipulated in the
lesson plan. (Engage, Explore, Explain)

ELABORASI: Students are given opportunities to expand the concept they have just
obtained by giving facilitation in the form of other related tasks which gives learners
opportunities to apply the new concept in real life use. This can be in the form of
report writing (language and social), problem solving tasks (math and science), a
little class project (vocational subject, language, social, math & science), discussion,
games etc. Tasks should be challenging but doable so as to increase the students’
sense of achievement to develop the students’ self-esteem. Such tasks can be
individual, pair-work or group-work. (Elaborate)

KONFIRMASI: This can be in the form of while-teaching assessment in the form of

observation conducted while the students are doing tasks in the elaboration phase.
The teacher is required to give positive feed back in the form of gesture, encouraging
comments, other forms of recognition. Further tasks which give students motivation
to explore further related to the concept they have just learnt can also be given.
(Evaluate)

The procedure stated above is still general. You need to make it more specific to apply this in the
subject you teach. We hope that we can provide facilities to develop the leraners’ potentials to help
them reach their learning goals.

Resources:
Depdiknas (2007) Peraturan Menteri Pendidikan Nasional RI No 41, Jkarta: Depdiknas
Stoll, Louis at al. (2003) It’s about learning, London:Routledge Falmer
Tauhidi, dawud (2001) The Tarbiyah Project: A Renewed Vision of Islamic Education,www.
Tarbiyah.org
__________Constructivism and the Five E’s, http://www.miamisci.org/ph/lpintro7e.html