In its endeavour to assist the development of education in Indonesia, USAID Prioritas collaborates with Indonesian teacher training institutes to enable those institutions (including Yogyakarta State University) to collaborate with local schools.
The focus of the changing role of teachers is designing challeging activities for children to practice and think. Besides, teachers are facilitator. The improvement in the classroom learning environment include gruping the students and making them to collaborate in the learning activities, displaying students’ works, and providing more learning resources.
That was the explanation from Stuart Welson from USAID Prioritas in the National Seminar in Active Learning Facilitator Association (ALFA) hosted by the department of Natural Sciences Education on Saturday (May 9th 2015) in the seminar room of YSU Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences. The other speakers were Ir.M. Zuhrif Hudaya, S.T., a member of the regional house of representatives, and Dr. Dadan Rosana, the head of the Natural Sciences Education Department.
Zuhrif further said that the students activities become more varied, applying learning by doing, and developing life skills. The students learn to solve problems and work collaboratively.
The effect on the partnering schools is that the learning process has improved by applying active learning. The teachers have shown the good practice in teaching and assessing the students. The teachers at the lower grades has performed the good practice in teaching reading. They support the efforts to improve the students ability and skills. The students also show positive learning behaviour. The reading materials in lower grades are used regularly. Furthermore, the leadership in the teaching and learning process at schools has also improved. In addition parents’ and community participation has increased. The schools’ managements have also taken initiatives to create a reading culture at their schools.
Meanwhile, Dr. Dadan Rosana in his presentation explained that the core problem in assessing the learning outcomes lies on how the teachers designs approaches in the teaching and learning process so that the assessments for the learning process and outcomes can be conducted effectively.
The active learning approach in which the students are the center of the teaching and learning process enables teachers to authentically assess each aspect of students’ learning achievements,”closed Dadan.