Contextual Teaching and Learning

A.    Contextual Teaching and Learning

The CTL system is an educational process that aims to help the students see meaning in the academic material they are studying by connecting academic subjects with the context of their daily lives, that is, with the context of their personal, social, and cultural circumstances. To achieve this aim, the system encompasses the following eight components: making meaningful connections, doing significant work, self-regulated learning, collaborating, critical and creative thinking, nurturing the individual, reaching high standards, and using authentic assessment.

CTL begins with a simulated or real problem. Students use critical thinking skills and a systemic approach to inquiry to address the problem or issue. Students may also draw upon multiple content areas to solve these problems. Worthwhile problems that are relevant to students’ families, school experiences, workplaces, and communities hold greater personal meaning for students.

B.     The characteristics of Contextual Teaching and Learning (CTL)?

There are 8 characteristics of Contextual Teaching and Learning consist of:

a.       Making meaningful connections

Students can organize themselves as learners, who learn actively in improving their interest individually, person who can work individually or collectively in a group and a person who can do learning by doing.

b.      Doing significant work

Student can make relationship among schools and the various existing contexts in the real world as business maker and as a citizen.

c.       Self-regulated learning

Students do the significant work; it has purpose, it has connection with others, it has connection with decision making and it has the concrete results or products.

d.      Collaborating

Students are able to work together. The teacher helps students in order to work effectively in a group and teacher helps them to understand the way how to persuade and communicate each others.

e.       Critical and creative thinking

Students are able to apply higher level thinking critically and effectively. They are able to analyze, to synthesize, to tackle the problem, to make a decision and to think logically.

f.       Nurturing the individual

Students carry on their selves, understand, give attention, possess high wishes, motivate and empower themselves. Students can’t get the success without the support from adult people. Students should respect their companion and adult person

g.      Reaching high standard

Students know and reach the high standard. It identifies their purposes and motivates them to reach it. Teacher shows to students how to reach what called ‘excellent’.

h.      Using authentic assessment

Students use academic knowledge in the real world context to the meaningful purposes. For example, students may describe the academic information that have learnt in subject of science, health, education, math, and English subject by designing a car, planning the school menu, or making the serving of human emotion or telling their experience.

C.     The Procedures of Contextual Teaching and Learning

There are seven main components of the contextual teaching and learning that become the foundation of the contextual learning in the classroom. They are constructivism, questioning, inquiry, learning community, modelling, reflection, and authentic assessment. A teacher uses the contextual approach in the classroom if he/she applies the seven main components in the learning process. The contextual learning can be applied in what curriculum is being done, what subject is being used and what situation the class is.

1.      Constructivism

Constructivism is a basic philosophy of contextual learning. It means that knowledge is built by the human beings less more less, and the result is enlarged through the limited context. Knowledge is not a set of facts, concept, or the pattern which is not ready to be taken or reminded. The human must construct the knowledge and give the meaning by his new experiences. The students must understand and apply their knowledge. They have to work to solve the problem, find something by themselves, and develop the ideas. The teacher does not only give the information to the students’ mind but also can transfer the important and useful concepts to them.

2.      Inquiry

Inquiry is a complex idea that means many things to many people in many contexts. Inquiry is an asking. Inquiry can be applied in all subjects. The key word of the inquiry strategy is the student can find himself. An inquiry activity is a cycle. The cycle consists of some steps. They are formulating the problem, collecting the data, analyzing and providing the result, communicating and presenting the result to the reader, classmates, or other audiences. The inquiry cycle consists of observation, questioning, hypothesis, data gathering, and conclusion.

3.      Questioning

Questioning is the main strategy of the contextual learning. It is the beginning of the knowledge, the heart of the knowledge, and the important aspect of learning. Questioning is a strategy which used by the students to analyze and explore the ideas actively. Questioning can be used for some purposes, some forms, and some answers. Sadker and Sadker (Cooper, 1990:113) explains that to question well is to teach well. In the skillful use of the question more than anything else lays the fine art of teaching; for in it we have the guide to clear and vivid ideas, and the quick spur to imagination, the stimulus to thought, the incentive to action. What’s in a question, you ask? Everything. It is the way of evoking stimulating response or stultifying inquiry. It is, in essence, the very core of teaching. The art of questioning is the art of guiding learning.

4.      Learning Community

In the learning community, the result of learning can be taken from cooperate with another people. The result of learning can be accepted by the sharing from friends, groups, and among those who know to those who don’t know. Learning community has a multi dimension meaning. There are learning community, sharing ideas, discussion, service learning, group learning, contextual learning, learning resources, problem-based learning, learning to be, learning to know, learning to do, learning how to live together, task-based learning, school-based management, and collaborative learning in cooperative learning.

5.      Modelling

Modelling is to translate the ideas that thought, to demonstrate how the teacher asks the students to study, asks them to do what he asks. Modelling is also the way how to operate something. The teacher as modelling gives the model or the way how to study effectively.

6.      Reflection

Reflection is a description of the activity or knowledge that just accepted. Reflection is the way of thinking about something that we have learned or thinking the past about what thing that we have done. The teacher should do reflection at the end of the learning process.

7.      Authentic assessment

Assessment is the process of gathering data which can give description of the students’ learning development. Authentic assessment is the assessment procedure on the contextual learning. The characteristics of the authentic assessment are:

a)      It must measure all learning aspects: process, activity, and product.

b)      It’s done after teaching learning process or the activity is going.

c)      It uses some ways and some resources.

d)     Test is only one of the data collectors for assessment.

e)      The teacher gives the tasks to the students which reflect the real living of the students on every day.

f)       Assessment must focus on the students’ knowledge and skills not quantity.

D.    The strength of Contextual Teaching and Learning.

-    Both direct instruction and constructivist activities can be compatible and effective in the achievement of learning goals.

-        Increasing one’s efforts results in more ability. This theory opposes the notion that one’s aptitude is unchangeable. Striving for learning goals motivates an individual to be engaged in activities with a commitment to learning.

-       Children learn the standards values and knowledge of society by raising questions and accepting challenges to find solutions that are not immediately apparent. Other learning processes are explaining concepts, justifying their reasoning and seeking information. Therefore, learning is a social process which requires social and cultural factors to be considered during instructional planning. This social nature of learning also drives the determination of the learning goals.

-        Knowledge and learning are situated in particular physical and social context. A range of settings may be used such as the home, the community, and the workplace, depending on the purpose of instruction and the intended learning goals.

-       Knowledge may be viewed as distributed or stretched over the individual, other persons, and various artefacts such as physical and symbolic tools and not solely as a property of individuals. Thus, people, as an integral part of the learning process, must share knowledge and tasks.

E.     The weaknesses of Contextual Teaching and Learning.

The weaknesses of Contextual Teaching and Learning is  in applying this strategy in class, because it needs the resource, facilities , labs and others that some school have not it.

F.      The strategy to be a great Project Based Learning Teachers

Involves real world experience:

Centre of Occupational Research and Development (CORD) describes the strategies of the contextual teaching and learning. There are five strategies of the contextual teaching and learning that called a REACT.

-          Relating

Learning is related to the real living experiential context.

-          Experiencing

Learning is focused on the exploration, discovery, and invention

-          Applying

Learning is about the knowledge which presented in the utilization of the context.

-          Cooperating

Learning is through interpersonal communicative context, and the collective using.

-          Transferring

Learning is through the utilization of the knowledge in the new situation or context.