The Scientific Approach in Education

The 2013 curriculum provides a new approach in teaching process as the demand in 21 st century.
Therefore, it provides scientific approach to develop the students’ skill, knowledge and attitude.
In scientific approach, it consists of learning phases constructed from observing, questioning,
collecting information/experimenting, associating, and communicating (Kementrian Pendidikan
dan Kebudayaan, 2013d). Moreover, by this approach students are expected to have good
attitude, skills, and knowledge. The attitudes acquired through activities, for example "receiving
lesson in a good attitude, doing tasks energetically and respecting other students in the group
study". The knowledge is obtained through the activities of "remembering the material of lesson,
understanding the material, and applying what is understood, analyzing, evaluating, and
creating” .The skills are acquired through activities of "observing the material that relates to
lesson, questioning something to know deeper, implementing what have been understood,
associating, and communicating what have been obtained to other students”. (Kementrian
Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan, 2013c). Furthermore, the changing curriculum focuses on the
future. It means that teachers should know what their students need in real life. It is to address
the emergence of the global era which needs the ability to communicate particularly in English.
Therefore, English becomes one of the crucial subjects at school.
A learning approach can be regarded as a scientific approach if it meets the seven learning
following criteria: first, the learning material based on facts or phenomena that can be explained
logically, not merely approximately, imaginatively as in a legend or a myth. Second, teachers’
explanation, students’ response, and teachers’ educational interaction students are free of
prejudice necessarily, subjective reasoning, or reasoning that deviates from logical reasoning.
Third, encouraging and inspiring students to think critically, analytically, and precisely in
identifying, understanding, solving problems, and applying the learning materials. Fourth, enable
the students to think in a hypothetical look at the differences, similarities, and another link from
learning material. Fifth, persuade and motivate the students are able to understand, implement,
and develop patterns of rational and objective thinking in response to the learning material.
Sixth, it should be based on concepts, theories, and empirical facts that can be justified. Seventh,
learning objectives are formulated in a simple and clear, yet an attractive  presentation system
(Direktorat Jenderal Pendidikan Dasar, 2013a). The 2013 curriculum emphasizes on the modern
pedagogical dimension in learning activities using scientific approach. In  principle, the learning
activities are an educational process that provide an opportunity for students to develop their
potential abilities. It is expected that the curriculum can increase the students’ attitude,
knowledge, and skill needed for them to contribute to society, nation, and mankind. Therefore,
learning activities aim at empowering all potential students to have competence skill. The
function of teacher as facilitator is providing students with useful phase (Mayer, 2008:8). It
encourages the students to construct new information and interpret their phases in the classroom.
Dealing with case, the teachers can guide them for more meaningful learning. Moreover, in the
2013 curriculum, the function of teacher is as a guide who assists the students to find something
new by discovering, as what the  process of scientific approach has included. According to
Education and Culture Minister (2013c) scientific approach is to encourage and inspire students
to think critically, analytically, and precisely in identifying, understanding, solving problems,
and applying the learning materials. It is to encourage and inspire the students to be able to think
in a hypothetical way in looking at the differences, similarities, and linking one to another from
the learning material. It is to encourage and inspire the students to be able to understand,
implement, and develop rational and objective learning patterns of learning materials. It is also
based on concepts, theories and empirical facts that can  be accounted for and the learning
objectives formulated in a simple and obvious way, but interesting in its presentation. The
learning outcomes of scientific approach creates  productive, creative, innovative, and effective
students through strengthening the integrated attitudes, skills, and knowledge (Kementrian
Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan, 2013c). In addition, according to McCollum (2009) the important
components of teaching using a scientific approach is to provide learning that can increase a
sense of curiosity (foster a sense of wonder), develop the skill of observation (encourage
observation), analysis (push for analysis) and communicate (require communication). The
required learning model is able to generate the capacity to learn, not only gained some
knowledge, skills, and attitudes, but more important is how the knowledge, skills, and attitudes
are acquired  by student. The learning activities in this step are
reading a text, listening to teacher’s
explanation, paying attention (without or with tools). The competence is developed to train
seriousness, thoroughness, and searching for information (Kementrian Pendidikan dan
Kebudayaan, 2013d). The teacher activities in observing are presenting the context through
pictures,  presenting audio visual material, showing realia, conducting excursions, carrying out
field trips, establishing social purpose through discussion and surveys (Kementrian Pendidikan
dan Kebudayaan, 2013b). The learning activities in observing  phase are paying attention to the
picture, reading text which provided by the teacher, listening to the teacher’s explanation,
imitating the model of description text, discussing about a thing that is unknown and want to
know (Direktorat Jenderal Pendidikan Dasar, 2013b; Direktorat Pembinaan Sekolah Menengah
Pertama, 2013). The process of observing facts or phenomena exposure includes listening
activities, reading text,  paying attention to the social function, the structure of the text, linguistic
elements, and delivery formation or writing. After the observing phase, the teacher conducted
questioning phase. The learning activity in this phase is ask questions about information that is
not understood from what is observed or questions to obtain additional information about what is
observed. The competence that is developed by this curriculum is creativity, curiosity, the ability
to formulate questions to establish the critical thinking necessary for intelligent life and long life
learning (Kementrian Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan, 2013d). In addition, the criteria of good
questions are brief and clear question, inspiring question, probing or divergent question, validity
question, giving opportunity to the students to rethinking, stimulating students’ cognitive ability
and stimulating interaction process (Direktorat Jenderal Pendidikan Dasar, 2013a).

The role of teacher in this stage is he gives initial question that encourages students to ask. He
also conducts discussion to build up students’ interest. It can be good way to persuade students to
ask a question. The objective of this stage is in order to students to think critically, logically and
systematically. The process is performed through questioning discussion activities and group
work and class discussion. Activity can ask them question the distinction made in the form of
exposure to  both orally and in writing in English and Indonesian, including usage differences,
differences in sentence patterns, and content of the discourse as central idea, specific
information, detailed information, reference the word, and so on. T
he students’ activities in
this activity are asking or answering question to the teacher about things related to lesson
(Direktorat Pembinaan Sekolah Menengah Pertama, 2013). For instance, they ask about content
of text, meaning text, grammar, text structure, the function of communicative text, things which
want to know in simple way. The students ask how to describe people, animal, and things. In
order to answer question in questioning stage, the students need collecting
information/exploring. The learning activity is doing experiments by discussing, reading sources
other than textbooks by using dictionary to find difficult words, observing the objects/events/
activities, having interview with the informant. The competence is developed to develop an
conscientious attitude, honest, polite, respect other people's opinions, abilities communicating,
implementing the ability to gather information through a variety of ways to learn, develop the
habit of learning and long life learning (Kementrian Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan, 2013d). The
teacher activities in collecting information/exploring are 1) sorting, matching, labeling activities;
2) activities focusing on device; 3) small group construction of text; 4) jigsaw and information
gap activities; 5) presentation and practice activities relating to the grammatical features of text;
6) skeleton text (Direktorat Jenderal Pendidikan Dasar, 2013b).
In addition, the students’ activities in
collecting information/exploring as follow: 1) reading various descriptive texts; discussing about
the material; 3) studying in group; 4) sorting, matching and labeling activities such underlining
pronoun in texts, circling adjective in texts, giving mark triangle for verb in group; 5) having
interview with informant (Direktorat Jenderal Pendidikan Dasar, 2013b; Direktorat Pembinaan
Sekolah Menengah Pertama, 2013:5). The next learning phase is associating. The learning
activities of these  phase is analyzing collected information either limited from the result of
activities or from observing and collecting information. Examining the collected information
from the one improving the comprehension to the information analysis aiming at looking for the
solution from many different sources having different and opposite point of view (Kementrian
Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan, 2013d). The competence that is developed are develop attitudes
honest, conscientious, disciplined, law-abiding, hard work, ability to implement procedures and
inductive and deductive thinking skills in concluding (Kementrian Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan,
2013d). This phase aims to build the capacity to think and act scientifically.
The teacher’s
activities in associating are 1) demanding students to analyze the result of exploring; 2) self
assessment and peer assessment activities; 3) demanding students to sequence the  pictures; 4)
comparing the model text with other text (Direktorat Jenderal Pendidikan Dasar,
2013b; Direktorat Pembinaan Sekolah Menengah Pertama, 2013). This activity also can be
designed by teacher through situations that are engineered in group activities so students do
activities such as analyzing texts, classify, categorize, infer, compare different expressions, text
structure, and elements of language, discuss the content of the discourse, as well as obtaining
feedback from teacher. In
addition, the students’ activities in this activity
as follow: 1) analyzing the collected data from collecting activities; 2) indentifying the result of
labeling activities which underlining  pronoun in texts, circling adjective in texts, giving mark
triangle for verb in group; 3) obtaining teacher’ feedback towards the analyzing activity
(Direktorat Jenderal Pendidikan Dasar, 2013b; Direktorat Pembinaan Sekolah Menengah
Pertama, 2013). The last phase is communicating. The learning activities of this phase are
delivering the observation result and summary based on the oral and written analysis as well as
other media use. Furthermore, communicating activities are activities to deliver results in the
form of conceptualization as demonstrated oral and written, write, explain, edit the work of a
friend; the magazine published the results of the work on the walls, bulletin school, learning
journals, and school blogs. In addition, it is the writing activity or telling what have been found
in the activity of collecting information, associating, and finding new pattern. The collected are
delivered in front of class (Kementrian Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan, 2013d). The competence
that developed is develop attitudes of honest, thorough, tolerance, the ability to think
systematically, to express their opinions briefly and clearly, and to develop good language skills
and correct. The teacher activities in communicating are 1) demanding students to ticking or
underlying material on worksheet; 2) demanding students to answer questions; 3) handwriting or
typing  practice as needed for use of the text type; 4) demanding students to present the tasks; 5)
demanding students to present draft and whole text (Direktorat Jenderal Pendidikan Dasar,
2013b).