The Nature of CTL

a. The Nature of CTL

Muslich 2007: 41 defines CTL as a learning concept that helps the teacher to create a relation between learning materials presented and learners’ real life environment, and to encourage the learners to relate their existing knowledge to its application in their daily life. According to Muslich, the philosophical basis of CTL is Constructivism, which emphasizes that learning is not merely a matter of memorizing, but reconstructing or developing knowledge and skills through facts and proportions the learners experience in their real life. COR Center for Occupational Research in America formulates five concepts of CTL with abbreviation REACT Muslich, 2007: 41 – 42. 1 Relating Learning has to correlate real life situation with new information to be understood or with problems to be solved. 2 Experiencing The knowledge is attained through learning by giving priority to thinking process with inquiry cycle. 3 Applying Learning is implementing the result of learning to the practical use and need. 4 Cooperating Learning is sharing information and experience, responding, and communicating. Cooperating is consistent to the contextual learning. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI 5 Transferring Learning is exploiting knowledge and experience to gain new knowledge and learning experience based on new context. According to Johnson 2002: 65, CTL is a comprehensive system which consists of interrelated parts. If those parts are united, the result of those will be better than that of being given by each part. CTL is a system of learning which is based on a philosophy that students will be able to absorb the learning if they are able to catch the meaning in the given academic materials and they will be able to catch the meaning in the learning tasks if they are able to correlate the new information with their existing knowledge and experiences Johnson, 2002: 14. Based on contextual teaching and learning point of view, meaning appears from the connection between content and context. The context gives meaning to the content. The more connections students find in a wide context, the more meaningful the content for them. Contextual teaching and learning involves the learners in a significant activity that helps them to relate academic learning to their real life context. The science of nervous system ascertains the relation between human’s brains with meaning. The brain creates meaning of new information by connecting it with the existing knowledge and skills. The brain searches for meaning and keeps it continuously. This is why the learning process needs to involve the students in finding meaning by understanding what they are learning. Because of its framework that invites learners to make connections to find PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI meaning, CTL is potential to gain students’ interest which is the base for the attention and understanding to the learning Johnson, 2002: 37. In addition, Johnson 2002 suggests that CTL has three scientific principles which make contextual teaching and learning move towards academic superiority, they are 1 Interdependent principle Language is an interdependent unit. Without interdependence, language would stop, together with other connections in the human brain since we would not be able to think and to communicate. This interdependent principle guides human to the creation of relationship, not to the isolation. This principle is in line with CTL, which enables the language learners to make connections to find meaning. 2 Differentiation principle Differentiation refers to the continual stimulus from the universe to produce unlimited diversity and uniqueness. Differentiation principle contributes creativity. The teacher of CTL applies this principle in classroom to present creativity, uniqueness, diversity, and cooperation. In CTL, the students are challenged to think creatively to increase cooperation with their classmates to carry out their self-regulated learning, and to develop by their own steps. 3 Self-regulation principle In self-regulation principle, all the things are regulated, defended, and realized by self. According to this principle, the teachers are to encourage the students to explore their potencies by relating the tasks to their personal experience and knowledge. When the learners create a relationship between the academic context and their personal real life, they are involved in self-regulation principle.

b. The Characteristics of CTL