Critical Review : Gagne Nine Events of Instructions.

Gagne’s 9 events of instruction is a very effective method to be followed because it covers every aspect that a teacher should do in the classroom in order to make an effective learning. It’s a combination of 3 learning theories. It supposed to be applied in all classes. But somehow, in several classes, it may not give a good response. For example, for passive students or slow thinker, they probably will not respond, or just keep quiet, that’s why we need to grab their attention and give motivation to the students, because if the students are not engaged and interested, they will not pay attention.

On the other hand, I don’t see much of Gagne’s application in the current classroom situation. What most of the teacher does when coming to class is that, follow only the behaviorism part in Gagne’s like gain attention by greeting the students – Which sometimes does not really grab the students attention -  and presenting information by explaining the topics and assess the performance of the students by giving exercise.

Most teachers do not give feedback to the students; Some times the teacher does not even assess the students. They just ask whether they understand it or not, of course we will not be able to know where their level is because kids might just say they understand. Furthermore, Teachers love giving taken home homework to assess the student, which I found is not really assessing, because some students may just copy it from their friends or ask someone else to do it for them.

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The order of Gagne’s 9 events of instruction is fine. But I think it is not a linear thing. Because I think some of the order can be changed. For example before telling the students of the learning objective, teacher can give example first and ask the students to guess from the given example about what they are going to learn. Because kids love guessing, isn’t it?

Sometimes stimulate recall is not needed, especially if the topic is not connected at all to the previous learning.And most of the teacher now, especially the young ones, does not really care with the students. Sometimes they do not even knowing what the students are doing at the back, and they keep teaching continuously. In order to apply these instructions, teachers should have a rough plan or maybe detailed plan on what they are going to do with the students. Don’t just come to class & then start teaching without any proper plan.I think this instruction should be applied in every classroom, and I believe that if every teacher follows these instructions, there should not be much problem in teaching & learning, and learning will be more successful.

Learning Theories in Application

These 3 learning theories will give different impact for teaching and learning in every classroom. It have its own advantage and disadvantage, so we as a teacher to be should be able to use what is good according to our learners' need, and able to choose what are the suitable methods that will work best with the students.

2013 Curriculum

Education in Indonesia is now in the transition time from Kurikulum Tingkat Satuan Pendidikan (KTSP) or in English known as School Based Curriculum to 2013 curriculum which focused on building students’ characters. Total subjects for KTSP are 11, but in 2013 curriculum will have 6 subjects only, which are religion, civics, Bahasa Indonesia, mathematics, art & culture, and also Physical Education.  Furthermore, science and social will be integrated with Bahasa Indonesia. I think that this merging in subjects is quite extreme, because students don’t learn thing specifically anymore, and it might create low level of mastery in each of those subjects.

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What is the government’s reason behind this new curriculum? The main reason was the failure of schools in creating the syllabus.  Most of the teachers are not able to create syllabus, which leads to unbalanced level of education, the learning is decentralized, but the final exams that determine the completion of school (year 6, year 9 & year 12) are centralized. The exam’s questions are almost the same in all over Indonesia. The different thing is only some numbers and name. Which I think is not fair for students in not so good school, they did not learn those things, but its being asked in the exam. Another reason is that, the same text books will be used for all school in Indonesia to prevent low quality of books and unsuitable materials in the books like what happened before because of different books used in each school. This new curriculum also being implemented due to the development of science and technology, together with raising the education standard in international level.

Before, English in elementary school is an elective subject. The new curriculum removes English from elementary school, which as an English teacher to be I found this is pretty unreasonable. Because later it probably means that the first time for some students learning English is in Junior High School. Even when they were exposed with English in the young age most schools are not able to provide the students with good English. How about later?

Another policy that is changed is removal of Information and Technology subject in junior high school & senior high school, because government thinks that technology should be integrated and had already integrated to students’ life. But I disagree with this; I think government over generalizing the students. Because as I live in small city like Aceh, for example the student that my mom is teaching in one of junior high school in Lhokseumawe and also the teachers, may not even know how to turn on a computer. They are not computer literate. On the other hands, science subjects (mathematics, physics, biology and chemistry) and also religion subject will have additional one hour contact time each as the government’s strategy to produce characterful students.

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The implementation of this policy is being done gradually, first it was applied in the schools with accreditation A in 295 cities in 33 provinces in Indonesia, which starts in July 2013, and hoped to be fully implemented in all over Indonesia in 2015. The early stage of this implementation showing good response, the teachers said that this builds the characters and student become more active in the class room. But this is the response in from selected schools with good teachers, facilities, and excellence students. But later, how about the implementation in other schools? Because talking about schools in Indonesia it is not just about the school in Jakarta, Bandung and other big cities, but also the schools in rural places like Aceh and Papua.

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The problem that the curriculum faced is that the level of understanding of teachers is still very low. And it needs long process to give training to the teachers. From a survey, 7 out of 10 teachers are still not sure what 2013 is all about. If teachers and school is not prepared, the whole school management can be ruined and will affect the students’ performance and most importantly, students are not guinea pig, Government can't just make a new curriculum and experiment it on the children. I think before they change the policy, they should train the teachers with enough facilities first and when the teachers are ready, they can start changing.

Overall, I think the governments plan is too rushing, it is not prepared well. It is too early to take such as big decision to change the whole curriculum. Why don’t they check and improve first what’s wrong with the previous curriculum rather than create a new one and confuse the teachers and the students themselves. Maybe the intention is good, want to raise the standard of education. But applying curriculum that had already used in the developed or even modern country, and starts to compare the students in this developing country, it’s just not right.

Hope this transition will bring Indonesia to a better quality of education!  

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