my tesis

ABSTRACT

Ahsan Sofyan, 2012. THE IMPACT OF OPEN-ENDED LEARNING METHOD TOWARDS STUDENTS’ CRITICAL THINKING ABILITIES (Quasi Eksperiment on Seventh Grade Students in SMP Negeri 11 Makassar). Thesis Faculty of Social Science Education. Indonesia University of Education.

Learning situation and process there made in order to develop student’s potential; it means that learning process must be oriented to the students (student active learning). Education’s task is developing student’s self potential, not feeding through the learning’s material or forcing students to memorize the data and fact. In this case, the more innovative learning is needed. One of the systems which is expected can be increased the students ability of particular thinking is applying the Open-ended approach. Open-ended approach is a learning approach which is more emphasizing in students’ efforts in order to come to the answer from the truth or only from the accuracy of student’s answer, students are facing the problem which has more than one right answer, teacher does not limit the way students in solving the problems, moreover the teacher gives freedom to the students for seeking and using many approach towards the problem.

This research was conduct in order to find out whether the Open-ended approach can be increasing students’ ability in critical thinking. The object of this research was the seventh grade students of SMP Negeri 11 Makassar, and based on the method used that is experiment method, two classes were chosen to be the contol class and the experiment class. This research used pretest-posttest design, so that the increasing of those classes’ ability in critical thinking can be seen.  

From the tabulation of data, before using Open-ended approach in the students’ critical thinking the result of experiment class and control class is not really different. After the Open-ended approach was used in the experiment class, the ability of the students’ critical thinking has increased from the average score of the low pretest category to be high pretest category. Whereas in the conventional class of critical thinking, the average score of the low pretest category students, slightly increased and included as middle category. In the experiment class, the learning result that had the average score of low category, increasing to be high category. While in the conventional class, the average score of pretest was slightly increased become the low category. So, it can be concluded that the learning process using Open-ended approach can be increasing the ability of students’ critical thinking than the common learning. Open-ended approach can be used by the teacher in Social Science learning in SMP in order to make the active learning, creative and also fun.

Keyword: Social Science learning, the Open-ended approach, Critical Thinking Abilities

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