Literacy Movement
Character Education Strengthener Based on Literacy
Eep Saeful Rojab Fansuri, Dasim Budimansyah and Isah Cahyani
Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia, Jl. Dr. Setiabudi no. 229 Bandung Indonesia 40154
Keywords: school literacy movement, reading challenge, character education.
Abstract: School Literacy Movement (SLM) is implemented as an effort to overcome the student low interest of reading,
and become part of character education in school. A number of schools in West Java implement SLM through
reading challenges with the students' routine activities of reading, writing book reviews, book presentations
and discussions, and uploading book reviews to websites. This study aims to explore and review information
about the implementation of School Literacy Movement by applying reading challenges in a number of Junior
High Schools in West Java, in the context of strengthening character education. The research used qualitative
approach with phenomenology method. The results showed that students' activities in carrying out the reading
challenge gave strengthening to character education, especially the value of like to read, discipline, creative,
independent, confident, curiosity and appreciative character. Actually, strengthening of the student's character
values is also influenced by the type of book they read. It is therefore important to make sure the book reads
inspire and have a positive effect on the students who read it.
1 INTRODUCTION
Education has an influence related to the growth or
development of the soul, character, and physical
abilities of individuals (Kneller, 197). However, in
reality the education in Indonesia has not been able to
realize the educational objectives as stipulated by the
law. In the context of school, character education
practiced so far the effect is still far from expectations
(Budimansyah, 2010). Some factors that cause
character education can not be effective and optimal,
namely: weaknesses of aspects of learning in the
classroom, learning system in Indonesia, curriculum,
and limited facilities and infrastructure (Wibowo,
2012).
On the other hand, the literacy ability of
Indonesian students is still very low compared to
other countries. The results of the PISA survey on
reading, math and science skills in 15-year-old
learners, followed by 65 countries, showed Indonesia
ranked 57th with a score of 396 (OECD average
score: 493), while on PISA 2012 Indonesia is ranked
64th with a score of 396 (OECD average score: 496).
Other data presented by UNESCO in 2012 that of
1,000 Indonesians, only 1 person has read interest.
Such conditions are clearly apprehensive because
reading skills are the basis for the acquisition of
knowledge, skills and attitude of learner (Wiedarti,
2016). It also indicates the importance of growing a
positive mental attitude towards reading and reading
activities early (Suwandi, 2007), so that learners do
not experience literacy poverty (Moon, 2014).
In order to answer the backwardness, the
Indonesian government issued a policy in the form of
Regulation of the Minister of Education and Culture
No. 23 of 2015 on the Cultivation of Character, which
mandates the implementation of daily, weekly,
monthly habituation activities. One of the habits to be
done is to use 15 minutes before learning time to read
books other than textbooks. This movement has been
widely implemented at elementary and secondary
education units. In fact, the guidance on its
implementation has been well developed. The general
objective of the School Literacy Movement is to
create generations of good character, lifelong
learning, and productive learning. In the end it will
produce future generations that are qualified and
productive for the glory of the nation in the future
(Chandra, 2016).
School Literacy Movement as a character growth
(character education) due to the efforts of character
development can be done by reading a variety of
reading materials that contain moral values in the
context of nationality and state of Indonesia as
Fansuri, E., Budimansyah, D. and Cahyani, I.
Literacy Movement - Character Education Strengthener Based on Literacy.
In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Sociology Education (ICSE 2017) - Volume 1, pages 387-391
ISBN: 978-989-758-316-2
Copyright © 2018 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved
387

contained in the points Nawacita: the values of
character, local, national, and global wisdom
delivered according to the stage of development of
learners (Sutrianto, 2016). So that the Literacy
Movement School can form the personality of
learners in cultivating literacy activities (Chandra,
2016: Sularso, 2015). Based on the various problems
above, researchers are interested to raise the issue in
a problem statement "School Literacy Movement for
Strengthening Character Education.
2 METHOD
Studies of the school literacy movement for character
education strengthening are specific, not just open
behaviors, but also unspoken processes, and are
intended to understand meaningful events. Therefore,
methodologically, this research uses qualitative
research design with phenomenology method
(Creswell, 1998; Finlay, 2008).
The purpose of this qualitative research is to
understand the social phenomena from the
perspective of the participants. In this case
participants are people who are invited to interview,
observed, asked to provide data, opinions, thoughts
and perceptions. Based on the above description, the
study participants included:
a. Schools that have implemented the school
literacy movement spread across five regions of
West Java Province, with representation of 1-3
schools per region.
b. A teacher of the school literacy movement.
c. Students are participants of the school literacy
movement.
d. Parents of students participating in the school
literacy movement.
The process of analyzing the data begins by
examining all available data from various sources, i.e.
from interviews, observations already written in field
notes, personal documents, official documents,
pictures, photographs, and so on. Once read, studied,
and reviewed the next step is to perform data
reduction, which is done by way of abstraction.
Abstraction is an attempt to make a summary of the
core, processes, and statements that need to be
maintained so that it stays within it. After that, the
reduced data will give a clearer picture, and make it
easier for the writer to do further data collection, and
look for it when necessary, presented in the form of
brief descriptions, charts, relationships between
categories, flowcharts and others. By displaying data
it will make it easier to withdraw conclusions and
verification.
3 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
School Literacy Movement is rolled out by the
Ministry of Education and Culture as one form of
implementation of character development as
mandated in the Minister of Education Regulation
No. 23 of 2015. Implementation of this movement
taken in three stages, namely the habituation of fun
reading activities in school ecosystems, the
development of reading interest to Improving literacy
skills, and literacy-based learning (Wiedarti, 2016).
West Java Province developed this movement
through a reading challenge called West Java
Leader's Reading Challenge (WJLRC). This model is
adapted from the Premiere Reading Challenge (PRC)
program implemented in South Australia. On this
challenge, students are required to read at least 24
books in ten months with teacher guidance. The
routine activities undertaken by participants of this
challenge is to read the book thoroughly, write book
reviews, and discuss the contents of the book.
Physical evidence generated in the form of book
review script uploaded by teacher to the website
www.literasi.jabarprov.go.id. As a motivation, to
participants who successfully meet the challenge will
be awarded medals from the Government of West
Java Province. Not only students, teachers are also
challenged to read 10 books in 10 months, and are
encouraged to pass the guided learners to meet the
challenges, with a promised medal and award (Disdik
Jabar, 2016).
Implementation of WJLRC program in West Java
accelerates the implementation of School Literacy
Movement by implementing at least 2 steps of SLM
in each cycle of activities, that is habituation (stage I)
and development (stage II). In addition, at each stage
there is consistent reinforcement, with the tasks
periodically, so that students should target the
achievement of the number of reading books, the
number of book reviews, and the process of
discussion followed on every week and every month.
In the unchallenged conditions as in the WJLRC
scenario, the school tendency to implement the SLM
is only at the habituation stage, with reading activities
15 minutes before learning, without follow-up and
tasks.
Variety of students' activities in following the
challenge of reading consistently, indicating a process
of strengthening the character education, both in the
school environment and in the family environment.
This is thus obtained from the observations and
interviews of teachers, students and parents. The
reinforcement process occurs through the overall
stages of WJLRC program activities, as well as on
ICSE 2017 - 2nd International Conference on Sociology Education
388

specific activities separately, and on the School
Literacy Movement in general.
In detail the process of strengthening character
education in each activity and stages can be explained
as follows:
3.1 Reading
There are three forms of reading activity in the SLM-
WJLRC that is reading 15 minutes before the start of
learning, reading the book thoroughly, and readathon
is a mass reading at certain times. Reading activities
carried out consistently strengthen the reading
interest. This is possible because the reading activity
is done together and in a pleasant atmosphere
especially on reading 15 minutes and readathon. As
for reading activities in order to challenge of WJLRC,
participants are required to finish reading the book
within a certain period of time targeted. This gives
reinforcement to the discipline character of students.
In addition to this activity can appear character of
accuracy, due to intensive reading is careful study,
and detailed handling conducted in the classroom to a
short task of approximately two to four pages every
day. The multitude of opportunities to read through
the SLM also encourages students to master the
knowledge of book analysis of various types (Hobbs,
1998).
3.2 Writing
Writing activity is done after students read thoroughly
a book, by making writing in the form of book review
in a simple form. Other writings that are also made by
students of reading challenge participants are diary,
essay and report or activity coverage to be uploaded
on the website. Through writing activities, students
have the opportunity to develop creativity. Creative
character is needed in writing because writing has
artistic purpose (beauty value), informative purpose,
that is giving information to reader and persuasive
purpose that is encourage or attract reader's attention
to accept information submitted by writer. Benninga
(2003) states that characters can be developed
through writing activities. Moreover, the recording or
writing activity is the essence of the literacy
movement (Lehaoux, 2013).
3.3 Book Discussion
Discussion of the book is done after the students read
the book and write the review of the book, and is a
forum for students to present their impression and
understanding about books that have been read, also
give respond each other’s. Thus in the discussion
activity there is activity listening and talking. In this
activity, the value of the character that gets
reinforcement is self-confidence, curiosity, and
appreciation. This is because listening is a process of
listening to oral symbols with full attention,
understanding, appreciation, and interpretation to
obtain information, capture content or messages and
understand the meaning of communication that has
been conveyed by the speaker through utterance or
spoken language that is heard seriously and attentive.
In the SLM-WJLRC activities the purpose of
listening is to acquire knowledge from the speaker's
speech material; In other words, he listens to study.
As for the type of listening conducted in the SLM-
WJLRC is concentrative listening activities. The
discussion also trains the students to have the courage
to speak, because while talking, occurs
communication which organized and developed
according to the needs of the listener. Students should
speak in class, so students will feel confident.
Speaking and listening is the key to life skills. In
addition, with this literacy, learners can be trained to
perform between groups and families (Belliveau,
2012).
Strengthening the character education process
through the School Literacy Movement is also
supported by the public involvement in the SLM,
especially in this case the parents of the students.
Parents' involvement, namely, in the form of fulfilling
the needs of books to read, supervision in the
activities of students at home, involvement in reading
activities in the home environment, and intensive
communication with teachers in the school. Parents'
participation is important because in the context of
character education, the role of parents is greater and
foremost than the role of teachers in schools (Kaur,
2015). In addition, all educators agree that character
education should be integrated in the family and
educational curriculum (Sewel and College, 2003)
because with the synergy of various parties, we can
know the basic character of child since early age.
This should be done because character education
can be implemented when school can construct
learners in identifying their identity through
education and socialization with intervention
(Pattaro, 2016). Next focus attention on the special
contributions that students build with general
education (Rose, 2007). The situation can be realized
because the personality is partly derived from within
and partly determined by culture (Friedman, 2000).
Therefore it is very important that learners participate
in a democratic culture (Schmidt, 2012). If it wants to
renew the community, it must raise the generation of
children with a strong culture. In this case character
education is very important during childhood through
education that integrates character values in schools
(Lickona, 2012).
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389

Student learning experience after following SLM-
WJLRC shows the desire to solve the reading
challenge that has been determined by the school and
West Java Provincial Education Office. This is
because students feel happy to follow step by step of
the activity in every stage, beside the motivation to
obtain awards or medals, and hope to participate in
the literacy jamboree event which is reserved for
students who successfully completed the challenge of
reading in accordance with the provisions. This is
indicated by student work of book reviews, essays in
the form of poetry, short stories or other writings
uploaded on the literacy website, or published either
in schools or by publishers. This happens because
students have a positive and supportive relationship
with the teacher, they have higher self efficacy and
greater intrinsic motivation to learn to solve the
challenge. Such success can occur because learners
remember strongly when they are involved (Perry and
Medina, 2011) throughout the series of activities of
the literacy movement.
Furthermore, teachers should be able to guide and
build a positive image by continuing to evaluate the
learner's literacy (Flewitt, et al, 2014). This is because
character can be developed through reflection of
morality, character ideas in didactic instruction and
main instruction approach (Smagorinzky and Taxel,
2004: 113). In addition, teachers should develop a
democratic atmosphere in the literacy movement,
because the school can develop the character of
learners, if implemented in a democratic community
atmosphere (Althof and Berkowitz, 2006: Lee, 2004),
plus teachers should also develop religious values
because religious affiliated institutions can be a
method for developing educational capacity to
provide character education in schools (Milson and
Mehlig, 2002)
There are several factors that become obstacles in
the implementation of SLM-WJLRC in West Java.
The main factor is the lack of the books that are
relevant to the interests and needs of students, so the
provision of reading books is often the burden of
students and parents. Another factor is school
readiness in implementing SLM-WJLRC with regard
to library facilities and infrastructure, arrangement of
teacher assignment tasks, and arrangement of activity
schedule in between dense school activity agenda.
Another constraint that is also found is the lack of
support and guidance of educational institutions in the
region to the school literacy movement and WJLRC.
School initiatives and creativity with leadership
support at the school level are a major force in
overcoming these obstacles and problems. It is
important for schools to be able to develop character
education programs by applying reading materials
that can inspire inner reflection and ideal behavior
(Hudd, 2005). Furthermore, schools should use
additional tools to mobilize effective teaching of
character strengths by motivation orientation in the
form of sustainable good efforts in the form of
academic challenges through the principle of the
effectiveness of character education constructed by
the cooperation of character education organizations
(Lapsley and Woodbury, 2016; Ghamrawi et. Al.
2015).
4 CONCLUSIONS
School Literacy Movement through the reading of
West Java Leader's Reading Challenge (WJLRC) in
West Java is a form of SLM implementation that can
accelerate the implementation of SLM stages that
have been programmed by the Ministry of Education
and Culture. This activity also contributes positively
to the strengthening of character education of students
at Junior High School. At each stage of the activities
of the students in following these challenges, that are
reading, writing book reviews, and book discussions,
indicating the process of strengthening the character
education of students, especially on the values of the
character likes to read, discipline, creative,
independent, confident, curiosity and respect.
The success of strengthening character education
through School Literacy Movement can be built by
the mutual commitment among various parties
namely schools, learners, parents, community and
government. The synergy of various parties is
important to overcome obstacles and problems in the
implementation of SLM. Parental involvement in this
case is very important in maintaining consistency and
aligning student activities in schools with day-to-day
activities in the home and neighborhood.
School Literacy Movement developed in West
Java through the challenge of reading (WJLRC), is an
effort to strengthen character education, towards the
embodiment of the government's Nawacita that
expect mental changes of the nation's generation
better. Although there are various obstacles and
problems that must be addressed, the movement is
expected to be one effort as well as solutions in the
development of character education for students in
schools.
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