Teaching for Civic Awareness in Defense Politics Classroom:

Achieving the Intended Learning Curriculum Outcomes

Rusnaini

Department of Civic Education, Universitas Sebelas Maret, Ir. Soetami Street, Surakarta, Indonesia

Keywords: Civic awareness, defense politics, learning curriculum outcomes

Abstract: To overcome the weaknesses of traditional defense, politics, learning at university, we developed and

researched semester learning plan (RPS) in the classroom. In this study, I examine the impact of an RPS

designed with the classroom. The objective of the research was to improve civic awareness of national and

defense security. The study was conducted using a case study design. Data was collected through

interviews, classroom observations and documents. Our findings showed that RPS of defense, politics had

efficacy in achieving the intended learning curriculum outcomes.

1 INTRODUCTION

Educating college students to have an effective

politic consciousness becomes an elusive objective

to universities. Universities very frequently educate

students about political knowledge only. These

outputs are not translated into disposition and

capacity for civic engagement very necessary in

post-college years. As a discipline, defense, politics

plays an important part in preparing students for

civic engagement, because of its subject matter

about national security today. Meanwhile, there is a

tendency to view national security issues of

sovereignty and patriotism aspects, so that we argue

that there are more dimensions of civic engagement

in which universities or colleges should prepare their

students. Students learn not only about content

related to security, defense policy, but also about

national security issues. An individual is considered

as having civic awareness, among others, when

he/she can identify national security issues and map

factual and potential threats against national

security.

Nevertheless, identifying the definition of civic

awareness is conceptually not easy. Most political

scientists consider civic awareness as an abstract

concept. However, it does not reduce the consensus

among scientists that civic awareness is urgent in

building better life. We argue that there are two

conditions in which community has civic awareness

level. Firstly, through the limited civic awareness

level, there is a risk for the citizen to be affected by

political propaganda thereby supporting non-

democratic power. Secondly, without high civic

awareness level, civic engagement is worried to be

lower in post-college years.

Considering an observation on the learning

outcome of students in Defense Politics class in

previous years, it can be found that civic awareness

level of students is low. In the attempt of improving

civic awareness level, we always try new learning

strategies in the class. Recalling the characteristics

of defense, political discipline, our learning

materials always change and so do our teaching

methods. Civic awareness will never be achieved

through unplanned political learning. There are at

least two basic challenges in the attempt of building

civic awareness. Firstly, the challenge relates to

learning strategy. Strategy, according to Kem (1995)

is a learning activity the teachers and the students

should conduct in order to achieve the learning

objective effectively and efficiently. In line with

Kemp’s opinion, Dick and Carey (1985) mention

that learning strategy is a set of learning materials

and procedures used concomitantly to result in

learning outcome among pupils or students. The

attempt of implementing syllabus or learning plan

that has been arranged in real activity in order to

achieve the specified objective optimally needs a

method used to realize the specified strategy. A

learning strategy can use several methods,

depending on the learning objective. So, strategy is a

plan of operation achieving something, while

Rusnaini, .

Teaching for Civic Awareness in Defense Politics Classroom: Achieving the Intended Learning Curriculum Outcomes.

DOI: 10.5220/0009024000002297

In Proceedings of the Borneo International Conference on Education and Social Sciences (BICESS 2018), pages 571-574

ISBN: 978-989-758-470-1

571

method is a way in achieving something. To achieve

the specified learning objective, teachers can choose

an appropriate and efficient learning model to

achieve their educational objective. Teachers should

take into account some points in choosing the

learning model: objective to be achieved (skill

competency, and its complexity), learning material

(whether it is a fact, concept, law or certain theory),

and pupils or students (their maturity level and

learning style). Secondly, it relates to

program/activity designing aspect. As a long-term

project, the attempt of building civic awareness

requires policy, program/activity, and clear road

map. The prominent drawback existing so far is the

absence of clear defense, politics, learning design,

becoming the framework of political education in

particular. In connection with this, this article

describes the repeated design and development of

Problem Based Learning that focuses on national

security issues. We discuss our process and place

them in the broader framework of educational design

research and aim to implement defense, politics

learning for building civic awareness among

students.

2 METHOD

This research is step 6 of a method proposed by

Borg & Gall (2003), consisting of: (1) identifying

potency and problems; (2) gathering information; (3)

model development; (4) model validation; (5) model

revision; (6) model trying out; (7) model revision;

(8) large-scale try out; (9) model revision (Borg, M.

D, and Gall, J. P., 2003). Defense politics, learning

specifically focuses on the national security subject

matter. The first step is the orientation of students on

the problem. In this step, we explain the purpose of

starting with the student orientation on the problem,

organize students to study, guide individual or group

investigations, develop and present the work and

analyze and evaluate the process of solving

problems. This study was an action research.

Defense politics, learning employed student centered

approach generating inquiry, discovery, and

inductive learning strategies. The learning methods

employed were lecturing and debriefing methods,

assignment methods such as literature review,

interview and field observation methods, class

seminar, and small group discussion methods. The

implementation of problem-based learning model

was conducted in two hours a week for 16 weeks.

Data collection method or information collection

was a mixture of focus group, observation and

interview. This research studied the effect of

problem based learning model on civic awareness.

Civic awareness was measured based on the abilities

of mapping national security issues, of identifying

trend national security issues, of analyzing

potential/factual threats against national security,

and of giving solution to the problem. Participants

consisted of 70 Universitas Sebelas Maret (UNS)

students who study Defense Politics.

3 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Having conducted learning using lecturing and

debriefing methods, the students were given many

assignments. The students were previously directed

to be able to classify issues in order to understand

them more in-depth corresponding to the study of

issues developing within community. The data

obtained from literature review assignment, it can be

found that the students could map national security

issues and group them into five issues: national

security issues based on ideology, politics,

economics, social-cultural, and security defense.

Furthermore, from the result of observation on class

and small-group discussion assignments, it can be

found that students could identify the importance

national of defense issues in community life

From the data collected through interviewing

several students as the representatives of groups A

and B, it can be found that majority students argued

that national security issues are very important,

recalling that recently there are so many political

issues related to security and defense.

Then, the learning outcome obtained from the

result of cognitive evaluation, including mid

semester exam and final exams, showed that

students could answer the questions and the

problems related to the data about recent issues

indicating the development of their thinking,

reasoning and criticizing abilities in processing an

issue, and then could analyze the circulating issues

more in-depth and thoroughly. Students elaborated

their analysis of potential and factual threats in

living within society, nation, and state in this era.

The majority students saw that the factual threat in

the field of ideology was radicalism and the

terrorism movement, and the current factual threat

was more directed at the economic sector where

foreign domination over the factors of production

that were important and affected the livelihood of

the people. In addition, Indonesia's economic

politics currently lead to capitalism and liberalism

and makes use of non-renewable natural resources,

BICESS 2018 - Borneo International Conference On Education And Social

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which leads to more destruction of nature. They also

saw that the factual threat today is social-cultural

issue can result in national integration and

disintegration, and that current potential threats were

related to current war trends (hybrid, proxy war and

asymmetric). It was indicated with the students’

response by means of giving some solutions to the

problems encountered by Indonesians. Considering

the finding above, it could be seen that learning

strategy instruction changed the students’ belief in

defense politics learning. Thus, through applying

PBL, Defense politics could improve civic

awareness. Problem-based learning (PBL) is an

innovation in learning because in PBL the students’

thinking ability is actually optimized through a

systematic group or team work process, so that the

students can empower, sharpen, test, and develop

their thinking ability sustainable (Tan, 2008).

Margetson (1994) suggests that PBL helps improve

the lifetime learning skill in opened, reflective,

critical mindset, and active learning. PBL facilitates

the successful problem solving, communication,

group work, and interpersonal skill better than other

models do. PBL innovation combines the use of e-

learning access, creative interdisciplinary,

assignment, and individual skill development.

Knowledge acquired through a collaborative process

of social negotiation and evaluation on the existence

of point of view.

Literature showed that student centered learning

can improve learning outcome.

It is clearly in line

with the approach applied in defense politics

learning. Many of our students understood the

concept of politic of defence after we had given

lecturing and debriefing about the topics in the class.

In line with us, Mckenzie (2015) found that political

learning in class can improve political literacy.

However, in the presence of the new syllabus and

learning strategy, students became very interested in

the subject. When the students were engaged with

one of discussion activities in the class at that

semester, the classroom had dynamic circumstance,

much better than the standard lecturing room

discussed in the introduction section. Students were

moving, posing questions, talking to each other,

listening to other students with dissenting opinion,

solving problems, and sharing political science.

Eventually, they understood the concept of national

security, could map and identify the type of potential

and factual threats against national security, and

could apply this mapping and identifying to the real

world case. This finding was in line with Biggs

(2003), Hong & Lawrence (2011) who applied an

action research as a systematic effort to improve

teaching method and to ensure that everything ran

properly, so that students had a better learning

experience than what they usually had (Bigss, 2003;

Hong, C.E & Lawrence, S.A, 2011).

The result of research has certain implications

for stakeholders of political education. Lecturers are

recommended to equip the students with better

learning strategy along with the content of lecturing.

It will be useful to the students not only to be “a

good politic learner” but also to improve their

autonomy and self-efficacy. The message delivered

to the lecturers is that civic awareness can be created

or recreated when there are meditation instruments

such as politic learning strategy. Syllabus designing

is also recommended to include learning strategy

into the syllabus. If this strategy is reinforced with

learning module in all syllabuses, civic awareness

will be created and reformed more systematically. It

is only this that can revive the expectation that the

education system is stepping toward its main

objective, to educate the students for the future.

4 CONCLUSIONS

The finding of research shows that the selection of

appropriate learning approach, strategy, method, and

model can improve learning outcome. Defense

politics applying inquiry, discovery, and inductive

learning strategies and using such learning methods

like lecturing and debriefing methods all at once,

assignment methods such as literature review,

interview and field observation methods, class

seminar method, and small-group discussion method

can evidently improve civic awareness. This

research was conducted on the students in the same

department, so that they have a homogeneous

understanding of national security. It means that this

research can be a pilot project, because as

aforementioned there has been no such study in

literature according to the authors’ accessibility. In

the future, other researchers can be conducted

among the students with relatively heterogeneous

understanding level in different departments or

university.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The author would like to thank the editors and

reviewers for their advice which is very helpful to

improve this manuscript and the Institute for

Research and Community Service, Sebelas Maret

University, as the grantor of the 2018 PNBP Project

Teaching for Civic Awareness in Defense Politics Classroom: Achieving the Intended Learning Curriculum Outcomes

573

Fund under the Social Education and Humanities

Research scheme.

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