learning. Various teaching strategies have been introduced to teachers and
students to make learning more fun, enjoyable and meaningful. PAIKEM
(Active Learning) and GASING (Fun Learning) are two such examples.
Teaching methods such as PAIKEM and GASING require teachers to change
their teaching paradigms. Using these methods, teaching can no longer
be perceived as an activity that involves instructing and lecturing students,
but as an activity that involves facilitating learning and assisting students to
develop their own understandings.
The implementation of the PAIKEM and GASING approaches to learning,
which use active and fun strategies, has been shown to improve students’
acquisition of various concepts and to make learning more meaningful. It is
expected that with widespread use of the new methods, Indonesian students
will be able to succeed on a global level in future. The challenge is how to
ensure the new methods are applied in every school in Indonesia.
These new, innovative pedagogical practices allow teachers to facilitate
effective learning. However, teachers are expected to understand and
master the methods in order to make them work. Furthermore, constructivist
pedagogical methods such as these require teachers to have a comprehensive
understanding of the subject they teach because students often have a lot
of questions, opinions and even judgments. Additionally, teachers should
also have access to sufficient learning materials and references to facilitate
student learning. The main problem is that a vast number of teachers are not
sufficiently qualified to implement new methods and do not have access
to the required types of learning materials. Therefore, a key challenge in
introducing new pedagogical methods is how to enable teachers to first
improve their capacity, both in mastering their subjects and in gaining the
new skills required to facilitate the learning of those subjects by their students.
It is very important that the government continue in its efforts to improve
the quality of teachers and to make sure that the new methods of learning
are implemented all over the country. This can be achieved by training
teachers and ensuring that schools have the facilities and materials that are
required, as well as a positive attitude to the new approaches. Additionally, it
is important for every teacher to have the internal motivation to improve their
own capacity and the willingness to support other teachers to adopt the new
methods. Without this, the efforts of the government to improve the quality
of teachers will be ineffective.