Selasa, Februari 22, 2011

Introduction

Economic education is a part of the National Education Curriculum (NEC) from K-1 to K-12. Changes in economic conditions, both in macro and micro, has significantly affect the way we design the curricula for economic education and methods of instruction should be implemented in action. Accordingly, it is required certain efforts and innovations in economic educational profession to adjust teacher’s understanding and their skills of instruction to contemporary and to be more relevant with globalization trends. It is also true that they must show similar important reasons to changes taking place outside, but substantially important to economic atmosphere. Therefore, not all efforts to enhance human resources quality, especially in economic education do necessarily only based on past phenomena. Instead, the efforts should base on trends on to what has happen in the future as live in global villages world.

One of the most crucial problems in Indonesian economic education is that effective instruction has occurs only when teachers are able to conduct instruction process by using appropriate instructional strategies, materials, and opportunity to applied economic concepts and principles in the real setting. However, in the real setting, economics teachers are heading some barriers because of the time allocated to economics in high school curricula has always been limited. This barrier is worsening by scarcity of good reference books, poor instruction methods, and limited access to utilize the Information and Communication Technology (IT). It is hardly ever to find economic teacher utilizing a fashionable material and method. As a result, students has only acquire the introduction of economics concept, sometime misunderstood in explanation may also pose a barrier to emphasis on economic instruction in the schools.
So far, many efforts have being done to integrated economic instruction as a part of the social studies, especially in elementary and secondary educational level, by combining economic, history, geography and sociology-anthropology based on the National Competency Based Curriculum 2004. The curriculum has been revised at 2006, by integrating indigenous local content as a part of national curriculum. But, these afford have not been yet successful to improve economic instruction and educational system in general because of the School’s preparation and uneasiness of the teachers to handle instruction and learning process based on the real student’s needs.
In order to successfully manage and iron out these problems, the workshop progressively conducted for high school economic teachers based on the above considerations. Teachers, through this workshop, has been motivated to think about and to create instructional strategies to ensure effective and attractive economic lessons, matching with the local and national curriculum, by using more readiness of learning materials and lesson plan.
In general, the workshop has been realized for fasilitating and developing high quality of the reform process of economic instruction which emphasizes on the improvement of the teachers qualification in economic course. There were two main activities during workshop. First, to enhance the professionalism and quality of human resources, particularly for economic teachers and the students in learning economics from theoretically into practice. The second, are to develop the lesson plans and instructional materials which provide a space for the development of the students’ participatory and creativity to improve their ability as the functional live skills.

Sabtu, September 05, 2009

Asosiasi Profesi Guru Ekonomi

Guru Ekonomi di seluruh dunia kini telah semakin menyadari bahwa ilmu ekonomi telah terbukti memiliki sumbangan yang signifikan terhadap kemajuan peradaban dan kesejahteraan masyarakat internasional. Oleh karena itu, wajarlah jika ilmu ekonomi sering disebut sebagai .’mother of social sciences’ berkat jasa-jasanya dalam mengarahkan perilaku manusia dalam mencari dan mendapatkan barang dan jasa untuk memenuhi kebutuhan manusia. Namun di balik itu, salah satu kritik sangat ‘pedas’ dalam wacana pendidkan baik di tingkat domestik maupun dunia internasional adalah, bahwa ilmu dan mata pelajaran Ekonomi telah banyak ‘berjasa’ mengajari manusia kembali menjadi ‘binatang’ yang memiliki kebuasan luar biasa dalam membuat kerusakan di muka bumi.

Secara teoritik ilmu ekonomi dikembangkan untuk mendatangkan kemakmuran dan kesejahteraan di bumi. Namun secara empirik ilmu ikonomi juga banyak disalah-gunakan untuk membuat kerusakan, sebagaimana tampak dalam eksplorasi dan eksploitasi minyak dan gas bumi, pengrusakan hutan sehingga terjadi efek ‘rumah kaca’ di lapisan ozon admosfir bumi, dan masih banyak lagi kebijakan-kebijakan ekonomi yang direkayasa kelompok ekonom dan praktisi dunia usaha yang membuat manusia di bumi maunya hidup sejahtera, tetapi kenyataannya hidup makin sengsara.

Dari sejarah perekonomian dunia kita dapat mengambil pelajaran adanya kenyataan bahwa ilmu ekonomi ternyata bagai ‘pisau bermata dua’. Jika dikuasai mereka yang berhati mulia bisa menghasilkan produk-produk barang dan jasa yang memiliki nilai guna lehih besar dari kemuliaan hati itu sendiri. Oleh karena itu, adalah menjadi tugas mulia kelompok asosiasi profesi guru dari tingkat lokal, regional, nasional, sampai tingkat internasional untuk melakukan upaya-bersama mewujudkan aksiologi ilmu ekonomi itu sendiri, yaitu mendatangkan kesejahteraan di muka buni.

Lantas, bagaimana caranya? Itulah tugas pengembangan profesi kita, di sekolah, di rumah, dan di dewan atau asosiasi profesi guru ekonomi !!!