EDUCATIONAL ENVIRONMENT AND PATTERNS OF SOCIAL EDUCATION ACTIVITIES

EDUCATIONAL ENVIRONMENT AND PATTERNS OF SOCIAL EDUCATION ACTIVITIES

Translated by: Denny Nugraha

From the book “The foundation of islamic education’s lectures book” by Mr. Asep Setiawan

IAIN Syekh Nurjati Cirebon

1.        Educational Environment

a.       Informal, Formal, and Nonformal Education

Education was lived lifelong by individual person. Education takes formally, informally and nonformally forms in every educational environment. Thus, there are three kinds of educational environment: environment of informal education, environment of formal education, and environment of nonformal education.

1)      Environment of Informal Education

Informal education is education which holds naturally in daily life. Informal education is education which happens in family, childhood, workplace, activities of ritual religion, custom-habit, culture society and so on.

a)      Informal education in family

Family is the smallest social unit that is universal, itmeans it exist wherever in every places. In narrow meaning, family is the smallest social unit consists of two people (wife-husband) or more (dad, mom, and children). In wide meaning, family is social unit that consists of  some family in narrow meaning.

Family has some functions, they are affection, biologic, protection, economic, education, religion, recreation etc. According to George Peter Murdock, an antropologist (Sudardja Adiwikarta, 1988) there are four functions of the family universally:

Ø  To educate or doing education

Ø  As economic unity

Ø  Expanding generation

Ø  As the legallity of intimate relationship between man and woman based on wedding.

Family is educational environment that has informal characteristic, it means family is established not as educational regulation or educational institution, yet, in reality in a family naturally is occured education from parent to children. So the family is the pioneer of education for children.

The purpose of education in a family is in order that children are to be mature people, have morality, and to be good members of society.

The contents of education in a family usually involve: various basic knowledge/science, behavior, value and religious rules, value and society/culture rules and certain skills. Thus, the functions of education in a family are: (1) as the pioneer of education for children and (2) as the preparation to the line of life in their society.

b)      Informal Education in Society

Informal education in society can be happened through the culture/custom, friends intercourse, custom ceremony, work environmental intercourse, games, atrt show, and even through the usual conversation in daily life. In this context, education is social inheritance that used to preserve values of society’s culture.

2)      Formal Education (School)

School is social regulation or institution. Formal education is education’s stripe which structured and has levels consist of elementary education, middle and high education (Section 1 point 11 of UU RI No. 20 2003). Formal education is held in school, school is established intentionally by the society and or the government in order to organize education. Thus, school is one of social regulation or institution that has particular duty to organize education. Waini Rasyidin and M.I. Soelaeman stated:”School is a social unit or social institution which its specialization duty is to commit educational process” (Odang Muchtar, 1991).

School has certain structure supported by various component. School component consists of: 1) the purpose of education, 2) human, those are teacher, students, principal, librarian, laboratorium staff, administration staff, cleaning service or cleaning staff and so on., 3) curriculum, 4) educational media and educational technology, 5) medium, infrastructure, dan facilitation, also 6) school management. Yet, there are three main component should exist: students, teachers and curriculum.

As the institution of formal education is the unity of activities which organize learning process done by particular staff with structured and organized ways according to the order of values and rules that have determined to reach the purpose of education. School is called wiyh the term humanization. So, the school has functional two-line relationship with its society, needed and supported by its society.

From many version of the educational function in school, it can be stated in the following functions:

1)      Society-culture transmission function

2)      Socialization function (choose and teach social roles)

3)      Social integration function

4)      Expand the personality of child

5)      Prepare the children for certain jobs function

6)      Inovation/transform society and culture

Many sociologist studied the differences between socialization in the school and in the family. Robert Dreeben (1968) stated four differences the rules that studied by children in the family and in the school, those are independence, achievement, universalism, and specifity.

3)      Nonformal Education

Nonformal education is education’s stripe in outside of formal education that can be done structurally and by steps (Section 1 point 11 of UU RI No. 20 2003).

Nonformal education functions to expand the potentiality of students with stress on mastering knowledge and functional skill also developing behavior and professional personality. In the correlation with formal education, nonformal education is organized for members of society who need educational service that has function as substitute, enumerate, and or complement of formal education in order to support longlife education.

Nonformal education involves life skill education, youth education, woman empowerment education, skill and training work education, also another education which purposed to develop ability of students.

Unit of nonformal education consists of course institution, training, study club, society’s learning activities center, and so on.

2.      Activity Patterns of social education

As stated by J.W. Getzels and H.A Thelen, essentially there are two dimension of behavior that interacts each other and determine individual behavior in their social system, they are: 1) nomothetic dimension and 2) ideographic dimension (A. Morrison and D. Mclntyre, 1972). Nomothetic dimension involves regulation variable (Institution), role, and social expectations, yet, ideographic dimension involves individual variable, personality, and individual need-dispositions. Furthermore, that nomothetic dimension is correlated with culture variables, those are ethos, mores, and society values; ideographic dimension is correlated with biologic variables, those are organism, constitution, and potentialities. Thus, it can describe as the following diagram:

If social education activities analized based on its orientation against dimensions function of behavior as described above, it can be identified there are three patterns of activity of social education, they are 1) Nomothetic pattern, 2) Ideographic pattern, and 3) Transactional pattern.

Nomothetic pattern is mainly used for behavior dimension that has normative chararcteristic rather than behavior ideographic function. The reverse of nomothetic is ideographic. Because that education based on social ideographic have understanding as personalization of roles, that is the effort to help somebody to know and develop about what he/she wants to know or what he/she wants to expand. This is caused psychologism or developmentalism in education.

Activity of social education of transactional pattern mainly gives priority to functioned behavior dimension of nomothetic and behavior dimension of ideographic. The characteristic of this pattern are: a) everyone know purposes of system and those purposes are parts of personal need, b) everyone believe that social expectations which involve to theirselves is rational if those expectation can be reached, c) everyone feel that they is included to a group with the same emotional condition.

3.    Behavior pattern of teacher against students and its implications against function and type of teacher

David Hargreaves (Sudardja Adiwikarta, 1988) stated that there are three possibility of behavior pattern of teachers against their students and its implications to the function and types/category of teacher.

First pattern: Teacher assumes that his/her students are not mastering culture yet, but education is meant as enculturation. The implication is the task and the function of teacher is to guide students learning some stuffs which choosen by the teacher with consideration that it is the best for them.

The type of teacher in this pattern called “lion tamer”.

Second pattern: Teacher assumes that his/her students have motivation to study which should facing new teaching materials for them, difficult enough and less interesting. The implication is the teacher’s task is making the teaching become attractive, interesting and easy for his/her students. Type of the teacher in this pattern is categorized as “entertainer”.

The third pattern: Teacher assumes that his/her students have motivation to study, added with hopes that students must be able to find by themselves learning materials, and must be able to balance and role in dynamic society life, even with the speed that increase. The implication is the teacher must give freedom which wide enough to the students. Individually or in small group, teacher and students together arrange curriculer programs. The relationship between teacher and students in trust essential condition, and the line of learning-teaching is an expanding ability and study willingness in students. The type of teacher in this pattern is categorized as “romantic teacher” by Hargreaves.

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