THE SCIENTIFIC APPROACH IN EDUCATION

A.   Major Sources of Knowledge

1.        Experience

Experience about what had or has been occured in our past could make us be easy for making a decision about what we will do in the next step. It could happen to  us when we find the same problem. However, people who have the same problem does not mean they have the same experience. The way we solve the problem is depends on us, so it is the  reason why people have different experience in the same problem. For example, there are two students who do not understand about how to repair the broken computer. For the first student, he goes to an IT course and the other student are directly practicing it in the computer laboratory in his school.

2.       Authority

Trusting informations from TV, Radio, IT, people, and other sources is one of our habit. Especially when the hot news are coming and  everybody around us are talking about it. Certainly, as the people who love wondering something we would ask a lot of information. At this point, narasumbers are needed in order to find the truth of the information. Furthermore, narasumber or other medias also could aid us for collecting the data during the research. However, before trusting the information we should make sure that it is fact or just a hoax.

3.       Deductive Reasoning

Deductive reasoning is started from general to specific statement and the last statement is called by conclusion (it is like syllogism that consist major premise, minor premise, and conclusion). We could said if the major premise is true, so the conclusion will be true also. Look at the example of syllogism below,

Major premise           : Students of MA Darul Ulum could speak English well.

Minor premise           : Intan is student from MA Darul Ulum.

Conclusion                 : Intan could speak English well.

4.      Inductive Reasoning

Inductive reasoning is different from deductive reasoning. In the previous source of knowledge we could be summed up the fact of the conclusion depends on the premise. Look at the differences between deductive and inductive reasoning bellow.

·         Deductive Reasoning :

All of the participants in cultural seminar get their sertificate.

Students from MA Darul Ulum are one of the participants in cultural seminar.

Therefore, students from MA Darul Ulum get their sertificate.

·         Inductive Reasoning :

Every participants in cultural seminar that has been observed get their sertificate.

Therefore, every participant gets their sertificate.

From the example above we can conclude that inductive reasoning is started from the specific statement to general statement. Knowing premises at the first is needed when we use the deductive reasoning, but when we used inductive reasoning, observing the examples and generalizing from the examples to the whole class are the first thing to do.

5.       Scientific Research

Scientific research is different from the previous sources because hypotheses is needed here. In inductive reasoning we need to observe first in order to get the general statement. It is different from scientific research because in this knowledge source we start from the hypotheses then we make the systematic observation in order to confirm it whether it is fail or not.

B.   The Characteristics of Scientific Approach

There are five steps which we should do in scientific approach :

1.      Identification of the problem

2.      Statement of the problem

3.      Formulation of the hypotheses

4.      Giving prediction of consequences

5.      Testing the hypotheses

C.  Educational Approach

Educational approach is about how we get the information in educative problem or process (including students, teacher, the method that teachers’ use, the material, and other things). The example from this approach is when the researcher wonders whether discovery learning could improve students’ skill during Text Types class, so he would take the educational approach in his observation.

D.  The Differences between Quantitative and Qualitative Research

The differences between quantitative and qualitative research could be found in this following table bellow.

	Quantitative	Qualitative
Goal	Studying about relationship, caused and effect	Examining the phenomenon as it is, in rich detail
Design	Developed prior to study	Evolves during study
Approach	Deductive; test theory	Inductive; may generate theory
Tools	Using preselected instruments	The researcher is primary data collection tool
Sample	Using the large samples	Using the small samples
Analysis	Statistical analysis of numeric data	Narrative description and interpretation

E.   Kinds of Quantitative and Qualitative Research

a)      Quantitative Research

1.      Experimental Research

2.      Nonexperimental Research

b)      Qualitative Research

1.      Basic Interpretive Studies

2.      Case Study

3.      Document Analysis

4.      Ethnography

5.      Grounded Theory

6.      Historical Research

7.      Narrative Inquiry

8.      Phenomenological Study

F.   The Function of Research

1.      Finding (the result data is the new finding).

2.      Profing (the fact of the data will deny people doubt).

3.       Developing ( To develop product that has been found before).

G.  List The Steps Involved in Research Process

a)      Selecting the problem

b)      Reviewing the literature

c)      Designing the research

d)     Collecting the data

e)      Analyzing the data

f)       Interpreting the finding and stating the conclusion

g)      Reporting the results

REFERENCES

                                                          

Ary, Donald. et, al. (2010). Introduction to Research in Education. USA: Wadsworth.