A Sociological Review of School-Based Learning Laboratories

Abstract

This study aims to develop the construction of sociology laboratory in learning to integrate the theoretical knowledge of students, enhance the practical competence of students and enhance the teaching quality. In this study, which takes a constructivist approach and employs a qualitative descriptive style. The technique in data collection included class observation, and document analysis. The aim of class observation was to identify the activities of sociology learning including the learning method or model, teacher’s activities, students’ activities, learning sources, and learning media. The document analysis included a set of learning, social engineering product as the students’ assignment, and a document of curriculum policy. The results of the study showed that first, learning sociology is learning about community; second, learning sociology is learning about sociological theories, and research methodology; and third, to learn the community through sociological theories, it requires scientific activities by practicing the research method. Those three definitions of sociology learning become the base of the construction of sociology laboratory in learning, including the effort to implement the sociology knowledge (cognitive competence) in analyzing the social issues by practicing the simple research method (psychomotor competence) in order to increase the sensitivity and concern for students to be critical and capable of finding the solutions to social problems (affective competence).