SCHOOL LITERACY MOVEMENT IN INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 4.

0
ERA: OPPORTUNITY, CHALLENGES AND EVALUATION

Hariyanto Subiyantoro
Universitas Negeri Semarang
hariyantosubiyantoro@yahoo.com

Mohammad Qushoy
Universitas Negeri Semarang
Qushoymohammad@gmail.com

Abstract
Purpose- The exponential growth of the internet in industrial revolution 4.0 has a
tremendous impact on the way of millennials students learning English including
secondary school students in getting information and knowledge. On the contrary,
this situation has not taken into account in the School Literacy Movement
practices. The main aim of this paper is to provide an evaluation and assessment
of the School Literacy Movement in Secondary school. Methodology- The study
employs a qualitative descriptive method to evaluate and assess the school literacy
movement that has been initiated by the Ministry of Education and Culture
through decree No 23 in 2015. The research distributed online questionnaire to
find the students’ and teachers’ responses about the school literacy movement.
Findings- The study shows that teachers still face numerous challenges in
implementing School Literacy movement in the areas of availability of prominent
human resources outside school to promote English literacy at school. Lack of
fund to buy a new book is still the main concern and the implementaion of the
School literacy movement dimension put more emphasizes on reading and writing
practices only. Another finding of this study is that the implementation of the
School Literacy Movement has not effectively utilized digital reading devices to
access the digital text since most of the schools have inadequate reading materials
to support this program. Pedagogical implications-incorporating technology in
School Literacy Movement practice is highly required as technology will help
students to get access abundant interesting reading materials on the internet.
Keywords: Langauge Literacy, school Literacy movement, Education 4.0 era

INTRODUCTION

When we conducted an observation School Literacy Movement program

implementation in a school in the urban, some of the students define literacy as
merely the activity of reading and writing as what they have experienced in 15
minutes before the teaching and learning process. The most shocking thing is that
some Vocational school students in the urban could not be able to define the
meaning of literacy and even the School Literacy Movement. Rahmawati (2017)
argued that the word “literacy” is unfamiliar termed for vocational school
students. We thought that they were more interested in a physical activity instead
of reading and writing activity in the School Literacy Movement. The confusion
of the term “literacy” is not just merely happen in vocational school but also
Secondary School students. Based on the observation, we assumed that students
have inadequate knowledge about English literacy and even the main purpose of
the School Literacy Movement. In fact, Literacy is viewed as a social practices
and English literacy such as reading skill is considered important skills in the
digital era where the information and knowledge can be easily accessed through
the internet. Several explanations have been suggested students with poor literacy
skills are more likely to leave school and to face unemployment (Lundetrae,
Gabrielse, & Mykletun: 2010).
This article reports the assessment and evaluation of Gerakan Literasi
Sekolah (Hereafter School Literacy Movement) program at the Secondary School
level in the digital era. This program was firstly initiated by the Ministry of
Education and Culture through decree No 23 in 2015, as one of the government’s
efforts to improve and foster students reading literacy from elementary up to
Senior and Vocational school. This program also has been implemented to respond
to the poor results of global rankings on student performance in mathematics,
reading, and science, on the program for International Student Assessment (PISA)
in 2015. The reports showed that Secondary School students or 15 years old
Indonesia students’ score is relatively unchanged with averaged 397 in
Mathematics, reading and Science compared to 2012 and our students is still
perched on 64 positions from 70 countries in the world
(http://wwwoecd.org/pisa/). Against this background, we need to evaluate and
assess the current implementation and practice of the School Literacy Movement
at the secondary school so that we know the progress of this program. To this
mind, we will be able to improve and find an effective model for literacy practice.
However, since the inception of this program in 2015, relatively few studies of the
Literacy program have assessed and evaluated the major component in the School
Literacy Movement.
The present study uses online questionnaire from Pedoman Penilaian dan
Evaluasi Gerakan Literasi Nasional (2017) to investigate the implementation of
the School Literacy Movement in 25 differents schools accross the country.
Specifically, it assesses and evaluates the program in the areas of early assessment
of GLS, Socialization of GLS to the stakeholder, School Literacy Movement
Policy design.
The study addressed two central questions:
1. To what extent the schools have implemented the School Literacy
Movement at Secondary School Level?
 2. What are the major problems that have hindered the success of the
School Literacy Movement?

METHODOLOGY
The study employed a qualitative descriptive method to evaluate school
literacy movement implementation at the Secondary School level. To get the data,
we distributed an online questionnaire through WhatsApp group and social media.
We also observed Literacy practices and conducted an in-depth interview with
some English teachers and Principals. In the beginning, we want to observe the
implementation of the School Literacy Movement started from Primary,
Secondary, Senior and Vocational School but a small proportion of Primary,
Senior and vocational teachers have responded to this online questionnaire so we
found difficulties to get the vivid picture of this program. Also, two English
Lecturers respond this survey so we decided to reduce the data.
The main subject of this study is English teachers who teach and
implement School Literacy Movement 15 minutes before the teaching and
learning process in their classroom. There are twenty-five English who gave the
response to this online questionnaire and they come from different regions in the
country such as Kutai timur, Batam, Malang, Balikpapan, Bandung, Pekanbaru,
Cilacap, Semarang, Batam, and mostly Sleman. They hold Bachelor Degree (S1)
in English Language teaching and even some of them hold a Graduate Degree
(S2). All sampled teachers had teaching experience ranging from 3 to 22 years. It
means that they likely also have adequate teaching experiences to contribute to
some extent to their understanding of School Literacy Movement assessment and
evaluation. The data of the respondents can be seen in the appendix at the end of
this article.
In this online questionnaire, we used and developed online questionnare
from Pedoman Penilaian dan Evaluasi Gerakan Literasi Nasional (2017).
Teachers were asked to assess and evaluate the implementation School Literacy
Movement in their school.

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

In this section, the finding of the study will be divided into parts based on
research questions of the study. The first part will discuss the first research
question and the second part will discuss the second questions.
1) The implementation of the School Literacy movement
 The implementation of the School Literacy Movement in schools could be
identified through the questionnaire shared through WhatsApp group and social
media. The result showed that schools have implemented the program properly.
from the percentage gained, it can be seen that schools have done their job well in
implementing the School Literacy Movement, some indicators gained a high
percentage and will be mentioned further in the next paragraph.
The schools conducted the socialization of School Literacy Movement
program to stakeholders, teachers, parents, society and students. It means they are
serious to implement the program. They hope all the elements at the school know
about the program. Then, they used environmental potential (physical, social and
cultural potential) to enrich student learning experiences so they have broader
insights. The schools have literacy activities and facilitate students to carry out
social activities related to literacy habit. Some schools held the activity both inside
and outside the school environment, but the others do not.
In terms of Learning-based School literacy movement development,
schools have integrated the program with teaching, and learning activity in the
classroom. It reflected from a lesson plan that the teachers arranged including
relevant and contextual learning material, learning methods, learning steps, and
relevant assessment methods. however, schools could have not integrated the
program with school culture-based development. Schools did not have a primary
routine activity to enhance students’ literacy habits. Meanwhile, almost all school
members (students, teachers, education staff, and school principals) have the
attitude that reflect literacy. They showed exemplary attitudes in literacy habit.
2) Majors problem hinder School Literacy movement
There are four major themes emerged in this study: 1) availability of
human resources outside school, 2) lack of fund, 3) development of School
literacy movement dimension and 4) improvement of literacy habit.
a) School has not identified human resources outside the school
The school has not invited prominent people in their field and involved
parents, society, government institutions, even university members to develop the
School literacy movement practice. The School has to involve them in the
program by conducting a seminar or workshop to raise students’ awareness of
reading literacy. They also could hold a bookfair or exhibition to attract students’
interest in reading. Furthermore, there is no cooperation between school and other
institutions or related parties, for example, a museum, library, society reading
corner, government institution, sports center and nature like a farm field. So that
those elements will support the School literacy movement.

b) School has not identified financial sources for development of School

Literacy Movement, for example Company corporate social responsibilty.
 Based on the result from the questionnaire, the school has only managed
financial sources for the development of School literacy from the government and
parents of students. School had to identify other sources, for example from
company corporate social responsibility. It was a very challenging effort for a
school to have other funds to support the program because people and some
company corporate do not a concern on the school literacy movement.
Meanwhile, the program itself requires big funding.

c) School has not developed School Literacy Movement activity

The successful school Literacy movement should develop six dimensions
of literacy. On the contrary, schools put the emphasize on 3 dimensions only such
as early literacy, basic literacy, and library literacy. The facilities to support others
dimensions are inadequate. This is also as the consequence of a lack of funds so
that schools find it difficult to design activities that can help students develop their
literacy in all dimensions. Teachers should create interesting literacy practices, for
example: shared reading materials (Araujo, A., & Costa, P: 2015); Literacy bag
(Huang: 2013) and many more. Some teachers stated that the School literacy
movement is an expensive program and government less concern on the
development and evaluation of the program.

d) School has not developed primary routine program to improve

literacy habit/ culture.
Related to previous factors, teachers state that schools could not improve
literacy habit in all literacy dimensions. The result showed that they only achieve
the improvement of literacy habits in two or three literacy dimensions. According
to the teachers, school couldn’t apply some activities related to literacy culture
because there are so many activities that already schools have for their students. In
other words, the establisment reading culture among students, teachers and
schools community remain the problems. It is therefore important to conduct
literacy intervention to build Literacy culture in school community (Joubert, et.
al :2014).

CONCLUSIONS
This study reports on an evaluation and assessment School Literacy
Movement conducted in 25 schools in the urban from various regions in
Indonesia. Due to a small scale sample size, the results of this study are not meant
to be generalized to predict an overall picture of School Literacy Movement
practice in Indonesia. This study demonstrated that schools still face four major
problems in implementing the School Literacy Movement. First of all, school has
not invited prominent people from outside school community to improve and
develop the School Literacy Movement. Second, School has not identfied
financial sources from outside the school, for example from the company’s
corporate social responsibility (CSR), alumni donation and, etc. This leads to the
lack of availability of reading materials at school so that students had to bring
their own reading materials to schools. Third, School has not developed School
Literacy Movement activity to achieve all literacy dimensions. Finally, School has
not developed a primary routine program to improve literacy habit/culture, for
example: book fair or exhibition at school. this activity will expand students’
literacy through extensive exposure reading materials.
Based on the result, the study concludes that Literacy issue, although
important, is not yet the concern of all schools. Many schools consider it is an
additional job or even a side job for teachers in general. Many of them believe that
the program becomes a responsibility for language teacher especially Indonesian
and English language teachers only, not for all schools’ elements. Moreover, the
School literacy program is done as a daily routine because of obligations from the
government, not because of literacy awareness. In relation to the scarcity of
reading materials at schools, it can be done by utilizing digital devices to access
online reading materials from the internet. Nowadays, it is very common for
Millenials students to access the information and knowledge through the internet.
Therefore, reading literacy practice should not only be conducted from a printed
text but also online reading materials.

REFERENCES

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Huang, S. (2013) The use of literacy bags promotes parental involvement in

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Joubert, I., Ebersohn, L., Ferreira, R., Plesis, L and Moen, M. (2014). Establishing
a Reading Culture in a Rural secondary School: A literacy Intervention
with Teachers. Journal of Asian and African Studies. Vol 49 (4) 399 –
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unemployment (16 to 24 year olds) also when controlled for
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INTERNET RESOURCES
http://www.oecd.org/pisa/