Articles

Integrating Ethnopedagogical Approaches in English Vocabulary Learning: A Qualitative Study from Toraja, Indonesia

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learning and identifies the challenges teachers face in implementing these culturally responsive approaches in the Toraja context, Indonesia. Employing a qualitative research design with thematic analysis following the Miles and Huberman interactive model, data were collected through in-depth interviews with English teachers regarding the integration of ethnopedagogical approaches in vocabulary instruction. Findings reveal that ethnopedology significantly enhances student motivation across eight dimensions: increased learning attractiveness and information retention, enhanced overall motivation, greater active participation, increased confidence, improved long-term vocabulary retention, stronger sense of ownership and cultural pride, increased perseverance, and fostered independent learning habits. Teachers face ten substantial implementation challenges, including limited competence in integrating local wisdom, insufficient contextual materials, absence of evaluation standards, time constraints, difficulty balancing cultural content and linguistic targets, and assessment difficulties. Despite these challenges, teachers employ ten effective strategies including the use of authentic cultural objects, storytelling, discovery learning, cultural portfolios, and collaboration with community experts. This study contributes to the growing body of literature on culturally responsive language teaching by providing empirical evidence from an under-researched Indonesian context, offering practical implications for teachers, curriculum developers, and policymakers.

The Development of Environment-Based Visual Media to Enhance Learning Outcomes and Student Motivation in Science Course

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Learning media plays a crucial role in education, especially in facilitating student understanding and motivation. In this era of rapid technological advancement, learning media has expanded to include various forms such as audio, visual, and multimedia. To enhance learning outcomes, teaching media needs to be utilized as a source of learning for students, including environmental media as a learning resource. Visual media is expected to improve students’ understanding of ecological theme concepts in line with the intended objectives. This study employs the Research and Development (RnD) method in developing learning media, requiring a suitable instructional model that aligns with the content’s characteristics. The ADDIE (Analysis – Design – Development – Implementation – Evaluation) development model is used in developing the Microsoft PowerPoint tutorial video media. Normality tests for the variables were conducted using the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test. Based on the normality test results using SPSS 15 for Windows and the Kolmogorov-Smirnov technique, the values obtained were (0.120), (0.165), (0.114), and (0.127) with significance values of (0.200), (0.092), (0.200), and (0.200) respectively. When the significance level is set at 0.05, the significance values are more significant than 0.05. Subsequently, hypothesis testing (T-test) was conducted to determine the difference in using environment-based visual media between the control and experimental groups using the t-test formula. The t-test formula was used to determine the difference in students’ critical thinking abilities, both in the SPSS 20 for Windows calculation using Separated Variance, as the data exhibited non-homogeneity of variance. The hypothesis testing results indicate that the samples are non-homogeneous, with a calculated t-value of 6.833 and a significance level 0.000. When the significance level is 0.05, the significance value is much smaller than α. Thus, it can be concluded that environment-based visual media influences students’ learning motivation in the Science subject at grade 5 of SDN Kotakulon 2 Bondowoso. Based on the calculation and data analysis, it can be inferred that the hypothesis testing results support Ha (alternative hypothesis) and reject Ho (null hypothesis), meaning there is an influence between the variable (x) of environment-based visual media development and the variable (y) of student learning motivation.