The Effectiveness of Experimental Methods on Student Learning Outcomes in Science Subject in Elementary School

Abstract

This research was motivated by teachers who were less creative when choosing the right learning method. During learning process, teachers only provided conventional methods with continuous care and rarely used experimental methods for science subjects so that there was a lack of enthusiasm and students’ participation in the learning process, which resulted in students’ learning outcomes becoming less than optimal. This study aimed to determine the learning outcomes of the control class students who were taught without using the experimental method and the experimental class that was taught using the experimental method. This was also to find out whether the experimental method was effective in improving the learning outcomes of fourth grade students of MI Ma'arif Sutawinangun. This research employed quantitative research using the experimental method, in this case it was the posttest-only control design. In this design, neither the experimental class nor the control class were selected randomly. The population of this study was the fourth grade students of MI Ma'arif Sutawinangun, totaling in 52 students divided into 2 classes: the control class and the experimental class. The sample in this study was taken by purposive sampling so that the researchers took two classes as sampling: he control class (26 students) and the experimental class (26 students). The results of the independent sample t-test hypothesis test obtained that the tcount value was 2.811 > ttable, which was 2.007. So from these results it can be seen that the experimental method was effective in improving the learning outcomes of fourth grade students of MI Ma'arif Sutawinangun.