Developing Responsibility Character for University Student in ECE through Project Method

Abstract

Being teacher of early childhood education (ECE) is not easy, because it needs good skills as a teacher of ECE. One of the skills is teacher of ECE have to know about characteristic of children. Children have the unique characteristic, and have many characters which should be developed by teacher (one of them is responsibility character). Teacher candidate of ECE will be a real teacher one day, and they will be a model for their children. To build the children responsibility character, teacher must have the responsibility character first. Teacher can build the responsibility character of children with being a model for children (with modeling theory by Albert Bandura). So, it's very important to develop the responsibility character for teacher candidate of ECE (including university student in PG.PAUD/Pendidikan Guru PAUD – one of departments in Yogyakarta State University which was built at 2008 and develops early childhood teacher). Because of new department, developing the responsibility character for university student in PG.PAUD can apply project method (project method was never done in PG.PAUD). Responsibility character which is part of independence character can be developed by project method with several stages which should be done by lecturer (planning and getting started, projects in progress, reflection and conclusion). When student (teacher candidate of ECE) learn with project method, they through several stages too, such as discussion, field work, investigation, representation, and display. In this situation (when they learn with project method), university student in PG.PAUD can learn about responsibility character, such as how they can complete the project that is given by lecturer. In summary, responsibility character (part of independence character) for university student in PG.PAUD can be developed by project method.