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Top1. Introduction
Learning in the current era is crucial to provide opportunities as well as support (scaffolding) for students to study independently, diverse ways of thinking, self-efficacy, systematically problem-solving and adopt the knowledge in social life. Socio-cultural changes often have an impact on everyday social life, both positive and negative impacts. Negative impacts, including social problems (corruption, crime, poverty, unemployment, juvenile delinquency, lifestyle do not match the national personality (promiscuity, etc.), environmental pollution (garbage, slums, water, and air pollution, etc.) need to be resolved. For this reason, students as members of society need to be taught early on social problem solving skills, including regular students and students with special needs according to their potential. Based on the current reality of learning outcomes related to social problem solving of junior high school students are relatively low.
The principles of learning activities are functional and contextual, the learning process needs to pay attention to the cultivation of soft skills aspects, including cooperation, mutual respect, a sense of belonging and responsibility, honesty, willing to sacrifice (Setyosari, 2009). Effort or activities including learning that done together can improve the quality of life, happiness, sociability, enthusiasm, prevent social conflict, improve both social and academic aspects (Joyce et. al, 2009). In addition, it is also important to pay attention to the characteristics of other students, in this study students' self-efficacy.
Moreover, most students barely pay attention to learning strategies and their characteristics, including self-efficacy, whereas it could affect learning outcomes, including learning related to social problem-solving. Learning that covers all aspects of students comprehensively, including the ability to solve social problems still not optimally implemented because most learners are still pursuing the achievement of curriculum targets, prioritizing the achievement of learning material that is more memorized and academic. Learning and training to improve problem-solving skills are useful so that students could analyze and solve problems systematically, face various challenges in an organized way, form innovative questions, design original solutions, distinguish truths and lies, appearance and reality, facts and opinions, knowledge and beliefs (Johnson, 2002).
Social problems are a problem related to values that grow in society or institutions and is the impact of modernization and socio-cultural changes. Social problems are commonly found as peace interferes in society. Thus to identify a social problem moral aspects is needed, to assess and make a good measurement. Social problems, including corruption, crime, poverty, unemployment, juvenile delinquency, lifestyle do not match the nation's personality such as promiscuity. Students' problem-solving skills are relatively declining due to various factors, including strategies/models / approaches/learning methods that not relevant (the results of observations and interviews with researchers and parents and communities who care about education). As citizens and students are expected to contribute and possess active learning in solving social problems. However, that condition requires a proper learning strategy, in this study investigation learning of scaffolding assisted groups and self-efficacy are applied.
Learning related to the ability to solve social problems is still focused on providing information that is memorized, only questions and answers occur between learners and students, each student has not yet obtained the role according to his potential in the group. Group learning is also still in the form of class discussion, meaning that the whole class discusses a problem with the learner as a moderator, even if a small group is formed, it is not certain that all students have roles according to their potential, even the learning process is dominated by certain students so that other students lack the opportunity to role and opinion according to their potential. This paradigm still survives until now, so also there are still tests and worksheets that are only in the form of memorization.
Based on the issues in learning described above, it is necessary to conduct contextual, cooperative, collaborative, and fun learning based on constructivist learning theories and to use constructivist instructional design (Richey, et. al, 2011) and models, strategies, the right approach, learning method as a solution to improve social problem-solving skills. Based on descriptive learning theory (Reigeluth, 1983, Degeng, 1989, 2013), conditions and methods are independent variables, conditions and methods interact to produce effects on learning outcomes as dependent variables.