Strengthening Social Studies Literacy in the Social Distancing Policy Paradigm in the Covid-19 Pandemic Era (Study of Basic Understanding of Junior High School Students in the South Region of Garut Regency)

Abstract

Covid 19 Pandemic phenomenon has given birth to a new social and cultural order in the lives of people in the world including Indonesia. The existence of the Social Distancing paradigm gave birth to a new understanding for the community including junior high school students who are closely related to social studies subjects. The policy of implementing Social Distancing has been responded to by various elements of the community. This then encourages the writer to examine the understanding of junior high school students who have been learning about social studies education, how their understanding is related to the application of social distancing, how they react to it and its implementation in their learning activities and how the relationship between the application of social distancing is with strengthening social literacy. This study uses a quantitative approach in which the sample is junior high school students in the southern area of Garut regency as many as 97 students drawn from grades eight and nine. The results showed that students' understanding varied with the most understanding of social distancing that studied at home (56.4%). Most attitudes and implementations state that they follow the direction of the school to study at home and follow distance learning (62.5%). There is a positive significance (45.7%) between the application of social distancing in schools with strengthening social literacy, especially in the discipline of maintaining social distance and social solidarity. This research has implications for the provision of knowledge and understanding of social distancing policy needs to be done on a massive scale so that it has implications for healthy behavior and social attitudes among students and the community.