THE EFFECT OF CHARACTER EDUCATION IMPLEMENTATION TOWARD IMPROVEMENT OF STUDENTS CURIOSITY AND CRITICAL THINKING ABILITY USING INQUIRY LEARNING AT JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL

The purpose of this research were to know the effect of character education implementation toward improvement of students curiosity and critical thinking ability in Physics (Newton Laws).The research method was quasi experimental. The population were all of students grade VIII SMP Swasta Muhammadiyah I Medan and 80 students became sample of this research. The sample divided into two classes, experimental and control classes. The treatment given was the implementation of character education in class VIII-C use inquiry learning, and without the implementation of character education in class VIII-B. Data obtained by direct observation for the students curiosity and test of critical thinking ability after learning that the treatment given. Data analysis technique used is the chi-square.
To get data of curiosity variable using observation sheet that suitable indicator of person that has curiosity, while to get data of critical thinking using essay test. Instrument validation of this research tested by using content validation. Data analysis technique used two way ANOVA and processed by SPSS 16.0.Then significant level that used α = 0.05.
The results of first hypothesis get sig 0.000, 0.05 > sig 0.000,so first hypothesis Ha is received, therefore there is difference of critical thinking ability with character education implementation using Inquiry Learning and Inquiry Learning without character education.. Then, second hypothesis get sig 0.001, 0.05 > sig 0.000,so second hypothesis Ha is received, therefore there is the difference of critical thinking ability between students that have high curiosity and low curiosity.Third hypothesis get sig 0.159, 0.05<0.159,so third hypothesis Ha is rejected, so no interaction between Inquiry Learning with character education and Inquiry Learning without character education with curiosity toward critical thinking ability.