Improving Volleyball Underhand Passing Skills through Student Teams Achievement Divisions (STAD): A Classroom Action Research in an Indonesian Senior High School

Abstract

This study was motivated by the low learning outcomes of volleyball underhand passing techniques among Grade X Class 8 students at SMA Negeri 2 Denpasar during the 2025/2026 academic year. Preliminary observations indicated that most students failed to achieve the Minimum Learning Mastery Criterion (MLMC) of 75. Although previous studies have demonstrated the effectiveness of the Student Teams Achievement Divisions (STAD) cooperative learning model in improving general academic achievement and Physical Education learning outcomes, limited evidence has specifically examined how STAD implemented through Classroom Action Research (CAR) systematically improves students’ mastery of volleyball underhand passing skills across successive instructional cycles. The scientific contribution of this study lies in demonstrating the instructional mechanism through which cooperative interaction, peer tutoring, individual accountability, and continuous reflective improvement within the CAR framework collectively enhance psychomotor learning outcomes in volleyball. Unlike previous studies that mainly evaluated general learning achievement, this study provides empirical evidence of progressive skill development across instructional cycles while explaining the pedagogical processes underlying students’ motor skill acquisition. This study aimed to improve students’ learning outcomes in volleyball underhand passing techniques through the implementation of the STAD cooperative learning model. The research employed a two-cycle Classroom Action Research design involving 38 Grade X Class 8 students. Data were collected using volleyball underhand passing performance tests and analyzed through descriptive quantitative techniques. The findings revealed that classical learning mastery increased from 15.8% at the pre-test stage to 36.84% in Cycle I and reached 79.0% in Cycle II, representing an overall improvement of 63.20 percentage points. These findings indicate that the STAD cooperative learning model effectively improves students’ technical performance, active participation, and collaborative learning. It can therefore be concluded that integrating STAD within a Classroom Action Research framework represents an effective instructional strategy for improving volleyball underhand passing skills while providing empirical evidence of how systematic instructional refinement contributes to psychomotor learning improvement in Physical Education.