<![CDATA[This study aims to examine the effect of contextual learning on elementary students' understanding of national economic concepts. Understanding economic concepts at the elementary level is fundamental for shaping students' financial literacy and economic awareness as they grow into adulthood. However, economics-related material in social studies is often taught abstractly and disconnected from students' everyday experiences, resulting in low conceptual understanding. Contextual Teaching and Learning (CTL) is an approach that connects subject matter with real-life situations experienced by students, encouraging them to construct knowledge through direct experience rather than memorization. This research employed a quantitative approach with a quasi-experimental design using a one-group pretest-posttest model. The research was conducted at SD Negeri 35/III Tambak Tinggi, involving a fifth-grade class consisting of 16 students as the research subject. Data were collected through a conceptual understanding test administered before and after the implementation of the contextual learning approach, then analyzed using a paired sample t-test with the assistance of statistical software. The results indicate that the average posttest score (82.19) was significantly higher than the average pretest score (61.56), with a significance value of p < 0.05, indicating that contextual learning has a significant effect on students' understanding of national economic concepts. These findings imply that linking economic material with students' daily life contexts, such as buying and selling activities, household needs, and local economic phenomena, can strengthen meaningful learning and long-term conceptual retention. This study recommends that elementary school teachers integrate contextual strategies more intensively in social studies and economics instruction to build a strong foundation of economic literacy from an early age.]]>
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