Teacher education in Indonesia: development and challenges

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Abstract

Following the political reform in 1998 marked by the falling of the Suharto's regime (New Order), Indonesian education has undergone a major significant reform in almost all spheres of the field. Although the reform in school management had started since 1999 when the regional autonomy law (Law No. 22, 1999) was issued, it has just had a stronger basis on the new Education Law in 2003. In this current law, as Raihani (2007a) observes, the reform encompasses three major areas of education, i.e. the philosophy and objec-tives, management, and curriculum. National education is now aimed at developing each student's potential to become people with faith and piety towards God the Only One, good morality, good health, knowledge, intelligence, creativity, independence, and to become democratic and responsible citizens [authors' translation] (Departemen Pendidikan Nasional, 2003c, article 2). There is an emphasis on religious and moral values, intellec-tual competences, and democratic values. While the first three domains of objectives (reli-gious, moral and intellectual) are characteristics repeatedly mentioned in the previous education laws (Poerbakawatja, 1970), the explicit mention of democratic values is notable. Such a mention is a resemblance of what had been happening around the issue of the law, which is the major political change from authoritarianism to democracy. The law suggests that students need to be enlightened to the democratic values and prac-tices, strengthening the relationship between education and politics (Azra, 2002), and indicating that schools were a crucial locus for educating children to become democratic citizens, who contributed to constructing and sustaining a democratic country (Hochschild & Scovronick, 2002).

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• Teacher education in Indonesia: development and challenges. (deposited 23 Mar 2011 00:52)
  • Teacher education in Indonesia: development and challenges. (deposited 05 Jul 2011 01:07) [Currently Displayed]