A Brief Note of Science Education Development in Indonesia


(I feel you know where “a brief” phrase come from...)

Tribute to Arij Zulfi M.:
“Thanks for all support and help, especially when you were in my side and understood me during my-darker-than-blood period. I would never have spirit to finish my-crush-study without your patient.”

Indonesia Government has changed the curriculum periodically since 1947. It was done to repair the education system and also to improve education quality in Indonesia. Science education have a great role in enhancing it, especially to increase qualified students who are creative, critics, logic and initiative toward the issue in society which occur as a result of Science and Technology development. This simple-essay describes science education development in Indonesia through an analysis of curriculum changed since 1947.

Changes
(“Change” is a Korean song and the first single by South Korean singer Kim Hyuna marked her debut as a solo artist but still as part of girl group 4minute, I like that music video.)

Indonesia Constitution 1945 have a big purposes to develop citizen ability and personality traits also dignified civilization in order to educate all people to be a religious and faithful, have a good manner, healthy, intelligent, creative, independent, responsible and democratic person. National Education should be capable to guarantee the equity of education’s opportunity, quality improvement, relevancies, and education management efficiency. It described in Chapter XIII about education on article 31st that consist of two Clauses: (1) Every people has right for education, (2) Government work on and organize national learning system, regulated based on constitution. The second clause becomes a fundamental consideration in changing the curriculum. It was done to complete and accomplish previous curriculum. Curriculum completions have been doing continuously as an effort to adjust it with science and technology development and also society demand. It was done to get perfect proportion of learning goals, student potential, neighborhoods condition and facilities. Table 1. below showed the curriculum changes from 1947 until 2006.
Table 1. curriculum changes from 1947 until 2006
Curriculum
Orientation of Education
Rentjana Pengajaran 1947
Education as development conformism, to shape Indonesia people character which independent and sovereign and equal with other nation on the world
Rentjana pelajaran Terurai 1952
Every lesson plan should concern on the content and its relation to daily life
Rentjana Pendidikan 1964
Learning process was oriented on Pancawardhana Program which consist of sense of creative, feeling, intention, work and moral. Subject matter was classified into: moral, intelligence, emotional/ artistic, skill and physic. Elementary education was focused on knowledge and practice activity
1968
The education was focused on (1) created a real Pancasila people, strong and health; (2) improve intelligence, physics skill, ethics and religion belief
1975
Method, subject matter, and teaching purposes was specified in instructional system: Prosedur Pengembangan Sistem Instruksional (PPSI).It was known terms of learning unit “satuan pelajaran”. Each learning unit should be specified in general guide, purposes of specific instructional, subject matter, learning materials, and evaluation.
1984
Focused on process skill approach. Student became a subject of learning, start from observe, classify, discuss and report. The model is called Student Active Learning (SAL)
1994
Focused on content orientation: content understanding and skill to solve problem
2004 Competence Based Curriculum
Oriented on: (1) result and impact on student through meaningful learning experiences, (2) Diversity which can manifested based on the need
2006 KTSP
Emphasized on giving direct experience through inquiry to improve the competence in understanding nature scientifically, this competence become basic of curriculum development in each units (schools).
2013 Curriculum
Designed to give learning experiment broadly to learners to improve their attitude, skills, and knowledge which contributes to improving learners’ ability and potency as global citizen.

From the table above, it can be analyzed that the curriculum start arrange systematically in 1975, the learning organizations consist of: religion, language, math, social science, art, sport and health, skills, moral education and other integrated subject. Science education was not included in that organization. It begun to be developed in 1984 where the curriculum focused on process skill approach which support it. Student became a subject of learning, start from observe, classify, discuss and report. In the reality, teacher had some misinterpretation of term ‘active’, most of them let student learn independently in class without lecture. In fact, there were many critics to the curriculum. Then it enhance to be curriculum 1994, but it faced a problem on student understanding on science, they just memorize the lesson without understand it because of it only focus on content of subject.

Government enhanced the curriculum to the Competence Based Curriculum. It was made based on UU No. 22 and 25, 1999 about region/district autonomy. Schools and prefecture government has authority to create and develop their own curricula based on National Standard of Education in Indonesia. It enhanced to be curriculum based on education unit level or KTSP (Kurikulum Tingkat Satuan Pendidikan) in 2006. There is new arrangement of subject matter and program structure. However, government rise issues in 2010 about character based curriculum. It based on 100 days government program to enhance nation culture and character besides 100 days program of active learning implementation to solve corruption, criminality in society, undisciplined, bullying, cheat in national exam, etc.

The improvement of 2013 Curriculum from “curriculum for each education unit” (Kurikulum Tingkat Satuan Pendidikan, abbreviated by KTSP), to “competency-based curriculum” according to Ministry of Education and Culture is reflecting some principles. Those principles of improvement curriculum are: (1) Curriculum must be designed by giving opportunity to learners to improve the differences in skill and interest; (2) Curriculum must be centered on potency, improvement, need, and benefit of learners and his environment. Curriculum must be designed based on the principle that learners is on central position and must be active while learning; (3) Curriculum must be perceptive to change of knowledge, culture, technology, and art; (4) Curriculum must be relevant with need of life.

The New Classic 
(“The New Classic” is the debut studio album by Australian rapper Iggy Azalea contains my favorite song “Fuck Love”)

Government published “2013 National Curriculum” was a completion from the previous curriculum because of unsatisfied competences, of graduates, the heavy broad and irrelevant contents, teacher centered and textbook oriented learning, and cognitive focused assessments. This is also triggered by the new challenges faced in the rich technology and information era that impact on modernization, globalization, science and technology development. Indonesia’s potential having 55 million skilled workers in the Indonesian economy today that Indonesia will need 113 million skilled workers in 2030, thus we need to improve quality and relevancy in education because it is critical to economic and social development.

A child who has received a good education tends to be a better parent, make informed decisions, earns a better living, adopts new technology, copes with crises, and be a responsible citizen. Thus, education is an important aspect that should be considered by a government to develop the nation by having qualified human resources. Qualified human resources are developed by qualified educational system that includes teachers, policy maker and students. Indonesia is one of developing countries, which still needs qualified human resources to build it. In addition, 53% populations in cities are producing 74% of GDP, and then we have to prepare social engineering in order to achieve 71% population in cities that will produce 86% of GDP. (I always use satire by saying, “What is the impact on Indonesian GDP?”)

One of the big challenges that should be faced by Indonesian student in this century is to compete in TIMSS and PISA. TIMSS result showed that Indonesia had the national target population that did not include international target population. Furthermore, PISA result of Indonesian students also was not exciting. This Program of International Students Assessment assesses the extent to which 15-year-old students have acquired key knowledge and skills that are essential for full participation in modern societies. The assessment, which focuses on reading, mathematics, science and problem-solving, does not just ascertain whether students can reproduce what they have learned; it also examines how well they can extrapolate from what they have learned and apply that knowledge in unfamiliar settings, both in and outside of school. Indonesian students rank was poor position. This showed that they have low-key knowledge and skill that essential for full participation in modern scientist. The students were not ready enough to compete in international competition and join in modern science.

New released curriculum is one strategy that developed by government to enhance educational quality in order to create qualified students to compete in international world. The completion of curriculum framework between 2013 curriculum and the previous ones is illustrated in table below.
Table 2. Curriculum Framework Completions
No.
KBK 2004
KTSP 2006
2013 Curriculum
1
Graduate competency standards derived from content standards
Graduate competency standards derived from needs
2
Content standards formulated based on course purposes, as specified in the standards for graduate competencies and basic competencies of the course of study
Content standards derived from graduate competency standards through free core competencies of the course
3
Course of study that develop attitudes, skills and knowledge was separated
Every subject have to contribute to developing attitudes, skills, and knowledge
4
Competencies derived from course of study
Course of study derived from competence
5
Courses of study independent of each other, such as separate groups of lessons
Every course of study banded by core competencies (each classes)
6
The development of the curriculum until up to the syllabi
The development of curriculum until up to the basic competence
The development of the curriculum until up to the text book and teachers’ guidelines book
7
Thematic content for grades I and II (refer to course of study)
Thematic content for grades I–III (refer to course of study)
Thematic content for grades I–VI (refer to competencies)

The development of the curricular framework in Indonesia refers to the Constitution and follows several phases. In 2004, the first phases of curriculum development began with design of the framework followed by structure and content standards (development of thematic contents for grades I and II) that delivered standards for processes, graduate competencies, and assessment. The second phase after developing these three sets of standards, the government developed guidelines, syllabi and sample lesson plans. The third phase was textbook development, learning and assessment, which were conducted by the educational units (local governance). In 2006, in the third phase the government established a new policy that the development of syllabi, lesson plans, textbook development, learning and assessment, would be conducted by educational units (local governance) and developed thematic content for grades I- III. This curriculum was called Kurikulum Tingkat Satuan Pendidikan (KTSP). In 2013, the government changed the framework of the curriculum development process. In the first phase, they analyzed student profiles and the needs in relation to national educational goals, and then the second phase, improved graduate competency standards from which were derived processes, framework and assessment standards. Content standards were developed from the curriculum structure that followed the curricular framework. At the third phase, the development of syllabi, lesson plan, textbook development, learning and assessment was took place by the government. Thematic content is designed for grades I- VI. The completion of curricular framework between the previous curricula and the 2013 curriculum is illustrated in detail in Table 1, which describes differences in graduate competency standard, content standards, courses of study, and phases of development processes.

The main purpose of this new curriculum is to create productive, innovative, creative, and good effective human resources, through reinforcement of attitude, skill and knowledge in order to face challenges in the 21st century. The government has not implemented this reform in all regions; it has been carried out in specific areas and responses are being collected from educational practitioners. Teachers criticize this curriculum because of the thematic content, which forces them to think holistically in order to teach lessons. In other words, teachers need to integrate all subjects into a class to achieve the core competencies in students. In fact, the answer to what is the best methodology to achieve the purpose of the curriculum has not been studied yet. However, the integration of science and technology plays an important role in creating the citizenry needed in this century. I leave you something to doing Academic Research for Society.

“It is not necessary to go to the other side of the world to learn about the world; there are many things I can learn just in our own neighbourhood.”
— Lee Hsien Loong

Note
I do not write bibliography so that it isn't make me called a nerdy or diligent readerI'm too lazy to read. All sources used here can be guessed by searching on online search engine like Google—I recommend to use Google Scholar for more valid results.