Local Epistemologies in the Provision of Social Justice in Education: A Case for Indonesia
Published Oct 9, 2019 · R. Chowdhury
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Abstract
In a country of enormous demographic diversity such as Indonesia, an ongoing challenge for teachers can be to respond to the learning needs of every student in fair and socially just manner. In such an environment, teachers often intuitively resort to a one-size-fits-all approach in managing the pressures of an already crowded curriculum. Such practices, however, are often met with futile outcomes where the educator’s primary motive is to adopt ‘safe’ practices. However, contemporary research has shown how the learning needs of our students greatly vary, not only because of socio-economics and access to technology, but because of significant variations in students’ physical and learning abilities and preferences, their life experiences, personal interests, as well as varying levels of readiness. Because of this, there are immense benefits for the society if our teaching is differentiated. Differentiated instruction in the classroom, where students are provided with equitable rather than equal access to learning, enables students to achieve better academic output through access to fairer opportunities to learning. By accommodating students' diverse learning needs, such a responsive approach also allows teachers to integrate the social justice agenda into their teaching. Far from being a Western construct, social justice is a quintessentially Indonesian attribute embedded within the construct of Pancasila; while differentiated instruction – an approach to enacting social justice – is not necessarily resource-heavy and technology-dependent, unlike many other approaches to teaching. This presentation will show how differentiated instruction can be implemented in a resource-constrained environment, without the need for the latest technology or abundant resources, and in large classrooms, such as those in Indonesia. In particular, it will also present some of the mechanics of managing a differentiated classroom and the practicalities of ensuring this within the contextual particulars of the Indonesian classroom, including the confines of state-regulated curriculum and assessment.