Challenges of Curriculum Reform in the Context of Decentralization: The Response of Teachers to a Competence-Based Curriculum (CBC) and Its Implementation in Schools

摘要

This study focuses on the time when the Indonesia government launched a new national curriculum, CBC, in response to both the need to produce human resources to survive in the era of globalization and the change in the government system from centralization to decentralization, which resulted in increasingly greater responsibility at the local level in implementing the reforms. As the reforms regarding the decentralization of certain educational functions and processes in Indonesia continue, understanding the impact on curriculum reform and the changes at local school levels will be essential.The objective of this study was to investigate the ways in which primary school teachers respond to the implementation of CBC, particularly issues like curriculum diversification, learning materials, syllabus design, and student assessment. Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian language), one of the subjects in the primary school, was selected as a focus of interest in this study. Sixty-five primary schools from two provinces were selected: Jakarta municipality (represents urban community) and Kodya Bandung, West Java (represents sub-urban community); and 286 teachers were invited to participate. The survey instrument featured "closed-ended" questions of twenty-five education-related and six demographics-related questions in different. A descriptive statistic was applied to the SPSS and used for data analysis. The current study reveals that over the long-term, in-service teacher training (INSET) has addressed only one third of the training badly needed by teachers. Teachers claimed to know what CBC is, but in actual classroom implementation of CBC, these teachers were lost, returning instead to the former curriculum, which they were more comfortable teaching. This study also investigates the policy issues regarding teachers' improvements using the three sets of terminology- "adopt," "adapt," and "implement" -to portray the connection between the conceptual and the practical sides of classroom teaching and learning activities.The implications of this study for further policy implementation of the CBC address two issues: the needs of teacher's training and the teachers' quality improvements. Regarding the government policy of decentralization, the policy actors- the "center," teachers' forums and the Curriculum Network Group- must establish a strong collaborative team of professional agents that will improve the quality of teachers.