Pride and Pancasila

The 90% PhD Seminar of Yanti Sastrawan, PhD Candidate in Media and Communication Studies on 'Pride and Pancasila: Meaning-Making of Citizenship through the Digitalisation of Education in Indonesia.'

Welcome to the next higher seminar organised by the Media and Communication Studies department!
In this higher seminar, our doctoral student, Yanti Sastrawan, will present on her PhD research project titled 'Pride and Pancasila: Meaning-Making of Citizenship through the Digitalisation of Education in Indonesia.'

With almost 280 million people, Indonesia is the fourth most populous nation, encompassing more than 1,300 ethnic groups and over 700 regional languages. Amid this diversity, the state promotes Pancasila (pronounced as Pan-cha-see-lah) or the Five Principles as the official ideological foundation of the nation (Frederick et al., 1993). While Pancasila is constitutionally enshrined and widely invoked as a unifying framework, its meanings have been historically contested. Nonetheless, it has been persistent with its ambition to educate citizenship rooted in the Pancasila ideology. One of its advances is the launch of the ‘Merdeka Mengajar’ (‘Emancipated Teaching’) digital platform for teachers by the Minister of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology in 2022.

The platformisation of education enforced by the government’s belief in technological solutionism (Facer & Selwyn, 2021; van Dijck et al., 2018) has created an intense relation for teachers in making sense of teaching in the digitalisation of education era. Arguably, the governmental initiatives not only bring optimism but also consequential risks that constantly reshape teaching practices (Rahm, 2019). Here, the study aims to understand how Pancasila is produced in the digitalisation of education and how its meaning-making practice forms citizenship values. Correspondingly, the research design focuses on qualitative methodology. This includes methods of interviews and field notes observations from conducting fieldwork in Jakarta, Bali, and Jogjakarta, speech and policy document analysis from government institutions, as well as Pancasila education video analysis.

Pancasila functions as an instrument in defining good Indonesian citizens despite its ambiguity (Geertz, 1973). Still, its vagueness in allowing a wide interpretation puts forward that each institution has its own way in defining and educating Indonesians to be good citizens through an ideology that intertwines acutely with its history (Darmaputera, 1988). By studying the advances of digitalisation of education in Indonesia with the ideology’s ideals, it can offer an insight into how such optimism is criticised by the teachers experiencing it themselves. As it is those on the frontlines who have to bear in fulfilling such anticipated optimism in conveying what it means to be a good Indonesian citizen.

It is possible read the PhD manuscript in advance as well as to join the higher seminar on campus and online via Zoom. Contact us for the Zoom details if you'd like to join online, and if you'd like to read the manuscript in full.