Notification of public defence with Yanti Sastrawan, Media and Communication Studies

Yanti Sastrawan presents her doctoral thesis ”Becoming Indonesian: Teaching Pancasila at the Intersection of Education Technology and Ideology”.

Subject: Media and Communication Studies
Research area: Studies in the Educational Sciences
Doctoral School: School, Sport, Screen
Language: English

The public defence of doctoral thesis will take place on Friday 25 September 2026 - see link below.

Abstract:
With a population of nearly 280 million people, Indonesia is the fourth most populous nation in the world, encompassing more than 1,300 ethnic groups as well over 700 regional languages, with Bahasa Indonesia being the national language. 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. While Pancasila is constitutionally enshrined and widely invoked as a unifying framework, its meanings have been historically contested. Nonetheless, it has been foundational in teaching citizenship education, and it is clearly present in Indonesia’s shift to the digitalisation of education in recent years. Pancasila’s vagueness allows government institutions wide room for its interpretation as they define its meanings in relation to education on how to become good citizens, utilising an ideology that intertwines acutely with the nation’s history (Darmaputera, 1988). With the digitalisation of education that has been enacted by the government, this has intensified both the ambitions, and the tensions present in teaching practices in schools.

This research aims to explore the ways in which Pancasila is articulated, both historically as well as in contemporary governmental policies, and how it is adapted in teachers’ educational practices with digital media and technologies. As there is a historical lens through which one must observe the meaning-making of Pancasila, this research begins by examining this perspective from The Birth of Pancasila speech, the Pancasila Ideology Development Agency, as well as the Merdeka Mengajar (Emancipated Teaching) digital platform (PMM) and the Pancasila Student Profile framework, which are initiatives that were launched by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Research and Technology.

Through an inquiry adopting a cultural approach to educational media production, this study is theoretically grounded within the encoding/decoding framework (Hall, 1973). As an analytical tool, it observes the meaning-making of Pancasila through culture and ideology (Anderson, 2006; Geertz, 1973) as well as the measurements of learning (Biesta, 2009), technological solutionism (Facer & Selwyn, 2021), and cultural citizenship identity (Dahlgren, 2009). Correspondingly, the research design centres a qualitative methodology that includes analysis of interviews and field notes observations from fieldwork conducted in Jakarta, Bali, and Jogjakarta; The Birth of Pancasila speech, and policy documents from the Pancasila Ideology Development Agency (BPIP); as well as Pancasila educational videos.

Pancasila functions as an instrument for defining good Indonesian citizens, and understanding its ambiguity (Geertz, 1973) is necessary for learning how to teach and practice Pancasila. At the intersection of education technology and ideology, teachers are positioned as intermediaries to instil a culture of learning Pancasila through lived experiences by being its active interpreters. Ultimately, teachers’ negotiated practices in using digital technologies and media not only are a reflection of their being exemplary teachers, but also a feature of becoming Indonesian as well.

Keywords: digitalisation of education, Platform Merdeka Mengajar, Pancasila Student Profile, citizenship education, teaching realities, lived ideology.