Conflict Resolution Education Training in Indonesia1

Conflict Resolution Education Training in Indonesia: Teaching Tolerance through Conflict Resolution Education[1]

December 13th, 2003, marked the end of a joint Indonesian-American education project that has occupied most of my thoughts and activities for past two years. On my return to Ohio University (OU) in the fall of 2001, in fact two weeks into my first quarter, I was presented with the challenge of drafting an initial plan for tolerance education training to be done in Indonesia. This would be one part of a larger, multi-perspective Conflict Resolution Training-Of-Trainers (TOT) grant proposal for which the Center for Research on Intergroup Relations and Conflict Resolution (CERIC) at the University of Indonesia (UI) and Center for Southeast Asian Studies at OU, was applying. It was a collaborative response to help with the increasing rate of communal and ethnic violence which has been occurring in Indonesia since 1997. In Spring 2002, the U.S. State Department awarded our group with the funding to begin.Little did we know then that this project would become the major focus of my second Master’s degree and motivate me to do a Ph.D. in teacher education. The grant has given me the opportunity to work collaboratively with 74 Indonesian educators, a varied group of Indonesian professionals, and several Ohio University (OU) faculty across many disciplines. Together we have begun to transform an idea of tolerance through conflict resolution education (TCRE) into a possible Indonesian democratic education reform.

In this article, I report on the TOT workshops conducted for elementary, middle, and high school teachers, professors in teacher education, and students majoring in teacher education. These workshops were conducted in cooperation with CERIC centers in Surabaya, East Java; Palembang, South Sumatra; Malang, East Java; and Banjarmasin, Southeast Kalimantan. In total 74 participants attended the workshops, and 13 Indonesian participants have already joined OU trainers as presenters in training workshops on teaching tolerance through conflict resolution education.

Initially, I suggested that the curriculum we use needed to be based on a cooperative learning [CL] model. In Western countries, CL has gained popularity as an instructional method that promotes multicultural understanding and cooperation among diverse student groups, reduces stereotyping, and increases skills in critical thinking, creative problem solving, and social-emotional intelligence (Johnson, & Johnson, 1989; Johnson, Johnson, & Holubec, 1994).As a special education teacher and later as an English as a foreign language teacher, I had employed different aspects of CL successfully in Tunisia, Malta, Korea and Indonesia where I team-taught with local teachers.

After examining literature on Conflict Resolution Education (CRE), I realized that it was based on CL and non-coercive classroom management (NCCM) techniques (Bodine, Crawford, & Schrumpf, 1994; Deutsch & Coleman, 2000; Glasser, 1999). In fact, both CL and NCCM could be considered pillars of CRE. Both focus on modeling, teaching, and reinforcing effective communication skills. Similar to Democratic Education, CRE targets the values and skills necessary for good citizenship: equity, trust, justice, tolerance, empathy, active listening, paraphrasing, reframing, speaking to be understood, cooperation, and consensual problem solving (Crawford & Bodine, 1996; Deutsch & Coleman, 2000). Since Indonesia continues to struggle with educational reform to promote democratic citizenship, I suggested that CRE would be a possible fit for the TOT grant. I called the program “Teaching Tolerance through Conflict Resolution Education” (TCRE).

Since the 1997 Asian economic crisis, Indonesia has gone from being a country hailed as an economic development wonder to a debtor nation suffering from ethnic violence and terrorist activity. Under Suharto’s 32 years of rule, conflicts were repressed through military and police force. Conflicts that did surface were often not reported. Since the downfall of Suharto in the spring of 1998, many violent conflicts have re-emerged; illustrating that repression without resolution is not an effective way to handle conflict (Collins, 2002; Colombijn & Lindblad, 2002).

A traditional way to resolve conflict in Islam is through musyawarah (“let us sit and reason together”). However, in practice, Indonesians are more accustomed to relying on authority figures for the final conflict resolution. During Suharto’s tenure, this tradition of deference was supported with a nationally mandated civics course known as Pancasila.[1] This course was originally promoted during the independence struggle in the 1940s as a national creed to unite the diverse citizens of the IndonesianRepublic, which includes more than 13,000 islands and over 300 different ethnic groups under a set of shared national values. However, Pancasila became a sort of indoctrination in schools with the main purpose of building support for the Suharto regime. No discussion of issues or criticism of State policies or actions was tolerated.

In addition, all discussion of religious, ethnic, racial, and intergroup conflict was forbidden by law under the New Order.[2] Conflict was considered threatening to the harmony of society. Open disagreement or criticism was not seen as a way to creatively address a problem or as a chance for growth and learning, let alone a way of building empathy or, at the very least,tolerance for difference. Pancasila presented in this way seems to have been bolstered by the very traditional customs (especially of the largest ethnic group—the Javanese) of deference to one’s superiors and maintaining composure. After the fall ofSuharto’s totalitarian rule, however, this sort of force acceptance did not last.Many suppressed conflicts re-emerged. And in their new era of democratic reform, Indonesians are struggling to find a path to social justice and socio-political stability. As has been true of many countries that begin reform (Post-Apartheid South Africa, Post-PerestroykaRussia), the education sector has become the primary site for blame as well as for restructuring (Banks. 2004).

The Indonesian Education System

Indonesia’s public school system is supplemented by an extensive network of religious (Islamic and Christian) and secular private schools. All schools are required to provide religious education in one of the five recognized religions: Islam, Protestantism, Catholicism, Buddhism, and Hinduism.[3]The education system is mainly under the control of the Ministry of Education and Culture, but the Ministry of Religious Affairs is in control of the Islamic school system, and the Ministry of Home Affairs works with the Ministry of Education and Culture at the local level (Purwadi & Muljoatmodjo, 2000, 92).

Until recently, all schools had to follow the Ministry of Education’s national curriculum. Additionally, from 1975 until 1998, besides religious education, all schools, including universities were required to provide a combined civics and moral education course, known as Pancasila Moral Education, or its Indonesian acronym PMP/PKKn, to promote a unified national identity (Fitch, 1992-93). Besides students, all civil servants, which is the employment designation of teachers, and many other public and private organizations were also required to receive civics and moral education training (Bjork, 2003; Neilsen, 1998). However this is in the process of being reformed too. In fact some movement away from centralized education began to occur in the early 1990s under the pressures of economic globalization (Bjork, 2003).

Beginning in 1994, Indonesia’s national curriculum was changed to give more authority to local areas (Bjork, 2003; Purwadi & Muljoatmodjo, 2000). Districts were given the right to adapt approximately 20% of the curriculum to fit local needs and resources. After the fall of Suharto, new decentralization laws were passed transferring authority for schools to local administrations. As a result, the national curriculum is slowly becoming a list of standards and competencies. Although Pancasila is no longer mandated, at present there has not been any other tolerance or civic program introduced to replace it. Most local districts do not have the resources to develop their own curricula and thus continue to use Pancasila.Accordingly many private schools also continue to use the Pancasila course materials, although some have developed new character education courses. Like Pancasila, these have been criticized, in general, for emphasizing rote learning, stressing sympathy versus empathy, and indoctrinating students rather than educating them to be more tolerant and democratic (Fitch, 1992-93).

Additionally, there is thepossibility of confusion between civic ethics versus religious morals. This came up in at least one of my interviews when an elementary English teacher at an Islamic private elementary laughed at the notion or need for civics education since the students already receive a lot of moral training in Islamic ethics in their religion classes. She felt that her students had a very strong ethics background. She stated, “If their [student’s] friend say something bad/dirty, the student comes straight away and tells us, ‘Teacher, s/he [the other student] said something dirty, teacher!”Examples like this made me consider the possibility of continued ethnic balkanization if civic education is left only to the different courses in religion.

Under the New Order, there were a variety ofefforts to reform education (Dardjowidjojo, 2001; Nielsen, 1998; Shaeffer, 1990). In the 1970s, the Development School Pilot Project (known in Indonesian as PPSP) got underway. This was a multi-perspective education reform that targeted the physical structures of schools, course offerings, curriculum development, and teacher pedagogy with a heavy emphasis on mastery learning.As Shaeffer (1990) notes,PPSP met with little success in most areas of Indonesia due to the top-down nature of the reform and the cost entailed in overseeing its success. In the mid-1970s, another educational innovation known as the PAMONG project was attempted with only limited success. Shaeffer (1990) describes this innovation as a reform to provide “an alternative system” of mass primary education in a developing country with teacher shortages and economic hardships (p.39). PAMONG was designed as a way to reach more children with fewer teachers that made use of peer tutoring and self-instruction. Key to this system was a set of learning modules that were created to be followed in chronological order, with successive levels for each learning unit, built-in review of previous units, and instruction in the skills needed to enter the next level. Shaeffer (1990) states, “the glue holding these pieces together was a system of self-instruction and programmed instruction using modular materials” (p.39).However, as he also notes,PAMONG required a lot of student self-motivation, parental understanding and support, and consistent monitoring.Like PPSP, PAMONG eventually fell to the wayside without having a lasting impact on the educational system as a whole.

In the early 1980s, on-site teacher training was initiated focusing on active learning methods known as Cara Belajar Siswa Aktif (CBSA). After CBSA was successfully introduced in a few pilot sites in West Java, it spread very quickly and was even mandated under the national curriculum. However, follow-up studies showed that the reform of teaching methods failed due to lack of training, monitoring, evaluation, and support (Lie, 2003; Shaeffer, 1990). Also important to note is that teacher training institutes were not included in this reform, and as Shaeffer (1990) asserts, this became a point of contention and criticism.

In 1994, another effort was made to reform the national curriculum by introducing critical teaching methods through training of prospective and current teachers and providing economic incentives to teachers. However, this reform was also not successful (Nielsen, 1998). According to Dardjowidjojo (2001), “in an Eastern society…where the yardsticks for good behavior are the principles of total obedience, the unquestioning mind, the concept of elders-know-all, and the belief that teachers can do no wrong, the implementation of such [student-centered] teaching activities is not without problems” (p.309). Dardjowidjojo suggests that these social norms are so intractable that Indonesian teachers would have difficulty adopting student-oriented curricula.

The failure of educational reforms remains evident in most Indonesian classrooms according to many reviewers (Bjork, 2003; Buchori, 2001; Shaeffer, 1990; Nielsen, 1998). In general, classrooms retain the very traditional look.Teachers remain in the front of the room on a raised floor space with their students seated in rows in front of them. Teacher/student ratios vary from 25-60 students per teacher. Students most often do not talk unless they are addressed.[4]That is the educational history and structure which served as the backdrop for my attempt to introduce tolerance and conflict resolution education to Indonesian educators.

Adapting Tolerance Education to an Indonesian Context

In adapting TCRE to an Indonesian context, CL, in particular, seems to fit well with the traditional Indonesian values of gotong-royong, mufakat and musyawarah, which loosely translate as cooperation and consensual problem solving (Fitch, 1992-93). However, the emphasis on the high status of teachers and the appropriate deference to superiors contrast with the TCRE emphasis on student choice and individual voice. To help inform the TCRE workshops set for 2003, I followed the guidelines set by Honeyman & Cheldelin (2002) to anticipate problems in introducing CRE in Indonesia and conducted interviews with Indonesian teachers and administrators in East Java in the summer of 2002.[5]

The Indonesian educators I met with were concerned that cooperative learning was just another version of the failed CBSA program. They were also concerned about the difficulty of managing group learning and losing their authority if a student-centered approach to learning were introduced. They explained that large classes would require many groups and that one person would not be able to control them. Although they complained about passive students, they were content with controlled classrooms, which they described as quiet and respectful. These concerns suggested to me that classroom management and teaching are understood in terms of surveillance and control.[6]

I also came to see that the teachers had a very different understanding of conflict than I. The word konflik in Indonesian is generally used to describe a communal conflict that has become violent. In general, the teachers considered conflict to be disruptive, destructive, and bad, something to be suppressed. Thus when asked about konflik in their school, teachers said that there was no konflik in their classrooms. Yet, when I asked about discipline problems, teachers described problems with students arguing, fighting, teasing, and being disrespectful. The teachers consistently described classroom discipline in terms of punishment or extrinsic rewards. Although corporal punishment is illegal and the educators whom I interviewed all stated that they never used it, over the years, including the summer of 2002, I have observed other teachers use harsh verbal reprimands, humiliation, and ostracism to discipline students.

As a result of my discussions with Indonesian teachers and administrators, five themes were identified for the Teaching Tolerance TOT Workshop: 1) defining active and cooperative learning strategies and using them as the pedagogy of the workshop; 2) defining non-coercive discipline by building learning communities in the classroom; 3) defining effective communication skills; 4) defining framing conflict and practice it use; 5) setting of goals and objectives. Taken together, these themes provide the basis for TCRE.

The workshops. [7]

In the TOT workshops on CRE, Indonesian and American trainers worked together in presenting the theory and teaching approaches of TCRE. As Honeyman & Cheldelin (2002) emphasize, collaborating with local experts promotes partnering, gives legitimacy to the projects and assists the process of adaptation of international concepts to local contexts. Discussion focused on the principles of TCRE and how they differed or complemented traditional teaching methods used in Indonesia. Particular emphasis was placed on the ways that CL differs from the unstructured group work of CBSA. The presenters showed participants how CL would support the national directive for a competency-based curriculum, known in Indonesia as KBK.

In every workshop, along with receiving direct instruction on cooperative learning, CL groups were used to explore the all the topics introduced and to give participants experience in the method of cooperative learning. After group exercises, the participants analyzed the communication skills used in the groups and discussed how group work could be structured to teach effective communication skills. One exercise that we introduced was a simulation jigsaw, which involved small groups digesting a reading and developing a summary of important points. The small groups then taught what they had learned to each other. This was presented as an active-learning strategy to replace the traditional method of assigned readings and lecturing. Another method that was introduced was constructive controversy—an engaging strategy that uses debate but eliminates competition and places emphasis on collaborative problem solving. We found the participants excited about implementing these strategies in their classrooms.

The most difficult concept for participants in the TCRE workshops was NCCM, a classroom management approach that involves students in rule-making and deciding on the consequences associated with infractions of rules. To counter the view that teachers lose authority when they switch to more facilitative roles (Dardjowidjojo, 2001), participants were assured that providing students more choice did not undermine a teacher’s authority. Group activities encouraged teachers to ask students meeting in small groups to draw up a set of classroom rules and then the class would debate different rules and come to a consensus on the rules that should be adopted. Students could also be asked to recommend consequences to particular infractions. In the process of discussion, the teacher’s authority was re-defined as managing groups, facilitating communication, and knowing the content well enough to present it in different ways (Friere, 2000). The trainers suggested that allowing student participation in making classroom rules and deciding on consequences was a strategy for teaching responsibility. At the same time, teachers are freed from the need to enforce discipline and can model authoritative leadership.