QUESTION FORMATION OF BAHASA INDONESIA AS A SECOND LANGUAGE

Abstract: This article aims to implement Processability Theory (PT) to Bahasa Indonesia or Indonesian language and to identify developmental stages for question formation in the setting of Bahasa Indonesia as a second language (ISL). PT provides a theoretical framework in making predictions about the course of language development, in this case the question formation acquisition. This study proposes developmental stages of question formation in ISL setting by contrasting the lexical functional grammar of Indonesian question as compared to ESL question formation. Four stages of ISL question formation were proposed. The proposed stages serve as the basis for data analysis and to show its plausibility

NEGOTIATING SOCIAL IDENTITY THROUGH QUESTIONS IN CASUAL CONVERSATIONS: A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

Questioning is a potential means to establish identity in social interaction, and thus it helps position oneself in relation to others. However, this relationship between question and social identity remains relatively under-explored in the theoretical territory (Kao Weng, 2012; Tracy Naughton, 1994). This paper contributes to this area of inquiry by employing critical discourse analysis in investigating the construction and negotiation of social identity through questions. Data are drawn from four sets of casual conversations I conducted with two native and two non-native speakers of English. Two stages of analysis are carried out. Firstly, I present and distribute the questioning patterns that emerge from the conversation. Secondly, I analyse the questioning process and its relation to the negotiation of social identity. Findings and discussion reveal that social identity is multiple: as a site of struggle and subject to change. The negotiation of identity through questions is evident from the emerging patterns of the length of interrogative form, repetitive questions, and the intensity of social control

Photovoice: Young children online English language learning, parents’ voices and its implication to educational policy and provision

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought significant changes to the education sector. The shift from classroom-based conventional learning to virtual mode means that the study from home policy appears to place responsibilities of students learning on parents. By focusing on primary level education, we explored parents’ voices and aspirations in assisting their children in taking online English language classes. As most of the parents have been overwhelmed, we offer some insights regarding how to mitigate the problems. Using photovoice, fifteen parents whose children were learning English language in primary schools were invited to take the photographs from the online English language learning (OELL) program and discussed the photographs. We used Photovoice in the project to capture parents’ concerns over the program and their relationship with the pandemic. Thematic analysis was used as a tool to generate important themes from the photovoice data. While appreciating the program, our respondents highlighted the obstacles and concerns over the online English learning through their photographs. In this article, we demonstrated, that photovoice not only offered a space to explore parents’ experiences in engaging in their children’s OELL program, but also served as a space for parents’ aspirations in disrupting and influencing educational programs and reforms

‘Leadership is a sacred matter’: Women leaders contesting and contextualising neoliberal meritocracy in the Indonesian academia

Feminist scholars have critiqued neoliberal meritocracy as discriminating against female academics through the persistence of gender-biased assumptions, closed procedures of recruitment and promotion, and patriarchal network connections. While these scholars demand fairer meritocratic competition, we explore possibilities to (re)imagine academic career and university leadership beyond the dominant discourse of neoliberal meritocracy. Based on interviews with female deans in Indonesian universities, we identified two alternative discourses (in)forming their subjectivity as university leaders, which may both challenge and contextualise neoliberal meritocracy. The first is the Islamic notion of leadership as amanah (God-given responsibility), and the second is a view of university as family. We demonstrate that understanding university leadership through these discourses enables and fosters a sense of trust, nurture, harmony, relationality, and spirituality; which are in contrast with neoliberal meritocracy’s objectivism, individualism, corporatism, and entrepreneurialism. Nevertheless, neoliberal meritocracy is quick to co-opt these contextual ways of being for its neoliberal agenda

The reconceptualisation of knowledge base in the pre-service teacher education curriculum: Towards ELF pedagogy

This article examines “what will be taught” or the knowledge base demonstrated in the English language teacher education curricula by using the framework of English as a Lingua Franca. The need for enhancing the professionalism of English teachers in the ascendancy of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) in Indonesia demonstrates a critical point where pre-service teacher education holds strategic roles. This epistemological turn needs to ensure that the teachers are devised with knowledge base as well as contextual approach suited to each particular educational environment. Fifteen Indonesian pre-service teacher education programmes were randomly selected and meta-analysed to aggregate the extent of reconceptualisation of the knowledge base provision by focusing on the curricula’s emphasis (linguistics and/or language proficiency) and the integration of socio-cultural perspective. Although these curricula cannot wholly represent cultural responsiveness and pedagogical practices, they could serve as sites concerning the values and knowledge held as important in the institution. We argue that there is a need to place a greater emphasis on the language proficiency that matches the ELF paradigm, as well as to reconceptualise the knowledge base to respond to the diverse Indonesian socio-cultural realities encountered by the recontextualising agents, the teachers. The reconceptualisation of knowledge base would foster greater awareness of sociocultural relativity and learning expectations of teaching ELF situated in the Indonesian educational context

Re-considering internationalisation from the periphery : Introduction to the two linked articles

Peer reviewe

Locally-grounded, embodied, and spiritual: Exploring alternative constructions of democratic education with/in Indonesian schools

Contemporary scholars have called for more diverse conceptions and practices of alternative ‘democratic’ education to contest the increasingly neoliberal and neoconservative educational systems. The current study responds to this call by exploring how the notion of ‘democratic’ education can be enriched using the contextual practices of education in Indonesia. Co-constructing qualitative data through site visits, document analysis, and interviews with leaders of five uniquely ‘democratic’ Indonesian schools, the current study seeks to expand the ‘thin’ understandings of democratic education characterised by ostensibly universal democratic virtues such as freedom, equality, social justice, and participation. Exploring what democratic education looks like when understood through the collective sensibilities of Indonesians, analysis revealed at least three alternative constructions of democratic education practiced by participating schools, namely, locally-grounded, embodied, and spiritual democratic education. By identifying and circulating these alternative constructions, it is hoped that the notions of democratic education might be continuously reimagined and diversified