SCHOOL-BASED CURRICULUM POLICY IN INDONESIA:THE NEED FOR AUTONOMOUS AND INNOVATIVE TEACHERS AND DEMOCRATIC SCHOOLS
Abstract
The writing investigates the impoftance of school-based cuniculum (SBC) in line with the
issue of democratizing schools. The emergence of this relatively new curriculum seems
to have encountered the fact that not all teachers are accustomed with independence
and innovative habits to design their teaching and other educational roles. lf such an
issue cannot be anticipated, this curriculum in practice seems the sarne as the previous
curriculum which tends to ignore teachers' instructional initiatives. At this point,
feachers appear to be passive practitioners rather than to be creative teaching designers.
This circumstance can become a barrier to create a more qualified school. ln order to
maximize this existing curriculum's impact on building teachers' and schools' capacities,
by making use of a couple of related references, this rtudy ties to analyze the nature of
SBC, strategies of optimizing teachers' educational innovation and roles, and possible
efforts to project a schoo/ as a democratic miniature society. Having analyzed some
conceptual perspectives, this study shows that SBC is more than giving teachers
opportunities to design their teaching practices but, inrtead, promoting their autonomy
to make pafticular educational decisions. As well as improving their own teaching design
quality and innovation, teachers need to be suppofted to build on their wide range of
educational cooperation with other colleagues in regard to either their teaching
practices or professional development. Besides, SBC will be practically enhanced if such
democratic values as freedom, openness and equality are to be institutionalized in a
school. Thus, teachers' capacity and institutional democratization are fundamentally
strategic to implement 5BC.