Conversations About Educational Inequities in Indonesia: Complicating Asian-ness in Mathematics Education (Poster 5)

• In Event: Everything Everywhere All at Once: Asian Math Ed Edition

Abstract

The aim of this poster is to examine educational inequities in Indonesia, and expand the conversation beyond the context of the US and its history while probing connections between the US and other parts of the globe. Indonesia has the fourth largest population in the world. It is rich with culture and natural resources that are spread across the archipelago. It is a multireligious, multilingual, multiracial, and multicultural country. These characteristics show the diversity within the country, but also are sources of inequities, tensions, and divisions.

Although I was born and raised in Indonesia and completed half of my secondary education there, my move to the US shifted my focus to understanding the US education system. While I focus my work on responding to education inequities in the US, I have focused on the strengths and needs of Black and Latine students. The prevalence of the model minority myth of Asians and Asian Americans (stereotypically East and South Asians) further distracted my attention from Indonesian students and other Southeast Asian students.

During my recent sabbatical, I visited Indonesia to learn more about the sociopolitical context of Indonesian education. I spoke with mathematics education faculty from two cities in Java, and graduate and undergraduate students from Eastern Java. The semi-structured interviews, completed in Bahasa Indonesia, focused on identifying marginalized groups in Indonesia and exploring related deficit narratives in mathematics education. Given the multiculturalism in the country, how is “racial minority” conceptualized? Moreover, what are the affordances and limitations of American frameworks, like Critical Race Theory, for examining educational inequities in Indonesia and how to respond to them?

In these conversations, students from remote Papua (not to be confused with Papua New Guinea) and “Eastern Indonesia” emerged as marginalized groups in Indonesian education. Government initiatives have focused on improving the education of students from the region (e.g., teacher incentives). News about violent conflicts between the Indonesian military and the Papuan Independence Movement led many to perceive Papuans as violent, uncultured, and uneducated. Their mannerisms were described as “loud” and “sounding aggressive.” One student witnessed Papuan university students in a gang conflict, which added to her fear of these students with “black skin” and “curly hair,” common descriptors of Papuan students. In the mathematics classroom, people described Papuan students as perpetually failing and lacking focus and motivation.

These stories share many aspects of racist narratives in the US that have been shown to impact the experiences of Black students in mathematics education. Exploitation of natural resources in the Papuan region and the dehumanization of its people also call for analyses from a critical perspective on settler colonialism. Are these imported perspectives helpful? How do these stories fit with narratives about Asian-ness and mathematics ability in the US? I recently met three Papuan women who are studying at a university in the US. The next steps of this work are to learn from these students, and listen to their stories in navigating higher education in the US, to further complicate what it means to be Asian in the US education system and abroad.

Author

• Aditya P. Adiredja, University of Arizona