Improving supervisor competence in supporting the implementation of the new curriculum: A policy analysis of the Merdeka Mengajar Platform in Indonesia

• In Event: Roundtable Session 4
  In Refereed Roundtable Session: Navigating complexity: Key challenges and trends of comparative and international education across Southeast Asia

Proposal

A global challenge in thinking about improving students' learning experiences is teacher education on a national scale. The complexity of coordinating and managing a nation-wide teaching workforce is high, as are the resources required to ensure that high-quality teacher training is consistently and equitably accessed by all teachers. Given these challenges, innovative technologies offer a promising contribution to effective and efficient teacher upskilling.
We explore the case of the Merdeka Mengajar Platform (PMM), an application developed by the Indonesian Ministry of Education, through which teachers across the country can access the latest curriculum updates, complete teacher training modules, and connect with teachers in other cities. The platform’s ability to reach many teachers in real-time has many policy implications and offers the opportunity to explore the ways in which technology tools may or may not be effective mediums for teacher education.
Based on a systematic literature review and secondary data available related to utilization of the teaching application, we evaluate the effectiveness and impact of the Merdeka Mengajar Platform (PMM) as a tool for teacher education using the policy analysis framework put forward by Bardak & Patashnik (2024) as a guiding lens.
While taking in the full affordances of the application, we focus on online teacher training and ask two conceptual questions: 1) how efficient teacher training is for a range of skills (both theoretical knowledge, and in-classroom practical skills); 2) whether the training delivered through the digital application contributes to student learning gains and achievement.
We outline alternative ways the application could function and assess relevant considerations to ensure a sustainable and equitable digital platform, and suggest alternative strategies to complement the digital approach to teacher education with the goal of advancing teacher quality. In doing so, we share insights from Indonesia's technological innovations and enter an international dialogue on the digitalization of teacher upskilling.

Authors

• Sylvia Lei, Harvard University Graduate School of Education

• Callysta Thony, Harvard Graduate School of Education

• Avery Thrush