Indonesia Impact
Action Research Projects bring change in
Indonesian higher education institutions
STAFF REPORT
D
uring a sabbatical stay of four months
based at the National Education University
Indonesia (Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia)
in Bandung, Dr. Beth Goldstein continued her work
on the U.S. Agency for International Development’s
Indonesia program for Higher Education Leadership
and Management. Goldstein and colleague Dr. Susan
Carvalho have guided action research projects in
25 universities and polytechnics across Indonesia.
Initiated and implemented by collaborative teams
of mid-level faculty and staff, these projects focus
on pressing issues of local significance to their own
institutions. They contribute to the movement in
Indonesia away from highly centralized government
control of higher education to greater autonomy and
local responsiveness.
The projects have ranged across topics of
student access and success, curriculum innovation,
community sustainable development, and
institutional quality and accreditation. For example,
over three years of action research, the action
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research projects team at the Faculty of Agriculture
at the University Muhammadiyah Malang has
flipped its curriculum and classrooms to studentcentered learning, consonant with the university’s
core Islamic values of learning and science in service
to community. Their students now work with local
communities to solve problems in areas such as
nutrition, farming and water management. The
students also cultivate a financially self-sustaining
and organic, experimental farm that provides food
to local people. Cendrawasi University in Papua
has introduced a praxis-based entrepreneurship
curriculum targeted to increase participation in
economic enterprises of Papuan students from
remote areas. From a project in one department,
this initiative is now being expanded campus-wide.
Based on their success with their first action research
projects designed to improve institutional levels
of accreditation, both Politechnic Aceh and Syiah
Kuala University (both in northern Sumatra) have
begun new projects, focused respectively on student
recruitment and curriculum innovation.