52
Social Studies Education and Global Citizenship for the 21
st
Century
Christine Pheeney and Elly Malihah
Sociology Education Program Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia
Bandung, Indonesia
Abstract
The current globalisation era has various impacts, including increases in cross-cultural interactions. To live peacefully, diverse communities are faced with the challenge of facilitating inter-dependence. In Indonesia, Social Studies Education is
considered an important tool to develop the national goal of ‘unity in diversity’ in citizens. Towards this goal, policy documents direct schools and teachers to develop learning that fosters cultural expression. Also university education
subjects in ethno-pedagogy have been initiated to work towards peaceful inter-cultural interaction and understanding. Concurrently further opportunities arise to incorporate other phenomenon of globalisation – increased digital technologies
and connectivity – in working towards this goal. The focus of this paper is to present activities undertaken to support student learning of ethno-pedagogy with social media technology. This paper reports on data collected in the subject of
Ethno-pedagogy For Civic Education
at Indonesia University of Education, for Civic Education Masters students. A social media class group was set up with sharing of weekly class homework tasks within the group. Class interactions and student
reflections on the use of this social media group were collected and analysed to study the student’s learning related to the university subject themes: 1. Personal, local, national, global identities for intercultural understandings; 2. Cooperation
Values; and 3: Links between Theory and Practice. The results suggest that social media was a beneficial tool to facilitate sharing of activities relating to cultural identities and helpful for students to process their thoughts on national and global
identities, while mutually extending intercultural understanding. Cooperative values were enacted while students developed links between theory and practice. Inter-dependence was initiated with sharing of class-developed resources
implemented in classroom practice by some of the members, along with some peer mentoring given. Application of social media offerings including a variety of sharing tools and easy forum for discussion, assisted in student engagement and
motivation to enlarge knowledge and experiences for intercultural interactions and understandings. The study concluded that social media activities and methodology supported learning of subject themes and goals. These findings are relevant to
social studies education for global citizenship in both Indonesian and International contexts, in the 21
st
Century. Keywords: ethno-pedagogy; cultural unity in diversity; inter-dependence; social media class use
I. B
ACKGROUND
A.
Globalisation challenges and Educational Response
Globalisation is a term widely used to describe the current state of the world, involving interactions of economy, immigration, information and ideas, technology and social relations Reich, 1998. The increased intensity and
acceleration of exchange over the last few decades Doku and Oppong-Asante, 2011 has brought about both general and broad impacts and challenges to society, that are not homogenous or uniform in phenomena Shome and Hedge,
2002. There is a growing consciousness that globalisation presents taxing challenges to the human psyche Doku and Oppong Asante, 2011. In order to pursue equitable quality education, governments, education departments and
researchers internationally struggle to understand our changing society and ways of learning Cheng, 2004. Accordingly, numerous studies of pedagogy, curriculum content, educational structures and the role of schooling have
been undertaken to explore and consider educational activities appropriate to changing social conditions and needs e.g. Fazekas and Burns, 2012; Kärkkäinen, 2012; Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development OECD, 2013;
Kress, 2008; Luke, 2004; Aman, 2013; Cazden, Cope, Fairclough, Gee, et al., 1996. Catering for diverse learners and developing local and global identities are common themes that arise in many papers e.g. Schachter and Rich,
2011;Delors Report, Delors, as cited in UNESCO, 2002;Dokuand Oppong Asante, 2011;Hofstede and Hofstede, 2005;Meijer, 1996; Cheng, 2004; Nelson Guerra, 2012.
53 Similarly, the Asia and Pacific Network for International Education and Values Education APNIEVE, identifies
a potential benefit of globalisation as being an increase in understanding through closer links and communication between peoples and cultures UNESCO, 2002. They suggest that maximising the ‘good’ elements of globalisation,
by keeping education and activities human centred, will bring about empowered, full participation. They argue that this could forge greater interdependence, harmony and international cooperation. They encourage the emergence of a
globalisation process that is adapted to people’s needs and aspirations, using increased interaction to respond to persistent and emerging problems.
These papers and reports, along with other sector wide influence including moving away from neo-liberal politics Keddie, Mills and Pendergast, 2011 and market focus changes Sawyer, 2005. And growing bodies of research
have seen educational shifts in policy directing change in teaching practice to move away from focus on commonality to being more student centred, appropriate to changing society and more innovative. E.g.Vientiane Seminar Report,
UNESCO, 2003; Olson, James and Lang, 1999 - reporting on 13 OECD countries. B.
Indonesian Context
Indonesia, like other countries, has both persistent and emerging problems Jones, 2007. Various academics outline factors contributing to the initiation of Local Content Initiatives and decentralisation as being: problems of unity,
Javanese political dominance no longer being accepted by outlying regions, economic crisis, transformation from agrarian to industrial society, an increase in urban population, regional leaders contesting for autonomy, students
fighting for democracy, and international lenders wanting to see good governance Yamashita, 2003; Kristiansen and Pratikno, 2006; Young, 2010. Accordingly In Indonesia change has ensued, shifting from commonality based curricula
to education law provisions oflocal content via delegation of the design of curriculum to provinces, districts and schools Kristiansen and Praktikno, 2006; Sari, Fitriana and Susilowati, 2010;FirmanandTola, 2008. Commitment to realising
this vast task continues in development and training being pursued in Kurikulum 2013 initiatives. Along with working towards local content being developed at schools across Indonesia, Ethno-pedagogy has been
recognised as an important field of educational study. Ethno-pedagogy was coined with aim to equip educators in ‘cultural sensitivity, with techniques for improving cross-cultural teaching by fitting ethnic patterns’ Burger, 1968.
Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia UPI or Indonesia’s Education University is Indonesia’s largest university that focuses on Schooling Education. UPI is committed to developing ethno-pedagogic paradigms in their pre-service
teachers Surnayo, cited in Alwasilah 2009 with several initiatives working toward this goal. This includes ethno- pedagogy within curriculum subjects areas are being undertaken since 2010.
C.
Globalisation Technology Opportunities
Analogously, to globalisation intercultural social and educational impacts local content initiatives and the field of ethno-pedagogy gaining attention the New London Group NLG in 1996, was one of the earliest groups to consider
the challenges and opportunities of ‘local diversity and global connectivity’ in regard to education. They assert that ‘to be relevant, learning processes need to recruit, rather than attempt to ignore and erase, the different subjectivities …’
The New London Group, 1996, p.9. The NLG argue that traditional programs, which are limiting, usually with monolingual and monoculture forms, can perpetuate educational outcome disparities. They argue that ‘issues of
differences become critically important in reaching objectives to create learning conditions for full social participation’ and that ‘the proliferation of communications channels and media supports and extends cultural and sub-cultural
diversity’ The New London Group, 1996, p.1. Furthermore, Murray 1997 asserted that development of technology is in response to needs: ‘like every human
medium of communication, digital media have been developed to perform tasks that were too difficult to do without them’ p90. Further application of digital technologies to meet collective education goals, is asserted by the World
Education Forum: Information and communication technologies ICT must be harnessed to support Education for All goals at
an affordable cost. These technologies have great potential … This potential will not be realized unless the new technologies serve rather than drive the implementation of education strategies. 2000, p.21
Subsequently researchers and practitioners discuss social media as a constructive tool for teachers and students to gather, author and reflect collaboratively Yamamoto and Karaman, 2011; Herrera and Peters, 2011; Bryer and
Zavatarro, 2011. Moreover, Nycyk asserts social media tools are ‘now becoming indispensable for learning and acquiring information and knowledge’ 2011. Concurrently emerging social media technologies are being used in
education practices all around the world in order to respond to variety of educational challengese.g. Wenger, White, and Smith, 2009; Callaghan and Bower, 2012; Wang’s, 2012; Hughes, 2007; Merchant, 2011;Hull and Stornaiuolo,
2010;Hartand Steinbrecher, 2011; Herrera, and Peters, 2011. The studies in classrooms show motivation and
54 engagement in class can benefit from social media implementation. This benefit was shown to be critically dependent
on the teachers in fulfilling their facilitating role, to influence behaviour and learning. As lecturers of the subject Ethno-pedagogy for Civic Education in 2014 Civic Education is compulsory subject
delivered across all levels of Education in Indonesia we sought to further develop the presentation of the subject this year to foster learners’ critical engagement by utilising social media to support face-to-face activities. Before
commencing, we sought to strategies to develop our professional practice from other’s experiences. In our professional reading we found that most studies of social media have been conducted within developed world contexts. Also in our
readings we became aware of Hofstede and Hofstede’s 2005 cross culture research shows that national cultures differ and that these differences have implications in behaviour relating to organisational and management strategies; and
Choi and Chung 2013 studies, that emphasising technology acceptance of social network sites as being largely dependent upon inter-relationships in the group. Therefore we combined learning from the readings with our personal
teaching experience and local cultural knowledge to shape our class communications. This paper reports on our class social media interactions and student reflections on these. We hope our studies can be beneficial to understanding
learners in our context and lead to better ethno-pedagogy practice.
II. M
