No abstract

Artikel ini mendeskripsikan keberadaan guru laki-laki dan perannya pada Pendidikan Anak Usia Dini (PAUD). Faktor rendahnya keberadaan guru laki-laki di PAUD disebabkan oleh banyak hal, salah satunya dikarenakan adanya berbagai persepsi masyarakat yang berbeda terhadap pekerjaan laki-laki sebagai guru PAUD. Pada banyak negara termasuk di Indonesia, guru PAUD didominasi perempuan, yang mendorong beberapa negara untuk meningkatkan partisipasi laki-laki, karena munculnya kekhawatiran terhadap ketidakseimbangan gender di PAUD. Walau demikian, sampai saat ini khususnya di Indonesia, masih ada laki-laki yang bertahan dan memilih profesi tersebut. Metode penelitian menggunakan studi pustaka, dimana peneliti mencatat dan mengolah berbagai sumber, baik itu jurnal, buku, dan berbagai bentuk dokumen terkait guru laki-laki di PAUD. Adapun hasilnya, keberadaan dan peran guru laki-laki di PAUD sangat penting, utamanya dengan alasan agar adanya keseimbangan gender yang terjadi, serta memberikan interaksi pengalaman pembelajaran pada PAUD.

Indonesia has been conducting a teacher reform program since 2005. Teachers' low status and the crisis of student achievement are the rationales of this reform. This paper investigates the implications of Indonesian neo-liberal teacher reform on kindergarten teachers' professional experiences and practices. The research was conducted in Buleleng regency, the northern part of Bali Province, Indonesia. This research used focus group discussion to obtain general information about teacher reform/professionalisation in the Buleleng regency. In-depth interviews were conducted to gather richer information about teachers' personal experiences of professionalisation. Drawing from Osgood's deconstruction of professionalism in early childhood education (ECE), this paper argues that the teacher reform policies have failed to recognise the uniqueness of ECE teaching practices, which are centred on emotion and care. The reform has also overlooked the disadvantaged conditions and unequal playing field of kindergarten teachers in the professionalisation process. Thus, despite the improvement of teachers' individual welfare, the "regulatory gaze" of teacher reform policies poses a subtle threat to kindergarten teachers' professional identities.

This paper aims to understand social expectations of male teachers who work as educators and carers of young children. According to the Ministry of Education and Culture's Centre of Data and Statistics of Education/PDSP (2014), the number of male teachers in Indonesian ECE is very small; it is only 3% (11,434) of the whole population of ECE teachers (377,164). However, the number of male teachers has increased compared to the 2001 data, which only 1.95% of teachers in ECE were males. There is an assumption that the small number of men teaching in ECE is related to heteronormative gender ideology of the society. Caring for and educating children is considered a female role while providing for and protecting the family is the male's domain. The increasing number of male teachers in Indonesia might be a clue of as to a shift in the Indonesian idealized gender construction. Based on interviews with seven parents, seven female teachers, and four school administrators, this paper argues that there are conflicting social perceptions of men who work in kindergartens. In a situation where ideologically men/women supposed to be superior to women/men, the society perceives male teacher in accordantly. The attempt to perceive as socially expected trigger inconsistency, contradictions, and ambivalence. The analysis shows that the contradiction is embedded within the social gender system itself. Thus, social perceptions of male teachers in ECE is not a simple black and white social phenomena.

Since 2012, Indonesia has been obsessed with the notion of melestarikan budaya lokal (preserving local culture) as part of Indonesian Cultures. In West Java, Indonesia, the cultural revitalisation program is called “Rebo Nyunda”. Rebo means Wednesday; nyunda means being Sundanese. Sunda is the dominant ethnic group in West Java and the second largest ethnic group in Indonesia. Childhood often becomes a site for implanting ideologies, including nationalist ideology through the rhetoric of anti-West. Rebo Nyunda is expected to be able to shape future generations with strong cultural roots and unshaken by negative foreign ideas. Using focus group discussions this paper investigates the extent to which teachers understand Rebo Nyunda as a mean of cultural resistance to foreign forces amid the wholesale adoption of early childhood education doctrines from the West, such as the internationalisation of early childhood education, developmentally appropriate practices, neuroscience for young children, child-centred discourse, economic investment and the commercialisation of childhood education. This paper examines the complexity of and contradictions in teachers’ perceptions of Rebo Nyunda in Bandung, a city considered a melting pot of various ethnic groups in Indonesia.