Somantri, Cecep
(2021)
Leadership of community education: evidence from Indonesia.
PhD thesis, University of Nottingham.
Abstract
Literature and research on educational leadership and management have received increasing attention in the last three decades. However, out-of-school leadership and community education are two areas that remain under-researched, globally and in Indonesia. This study aims at gaining an understanding of the ways in which the leadership of community education is practiced in Indonesia. It examines the nature of leadership in Indonesian Community Learning Centres (CLCs). It further explores CLC organisational structure, the relationship of CLCs with the community, CLC networking and partnership strategies, curriculum development, and the methods employed by CLC leaders and teachers to engage with learners.
The study embraced constructivist and critical paradigms, employing a multiple case study design to obtain thick data from four purposively-selected CLCs in three different regions of Indonesia. Nine participants were selected from each case CLC and its community to investigate the ways in which the leadership of community education is practiced. Interviews, observations and document reviews were employed as the methods to collect data. Thematic analysis was used to generate themes from the data, linked to the research questions.
The study found that CLC leadership in Indonesia is susceptible to various dimensions of context and community, and it focuses on social justice by aiming to provide equitable learning opportunities for all. The empirical findings indicate that both state and privately funded CLC leaders resisted government policy about ideal CLC organisational structure by developing a structure that best suits the context and community where they are working. While acknowledging community as the primary reason of CLC establishment, the study reveals that relationships between the community and the CLCs are mutual. The empirical evidence suggests that building and expanding networks and partnerships primarily mean maintaining good relationships with government authorities to secure resources to support each CLC’s daily operation. The study also discovers that CLC leadership calls for individualised and self-directed learning by resisting to fully follow the prescribed government curriculum. The study shows that, in CLC leadership, persuasion is key to student engagement, as many of them have experienced some level of exclusion and marginalisation from education.
The study provides recommendations for practice at CLC level, policy makers at the national level, and for further research. The study recommends that CLC leaders need to engage better public accountability measures, to the state and the community members, to gain more support, and to explain how resources are (re)distributed respectively. It also recommends that policy makers should maintain and increase support for community education and its programmes, because CLC leaders and teachers try to fulfil the government’s promise to ensure education for all. Finally, the study recommends further research to widen the geographical coverage of the study, involve other categories of CLCs, and explore the perceptions of government officials, to provide complementary data for comprehensive understanding of CLC leadership.
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