Multicultural Education in Indonesia’s “Merdeka” Curriculum

Aim. Using James A. Banks’ (2003) four approaches, this study is aimed at exploring how multicultural education content is integrated in Indonesia’s “Merdeka” (Emancipated) Curriculum, officially launched in 2022 as a new school curriculum. This examines how the Indonesian government consistently develops multicultural education in the curriculum as a continuous response to the increasing diversity of its society. Methods. This study employs a qualitative content analysis method, selecting the Learning Outcomes document and Textbooks of Pancasila Education and Religious Education subjects as samples. It selects information from the published documents based on several keywords and strategies. Results. The new curriculum variably contains multicultural education. Pancasila and Catholic education use the social action approach to challenge students to think of actions that may be employed to solve diversity-related social problems, while other subject curricula remain focused on developing multicultural qualities in students or using the transformation approach. There is no indication that the curriculum uses the contributions and additive approaches. Conclusion. Banks’s (2003) approaches to the integration of multicultural content in curriculum can be traced in the new Merdeka Curriculum in a various degree in every subject being studied in this research. The curriculum needs further improvements to incorporate a more critical approach towards the social reality of diversity and provides firm guidelines for students to learn and take social actions. This study, however, is limited to see multicultural education in several related subjects, not as a whole-school educational process on which future studies should be focused.