Aim/Purpose: The purpose of this study was to explore language teachers’ online engagement during the Covid-19 pandemic in Indonesia. Four questions guided the inquiry in this study: 1) To what extent did teachers engage in online learning during the Covid-19 pandemic? 2) What challenges did teachers encounter while engaging in online learning during the Covid-19 crisis? 3) How has the suspension of face-to-face classroom meetings changed teachers’ practices? and 4) What were their hopes for the future of education in their respective regions?v Background: The sudden learn-from-home mode enacted since 24 March 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic has forced all schools to shift into online learning with no or little preparation in terms of internet access, teacher capacity, and student-parent readiness. All in all, the pandemic disruption has shed light on the widening digital divide that has serious implications for the human capital development in Indonesia Methodology: This case study involved 18 teachers from four regions in Indonesia. Data were collected through an online survey, weekly reflections, and interviews with the teachers. A group interview with five students for each of the 18 teachers was used as triangulation. To probe more deeply into a representative sample for a variety of attributes, the researchers then focused on four teachers for a more in-depth analysis. Contribution: Knowledge of the impacting factors on online learning engagement can aid in resolving the issues and providing equal opportunities for all students. This study highlighted that teachers in remote regions would need a more top-down intervention from education authorities and offered two recommendations to the government to overcome the widening digital divide as amplified by the current school suspension. This study presents interesting results pertaining to online learning engagement during the Covid-19 pandemic in Indonesia. Insights gained in this study would contribute to the perspective on the challenges and dilemmas faced by educators and students elsewhere while engaging in online learning. Findings: This study found an interplay of five related factors of online learning processes against five levels of engagement. Those five factors are learners, teachers’ prior exposure to online learning, technological knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, and the support system. Teachers in this study were still struggling to enhance the quality of online learning engagement. Nevertheless, given the rising awareness of the inadequacy of their online learning delivery and a renewed sense of commitment, these teachers had high hopes that they would be able to enhance their competence and improve their professional practices. Recommendations for Practitioners: This study found most teacher participants have, within a short period, enhanced their technological knowledge (TK) regardless of their prior exposure to technology. Teachers can be encouraged to integrate their technological knowledge with pedagogical and content knowledge to develop their technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) by participating in the government program for teacher professional development. Recommendation for Researchers: This study involves only language teachers; therefore, future researchers are invited to involve non-language teachers so that more conclusive findings can be obtained. Impact on Society: Knowledge of the impacting factors on online learning engagement can aid in resolving the issues and providing equal opportunities for all students. More importantly, the lessons learned should enlighten educators that technology integration into sound pedagogy would transform current practices into quality learning. Future Research: Issues related to technology integration in education can still be unearthed especially because the budding insights of online learning will steadily be developing in post-pandemic realm, particularly in Indonesia.

The increasing dominance of English has brought implications in language policy and the teaching of English in the multicultural Indonesia. A high power language such as English is taught in schools as a language of modern communication, while the national language is regarded as a force of unifying the nation and local languages as carriers of ‘tradition’ or ‘historical’ identity. Within that context, this article focuses on the increased use of English among an emerging group of young and adolescent learners and their possible identity transformation. This article examines the issues, challenges, and opportunities in English language learning and identity transformation in the multicultural context of Indonesia. A description of the multicultural context and linguistic diversity is presented to understand the language policy and its implications in the functions and degrees of the national language Indonesian, local languages, and English in Indonesia. Issues in the spread of English are explored to understand the challenges and opportunities in transforming cultural identity and achieving performance standards in English.

The Indonesian government has been struggling to improve the quality of teachers in its public and private schools. Several programmes of teacher education and teacher certification have been designed to enhance teacher quality. However, the programmes do not yet develop effective teachers. Supporting the government programmes, the Tanoto Foundation has facilitated teacher professional development programme since 2010, specifically in elementary schools in the provinces of Riau, Jambi, and North Sumatra. This paper first describes how the Tanoto Foundation has designed and implemented its teacher quality improvement programme for in-service teachers in remote schools in Indonesia and then uses this context to examine to what extent teachers benefited from these programmes. Reported findings broaden our understanding of how teachers can improve their quality via privately sponsored programmes.

This study is part of a larger-scale research aimed at mapping the pedagogical competence of teachers of English and Indonesian Language across three cities of differing demographic features in Indonesia. As a subset of the study, this paper focused on investigating the ability to formulate higher-order thinking (HOT) questions in the classroom among the teachers, as well as getting their perception about applying HOTS in their classes. The mapping was done by comparing the abilities across teachers’ regions, years of service, and subjects taught (English and Indonesian Language). This research was designed as a case study involving quantitative and qualitative data analyses, with 15 (fifteen) secondary school teachers as the participants.  Data were collected through classroom observations, document (lesson plan) analyses, as well as teachers’ interviews. Quantitative analysis was performed on the teachers’ scores in formulating HOTS questions, while teaching documents and transcripts were coded for qualitative analysis. Although the statistical results revealed no significant difference between the HOTS questioning scores of the teachers in the different regions and years of service, qualitative data suggested that language medium, as shown by the difference between English and Indonesian Language teachers, might be an important factor affecting the abilities of teachers to ask HOT questions, as well as their perception of the applicability of HOTS in their classes. The inquiry into the teachers’ perceptions of HOTS also displayed a gap between teachers in the bigger city and those in more remote regions, as well as between the novices and the practitioners.

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Digital technologies and the Internet have revolutionized the way people gather information and acquire new knowledge. With a click of a button or a touch on the screen, any person who is wired to the internet can access a wealth of information, ranging from books, poems, articles, graphics, animations and so much more. It is imperative that educational systems and classroom practices must change to serve our 21st century students better. This study examines the use of Edmodo as a social media to teach a course in Pedagogy to a class of digital natives. The media is used as an out-of-class communication forum to post/submit assignments and resources, discuss relevant issues, exchange information, and handle housekeeping purposes. A survey of students' responses and discussions on their participatory process leads to insights on how the social media helps achieve the required competences.

This study examines the effects of home, school, and community factors on Indonesian secondary students’ self-identity changes in relation to their use of English. The subjects of this research were 1707 Indonesian high school students from four big cities in Indonesia. The instrument was a questionnaire on the influence of English exposure at home, school, and community and six categories of self-identity changes: self-confidence, subtractive, additive, productive, split, and zero changes. The analysis showed that there were three noticeable findings, they were (1) the issue of self-identity change on Indonesian students was not evident, (2) the greatest influence on the six self-identity indicators came from community factors altogether although slightly, and (3) the biggest influence of all was home factors on the subjects’ self-confidence. A conclusion is then made with a recommendation.

This article examines the second-generation immigrants in California and focuses on their language use and cultural identity as Indonesian-Americans. This study investigated to what extent home language use and community involvement influenced mastery of Indonesian heritage language and what factors affected the forming of cultural identity. Data were drawn from self-assessed Indonesian Oral Proficiency Questionnaire and in-depth interviews of sixteen Indonesian-Americans aged fifteen to early twenties. Their parents were also interviewed as triangulation. Results show that parents' insistence in using Indonesian as home language and the youths' investment in support community have enhanced the mastery of Indonesian heritage language. Furthermore, exposure to the language and culture, investment, and community factors have affected the transformation of cultural identity.