Abstract:
Indonesia has started implementing Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) in response to the declaration of the United Nations Decade of ESD (2005- 2014). Given the complexity of the term of „sustainable development‟, this study attempts to examine how ESD is conceptualised in Indonesian education policy and school‟s curricula. This study focuses on analysing policy documents and four high schools curriculum as they apply ESD in a distinct subject called Environmental Education. The documents are analysed with reference to three different frameworks to achieve an understanding of the discourses and ideologies that inform ESD in Indonesia. These documents are placed within the wider historical background of economic, political and education systems in Indonesia. This study shows that the conceptualisation of ESD in Indonesia‟s environmental education policy and environmental education curriculum in four schools apparently did not show significant difference from previous practice of environmental education. The ESD is mostly conceptualised in a positivist view of environmental issues which is closely linked to the utilisation of technology and knowledge to manage the environmental issues. The study also highlights the lack of critical points in the curriculum that enable students to link the environmental issues to the bigger issues of poverty, inequality and social justice which are crucial in ESD implementation.
