Narratives and Contextualisation Gaps: A Preliminary Exploration of East Asian History Teaching

Abstract

East Asia exerts a significance influence on Southeast Asia, particularly Indonesia. Despites the existence of dedicated study center, a master’s program and even a compulsory course, research on the teaching of East Asian history in Indonesia high school remains limited. This has created a gap between the region’s significance and the core objectives of history education. To address this gap, the study combines corpus analysis of secondary school history textbooks and interviews with of teachers.  Findings indicate that Indonesian history textbooks in high schools predominantly cover China, Japan and South Korea, with instruction largely focuses on the Japanese colonial period in Indonesia. Teaching tends to emphasis political and military narratives, offering few contextualization relevant to students’ everyday experiences, thereby constraining their understanding. The study highlights the need for collaboration between schools and universities to develop contextualized materials about the region and to relate international or regional issues to local realities. Such an approach would enhance both comprehensiveness and relevance of East Asia history education for students.