Keywords:
Early Childhood Education
Merdeka Curriculum
teacher sensemaking
teacher agency
marginal contexts

  • Abstract

    In Indonesia, the Merdeka Curriculum aims to enhance pedagogical flexibility and teacher agency; however, its implementation in 3T regions (frontier, outermost, and underdeveloped areas) unfolds within complex structural constraints that remain insufficiently examined from teachers’ lived perspectives. This study explores the everyday meaning-making and lived experiences of early childhood teachers implementing the Merdeka Curriculum in the 3T region of Timor Island, East Nusa Tenggara, with particular attention to sensemaking processes, expressions of teacher agency, and the formation of teacher resilience. Employing a qualitative design grounded in Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), data were generated through in-depth interviews with teachers who had direct experience enacting the curriculum and were analysed thematically and interpretatively. The findings reveal that curriculum implementation is not experienced as a technical enactment of policy, but as a contextual and reflective sensemaking process through which teachers actively interpret, adapt, and negotiate curricular principles in relation to socio-cultural realities and structural limitations. Teacher agency emerges as situational and ecological, shaped by local environments, community cultures, and children’s lived experiences rather than institutional resources alone. Furthermore, teacher resilience functions as a critical form of professional capital, sustained through moral commitment, community support, and spirituality, enabling pedagogical continuity amid uncertainty. This study contributes to curriculum reform scholarship from a Global South perspective by demonstrating that curriculum enactment in marginal contexts is shaped less by policy design than by teachers’ capacities for meaning-making, agency, and professional resilience.

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Selly, F. K., Bali, E. N., Ardi Sinlaed, R. V., Neonufa, S., Kale , S., & Makleat , N. (2026). Early Childhood Teachers Everyday Meaning Making and Lived Experiences in Implementing the Merdeka Curriculum in Marginal Indonesian Contexts. Multidisciplinary Science Journal, (| Accepted Articles). Retrieved from https://malque.pub/ojs/index.php/msj/article/view/16264
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