Pre-service Teachers’ Beliefs on Values behind ‘Laskar Pelangi’

Abstract

One focus of the 2013 curriculum changes in Indonesia is building the character of the nation to face challenges, changes and chances in global sustainability. This study is inspired by Laskar Pelangi, an evocative story about marginalized people pursuing dreams and education, revealing in an exciting combination of caricature and literary style by Andrea Hirata (novel and movie) that is successfully attracting Indonesians. The issues discussed in this study are the right and the quality of education; facility versus approaches, competencebased versus values-oriented, process versus product. This study explores: 1) how the conflicts are resolved in the novel and movie and what alternative meanings might be built on it; 2) the beliefs about the values of the pre-service teachers on Laskar Pelangi (both movie and novel). To answer the questions, critical discourse analysis is applied to ‘Laskar Pelangi’ and the pre-service teachers’ presentations related to those two sources. From the very beginning, ‘Laskar Pelangi’ movie expose the gaps in education world; comparison between modern and postmodern concepts was made. Pre-service teachers’ beliefs on how valuable teachers’ passion and the students’ dream in a very limited situation is one of the findings in this study. The study concludes that local literary works are valuable resources to explore values and characters to be developed in education especially to face global sustainability. Keywords - Education, pre-service teachers’ beliefs, character building, Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), descriptive design, Indonesia