Psychoanthropology of Power Contestation: Mangunan Alternative Education “Versus” the National Curriculum of the Indonesian Government

In 2009, Nolen conducted a systematic study of 11 journals with the highest impact factor in educational psychology. One of the findings is that there are four themes which are considered to be distinctive to educational psychology, namely classroom achievement, learning and memory, affective/motivation/beliefs, and cognition/reasoning (rank 1 through 4). Meanwhile, sociocultural factors, psychosocial factors, and public policy was ranked 15, 20, and 25 out of 25 themes which had been “agreed” by the authors of the journal articles regarding the distinct content of educational psychology. The current study actually emphasizes public policy and sociocultural factors as the research focus, with the assumption that psychological processes in education are not only contributed by psychosociocultural factors, rather the process ses themselves are social processes. This research aims to present qualitative analysis regarding contestation of power between the Indonesia National Curriculum with the Mangunan Canisius Experimental Elementary School (CEES) as an experimenting society. This research belongs to the grounded theory type of research, using methods of data collection in the form of participant observation, in- depth interview, and lived in Mangunan CEES for 2.5 years. The research results indicate that there is contestation of power between Mangunan CEES (“True Learning”) and the Indonesia National Curriculum. In addition, Mangunan CEES epistemologically and psychologically has an implication on the continuous care for the poor and marginalized people to be able to support themselves in an independent and holistic manner.