A Retrospective Case Study of EFL Instruction in Elementary Schools : A Critical Language Policy Perspective

Abstract

The growing global popularity of English for young learners (EYL) teaching is the embodiment of the spread of English as the world’s lingua franca. The rapidity of the EYL expansion also occurs in Indonesia despite the blurred policy to implement it. The present study was conducted to explore the current practices of EYL teaching in Indonesian elementary schools after the national curriculum reforms. The selected municipality that represented the setting of the study was the second populous city in Indonesia, where a wide selection of schools was located. Data were collected using questionnaires administered to 184 school principals and 178 EYL teachers and analyzed through the use of simple descriptive statistics. Regardless of the absence of Government support, the findings revealed that most of the elementary schools in the research site offered English. A varied implementation of English teaching from one school to another was ascertained in terms of English position in the school curriculum, its frequency per week, the teaching resources and the learning materials, and the teacher to teach the subject. The schools reported that the shift in the foreign language policy had invited challenges in implementing the instructions relating to the funding and the teaching guidelines. In response to these encounters, this study recaps three focal points as recommendations to policymakers and related stakeholders to review the current policy of EYL instruction by considering the need for teaching guidelines and the status of the teachers administratively, as well as their access to professional advancement.