Measuring meritocracy: a study of Indonesian English teachers’ views on the role of effort in their own and their students’ success

ABSTRACT

Meritocracy argues that people’s success in life should be based on their own effort, not their family background. Education plays a vital role here, providing opportunities for people of all ages to develop and demonstrate their merit. Although meritocracy is generally seen as positive, this article cautions that achieving a more meritocratic society can be problematic, that merit can be difficult to define, and that merit may be unfairly used to rationalize inequality. A survey study was presented involving 260 school teachers of English in various parts of Indonesia who were asked their views and experiences on meritocracy. Results suggest that many supported meritocracy and believed that it functioned fairly well in Indonesia for themselves, their own students, and students in Indonesia generally. The study makes an empirical contribution to a small but growing body of research on the role of meritocracy in education, especially in the Global South.

KEYWORDS:

• Common good
• equal opportunity
• Global South
• meritocracy
• teachers’ beliefs

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Anita Lie

Dr Anita Lie is a professor at Widya Mandala Surabaya Catholic University, Indonesia. She teaches at the Faculty of Teacher Training and the Graduate School. Her areas of research are teacher professional development, English education and heritage language learning. She has also been consulting projects on school improvement in remote regions of Indonesia. She was granted SEAMEO-Jasper Fellowship Award in 2000 for her research on English curriculum in Indonesia. In 2011, she was a research fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. In 2016, she got a research grant from American Institute for Indonesian Studies (AIFIS) Luce Fellowship for her research on heritage language learning among second generation of Indonesian-Americans in California. In 2018, she got a Dedicated Scholar Award from Kompas, a leading national newspaper in Indonesia. She has published books and articles in scholarly journals as well as newspapers.

George M. Jacobs

Dr George M. Jacobs has published and taught widely on student centered learning, environmental education, the shift toward a post-positivist paradigm, and activism for animals. Currently, he is co-editor of Being a Community Engaged Educator for Springer. He has served on the boards of local and international organizations in the Education and Charity sectors, including Extensive Reading Foundation, International Association for the Study of Cooperation in Education, International Ecolinguistics Association, International Vegetarian Union, Centre for a Responsible Future, and Kampung Senang Charity and Education Foundation. George’s current research and publication projects involve B12 fortification of foods, memoir writing by seniors, the role of English as a Foreign Language in meritocracy, the use of the relative pronoun “who” to refer to nonhuman animals, conservation of aquatic animals, and community gardens.

Meng Huat Chau

Dr Meng Huat Chau has published and taught widely on applied linguistics and language education. He began his career over 20 years ago as a teacher working with primary, secondary and high school students, before he took up a fellowship and joined Universiti Malaya in 2010. At Universiti Malaya, Meng Huat teaches, mentors and supervises research: His teaching, research and supervision, particularly in recent years, have been motivated by ecojustice considerations. Meng Huat holds/has held adjunct and visiting professor and scholar appointments at Jeonbuk National University, the University of Cambridge, and Yogyakarta State University.

Chenghao Zhu

Chenghao Zhu is a Ph.D. student in the Faculty of Language and Linguistics at Universiti Malaya. His research interests include corpus linguistics, second language acquisition and language education.

Hady Sutris Winarlim

Hady Sutris Winarlim is a senior member of the English Department at Widya Mandala Surabaya Catholic University in Indonesia.