The Indonesian government, through its National Strategy for Artificial Intelligence, is preparing to integrate AI into the primary and secondary school (K-12) curriculum starting from the 2025/2026 academic year. However, the readiness of this policy faces major challenges on the ground:
- Infrastructure Gaps: Approximately 65% of schools in Indonesia do not yet have stable internet, and 35% lack a reliable electricity supply.
- Training Disparity: Access to teacher competency development remains uneven and is heavily centralized in urban areas. Furthermore, teachers’ AI literacy levels have not yet been accurately mapped.
To look at the actual readiness beyond policy documents, from September to November 2025, the research team surveyed 132 K-12 teachers using open-ended questions to elicit honest understandings from the educators.
Main Findings: “Know How to Use, But Misunderstood”
The study found a unique mismatch. Teachers are highly enthusiastic about adopting AI, yet their understanding of how this technology actually works remains very low.
Misconceptions About How AI Works
- Surface-Level Definition: 55.4% of teachers define AI merely as “technology that mimics humans” without knowing its underlying mechanisms.
- ChatGPT Understanding Error: When asked to explain the process by which ChatGPT generates answers, the majority gave ambiguous, normative responses. In fact, 21.5% of teachers mistakenly thought ChatGPT works like Google, meaning it searches and retrieves data directly from the internet/data centers (knowledge retrieval misconception), rather than predicting words based on language probabilities.
AI Adoption Patterns in Schools
Despite minimal theoretical understanding, AI adoption in schools has apparently been happening organically for the sake of work efficiency:
| AI Use by Teachers | Percentage | Teachers’ Perception of AI Use by Students | Percentage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Creating Teaching Materials (Slides, infographics, video/image editing) | 32.3% | Directly Answering Assignments (Seeking instant answers for homework) | 44.6% |
| Grading & Assessment (Creating rubrics, answer keys, automated grading) | 26.9% | Information Retrieval (Gathering material references) | 19.2% |
| Information Curation (Searching for materials, translating, summarizing) | 21.5% | Content Generation (Creating presentation slides, posters) | 16.2% |
| Lesson Planning (Creating teaching modules, learning steps) | 19.2% | Tutor-like Support (Asking about difficult concepts, interactive discussion) | 10.8% |
Moral Dilemma: Between Efficiency and Character Risks
The study recorded massive support: 96.2% of teachers support AI use for teachers and 84.6% support it for students. Teachers find it incredibly helpful because AI significantly cuts down their administrative workload.
However, behind this support, teachers harbor deep concerns (opposition risks) if AI is used without strict supervision:
- Threats to Academic Integrity: The greatest risk feared by teachers is plagiarism and academic cheating (23.8%). Teachers worry that students use AI as a “shortcut” to complete assignments without actually learning.
- Dependency and Mental Laziness: Teachers are anxious that this technology will erode students’ critical thinking skills because they become accustomed to passively receiving instant answers.
- Loss of the Human Touch: There is concern that over-reliance on AI could reduce the vital social-emotional interactions between teachers and students in the classroom.
Recommendations for Curriculum Policy
To ensure that the implementation of the new curriculum does not become a mere formality, this study suggests three strategic steps for the government:
1. Conceptual Literacy-Based Training: Teacher capacity-building programs must go beyond just teaching how to use the tools. Instead, they must explain the limitations, biases, risks of information hallucination, and the foundational mechanics of AI so that teachers can make sound pedagogical decisions.
2. Differentiated Support: The government must map out training equitably, providing greater assistance to schools outside of Java and in rural areas that lack infrastructure, ensuring the digital divide does not widen further.
3. Ethical Guidelines and School Governance: Schools need clear regulations regarding the boundaries of when students are allowed to use AI (for instance, for brainstorming or as a personal tutor) and when AI is strictly forbidden to maintain academic integrity.
Research Team: Alham Fikri Aji, Afifa Amriani, Rendi Chevi, Ayu Purwarianti, & Derry Wijaya.