Zugl.: Philadelphia, Temple Univ., Diss., 2007

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This study aims at investigating similarities and differences in the curriculum development processes in two selected pesantrens in South Kalimantan, Indonesia. The research explores the involvement of key stakeholders in the curriculum development processes and the curriculum itself. The study is a qualitative approach, which, in collecting the data, employs in-depth interviews with the kyais (leaders), ustadzs (teachers), and santris (students); observation on the pesantrens’ daily life and classroom activities; and relevant documentation. The findings suggest that there are similarities and differences in both pesantrens in the curriculum development processes. Both pesantrens can be classified as Site-Based Managed Schools in which all interactions of the members are permeated with some values. However, Pesantren A has a rather collaborative and goal-oriented curriculum development process, while Pesantren B tended to conduct a single-handed and content-oriented one. The curriculum of Pesantren A is a subject-based curriculum accommodating both religious and non-religious disciplines in relatively the same proportion, whereas that of Pesantren B is a kitab (book)-based curriculum accommodating largely religious disciplines. Overall, it was found that both pesantrens need to conduct more collaborative and systematic curriculum processes. To do so, since ustadzs have a significant influence on the curriculum, there is a need for well-directed and organised professional development programs focusing on pedagogical issues. There is also a need to set some indicators for curriculum evaluation based on the context of Islamic education and immediate societal demands.

Transgendered Indonesians live in the fourth most populated nation in the world with more Muslims than any other country. This thesis summarizes an ethnography conducted on one religiously oriented male-to-female transgender community known in the city of Yogyakarta as the waria. This study analyzes the waria’s gender and religious identities from an emic and etic perspective, focusing on how individuals comport themselves inside the world’s first transgender mosque-like institution called a pesantren waria. The waria take their name from the Indonesian words wanita (woman) and pria (man). I will chart how this male-to-female population create spaces of spiritual belonging and physical security within a territory that has experienced geo-religio-political insecurity: natural disasters, fundamentalist movements, and toppling dictatorships. This work illuminates how the waria see themselves as biologically male, not men. Anatomy is not what gives the waria their gender, their feminine expression and sexual attraction does. Although the waria self-identity as women/waria, in a religious context they perform as men, not women.