Implementing Indonesia's English language teaching policy in primary schools: The role of teachers' knowledge and beliefs

Many studies have been conducted to investigate teachers' knowledge and beliefs and they confirmed that knowledge and beliefs are an influential factor in teachers' decision making in the classroom. However, little research has been undertaken to investigate how teachers' knowledge and beliefs in influence the implementation of language policy. This study aims at investigating primary school teachers' knowledge and beliefs about the English program in primary schools in Indonesia, focusing on their pedagogical knowledge and how it influences the way they teach English when English is positioned as a local content subject in the curriculum The study reveals that in the absence of official curriculum teachers are required to draw on their existing knowledge and beliefs but the existing knowledge and beliefs of teachers in Indonesia are often not well developed. With no curriculum to guide their teaching, teachers' rely on textbooks. They consider that the textbook can be regarded as a substitute for a curriculum because the textbook contains information about the themes, the objectives of teaching, materials, and exercises. That is, textbooks have many of the features that teachers said were important in curriculum as guides for teaching.