Physics meets tradition: An ethnophysics study of the Perahu Jong in developing students' science literacy

The present study investigates the impact of the Perahu Jong cultural festival on students' cultural literacy and their understanding of physics concepts on Rupat Island, Indonesia. Utilizing a convergent mixed-methods approach, the research combined qualitative data from interviews and observations with quantitative data from a validated survey, involving 109 students from six schools. The instrument validation process included an expert panel and reliability analysis to ensure methodological rigor. The findings indicated that students' understanding of physics concepts related to the festival included Newton's Laws, Waves, Equilibrium, Pressure, Static Fluids, and Dynamic Fluids. Despite a generally low level of cultural literacy, Spearman's correlation analysis revealed a statistically significant. However, the correlation was categorized as weakly positive (rs = .266, p = .005) between cultural literacy and physics conceptual literacy, indicating that cultural understanding is related to academic achievement but explains only a limited proportion of the variance in physics literacy.266, p < .001) between cultural literacy and physics conceptual literacy, underscoring the critical role of cultural understanding in academic achievement. This study makes a unique contribution by quantitatively demonstrating the relationship between cultural literacy and physics conceptual literacy, particularly in coastal communities with strong ties to the Perahu Jong tradition, and presents a validated model for culturally responsive pedagogy. Received: 24 October 2025 / Accepted: 11 December 2025 / Published: January 2026