Rural teachers’ perspectives on Deep Learning implementation in Indonesia

The Indonesian government implemented a new educational strategy known as Deep Learning in 2025. Participation in the associated training programme is limited to selected teachers. This study primarily explores the perspectives of educators in rural Indonesia to identify potential inequities arising from current policy practices, with urban teachers included for comparison. Drawing on Critical Policy Theory, the study analysed the views of 15 educators from rural and urban settings through semi-structured interviews. The interview data were transcribed and analysed using inductive thematic analysis. The findings show that rural educators experience limited access to training, insufficient institutional support, and perceive discriminatory effects linked to the policy. Rural teachers also reported a limited understanding of the policy and described classroom practices as sub-optimal due to inadequate support. Overall, the findings suggest that current policy practices disproportionately disadvantage rural educators while privileging those in urban settings. These results highlight the need to revise existing policy frameworks to ensure more equitable and inclusive implementation, with particular emphasis on the development of rural education.