Implicit Transdisciplinary Affordances in Indonesia and Malaysia’s National Curricula: Where Does Art Education Stand?

Abstract

Transdisciplinary pedagogy has gained increasing attention in curriculum studies as education systems respond to complex social, cultural, ecological, and technological challenges. However, national curricula do not always explicitly name transdisciplinarity, even when they contain structures that may support cross-disciplinary knowledge integration. This qualitative comparative case study examines how transdisciplinary affordances are articulated in Indonesia’s Kurikulum Merdeka and Malaysia’s Kurikulum Kebangsaan, with particular attention to the positioning of art education. Drawing on official curriculum documents, policy frameworks, learning outcome statements, and pedagogical guidelines, the study uses thematic document analysis to identify references to cross-curricular learning, project-based learning (PjBL), knowledge integration, creativity, and the arts. The findings show that neither curriculum explicitly adopts the term “transdisciplinary” ; however, both contain implicit affordances through mechanisms such as Indonesia’s Projek Penguatan Profil Pelajar Pancasila (P5), learning phases, flexible subject choices, and Malaysia’s Elemen Merentas Kurikulum (EMK), Pendekatan Bersepadu, higher-order thinking skills, and thematic integration. The comparison also reveals an important asymmetry. Indonesia positions art education more visibly as a site of interdisciplinary integration, whereas Malaysia distributes integrative expectations more broadly across cross-curricular and competency-based structures. The study argues that art education can serve as a generative epistemic space for transdisciplinary curriculum work, yet it also risks being instrumentalized if its intrinsic artistic, cultural, and critical value is subordinated to broader curriculum agendas.