We are immensely proud to announce that AFIRMASI researcher Ayu Fitriani has had her paper accepted for presentation at the 2026 American Educational Research Association (AERA) Annual Meeting. The conference, known as the world's largest gathering of education scholars, will take place in Los Angeles, California, from April 8 to 12, 2026.
Ayu's paper, titled "The Roots of Tomorrow: A Framework for an Agrarian Resilience Curriculum," was selected from over 13,000 submissions worldwide. Co-authored with Muhammad Hilal Sudarbi, the research presents a transformative, place-based educational model designed to address youth out-migration and climate vulnerability in agrarian regions like Nusa Tenggara Timur (NTT), Indonesia.
Challenging the Coloniality of Education
The accepted research provides a critical diagnostic analysis of the dominant educational framework, which frequently erodes community resilience by devaluing agrarian practices. Ayu argues that current paradigms inadvertently promote an "education for exodus," conditioning youth to seek urban employment and leaving rural communities with an aging agricultural workforce in the face of escalating climate shocks.
Ayu will present her findings in a Roundtable Session titled "Past and future of (material not just symbolic) decoloniality in curriculum," curated by Division B - Curriculum Studies. Her proposed Agrarian Resilience Curriculum (ARC) seeks to disrupt this cycle through three interconnected pillars:
- Ecological Attunement: Authenticating and integrating Indigenous Agricultural Knowledge (IAK) with modern scientific data to foster relational accountability to the land.
- Systems Thinking & Adaptive Science: Providing students with analytical instruments for climate-smart innovation, rather than passive technological adoption.
- Socio-Economic Agency: Developing practical competencies for agri-preneurship and policy advocacy, empowering youth to enact change from within their communities.
Global Impact for Frontier Communities
"A mere curricular update is inadequate," Ayu notes in her work. "The issue is embedded in the colonial ideology of the educational system itself. We must transition from a mechanism of extraction to a pedagogy of resilience and regeneration."
Ayu's participation at AERA 2026 places AFIRMASI's research at the forefront of global conversations on decolonial education and climate resilience. By bringing the realities of Indonesia's 3T (frontier, remote, and disadvantaged) regions to an international academic audience, she champions the necessity of re-humanizing education to serve, rather than displace, agrarian communities.
The AFIRMASI team extends our warmest congratulations to Ayu on this remarkable achievement. We look forward to seeing her conceptual framework inspire scholars and educators from across the globe this coming April in Los Angeles.