Thirty Years of Changes: A Systematic Literature Review on Curriculum Reform in Indonesia

Sriwidayani Syam (Program Studi Administrasi Pendidikan, Fakultas Ilmu Pendidikan, Universitas Negeri Makassar, Indonesia)
Faridah Faridah (Program Studi Administrasi Pendidikan, Fakultas Ilmu Pendidikan, Universitas Negeri Makassar, Indonesia)

Jurnal Riset dan Inovasi Pembelajaran
Vol. 6 No. 2 (2026): May - August 2026

Curriculum reform has been a central strategy for improving educational quality in Indonesia over the past three decades. This study synthesizes empirical evidence on the evolution, implementation, and outcomes of curriculum reform in Indonesia through a Systematic Literature Review (SLR). Following the PRISMA framework, a comprehensive search of the Scopus database, complemented by manual reference screening, identified 97 records, of which 21 studies met the inclusion criteria for thematic analysis. The findings reveal three major patterns. First, curriculum design and content reform dominate the existing literature, whereas assessment and educational technology remain substantially underexplored despite their critical role in translating curriculum policy into classroom practice. Second, curriculum reform has progressively shifted from content specification to institutional autonomy and teacher pedagogical agency, yet implementation challenges have persisted across reform phases. Third, inadequate teacher capacity, limited assessment literacy, and inconsistent policy continuity have consistently constrained the achievement of intended learning outcomes. Overall, the synthesis demonstrates that the effectiveness of curriculum reform depends on the interaction between teacher capacity, coherent assessment practices, and stable policy implementation. The principal novelty of this review lies in its longitudinal, cross-thematic synthesis of three decades of curriculum reform in Indonesia, extending beyond previous reviews that focused on a single reform phase, educational level, or subject area. Based on this synthesis, the study proposes an integrative framework of capacity, coherence, and continuity to explain how teacher capacity and governance stability shape the relationship between curriculum design and student learning outcomes. This framework advances the conceptual understanding of curriculum reform and provides an evidence-informed foundation for future research and policy development.