RECONSTRUCTING LOCAL WISDOM INTO ETHNO-STEM TEACHING MATERIALS: A NEED ANALYSIS STUDY AMONG SCIENCE TEACHERS

Abstract

Science teachers in multicultural regions consistently encounter difficulties in incorporating indigenous knowledge into their curricula, particularly when practical and contextually relevant support resources are absent. Although the challenge of Ethno-STEM integration has been documented globally, it remains largely unaddressed in the specific geographic and cultural context of Merauke, Papua, Eastern Indonesia, where teachers serve students from highly diverse indigenous Papuan and migrant communities simultaneously. This study investigated the needs of senior secondary science teachers in Merauke for the transformation of local wisdom into Ethno-STEM teaching materials, generating an empirical basis for handbook development. Grounded in the needs analysis framework of Nation and Macalister (2010), the study employed a quantitative descriptive cross-sectional survey design. Data were collected from 54 certified Biology, Physics, and Chemistry teachers in all public and private senior secondary schools across Merauke Regency using total population sampling. The instrument, the Teachers' Need for Ethno-STEM Material Development Scale (TNEMDS), comprised 24 closed-ended items across three sections (Necessities, Lacks, and Wants) and three open-ended prompts. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics (mean and standard deviation) and thematic content analysis of open-ended responses. Reliability was confirmed through Cronbach's alpha (α = 0.84–0.91). Findings indicate that teachers recognize Ethno-STEM competencies as a high professional necessity (M = 4.15), report substantial gaps in their current capacity to reconstruct local wisdom into structured materials (M = 4.06), with the most critical gap being the absence of contextually relevant references and systematic reconstruction procedures for Eastern Indonesian settings, and express very high demand for a practical Ethno-STEM teaching handbook (M = 4.52), particularly one containing concrete examples drawn from Merauke cultural practices. The study contributes an empirically validated needs profile and a context-specific instrument (TNEMDS) for Ethno-STEM material development research in multicultural Eastern Indonesia, offering direct practical guidance for handbook developers, teacher educators, and educational policymakers in Papua Province.