Two Routes to Depth: Deep Learning in Indonesian and Uzbek Educational Philosophy

Abstract

This study examines deep learning, rendered in Indonesian policy discourse as pembelajaran mendalam, through a comparative philosophical analysis of Ki Hadjar Dewantara’s educational philosophy and the philosophical foundations of Uzbekistan’s post-independence educational reform. A named primary corpus of two Dewantara volumes, one Indonesian ministerial regulation, and four Uzbek legal and strategic instruments was read through thematic content analysis guided by four dimensions: epistemic depth, learner agency, moral and existential formation, and contextual and cultural embeddedness. Deep learning is applied retrospectively as an analytical lens, not as a category either tradition used for itself. Both traditions contain principles that support it, articulated by Dewantara through the Sistem Among, Tri-Nga, and Trikon, and by Uzbekistan through the integration of Islamic-Turkic heritage with modernisation goals. Both reject instrumental education and commit to forming the whole person, while diverging between individual emancipation and collective nation-building. The paired reading shows the same four dimensions satisfied through opposite institutional routes, one bottom-up and community-anchored, the other top-down and state-anchored. Support is uneven: epistemic depth is philosophically elaborated on the Indonesian side but expressed on the Uzbek side as system architecture and benchmarking. The study contributes to decolonising deep learning discourse and proposes four testable propositions for bilateral cooperation.