A BRIEF COMPARATIVE REVIEW ON VOCATIONAL SECONDARY SCHOOL CURRICULUM IN INDONESIA, MALAYSIA AND JAPAN 1

During the last two decades various efforts have been made by curriculum developers nearly in all countries in the world to reform their education systems and review their existing curriculum policy, curriculum design, implementation, and curriculum evaluation. This paper highlights the innitial steps done by curriculum policy developers in three countries (Indonesia, Malaysia, and Japan) in revitalizing and reforming the vocational school curriculum to meet with the challenge of changing technological, social, economic, national and global environment. It also elaborate how curriculum developers in 3 countries make decision in curriculum design, policy, implementation, and evaluation regarding to overall approach to curriculum design as well as to the subject areas that will be implemented in vocational schools. This paper is mainly developed and written based on literature study taken from various sources and research publication on education and curriculum. The purpose of this paper are : (i) to have degree of appreciation of similiarities and differences among 3 countries in efforting the revitalization of vocational school curriculum development; (ii) to identify general trends and uniques features as well as indiginious aspects in developing vocational school curriculum among 3 countries; (iii) to brief cross-nationally analyse of each educational system and other related matters in reforming vocational school curriculum among three countries. The result of this paper is to have mutual understanding and degree of appreciation of similiarities and differences among 3 countries in efforting the revitalization of vocational school curriculum development. On the other side, in addition, the purpose of study is to gain cross-nationally analyse of each educational system in reforming vocational school curriculum.