In this globalized era identity formation has gained greater and greater attention in the world of education, showing people’s stronger awareness of their own existence in their own socio-cultural environment. Going global or becoming global citizens is a necessity, whereas preserving their identity is of the same necessity. In other words, today’s people face the global-local tension, as one of the tensions to be overcome in this century (Dellor, 1996). With a strong belief in the importance of identity, the theme of the 1st International Conference on Language, Literature, and Arts Education (ICCLAE) reads “Identity through Language, Literature, and Arts Education”.

Easy interactions, both directly face-to-face being eased by transportation technology and indirectly eased by information technology, among people necessitates language educators to rethink the competence to be achieved in language education. Until the early twentieth century, language education was focused on the development of students’ communicative competence, with more demand for better understanding of the target culture. However, more awareness of the importance of learning others’ culture while simultaneously preserving their own cultural values has encouraged people to go beyond communicative competence to reach intercultural communicative competence (Madya, 2020). Considering the need for solving the global-local tension mentioned above is a development worth appreciating. Finding its relevance in this very context is the keynote speech entitled An Intercultural Orientation to Language Education: Expanding Identity Repertoires by Michelle Kohler, who (1) outlines why an intercultural orientation is warranted in education and offers contemporary understandings related to how it may be conceptualized, (2) explores how an intercultural orientation may be realized in practice using a range of examples drawn from a long-term program of research with teachers in a range of educational contexts, and (3) asks how an intercultural orientation may be relevant for education in Indonesia and considering some of the implications for how it might be realized.

Leading Part I of this preceding, Kohler’s keynote speech is followed by a plenary speech entitled Exploring Teacher Roles as Teacher Identity by Dewi Rochsantiningsih, who discusses the concepts of teacher identity, how it relates to the particular characteristics of language teaching, and how teacher identity is developed through the teacher roles, (2) draws on a case study a relevant relationship between teachers’ identities and their roles in the classroom comprising ‘teachers as teaching/learning material developer’; ‘teachers as assessors and evaluators’; ‘teachers as facilitators’; ‘teachers as researcher’; ‘teachers as learners’; and, ‘teachers as researchers’, and (3) discusses implications for policy makers and practitioners. Related to this is Chowdbury’s plenary paper Reconstructing Foreign Language Teaching: Moving beyond Methods, in which the writer problematizes the dangers of homogenising and thus oversimplifying the needs of today’s students as ‘typical’ EFL learners and then offers ideas on how to move towards a more dynamic classroom in which diversity as strength is valued through the adoption of a differentiated instruction approach. Following these plenary papers are 38 papers discussing various topics on language education.

Leading Part II is Nor’s plenary paper entitled From Research and Practices into Journal Papers: Editor's Insight. Contending that the actual process of writing a journal paper is not a linear process for it often a messy and recursive one, Nor describes several key points in writing a journal article: introduction, literature review, discussion, and novelty. Her description is proceeded by the presentation of the definitions of two key terms ‘practices’ and ‘research’. She also presents reasons for article rejection, which include linguistic inaccuracy, poor coherence, irrelevant scope, poor introduction, and lack of novelty. This plenary paper is followed by 22 papers discussing topics on language.

Leading Part III is Sayuti’s paper entitled Literature as a Field of Identity Construction. Believing that, text creation needs a hall of creativity, he states that “Literary texts also become a ‘great pandhapa,’ a large space in which various forms of manifestation of human experience are held.” He continues to state that “Literary texts also become a field in which the construction of identity entrusts itself, that is when the subjects involved in it - writers and audiences - become inseparable because they are in reciprocal relations.” Another essential statement he makes is “Literary texts are essentially manifestations of a group of ideas that are culturally bound because they are directly derived from and in the context of real life.” Following this plenary paper are 28 papers discussing various topics on arts and arts education.

Leading Part IV is a plenary paper entitled Culture and Arts Education by Hussin, who reminds the readers that arts can function as the means to introduce and embed cultural identity through informal and formal education. He states that the development of national identity of the local people in any country has to be planned well, and education is the best avenue to shape the identity of the nation. He states that a conceptual framework of identity at the national level such as Pancasila in Indonesia and Rukun Negara in Malaysia can be a reference center for the development of national identity through formal curriculum including culture and arts education. However he reminds the readers that the framework of national identity must be based on local wisdom, taking into consideration several aspects such politics, economy, history, sociology, psychology, philosophy, and belief systems. Next plenary paper Promoting Cultural Identity through Arts Education: The Indonesian Context by Salam presents arts learning strategies to promote cultural identities and obstacles to implement such strategies. These two plenary papers are followed by three papers discussing other topics on arts and arts education.

Readers of this proceeding will find that being put together the above said papers build up the ideas supporting the theme of the conference.

Yogyakarta, 13 April 2020
Suwarsih Madya
Chief Editor