Trajectories of Chinese-Muslim Students’ Cultural Identity in Indonesia

Studying cultural Identity among students is considered a very important aspect in improving learning qualities. This research is an effort to discuss trajectories of identities among Chinese-Muslim students in Malang. By understanding this identity, a person will be able to fully understand his/her position in the society where he/she lives in. it’s also expected that citizen and student will have better tolerant attitude toward other cultures. In the educational realm, understanding cultural identity is extremely important to both teacher and student who interact each other in the teaching and learning process. In this research, researcher examines four Chinese-Muslim student’s experience in the process of constructing their cultural identity by using qualitative design. The result of the research stated that Chinese-Muslim students in Malang are Hui ethnic. Physically, they have close similarity with Han Chinese majority ethnic and identify themselves as being pure Chinese rather than identifying their ethnical background. In the context of Indonesia, they feel as an outsider because of their face characteristic. Chinese students learning identity is mostly passive and more individual compared with Indonesian. Because of its individual based learning, class discussion and working in group are being their barrier factors in education while self and parental motivations are being their supporting factors.