Production-Embedded Curriculum Enactment and Meaning-Making in Teaching Factory: An Interpretive Case Study of Shrimp Aquaculture Vocational Education in Indonesia
Indonesia Indonesia Indonesia Indonesia 
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Curriculum Enactment, Production-Based Learning, Shrimp Aquaculture, Teaching Factory, Vocational Education
Abstract
Background. Teaching Factory has been widely promoted as a strategy for strengthening school–industry linkages in vocational education, yet it is often understood primarily through competency alignment and procedural replication. In production-intensive sectors such as shrimp aquaculture, curriculum relevance depends not only on formal alignment but also on learners’ participation in real production systems shaped by technological standards, biological cycles, quality regimes, contractual arrangements, and market timing.
Purpose. This study examines how Teaching Factory functions as a production-embedded mechanism of curriculum enactment in an Indonesian vocational secondary school located within a shrimp aquaculture ecosystem.
Method. An interpretive qualitative case study design was employed. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews, direct observations, and institutional document analysis conducted across one complete shrimp cultivation cycle.
Results. The findings show that the Teaching Factory operates as an embedded production and economic unit rather than a simulated workshop. Curriculum standards are enacted through full-cycle shrimp cultivation, distributed school–industry roles, technological upgrading, contractual harvesting arrangements, and market-based quality requirements. Curriculum relevance is therefore produced through operational embeddedness rather than formal alignment alone.
Conclusion. By conceptualizing Teaching Factory as a mediating infrastructure between curriculum policy, industry governance, technological practice, and regional commodity production, this study contributes to vocational curriculum scholarship and offers a context-sensitive account of curriculum relevance in production-intensive TVET settings.
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Copyright (c) 2026 Dani Darmawan, Dedy Achmad Kurniady, Aan Komariah, Taufani C Kurniatun
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