Empowering National identity by Social Studies Curriculum (A Comparative Study in Malaysia and Indonesia Primary School)

National identity is a common issue for Asian countries with multicultural background researched by experts with different point of views. Indonesia and Malaysia face same problems when involve with globalization, changing and the decline of national identity as an effect of massive global pop culture. The education system is a backing for national identity preservation. So the research intended to investigate about how Indonesia and Malaysia use social studies subject materials/curriculum as a key point to develop and empower national identity by its curriculum. Research method use will be qualitative – descriptive – analytic method. Descriptive research method aimed to make a description, a sketch, an image systematically, accurate and factual facts, natures and relations between phenomena investigated, by collecting the data, analyzed by qualitative approach (Wahono, 2000). It’s called also as humanistic approach, because the researcher feeling involved in the research situation. The research doesn’t limit to counts, numbers, variables that minimize individual uniqueness. (Taylor & Bogdan, 1984). We will investigate the philosophical background of national education in both countries, the main ideas of social studies subject, the aim of social studies, the structure, organization and content of social studies; the learning strategies and all related aspects of social studies in both countries. We conduct document analysis methods, then enriched with interviews and participative observation in both countries. This research is significant as it has the potential to promote the transfer and sharing of expertise in social studies subject matters in order to empower national identity and knowledge of curriculum related to social studies instruction among the teachers of two neighbouring countries