Reimagining curriculum through the pedagogy of love: A reflection from Indonesian Madrasah

Faith and Pedagogy in a Global Era: Rethinking Teaching Practices in Islamic Higher Education

This study examines how teaching practices in Islamic higher education in Indonesia are shaped at the intersection of faith-based educational values and global pedagogical approaches. Using a qualitative multiple-case design, data were collected from 24 lecturers through interviews, classroom observations, and document analysis. The findings reveal that pedagogy is strongly grounded in faith, with teaching viewed as a moral and purposeful activity aimed at students’ holistic development. At the same time, global approaches such as student-centered learning are selectively adopted, resulting in hybrid practices that combine interaction and participation with continued lecturer guidance. However, this integration remains partial and uneven. Key tensions emerge between authority and autonomy, critical thinking and respect for tradition, and institutional expectations and classroom realities. The study also finds that while institutional policies promote contemporary pedagogies but offer limited guidance on integrating them with value-based educational frameworks, leading to inconsistent implementation. Drawing on a negotiative-integrative perspective, the study argues that teaching is a dynamic and context-dependent process shaped by ongoing negotiation between religious commitments and pedagogical innovation. By illuminating how lecturers actively mediate these competing influences, the study contributes a nuanced understanding of pedagogical adaptation in Islamic higher education highlights the need for clearer pedagogical frameworks, targeted professional development, and stronger institutional support to enable more coherent and meaningful integration.

Listening Across Difference: Pláticas as a Practice of Connection and Transformation for Adult Learners

This article explores the integration of pláticas—informal, culturally grounded conversations rooted in Chicana/Latina feminist methodologies—as a transformative pedagogical tool in adult learning contexts. Drawing from experiences as doctoral students and educators at a Hispanic-Serving Institution, the authors illustrate how pláticas foster connection, reflection, and critical consciousness across diverse learner identities. Through narrative, theoretical, and practical lenses, the article positions pláticas as a means of validating lived experience, disrupting traditional hierarchies of knowledge, and cultivating intercultural communication competence. The authors provide concrete strategies for structuring plática circles, co-constructing ground rules, designing reflective prompts, and integrating the practice into course assessments. They argue that when implemented with care and intention, pláticas promote inclusive, student-centered learning environments that enhance engagement, support emotional safety, and foster collective meaning-making. Ultimately, the article affirms pláticas as a liberatory practice that strengthens the social and relational dimensions of higher education and reimagines the role of educator as co-learner and collaborator.

Attadib: Journal of Elementary Education

Value-based facilitator: Integrating murabbi and progressivism in Islamic education

This study aims to examine the conceptual relationship between murabbi in Islamic education and the facilitator in educational progressivism, and to formulate an integrative model for repositioning the role of contemporary educators. This research employed a qualitative library research method by analyzing primary and secondary literature on Islamic educational philosophy, tarbiyah, ta’dib, murabbi, progressivism, student-centered learning, value education, and character education. The data were collected through document study and analyzed using qualitative content analysis and comparative-philosophical analysis based on ontological, epistemological, and axiological dimensions. The findings show that murabbi emphasizes ethical-spiritual guidance, character formation, moral exemplarity, and holistic human development, whereas the progressive facilitator emphasizes learning experience, dialogue, learner autonomy, participation, and problem solving. The synthesis of these two concepts produces the value-based facilitator model, consisting of five dimensions: ethical-spiritual, facilitative, dialogical, transformative, and critical-contextual. This model offers a conceptual contribution to contemporary Islamic education by integrating value formation with active learning, enabling educators to guide learners without domination and facilitate autonomy without losing ethical direction. Abstrak Penelitian ini bertujuan mengkaji hubungan konseptual antara murabbi dalam pendidikan Islam dan fasilitator dalam progresivisme pendidikan, serta merumuskan model integratif untuk mereposisi peran pendidik kontemporer. Penelitian ini menggunakan metode kualitatif dengan jenis studi kepustakaan melalui analisis literatur primer dan sekunder tentang filsafat pendidikan Islam, tarbiyah, ta’dib, murabbi, progresivisme, pembelajaran berpusat pada peserta didik, pendidikan nilai, dan pendidikan karakter. Data dikumpulkan melalui studi dokumen dan dianalisis menggunakan analisis isi kualitatif serta analisis komparatif-filosofis berdasarkan dimensi ontologis, epistemologis, dan aksiologis. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa murabbi menekankan pembinaan etik-spiritual, pembentukan karakter, keteladanan moral, dan pengembangan manusia secara holistik, sedangkan fasilitator progresivisme menekankan pengalaman belajar, dialog, otonomi peserta didik, partisipasi, dan pemecahan masalah. Sintesis kedua konsep tersebut menghasilkan model value-based facilitator yang terdiri atas lima dimensi, yaitu etik-spiritual, fasilitatif, dialogis, transformatif, dan kritis-kontekstual. Model ini menawarkan kontribusi konseptual bagi pendidikan Islam kontemporer dengan mengintegrasikan pembinaan nilai dan pembelajaran aktif, sehingga pendidik dapat membimbing peserta didik tanpa dominasi serta memfasilitasi otonomi belajar tanpa kehilangan arah etik.

Connecting Pedagogies to Enhance Methods of Resistance

Teaching students to think sociologically in a psychologically oriented culture is one of our most challenging tasks as instructors. Recognizing and understanding how sociological phenomena shape the classroom experience invites a more reflexive pedagogy in line with the tenets of the discipline, such as striving for social change and social justice. We are teaching our students to understand systemic inequalities and to fight for social justice, but is our pedagogy consistently in line with and using this lens? Many educators who are committed to social justice are embracing trauma-informed educational practices, an approach that does not reduce rigor or imply that students are unaccountable but that allows instructors to respond to trauma by fully integrating their knowledge of trauma in class policies, procedures, and practices. Sociology courses are especially poised to merge trauma-informed educational practices with orientations of social justice. I add to this and argue that sociology instructors can ‘do sociology’ by situating their pedagogy at the intersection of trauma-informed educational practices, culturally responsive pedagogy, and anti-racist practices; that we can teach students to be social-justice-minded, understand and respond to power imbalances, and consider differences in lived experience through these models of pedagogy—and that we in fact have a duty as instructors to teach sociologically because sociology is pedagogy; and that the ethos of our classrooms can and should lie at the intersection of these practices.

Integrating a Love-Based Curriculum and Pedagogical Deep Learning for Character Transformation in Indonesian Islamic Senior High Schools

The rapid growth of digital technology has intensified moral challenges in Islamic education, including bullying, cyberbullying, and declining reflective and ethical reasoning among students. Although previous studies have established relationships between religiosity, character education, and student behavior, they have largely remained correlational or conceptual, providing limited evidence on how value-based curricula can be pedagogically operationalized to achieve observable character transformation. This study analyzes the integration of the Love-Based Curriculum (KBC) and deep learning in Islamic Religious Education (PAI) to foster character transformation among Madrasah Aliyah students. A qualitative multi-case study was conducted across three Madrasah Aliyah using participatory observations, semi-structured interviews, and curriculum document analysis. The findings indicate that integrating KBC values through deep learning pedagogies positively transformed the school climate by increasing student engagement, reflective understanding of religious teachings, and meaningful participation in collaborative learning. The study also documented substantial reductions in bullying behaviors alongside increased student social participation and empathy. These changes were associated with the alignment of compassion-based curriculum values and deep learning strategies that promote critical reflection, ethical dialogue, contextual problem-solving, and prosocial behavior. The study contributes theoretically by demonstrating how value-based education can be operationalized through deep learning pedagogy, providing empirical evidence of value internalization and proposing an integrative model explaining the relationship between pedagogical processes and character transformation. The findings further highlight that the successful implementation of the Love-Based Curriculum depends not only on curriculum policy but also on teacher readiness and sustained institutional support for reflective and dialogical learning.