Asymmetrically Configured Habituation: Religious Character Education in an Indonesian Islamic Elementary School in an Industrial City

Bahyati Bahyati; Wasehudin Wasehudin; Ilzamudin Ilzamudin; Eneng Muslihah; Bidayatul  Inayah

doi:10.32806/jf.v15i03.1768

Authors

Bahyati Bahyati Universitas Islam Negeri Sultan Maulana Hasanuddin Banten, Indonesia
Wasehudin Wasehudin Universitas Islam Negeri Sultan Maulana Hasanuddin Banten, Indonesia
Ilzamudin Ilzamudin Universitas Islam Negeri Sultan Maulana Hasanuddin Banten, Indonesia
Eneng Muslihah Universitas Islam Negeri Sultan Maulana Hasanuddin Banten, Indonesia
Bidayatul Inayah Universitas Islam Negeri Sultan Maulana Hasanuddin Banten, Indonesia

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.32806/jf.v15i03.1768

Keywords:

religious character education; Islamic elementary school; madrasah ibtidaiyah; habituation; school–family partnership.

Abstract

Religious character education in Indonesian Islamic elementary schools (Madrasah Ibtidaiyah, MI) faces pressure from digital disruption, post-pandemic learning loss, and weakening school-family alignment, yet dominant frameworks assume character domains develop symmetrically. This study examines how religious character education is implemented in Islamic Religious Education at Madrasah Ibtidaiyah Negeri (MIN) 1 Cilegon, a state Islamic elementary school in an industrial city, identifying the factors conditioning its effectiveness and the impact produced. A single-case design combined interviews and focus groups with 18 participants, 24 observations, and document analysis over five months, analyzed in NVivo 14 through two coding cycles using the moral knowing-feeling-acting framework. Findings show the school operates a four-layer cyclical habituation architecture, daily to annual, sustained by teacher modeling and embedded across the formal and hidden curriculum; effectiveness is moderated by school-family synchronization asymmetry, as parental work schedules constrain home mentoring; and impact is documented for behavioral indicators but only indicated, psychometrically unconfirmed, for affective-spiritual dimensions. Drawing on habituation theory and parental-involvement research, the study argues domain asymmetry is a structural default of MI schooling, not implementation failure, and proposes an Asymmetrically Configured Habituation (ACH) model with three falsifiable propositions on domain asymmetry, temporal stratification, and school-family synchronization conditionality

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