Investigating teachers' approach to science subjects in Indonesian religious-based schools : a case study

Abstract

Modern secular Western thought tends to remove elements of religion in every dimension of life, including education. Religion is suspected to prevent people from learning science and predicts a negative attitude toward science. The religious institution is believed to practice a teaching approach that does not emphasize a learner-led transformative process. Although much research has been conducted on the teaching approach, viewing the teaching approach from an Islamic pedagogy framework has yet to be addressed. Islamic pedagogy emphasizes a learner-focused approach, it can flourish students' critical thinking and reasoning thinking. Thus, the researcher aimed to investigate the teacher's approach to teaching in an Islamic high school in Riau, Indonesia. The researcher used a case study design to investigate how the science teacher's approach to teaching science with Islamic values in an Islamic high school. With the three research questions, the researcher wanted to analyze the Islamic high school teachers' perceptions toward science education concerning religion, investigate the science teacher's approach to instructing science in the classroom, and investigate the science subjects' resources in the Islamic high school. The finding of this research provides empirical evidence of science teachers' approach, which supports the idea that Muslims need a clear concept of education. Participants consisted of six teachers and four students in the science class major. Six classrooms were observed, and four lesson plans and several official documents were analyzed. In summary, the result of this study showed that science teachers perceive science as not contradicting religious beliefs and believe that their faith supports them in learning science. In addition, all teachers in this school are used to relating religion with science learning in the classroom by mentioning some verses and hadith related to materials. The researcher also found that stating God's greatness in a natural arrangement is also regarded as relating science with religion. A further finding indicated that the science teaching approach in this Islamic High school, where the teachers are Muslim, is categorized into two types; teacher-led and student-led. In addition, the Islamic values of education seem to be not recognized as a pedagogical approach in this school. The next finding of this research is that the learning resources for science learning in this school are unlimited. In addition, the teachers utilize the teacher's forum as their resource for creating their modified teaching module. The freedom of learning from everywhere is a sign that this school gives authority to each member to filter by themselves. The researcher hopes that another study will be conducted to provide more empirical evidence about science pedagogy related to Islam. The research about what factors impact teachers' approach to teaching is also recommended to provide an idea of how to have a compact teaching approach.