The Social Construction of Islamic Morality: Rethinking Character Formation in Contemporary Education
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.47945/create.v1i2.3490Keywords:
Islamic Morality, Social Constructivism, Character Education, Moral Agency, Contemporary Islamic EducationAbstract
Contemporary Islamic education faces the challenge of sustaining religious ethical commitments while responding to cultural pluralism, digital transformation, and changing educational relationships. This study examines how social interaction, cultural contexts, and Islamic values inform moral formation and develops a conceptual framework for character education. Employing a qualitative integrative literature review and critical conceptual synthesis, it examines scholarship on social construction, social learning, sociocultural theory, Islamic ethics, and constructivist pedagogy. The synthesis identifies social modelling and cultural mediation as recurring concerns in existing research, while reflective internalisation emerges as a theoretically informed explanatory proposition. It further distinguishes the normative foundations of Islamic morality from the socially mediated processes through which learners interpret and enact moral commitments. Building on these insights, the study proposes five interconnected analytical dimensions: normative grounding, dialogical engagement, contextual interpretation, reflective agency, and ethical enactment. These dimensions represent mutually influencing categories rather than sequential developmental stages. The framework extends predominantly transmissive accounts of character education by integrating religious ethical authority with participatory meaning-making and reflective judgement. Its implications concern curriculum alignment, dialogical teaching, and multidimensional assessment. As a literature-based conceptual contribution, the framework remains empirically unvalidated and warrants further comparative, longitudinal, and classroom-based investigation across diverse educational settings.
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