Southeast Asian Journal of Islamic Education
Vol 9 No 1 (2026): Southeast Asian Journal of Islamic Education, June 2026

Grounding Islamic Education Transformation in Religious Moderation: Bridging the Policy-Practice Gap in Indonesia's Merdeka Curriculum

Nursani Awal Artha Nugraha (Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia)
Agus Fakhruddin (Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia)
Aldam Shaka Pradipta (Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia)
Helmy Abdullah Helmy (Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia)
Pitra Gosha Patriasya (Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia)



Article Info

Publish Date
22 Jun 2026

Abstract

The policy-practice gap constitutes a persistent challenge in Indonesia's Islamic education transformation as two landmark policy reforms converge: the Merdeka Curriculum (2022) and Presidential Regulation on Religious Moderation (2023). Despite evident institutional commitments, implementation frequently remains superficial, constraining the effectiveness of digital technology integration. Religious moderation values internalization, pedagogical innovation, and curriculum reform across diverse Islamic educational institutions. This systematic review synthesizes empirical evidence from 55 peer-reviewed, Scopus-indexed studies (2020-2025) and uses the PRISMA 2020 protocol to identify strategic pathways to bridge this gap. Findings reveal that sustainable transformation requires cross-dimensional integration of digital technology, religious moderation, pedagogical innovation, and curriculum reform, with religious moderation operationalized through wasatiyyah values and dialogical methods, which emerge as a foundational anchor of the entire transformation framework. Teacher digital competency gaps and structural policy-practice misalignment constitute the most critical implementation barriers. The integrative conceptual model constructed demonstrates that transformative success depends on three strategic pillars: strong institutional leadership, sustained teacher capacity development, and coherent alignment between policy design and field implementation capacity. These findings offer evidence-based pathways for policymakers, practitioners, and researchers committed to designing sustainable, equitable, and empirically grounded Islamic education transformation within Indonesia's Merdeka Curriculum era.

Copyrights © 2026






Journal Info

Abbrev

SAJIE

Publisher

Subject

Education Languange, Linguistic, Communication & Media Mathematics Other

Description

Southeast Asian Journal of Islamic Education accepts unpublished, high quality, and original research manuscripts in English and Arabic related Islamic Education. The journal publishes high quality empirical and theoretical research covering all aspects of Islamic Education. These issues include: ...