This article aims to discuss the conceptual conflict between pedagogical discipline, national education standards, and child rights protection discourse, as well as to examine the relevance of the concept of taʿzīr within the Islamic educational tradition as an alternative normative framework for the reconceptualization of educational punishment. This study employs a qualitative approach through a critical literature review of pedagogical scholarship, sociology of education, child protection law, and Islamic educational thought, alongside discourse analysis of media reports on the criminalization of teachers in Indonesia. The data are analyzed using thematic categorization techniques to identify patterns of conceptual conflict and policy implications. The findings indicate that the controversy surrounding punishment in schools does not primarily originate from individual teachers’ practices, but rather from a lack of alignment between pedagogical norms, legal regulations, and parental social expectations. The unclear boundary between educational punishment and violence has contributed to the juridification of pedagogical relations and weakened teachers’ moral authority. The concept of taʿzīr offers an ethical perspective that conceptualizes punishment as a corrective action that is proportional and oriented toward behavioral improvement. This article contributes to the development of an integrated conceptual framework of educational punishment that is pedagogically sound, legally informed, and ethically grounded.
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