This study examines the implementation of the deep learning approach in Islamic Religious Education (PAI) at SMA Negeri 1 Babat and its contribution to strengthening students' conceptual understanding. The research addresses a persistent gap between PAI's meaning-oriented objectives and classroom practice that remains memorization-based, leaving students able to recite definitions but unable to explain reasoning, relate ideas, or apply concepts contextually. Using a qualitative case study design, data were collected through in-depth interviews with the principal, two PAI teachers, and nine eleventh-grade students, complemented by classroom observation and documentation, then analyzed through data reduction, coding, categorization, thematic identification, and source-and-technique triangulation. Findings show that deep learning was implemented through the integrated application of three principles, meaningful learning, mindful learning, and joyful learning, embedded across the opening, core, and closing stages of instruction. This implementation strengthened seven indicators of conceptual understanding: interpreting, exemplifying, classifying, summarizing, inferring, comparing, and explaining, demonstrated through discussion, case analysis, and reflective closure. The three principles were found to function in a mutually reinforcing sequence rather than in isolation, with meaningful learning anchoring interpretive and exemplifying capacities, mindful learning driving analytical and comparative capacities, and joyful learning sustaining the engagement that made sustained cognitive effort possible. This integrative relationship between the three deep learning principles and the seven-indicator structure of conceptual understanding constitutes the study's main contribution to PAI pedagogy.
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