Local Wisdom-Based Cross-Cultural Education Model: Interfaith Tolerance and Sociocultural Resilience in the Ngadas Indeigenous Community

Mifdal Zusron Alfaqi (Universitas Negeri Malang)
Alfian Fawaidil Wafa (Universitas Negeri Malang)
Aprilianata Aprilianata (Universitas Negeri Yogyakarta)
Alice Sabrina Bin Ismail (University Teknologi Malaysia)

International Journal of Educational Narratives
Vol. 4 No. 4 (2026)

Background. Formal tolerance education often fails to build social cohesion, as text-based methods rarely connect with community life. Indigenous communities show natural interfaith tolerance through local wisdom, yet the literature lacks a systematic framework explaining how such traditions function as structured, informal learning models. Purpose. This study examines interfaith tolerance in the Ngadas community as a model for cross-cultural education, exploring how tolerance is transmitted and sustains cohesion in multireligious society. It develops a conceptual model of indigenous wisdom as a mechanism for sociocultural resilience. Method. Using a qualitative single-case design within a social constructivist paradigm, this study was conducted among the Ngadas community in Malang, East Java, Indonesia. Six months of fieldwork combined participant observation with semi-structured interviews involving 15 purposively selected key informants traditional leaders, religious representatives, and villagers supported by socio-cultural documentation, analyzed using Miles, Huberman, and Saldaña's (2014) interactive model. Results. Tolerance in Ngadas is cultivated through layered educational processes anchored in two local concepts: titiluri (following ancestral wisdom) and ageman (separating custom from personal belief). These values are reinforced through rituals like Kasada, Karo, and Entas-Entas, and through daily social life, producing a cross-cultural learning ecosystem in which ritual adaptation and informal spaces transform tolerance into a lived habitus, fostering interfaith trust and intergenerational value transmission. Conclusion. Indigenous wisdom offers a measurable foundation for sociocultural resilience. This study advances cross-cultural education theory by proposing a participatory learning model, showing that structural social spaces and communal involvement embed diversity values more effectively than formal classroom instruction, informing community-based approaches to national educational policy.