WHEN DIVERSITY BECOMES EXCELLENCE
LESSONS FROM A PLURAL SCHOOL PREPARING PROSPECTIVE ISLAMIC RELIGIOUS EDUCATION TEACHERS IN UNIVERSITAS TERBUKA, INDONESIA
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.30868/ei.v15i03.10977Keywords:
multicultural education; Islamic religious education; needs analysis; prospective teachers;Abstract
Indonesia needs Islamic Religious Education (IRE) teachers who can teach religion while caring for diversity. The Universitas Terbuka (UT), as a distance university present in every province, has a strategic position to prepare such teachers, but its IRE curriculum has not explicitly equipped students with multicultural competencies. This study aims to analyse the urgency and need of multicultural education for IRE UT students from the perspective of graduate user schools, as an analysis stage in the development of a curriculum model. Data were collected through interviews, observations, and focused discussions at High School (SMA) Sultan Iskandar Muda Medan. The data was analysed thematically. The results of the study show that the implementation of multicultural education at SMA Sultan Iskandar Muda has succeeded in making the school a superior school with a multicultural perspective. SMA Sultan Iskandar Muda Medan has proven to be superior as a multicultural school because it consistently applies the value of diversity through the existence of houses of worship of five religions side by side in the school complex, the heterogeneous composition of students and teachers from various ethnicities, religions, and socioeconomic statuses, as well as the integration of multicultural curriculum and diversity classes that effectively eliminate social prejudices so that the learning environment remains harmonious without discrimination. Schools like this certainly require IRE teachers who have high multicultural sensitivity in addition to mastery of good learning materials. These findings affirm the urgency of developing a multicultural IRE curriculum at Universitas Terbuka that allows students from various provinces to practice teaching in a multicultural school environment.
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