Implementation of Character Development for Boarding School Students Based on the Book Al-AkhlAq Lil-Bann at the Darul Azhar Modern Islamic Boarding School in Southeast Aceh Abd.
Latif.
Universitas Islam Negeri Sumatera Utara abdullatiframud20@gmail.
Syamsu Nahar Universitas Islam Negeri Sumatera Utara syamsunahar@uinsu.
Azizah Hanum OK Universitas Islam Negeri Sumatera Utara azizahhanum@uinsu.
Corresponding Author: Abd.
Latif.
Article history: Received: Desember 03, 2025 | Revised: Januari 20, 2026 | Available Online:
March 27, 2026 Abstract This study examines moral character education, based on the book Al-AkhlAq Lil-Bann, at Darul Azhar Modern Islamic Boarding School, focusing on its pedagogical framework, day-to-day implementation, and the factors that shape its success.
Using a qualitative approach with participatory observation, in-depth interviews, and document analysis, the research finds that the book presents an organized framework that integrates cognitive, affective, and conative dimensions within a hierarchy encompassing both vertical relationships .
ith Go.
and horizontal ones .
ith other peopl.
Its simple language, concrete examples, and gradual scaffolding suit adolescent development and current work in moral psychology.
On the ground, the program runs through three overlapping channels: formal instruction, institutional habituation, and social control.
Role-playing and dormitory routines prove especially effective.
The findings also expose real tensions.
Habituation dominates, and critical reflection is limited, so character formation rests more on habit than on deeply held belief.
Most students show external regulation: they behave morally because someone is watching, and their conduct shifts across contexts.
The study therefore argues for stronger, more structured reflection, less reliance on external control, and strategies that help students carry their moral commitments into settings that the pesantren cannot supervise.
Keywords: character education.
Kitab Al-AkhlAq Lil-Bann.
Copyright: A 2026.
The authors.
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Introduction Digital technology has changed the ethical terrain adolescents grow up in.
Empirical research keeps returning to the same findings: heavy digital media use is linked to reduced empathy,1 higher aggression,2 and weaker self-control.
3 Berkowitz and Bier4 and Lickona and Davidson5 argue that this picture calls for serious engagement from scholars and educators with a more holistic approach to moral education, one that goes beyond cognitive instruction, takes affective development seriously, cultivates positive habits, and treats teacher behavior as a model for students to emulate.
6 and makes use of a social environment that can sustain adolescent character over time.
Dhofier7 and Lukens-Bull8 argue that pesantren have long been central to moral teaching, pairing religious instruction with a depth of daily practice that few other institutions match.
Among the classical texts used for moral pedagogy in pesantren.
AlAkhlAq Lil-Bann by Umar bin Ahmad Baradja is one of the most important, offering practical guidance on respect for teachers, discipline, honesty, and social responsibility.
At Darul Azhar Modern Islamic Boarding School in Southeast Aceh, the book anchors the moral curriculum: it is taught in class and reinforced through dormitory routines and teachers' day-to-day conduct.
Early field observations, however, reveal inconsistencies in how students actually behave, especially in self-discipline, respect for others, and social Jean M Twenge and W Keith Campbell.
AuAssociations between Screen Time and Lower Psychological Well-Being among Children and Adolescents: Evidence from a Population-Based Study,Ay Preventive Medicine Reports 12 .
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Yalda T Uhls et al.
AuFive Days at Outdoor Education Camp without Screens Improves Preteen Skills with Nonverbal Emotion Cues,Ay Computers in Human Behavior 39 .
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Hye-Sun Lee and Jae Kwan Jun.
AuRole of Moral Disengagement and Media Literacy in the Relationships between Risky Online Content Exposure and Cyberaggression among Korean Adolescents,Ay Scientific Reports 14, no.
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Marvin W Berkowitz and Melinda C Bier.
AuWhat Works in Character Education,Ay Journal of Research in Character Education (Emerald Publishing Limited, 2.
Thomas Lickona.
AuSmart and Good High Schools.
Integrating Excellence and Ethics for Success in School.
Work, and Beyond,Ay A Report to the Nation on Character Education in High Schools, 2005.
Wouter Sanderse.
AuAdolescentsAo Moral Self-Cultivation through Emulation: Implications for Modelling in Moral Education,Ay Journal of Moral Education 53, no.
1 (January 2, 2.
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Zamakhsyari Dhofier.
AuTradisi Pesantren: Studi Pandangan Hidup Kyai Dan Visinya Mengenai Masa Depan Indonesia,Ay (No Titl.
, 2011.
Ronald A LukensAaBull.
AuTwo Sides of the Same Coin: Modernity and Tradition in Islamic Education in Indonesia,Ay Anthropology & Education Quarterly 32, no.
: 350Ae72.
Sofwan Manaf et al.
AuStrategic Integration of General and Religious Education in Indonesian Pesantren:
Building Holistic Character for National Resilience,Ay Edcomtech: Jurnal Kajian Teknologi Pendidikan 10, 2 SE-Articles (November 16, 2.
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org/10.
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Abd.
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Implementation of Character Development for Boarding School Students Based on the Book Al-AkhlAq Lil-Bann at the Darul Azhar Modern Islamic Boarding School in Southeast Aceh care, a gap that shows how hard it is to carry moral ideals from text into the lived routines of a pesantren.
Despite the growing body of work on character education in Islam, one area has remained underexplored: how classical texts are actually used within today's pesantren and how the day-to-day mechanisms of value transmission affect the depth to which those values are internalized.
Most earlier research has focused either on textual content analysis or on broad descriptions of pedagogical practice, without systematically examining how institutional structures, teaching methods, and everyday interactions shape students' moral awareness.
This is true, for instance, of the studies by Sarwadi and Raihan.
10 and by Siswati.
Abidin, and Zaldi.
11 These studies also tend to blur two distinct phenomena: behavioral compliance when students know they are being watched, and genuine internalization, in which values become part of how students think and act even when no one is supervising them.
12 The distinction is important.
A pesantren can be very effective at fostering compliance and still fall short of cultivating the moral autonomy that sustains ethical behavior over time.
Kohlberg's stage theory helps frame this problem, since it draws a line between heteronomous morality, which rests on rewards and punishments, and autonomous morality, which grows out of internal principles.
13 Self-determination theory operates along similar lines, tracing how values shift from external pressures to a person's authentic 14 Islamic education describes the same movement in its own vocabulary through tazkiyah al-nafs: from nafs al-ammarah .
he self driven by base desire.
through nafs allawwamah .
he conscience that feels remors.
to nafs al-mutmainnah .
he soul at peace.
S Sarwadi and N Raihan.
AuReinforcing Islamic Moral Values through Contemporary Pesantren Education,Ay Edukasi Islami: J, no.
November .
: 1137Ae48, https://doi.
org/10.
30868/ei.
Vialinda Siswati.
Zainal Abidin, and Ahmad Zaldi.
AuSupporting Pesantren -Based Higher Education to Internalize Value Education Vialinda Siswati, 1* Zainal Abidin, 2 Ahmad Zaldi, 3Ay 6, no.
December .
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Siswati.
Abidin, and Zaldi.
AuSupporting Pesantren -Based Higher Education to Internalize Value Education Vialinda Siswati, 1* Zainal Abidin, 2 Ahmad Zaldi, 3.
Ay Lawrence Kohlberg.
Essays on Moral Development/2 The Psychology of Moral Development (Harper & Row, 1.
Edward L Deci and Richard M Ryan.
Intrinsic Motivation and Self-Determination in Human Behavior (Springer Science & Business Media, 2.
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reached once values are fully internalize.
15 Studies by Sri Haryanto16 and Rohmadi17 suggest that when Qur'anic principles and the ethic of Islamic moderation are steadily woven into the life of contemporary pesantren, students internalize character and ethics more deeply, mainly through integrated teaching, day-to-day interaction, and an environment that supports those values.
The broader literature points in the same direction: moral education has to go beyond behavioral conditioning if it is to produce genuine moral autonomy.
This study examines how moral instruction, based on Al-AkhlAq Lil-Bann, is implemented in the integrated life of a contemporary Islamic boarding school.
Unlike earlier work, it does not stop at a general description of practice.
It follows moral ideals through the channels by which they are transmitted: the formal curriculum, daily habits, the example teachers set, and the boarding system itself.
That shift in focus opens a different view of how student character is formed, one in which institutional structure, teaching method, and personal moral growth are not separate concerns but parts of the same ongoing process.
This study has three main aims.
The first is to read Al-AkhlAq Lil-Bann closely and ask how those values are put into practice within the pesantren's integrated education The second is to examine the interplay between external habituation and internalization, with particular attention to the gap between behavioral compliance and genuine moral awareness.
The third is to identify the structural and contextual factors that either facilitate or impede the shift from externally transmitted values to dispositions that a student can truly call his own.
The contribution to moral education lies in developing the idea of reflective internalization: the process through which values move from habits imposed from outside into dispositions a student holds through self-awareness and personal meaning.
Alongside this, the study offers an empirical way to make sense of how the integrated moral system of a pesantren operates on the ground.
The method is qualitative thematic analysis, which Siti Mutholingah and Basri Zain.
AuMetode Penyucian Jiwa (Tazkiyah Al-Naf.
Dan Implikasinya Bagi Pendidikan Agama Islam,Ay TAAoLIMUNA: Jurnal Pendidikan Islam 10, no.
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Sri Haryanto.
AuInternalization of Islamic Boarding School Values in an Indonesian Islamic Educational Institution,Ay AL-ISHLAH:
Jurnal Pendidikan .
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Rohmadi.
Duski Ibrahim, and Munir.
AuModel of Internalization of Religious Moderation Values in Salafiyah Boarding Schools,Ay Al-Hayat: Journal of Islamic Education 8, no.
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org/10.
35723/ajie.
Abd.
Latif.
R dkk.
Implementation of Character Development for Boarding School Students Based on the Book Al-AkhlAq Lil-Bann at the Darul Azhar Modern Islamic Boarding School in Southeast Aceh traces the links between institutional design and individual moral experience and produces practical suggestions for pesantren administrators seeking to build character programs that can sustain students' moral autonomy beyond the reach of institutional The research also responds to a pressing problem in the field: the need for a model of character education that can withstand digital disruption and moral complexity, rooted in both theory and evidence, and tailored to Islamic education.
Research Method This study examines moral education practices at a pesantren in Southeast Aceh through a qualitative case study drawing on Al-AkhlAq Lil-Bann.
Fieldwork ran for about eight weeks, from 1 March to 25 June 2025, and focused on two things: the institution's daily routines and how students themselves lived through the process of making moral ideals their own.
The pesantren chosen for this study is a boarding school that offers intensive religious education alongside the national curriculum and serves 450 middle school Al-AkhlAq Lil-Bann is taught as a stand-alone subject and also built into the wider rhythm of boarding life.
Eighteen participants were purposively selected: three institutional officials, four Al-AkhlAq teachers, three dormitory supervisors, and eight students .
our boys, four girl.
from different grade levels and diverse socioeconomic and participation backgrounds.
All participants gave informed consent.
for students under 18, parental consent was also obtained.
Data were gathered through three complementary methods to enable triangulation of findings.
The first was participant observation.
19 The researcher took a moderate participant role and observed 15 Al-AkhlAq class sessions across three grade levels, recording teaching techniques, student engagement, and classroom relational dynamics.
Evening dormitory life was observed from 6:00 to 9:00 PM, with attention to religious routines, peer interactions, and supervisors' role handling.
Nine communal activities were also observed to see how values were put into motion in group settings.
Field notes followed a structured format with description, reflection, and early analytic thoughts, and John W.
Creswell.
Qualitative Research and Research Design, 2018.
Kathleen Musante and Billie R DeWalt.
Participant Observation: A Guide for Fieldworkers (Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, 2.
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were transcribed within 12 hours to maintain accurate detail.
A two-week immersion period before formal data collection helped reduce the observer effect.
In-Depth Interviews.
20 Semi-structured interviews lasted an average of 68 minutes, with individual sessions ranging from 50 to 90 minutes.
Each protocol was tailored to the stakeholder group.
The questions asked participants about their understanding of the aims of moral education and their approach to teaching it.
They also asked how participants judged whether students had actually taken values on board, what it was like to try to live those values out, and where intrinsic commitments ran up against external expectations.
All interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim, and checked for accuracy.
Member checking with eight participants was used to confirm the interpretations.
The document analysis drew on the Al-AkhlAq Lil-Bann curriculum guide, the boarding school code of conduct, lesson plans, character assessment rubrics, and students' reflective notebooks.
A directed content analysis approach was used to identify where formal policy and day-to-day practice matched and where they diverged.
The data were analyzed with Braun and Clarke's reflexive thematic analysis, following its six iterative phases.
After reading through the full dataset, the researcher conducted line-by-line coding in NVivo 12, generating 243 initial codes.
These were then grouped into eighteen candidate themes and, through further review, narrowed down to eight final themes under three meta-themes: .
the integrated moral education system, .
the prevalence of external mechanisms in moral development, and .
challenges in the internalization of values.
A second analyst independently coded a quarter of the transcripts, giving an agreement rate of 84 percent.
Where the two readings differed, the disagreements were discussed until the coders reached a common interpretation.
Three kinds of triangulation were used to strengthen the credibility of the findings.
Source triangulation set the views of different stakeholders against each other.
methodological triangulation cross-checked interviews, observations, and documents.
and investigator triangulation brought in independent coding.
Spending more time in the field helped build trust with participants and reduce the observer effect.
A thick contextual description is included so readers can decide for themselves how far the findings Steinar Kvale and Svend Brinkmann.
Interviews: Learning the Craft of Qualitative Research Interviewing .
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Virginia Braun and Victoria Clarke.
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Abd.
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Implementation of Character Development for Boarding School Students Based on the Book Al-AkhlAq Lil-Bann at the Darul Azhar Modern Islamic Boarding School in Southeast Aceh generalize to other settings.
Reflexivity was handled through a journal the researcher kept throughout the study, especially given his position as a Muslim scholar of Islamic education with a background in pesantren, where assumptions and possible biases were worked through in writing.
Several limitations should be acknowledged.
This is a single-case study at one pesantren with its own particular character, so direct generalization to other institutions is limited.
The eight weeks spent in the field give a useful snapshot, but cannot capture how moral development unfolds over longer periods.
Even with assurances of confidentiality, some responses may still have been influenced by social desirability bias.
And because the study focuses on a single text within one teaching tradition, its conclusions may not carry over cleanly to pesantren that work from different books or use different instructional methods.
Discussion Moral Values in the Book Al-AkhlAq Lil-Bann as a Framework for Moral Education Reading Al-AkhlAq Lil-Bann by Umar bin Ahmad Baradja carefully shows how comprehensive its framework for moral education actually is.
The book arranges moral values in a clear hierarchy.
It begins with the vertical relationships a student is expected to cultivate with Allah SWT and the Prophet Muhammad SAW, then moves outward into the horizontal ones: parents, teachers, siblings, friends, and neighbors.
From there, it works through the development of personal and social ethics.
This ordering fits closely with current thinking on what makes character education work, which treats three dimensions as indispensable and as needing to operate together: knowing .
oral knowledg.
, feeling .
motional commitmen.
, and doing .
oral actio.
The book's ethical dimension toward Allah SWT emphasizes reverence .
, love .
, and gratitude .
as the foundation of spiritual awareness.
aa AE O aacaN Oa e aEN EaOA explained in the book: "AaO a Ia a aI aNA a A aEaeOA a a a a a a a acAE a eI a a aI aA a A( "AaOaAYou must glorify your Lord, love Him, and give thanks to Him for all the blessings He has bestowe.
This formulation encompasses the cognitive .
nowledge of Go.
, affective .
eelings of love and gratitud.
, and conative .
ractices of worshi.
dimensions, implying that the internalization of Norman K Denzin.
The Research Act: A Theoretical Introduction to Sociological Methods (Routledge.
Sanderse.
AuAdolescentsAo Moral Self-Cultivation through Emulation: Implications for Modelling in Moral Education.
Ay FIKROTUNA.
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values necessitates more than the sheer transmission of cognitive knowledge.
Dahl's research indicates that successful moral education must engage moral cognition, moral emotions, and moral behavior concurrently, as these three elements mutually reinforce one another in the process of internalizing values.
The book's emphasis on birr al-wAlidayn as a practical expression of piety is evident in the care with which it treats a child's conduct toward parents, particularly the mother.
The line "To comply with her commands with love and respect, and to do everything that brings joy to her heart" binds obedience to feeling, rather than reducing it to mechanical By turning the student's attention to what a parent actually experiences emotionally, the text cultivates empathy, which is what makes moral internalization possible in the first place.
This aligns with theories of empathy-based moral development, which argue that inductive discipline that explains the emotional consequences of an action tends to produce deeper internalization of values than approaches based solely on authority or punishment.
The personal moral values taught honesty .
, discipline, responsibility, simplicity, and humility .
awAs.
form a moral character that is integrated into oneAos self-identity.
26 Textual formulations linking physical cleanliness to moral goodness (" aAIa a A )"EaOAindicate an understanding that character formation involves the aE aCA e A aOEea a aI I eI a e aI eEA habituation of concrete behaviors.
Through repeated practices such as maintaining cleanliness, the book employs procedural learning mechanisms that foster 'moral automaticity,' the tendency to respond automatically to moral situations in accordance with internalized values.
The textbook fits the developmental level of Madrasah Tsanawiyah students .
ges 12Ae.
, in large part because of its design: its structure is orderly, its examples are drawn from everyday life, and its language is easy to follow.
At this age, perspective-taking and empathy develop quickly, which helps students understand moral principles not just as Audun Dahl.
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Implementation of Character Development for Boarding School Students Based on the Book Al-AkhlAq Lil-Bann at the Darul Azhar Modern Islamic Boarding School in Southeast Aceh rules imposed from outside but as grounded in reasons and carrying emotional consequences for other people.
28 The textbook manages to hold together obedience to spiritual and social authority on one hand and the cultivation of inner dispositions on the other, and this reflects a real awareness that adolescents need to bring these two sources of moral guidance into working relation.
Research by Hardy29 and Tirri30 supports the same idea: when transcendent commitment and autonomous reasoning are kept together rather than treated as alternatives, moral motivation is stronger and behavior more consistent across settings.
Read as a whole, the book builds connections that matter.
It ties knowledge, emotion, and action together.
It links compliance to empathy, and concrete practices to the more abstract dispositions those practices are meant to form.
That kind of integration reflects a real understanding of how moral internalization works and aligns closely with current thinking in moral psychology and character education.
The fact that the book also suits adolescent students at their developmental stage is a reminder that classical wisdom still has substantial contributions to make to character education today.
Implementation of Moral Character Formation: An Integrated Moral Education System At Darul Azhar Modern Islamic Boarding School, character is formed through an integrated moral education system that pulls together formal instruction, institutional socialization, and social control.
The boarding school structure is what holds these pieces in place day to day, and Al-AkhlAq Lil-Bann supplies the content they work with.
This way of joining things up fits the holistic framework of character education, which argues that the explicit curriculum, the wider culture of the school, and the teacher's actual classroom practice cannot really be treated as separate instruments.
they have to reinforce one another.
Jolien Van der Graaff et al.
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Sam A Hardy.
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AuMoral Identity and Adolescent Prosocial and Antisocial Behaviors: Interactions with Moral Disengagement and Self-Regulation,Ay Journal of Youth and Adolescence 44, no.
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The school treats moral education as central: Al-AkhlAq Lil-Bann is a required The Head of the Curriculum Division put it this way: "The book doesn't just explain ethical theories, it gives students concrete behavioral examples they can apply in everyday life.
" That approach aligns with Wenger and Trayner's concept of situated learning and with Troy D.
Sadler's argument that real learning occurs when knowledge is tied to meaningful social practice.
The curriculum sets learning objectives in three areas: cognitive .
nderstanding ethical concept.
, affective .
nternalizing value.
, and psychomotor .
racticing proper The point isn't just to transfer knowledge.
As one ustadz said, "What matters more is how students apply these moral values in their lives.
" Whether a student actually behaves differently is the real measure of whether the teaching has taken hold.
Studies of moral development make a similar point: understanding a principle and acting on it consistently are two different things, and only the second one counts.
The curriculum starts with personal and family ethics at the introductory level, then moves to social ethics at the advanced level.
That order isn't accidental.
it aligns with Vygotsky's zone of proximal development and the general principle of scaffolding.
The idea is that students handle moral complexity better when they start with the relationships right in front of them .
before working outward to something as abstract as "society.
The teaching methods vary: lectures, group discussions, role-playing, case studies, and Q&A.
Which one gets used depends on the material.
Role-playing is particularly useful for topics like honesty or social ethics, where students need actually to sit with a dilemma rather than read about one.
Anchoring the textbook in the students' own boarding school life seems to help, too.
One student put it this way: "I like the role-playing because it helps me understand how to behave.
Respecting teachers has a lot of sides to it.
" That's the kind of thing experiential learning is supposed to produce, not a definition of a virtue, but a working sense of what it actually looks like.
Reflection activities at the end of a lesson, such as "How will you apply this lesson in your daily life?" draw on metacognitive awareness, which Cleary and colleagues treat as a key element of moral development.
The point of reflection is to set up a small amount Haining Wang and Guangzhen Zong.
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Implementation of Character Development for Boarding School Students Based on the Book Al-AkhlAq Lil-Bann at the Darul Azhar Modern Islamic Boarding School in Southeast Aceh of cognitive dissonance.
That dissonance is what makes students notice the gap between what they've been taught and how they actually behave.
A lot of moral formation happens outside the classroom, in the dormitory.
A day that begins with communal Subuh prayer and moves through Quranic study, structured activities, and an evening self-check builds habits by shaping when, where, and how things happen.
This kind of controlled environment with steady routines is generally thought to make it easier for adolescents to absorb values Ai not because anyone lectures them more, but because the daily schedule quietly does the teaching.
Syifa Fauziah makes a related point about the dormitory's cleaning rota, table manners, and rules for how students treat each other: these are micro-practices that work through repetition rather than explanation.
This kind of habituation lines up with virtue ethics, where moral dispositions are formed through repeated practice, what Aristotle called hexis, until they become second 34 Berkowitz's work goes further.
His findings suggest that habituating concrete moral behaviors not only shapes what students do but also changes the cognitive and emotional patterns underlying the behavior.
35 You can see this in students who start out brushing their teeth or greeting their elders because the rules require it, and then, at some point, no longer need the rules.
The limitation shows up in the students on the other end of that process.
Some of them never get past the mechanical stage.
They perform the practices on schedule, correctly, and with no particular sense of why.
The habit is there.
the understanding that the habit was supposed to carry along with it isn't.
A consistent reward-and-punishment mechanism is implemented to address violations and reinforce positive behavior.
A system of cumulative infraction points resulting in tiered consequences, from verbal reprimands to parental summons, exemplifies consequence-based discipline.
Nevertheless, research by Ryan & Deci and Joussemet suggests that an approach overly dependent on external control can impede the Syifa Fauziah et al.
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development of autonomous moral motivation.
36 Observational findings indicate a dependence on external control: pupils demonstrate compliance under monitoring but display altered conduct as oversight diminishes, suggesting incomplete internalization of Conduct remains influenced by external regulation rather than intrinsic incentive.
Integrative Moral Pedagogy in Modern Islamic Boarding Schools: An Analysis of the Implementation of the Book Al-AkhlAq Lil-Bann and Factors Influencing Its Effectiveness Whether the character-formation program at Darul Azhar actually works for a given student depends on many factors.
The pesantren has to run the program well.
The family and community at home have to back it up.
And the student themself brings religious awareness, motivation, and self-control, or doesn't, to varying degrees.
Students who already care about their religion and are genuinely interested in learning tend to internalize its values deeply.
The ones who are there mainly because their parents made them go or because they don't want to get in trouble usually behave well without really buying into it.
Home life makes a big difference, too.
A student from a religious family hears the same thing at the pesantren that they've been hearing since they were small, and it tends to stick.
A student whose family holds different values is essentially being asked to live inside a contradiction, and you can see that in the outcomes.
Where students are in their cognitive and socio-emotional development also makes a big difference.
During the Madrasah Tsanawiyah years, roughly ages twelve to fifteen, perspective-taking and empathy develop quickly.
Students at this age start to see moral rules not just as orders handed down from above, but as things with reasons behind them and emotional consequences attached.
37 This is also when moral identity starts to form, the slow process by which moral values become part of how a student sees themselves.
That integration is one of the strongest predictors of whether moral behavior will hold up over the long term.
The catch is that students in this age bracket don't all develop at the same pace, and the current teaching methods aren't really set up to meet students at different stages of moral maturity.
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Implementation of Character Development for Boarding School Students Based on the Book Al-AkhlAq Lil-Bann at the Darul Azhar Modern Islamic Boarding School in Southeast Aceh How well the pesantren's value system actually lands with students depends on the teaching skill of the ustadz, how consistently the rules are enforced, and the culture of the pesantren itself.
Teachers who vary their methods, draw on personal experience as a form of modeling, and push students toward genuine reflection tend to have more influence on character formation.
Observations from the field point to the same thing: teachers who build emotional rapport with students and personally embody the expected conduct, the ideal of Uswah Hasanah, produce stronger internalization of values.
This fits Bandura's social cognitive theory of learning, which treats modeling as central to moral education.
The weak point is time.
Structured reflection and guided self-examination are squeezed into the margins of the schedule, and without that space, moral reasoning tends to stay Inconsistent enforcement makes it worse.
When students see the same behavior tolerated in one case and punished in another, the rules lose legitimacy, and the actual standard becomes hard to read.
Digital media and popular culture complicate all of this.
Even with restricted internet access inside the pesantren, students still reach outside content through visitors' phones, trips home, and informal workarounds, and what they find there often contradicts pesantren norms.
A few students manage to hold both worlds together in what Hefner calls "cosmopolitan Islam," blending traditional religious commitments with a more modern outlook.
Others never reconcile the two.
Some live with a persistent identity others settle into a kind of double morality, behaving as expected inside the pesantren without fully taking those expectations to heart.
Cooperative parental support fosters a family-school partnership, a key factor in the success of character education.
40 Regular contact between the pesantren and parents, through communication journals and periodic meetings, helps students carry the same values across home and school.
This only works when a family's values already align with the pesantren's.
The boarding arrangement matters here, too.
Because students live and study together for long stretches, the peer group itself begins to function as a moral Albert Bandura.
AuToward a Psychology of Human Agency: Pathways and Reflections,Ay Perspectives on Psychological Science 13, no.
: 130Ae36.
R W Hefner.
AuIslamic Education.
Social Change, and Reform in Indonesia BT - Making Modern MuslimsAy (University of HawaiAoi Press, 2.
, https://doi.
org/10.
1515/9780824872113-008.
Xiaodi Jiang and Ren Liu.
AuFactors Influencing School Climate: An Empirical Study Based on the TALIS Principal Survey,Ay Humanities and Social Sciences Communications 11, no.
: 722,
https://doi.
org/10.
1057/s41599-024-03203-1.
FIKROTUNA.
Jurnal Pendidikan dan Manajemen Islam Volume.
15 Nomor.
01, 2026
community, and values are reinforced through daily interactions and shared expectations about how one ought to behave.
41 The observation that Austudents remind one another if a friend violates the rulesAy indicates peer monitoring that can support internalization if grounded in a collective commitment to values, rather than mere pressure to conform.
The Complexity of Moral Internalization: A Theoretical Synthesis The findings show that moral formation is a complex process, and making sense of it requires drawing on multiple theoretical frameworks.
Two mechanisms carry most of the weight: habituation through repeated practice, and reflection prompted by moral The pesantren uses both, but habituation clearly dominates.
Students get plenty of repetition and very little encouragement toward deeper contemplation, which produces character built mostly on habit rather than on conviction.
Self-determination theory offers a useful way to read this.
42 The theory describes a continuum running from external regulation, where behavior is driven by punishment or reward, to integrated regulation, where behavior aligns with the person's own sense of self.
Most students in this study seem to sit at the external and introjected end: they behave appropriately largely because someone is watching, or because they want to avoid embarrassment, rather than out of a personal commitment to the values themselves.
One finding raises a real question about how stable moral character actually is:
students who follow the rules carefully while in the pesantren but break the same norms once they return home.
Person-situation interactionism offers a more useful reading of The inconsistency is not a sign that moral character is absent.
it is a sign that moral dispositions remain fragile and depend on a supportive environment to emerge.
That has a clear implication.
If the goal is a character that holds up across different settings, then tightly controlling the situation is not enough.
Students need to be explicitly prepared to carry their values into environments that will not support them, and the principle of moral self-regulation leads to the same conclusion: the drive must become internal.
Georgianne Tiu Hawkins et al.
AuThe School Environment and Physical and Social-Emotional WellBeing: Implications for Students and School Employees,Ay Journal of School Health 93, no.
9 (September 1, 2.
: 799Ae812, https://doi.
org/https://doi.
org/10.
1111/josh.
Ryan and Deci.
AuIntrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation from a Self-Determination Theory Perspective:
Definitions.
Theory.
Practices, and Future Directions.
Ay Sonja Bieg et al.
AuExploring the Complexity of Introjected Regulation in Self-Determination Theory,Ay International Journal Teaching Learning Sciences, 1Ae10, https://doi.
org/10.
47991/2024/IJTLS-125.
Abd.
Latif.
R dkk.
Implementation of Character Development for Boarding School Students Based on the Book Al-AkhlAq Lil-Bann at the Darul Azhar Modern Islamic Boarding School in Southeast Aceh The tension between traditional pesantren values and the pull of secular modernity reflects a broader debate within contemporary Islamic education.
Modern Darul Azhar Islamic Boarding School is one example of a hybrid model that combines the national secular curriculum with traditional religious instruction, creating ambiguity about what the institution actually prioritizes.
The schedule allocates 57 percent of class time to formal subjects and 43 percent to religious and moral instruction, creating a structural gap between what the pesantren says it values and what its calendar shows.
Students caught between pesantren values and global media, or between pesantren expectations and the expectations at home, are living out the hybridity that many contemporary Indonesian Muslims know firsthand.
Character education in this context has to take the socio-cultural reality of adolescents in the digital era seriously.
One finding raises a real question about how stable moral character actually is:
students who follow the rules carefully inside the pesantren, but break the same norms once they return home.
Person-situation interactionism reads this differently.
The inconsistency is not a sign that moral character is absent.
it is a sign that moral dispositions remain fragile and depend on a supportive environment to show up.
That has a clear implication.
If the goal is a character that holds across different settings, then tightly controlling the situation is not enough.
Students need to be explicitly prepared to carry their values into environments that will not support them, which is what the principle of moral self-regulation points to.
The tension between traditional pesantren values and secular modernity reflects a broader debate within contemporary Islamic education.
Modern Darul Azhar Islamic Boarding School is one example of a hybrid model, combining the national secular curriculum with traditional religious instruction, resulting in ambiguity about what the institution is actually prioritizing.
The schedule allocates 57 percent of class time to formal subjects and 43 percent to religious and moral instruction, creating a structural gap between what the pesantren says it values and what its calendar shows.
Students caught between pesantren values and global media, or between pesantren expectations and those they encounter at home, experience this hybridity directly, as many contemporary Indonesian Muslims do.
Character education in this setting has to take the socio-cultural reality of adolescents in the digital era seriously.
FIKROTUNA.
Jurnal Pendidikan dan Manajemen Islam Volume.
15 Nomor.
01, 2026
Conclusion The Kitab Al-AkhlAq Lil-Bann lays out a structured approach to moral education.
It addresses students' understanding, their feelings, and the choices they make, and it orders the moral life in a clear hierarchy that covers duties to God alongside duties to other people.
The text teaches gradually, using examples drawn from everyday situations, and much of this lines up with what modern moral psychology says about how character actually develops in young people.
At Modern Darul Azhar Islamic Boarding School, teaching runs through classroom instruction, the routines of pesantren life, and the rules governing student conduct.
The school draws on a range of methods, but habituation does most of the work.
Critical reflection gets far less room.
The result is that students form moral habits mainly under They behave well when watched and tend to slip when they are not, which is the clearest sign that the character being formed is still fragile and leans on external pressure to hold up.
The problem gets harder once pesantren values come up against digital media, because students there encounter ideas that the school's traditional approach was not built to handle.
A few changes would help.
The school could work more structured reflection into daily practice, ease back on control-based discipline, and give students chances to apply their values in settings outside the pesantren.
Passing down tradition matters, but it is not enough on its own.
Students also need to learn to act on their own moral judgment, especially once they are no longer in the environment that shaped them.
Abd.
Latif.
R dkk.
Implementation of Character Development for Boarding School Students Based on the Book Al-AkhlAq Lil-Bann at the Darul Azhar Modern Islamic Boarding School in Southeast Aceh
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