Teaching Moderation, Moderating Teachers: The Facilitator’s Role in Nurturing Moderate Teachers in East Kalimantan, Indonesia

Abstract

Recent educational surveys reveal the increasing penetration of conservative and exclusivist ideologies within Indonesian schools, yet existing studies rarely investigate how school-based mentoring grounded in local community assets can counter these trends. Addressing this gap, this study examines the implementation of the Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) approach in religious-moderation mentoring for Islamic Education Teachers (PAI) in Samarinda, East Kalimantan, Indonesia. Using a qualitative phenomenological approach, drawing on in-depth interviews with 23 teachers, participant observation across three mentoring cycles, and program documentation collected between January and March 2023, this study analyses both conceptual shifts and classroom-level implementation of moderate values. This study found that ABCD-based mentoring mobilizes teachers’ social and cultural assets to reframe moderate religious values, strengthen critical-dialogic classroom practices, and reduce receptiveness toward exclusivist narratives. This study contributes to the literature by demonstrating that ABCD can function as an integrative pedagogical framework for religious-moderation training, offering a locally rooted, community-driven model for mitigating extremism in Islamic education. These insights enhance theoretical debates on moderation pedagogy and provide an empirically grounded basis for designing scalable school-based interventions.