Mainstreaming Religious Values in Curriculum Development for Multicultural Society
Firdaus Wajdi
Universitas Negeri Jakarta
Abstract
Curriculum development is a continues process in order to improve and adjust the quality and goal of studying and teaching. One challenging process is, however, to prepare a transformed curriculum for different students. This study aims at illustrating curriculum development process of general religious study subject for university students. The curriculum has been adjusted to be delivered for specific Muslim students into multi-religious-background students. Therefore, this process involves mainstreaming of values of religions instead of description of formal rituals. This is a qualitative study that utilizes library research, participant observation, as well as interviews as main source of data collections. The observation has been focused in Universitas Negeri Jakarta and Tanri Abeng University. The two universities share unique characteristics in terms of religious studies and therefore important and functional for kind of comparison. This study discovers that mainstreaming of religious values has been accepted by students with multicultural backgrounds in religion. This mainstreaming of religious values has made the connection between the students closer and stronger. This unique approach has enabled the students with different background of religion to find a common ground among the faith without harming their own belief.
Keywords: Religious values, Curriculum development, Religious studies, Multicultural society.
Topic: International Symposium on Social Sciences, Humanities, Education, and Religious Studies