Developing Students’ Islamic Personality Character through Group Counseling Based on ASWAJA An Nahdliyah Values

Abstract

Religious-based local wisdom counseling has emerged as a strategic alternative for addressing the moral and identity crisis among adolescents in the era of globalization. One of the most contextual approaches in Indonesia is the values of ASWAJA An-Nahdliyah, which emphasize moderation (tawassuth), balance (tawazun), and tolerance (tasamuh). This study aims to examine the effectiveness of a group counseling model based on ASWAJA values in developing students’ Islamic character.

Using a quantitative approach with a quasi-experimental method and a pretest-posttest control-group design, this study involved 25 students from Islamic Senior High Schools (MA) who were categorized as having very low Islamic character scores. Participants were divided into control and experimental groups. The instrument used was the Religious Moderation Scale (RM-S), which measures four core indicators: national commitment, tolerance, non-violence, and accommodation of local culture. The results of the normality and homogeneity tests confirmed that the data met the assumptions for parametric analysis. The paired-sample t-test revealed that the control group showed an increase of 12.57 points with a significance level of 0.000, while the experimental group showed a significantly greater increase of 36.57 points, also with a significance value of 0.000. These findings indicate that the ASWAJA-based counseling model is highly effective in improving students’ Islamic character compared with conventional counseling approaches. Therefore, this model is worthy of adoption in formal educational counseling services as a means of grounding students’ character formation in local religious values.