Developing Children's Religious Character through Informal Family Education: Multiple Parental Roles in Air Jamban Village

Abstract

This study explores parents' lived experiences in providing informal religious education and supporting children's religious character development in Air Jamban Village, Bengkalis, Indonesia. The study employed a qualitative phenomenological design involving seven participants: three parents as the main informants, three children as supporting informants, and one community leader. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews, observations, and documentation. Analysis combined Moustakas’s phenomenological procedures (bracketing, identification of significant statements and meaning units, and textural–structural description) with the data condensation, data display, and conclusion-drawing cycle of Miles, Huberman, and Saldaña. The five parental roles drawn from the literature served as sensitizing concepts rather than fixed categories: interviews began with open narrative questions, and the meaning, enactment, and interrelation of each role were developed from participants’ accounts. The analysis yielded five interconnected dimensions of parental experience: parents as educators, motivators, role models, supervisors, and facilitators. These dimensions illustrate how informal religious education is experienced as an integrated process embedded in everyday family life, in which religious instruction, encouragement, modeling, supervision, and the provision of a supportive environment operate in relation to one another. The study's novelty lies in offering an integrated analysis of these five interconnected parental roles within the context of informal, family-based Islamic education, rather than examining parental involvement as separate or general functions. The findings suggest that the interconnected involvement of parents can support children's religious character development through everyday family interactions and practices. The study contributes to Islamic family education by providing a phenomenological account of how parents experience and enact religious education as an integrated process of character formation within the family.