INTEGRATING ISLAMIC RELIGIOUS EDUCATION AND EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING TO STRENGTHEN STUDENTS’ PROSOCIAL CHARACTER: AN INTEGRATIVE COMPARATIVE LITERATURE REVIEW OF INDONESIA AND MALAYSIA

Abstract

Islamic Religious Education (IRE) is expected to develop not only religious knowledge but also students’ moral and social dispositions. However, a persistent gap remains between understanding religious values and translating them into prosocial action. This study examines how experiential learning can strengthen students’ prosocial character through IRE from Indonesian and Malaysian perspectives. Using an integrative comparative literature review, peer-reviewed studies and relevant scholarly sources on Islamic education, experiential learning, character education, and prosocial behaviour were purposively selected, with priority given to recent literature and comparative studies from both countries. The sources were analysed through thematic content analysis and interpretative comparison. The synthesis indicates that experiential learning can function as a mechanism of value internalization by connecting Islamic moral principles with concrete social experience, reflection, meaning-making, and action. The literature also shows that Indonesia and Malaysia share a strong orientation toward religious and character formation, although curriculum structures, institutional arrangements, and pedagogical practices differ. The study proposes an integrative framework: Islamic Values → Social Experience → Reflective Meaning-Making → Prosocial Action. This framework positions empathy, helping, cooperation, solidarity, and social responsibility as observable outcomes of experiential IRE. The study contributes a comparative conceptual model for more socially transformative Islamic education and recommends empirical testing across schools in Indonesia and Malaysia.