Contextualizing Social Media as a Cognitive Tool in Islamic Religious Education: A Multi-Site Case Study
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.59944/postaxial.v4i3.1930Keywords:
Cognitive tools, Digital ethics, Digital literacy, Islamic Religious Education, Social media, Secondary educationAbstract
Social media are widely used by secondary-school students, yet their presence in education does not automatically support meaningful learning. This study examined how social media were contextualized as cognitive tools in Islamic Religious Education (IRE) at SMP Muhammadiyah 3 Ciparay and SMP IT Bani Umar Arjasari in West Java, Indonesia. A qualitative multi-site case study was conducted with 30 participants, comprising 10 students and five IRE teachers from each school. Data were collected over two months through semi-structured interviews and classroom observations and analyzed using thematic and cross-site analysis. The findings revealed that social media served five interrelated functions: providing access to learning resources, supporting structured tasks, facilitating teacher–student and peer interaction, enabling information verification, and encouraging reflection on religious knowledge and digital conduct. SMP Muhammadiyah 3 Ciparay demonstrated a more participatory pattern characterized by active discussion, resource exchange, and project coordination. SMP IT Bani Umar Arjasari exhibited a more teacher-directed pattern centered on material distribution, assignment communication, and clarification. The principal constraints were unequal digital skills, passive participation, information overload, distraction, and difficulty evaluating the credibility of online religious content. Social media functioned as a cognitive tool only when teachers moved its use beyond content delivery by requiring students to explain, compare, evaluate, and reflect on digital information. The study contributes a contextualized social-media cognitive-tool framework consisting of access, structured tasks, interaction, verification, and reflection. This framework can guide the design of digitally mediated IRE that integrates knowledge construction, religious-information literacy, collaboration, and ethical responsibility
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