The role of Islamic education teacher to build learners' character at MTs Assalafiyah Tegal City

The importance of Islamic education teachers' role in building students' character in modern era is reflected on becoming role model who could build students having Islamic character through exemplary and habituation . This research focuses on Islamic education teachers in building students characters at MTs Assalafiyah Tegal city. Thus, it can be drawn problem statements as follow: (1) what is the definition of Islamic education teachers' role? (2) what is definition of character education? (3) How are role of Islamic teachers in building students' characters at MTs Assalafiyah Tegal city? This research used qualitative method especially case study which applied descriptive method to analyze. It was conducted at MTs Assalafiyah Tegal city. The research subject were the headmaster, teachers and students of class IX . It applied observation, interview, and documentation as the technique of collecting data. It applied data triangulation to analyze the data . The research finds that teachers' role in building students' character at MTs Assalafiyah is categorized as good. It can be seen from MTs Assalafiyah teachers' education background that most of them graduated from Islamic Boarding Schools and Islamic Universities. Teachers have applied their role as the role model in habituating disciplines in their daily life that is crucial to shape students' characters.


INTRODUCTION
Attarbiyah: Journal of Islamic Culture and Education https://www.attarbiyah.iainsalatiga.ac.id/index.php/attarbiyah/82 VOL. 7NO. 1, JUNE 2022   The development of science and technology has brought many changes in our life in this modern era.One of changes happens in education system.The positive impact of science and technology development is the ease of accessing any information.It may improve the learning process especially on the use of various media, learning model and strategy.On the other hand, the development of science of technology may cause negative impact.The phenomenon of moral degradation happened in the society which involves school aged learners might cause nationalism erosion, free sex, drugs and alcohol abuse.Those negative impacts would endanger nation and young generation's future (Wally, 2021).
Education is proposed to be one of solutions to anticipate the situation since education could shape virtuous personality.Education is part of an attempt, protection, treatment, and assistance given to the students to reach self-maturation and to be able to do their life task.In addition, related to the education, teachers have important role in the learning process.The learning process is the core of entire education process which is aimed to change better learners' behavior (Kirom, 2017).
Teachers' role is needed to shape learners' character, they do not only teach knowledge but they are also responsible to guide students to have noble characters.Thus, teachers could share moral values in every learning that motivate and build students' spirit and behavior.The importance of teachers role to shape learners' characters forces teachers to have good characters to support them shaping learners' characters (Nurasiah et al., 2021).
The gist of character education has similar meaning with the moral education.John Dewey stated that "it is common in the theories of education that character building is the general goal of teaching and character education at school".There are some values in Islam: moral, courtesy, and exemplary.Moral refers to the duty and responsibility, courtesy relates with good behavior, and exemplary refers to character quality which is presented by the every moslem where the characters are following how Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) behaved.The three points above become the fundamental of character education in Islam (Ainissyifa, 2014).
Educating is an action of doing good thing to help learners reach their self-maturity with the support from their physical, spiritual, emotion, mental, and so on through choosing appropriate, conscious, flexible, and continuous action.The responsibility to improve students' competence is not only teachers' responsibility but also school principal's responsibility aimed to improve school quality.Teachers should build, guide, analyze the learners' difficulty, and analyze every student's improvement to reach better school quality.The recognition of teacher's certification that they receive from the government could be used to improve their competence and to fulfill their safety and convenience in doing their teaching duty (Bafirman & Wahyuri, 2019).
Islamic Education teachers are not only guiding students while the Islamic education teaching learning process happens but also they need to do other thing to accomplish the Islamic education goals.This concept could be realized through creating religious environment and shaping students' character at school.Religious environment means the creation of religious situation among teachers and students who know Islamic teaching, have noble character, love cleanliness, live simple and economical, and recognize the false then know how to fix it (Oktavia & Rahman, 2021).
The crucial role of Islamic education teachers in building students' Islamic characters needs good and professional Islamic education teachers who could shape Islamic generation.MTs Assalafiyah Tegal city is one of schools having religious background where the teachers graduated from Islamic Boarding School and Islamic University.So, the researcher would like to discuss an article entitled "Islamic Education Teachers' Role to Build Learners' Characters at MTs Assalafiyah Tegal City".
Based on the description above, it can be drawn some problems statements as follow: (1) What is the definition of Islamic education teachers' role?(2) What is the definition of character education?(3) How is the Islamic education teachers' role to build learners' characters at MTs Assalafiyah Tegal City?

METHOD
This research used qualitative approach especially case study and applied descriptive method.Moleong defined qualitative research as an attempt to present social world and perspective in this world in form of concept, behavior, perception, and person's problem that is investigated.The qualitative research character may help researchers to dig up information and reality faced by respondents.It was a descriptive research which was aimed to know teachers' role to build learners' characters based on Islamic education perspectives conducted at MTs Assalafiyah Tegal City.The subject of this research were the headmaster, teachers and students of class IX.The technique of collecting data used in this research were observation, interview and documentation.The research instrument of this research was the researcher himself as the observer who entered the research setting to collect the data.The technique of analyzing the data was triangulation defined as a method to check the information through some steps: data collection, data reduction, data presentation and verification (Nurasiah et al., 2021;Pradina et al., 2021).

The Gist of Islamic Education Teachers' Role
Based on Indonesian dictionary, role means series of behavior which are expected owned by a person who holds a position in society.In social real life, role means having a social position in the society or social structure.Someone will have certain function based on his position.Every individual who plays role in social status should follow the rules, in form of applicable norms (Suhardono, 2018).
Linguistically, teacher means educator which means someone who transfers knowledge.Teacher has important value in formal education because teacher becomes one of components of success of achieving learning goals.Teacher is a model for his students and he is required to have adequate competences to reach the learning goals and conduct teaching learning process.With the character and competence that the teacher has, he is expected to build his personal and optimize the teacher characters to support teacher's professionalism in education institution (Sarwono & Meinarno, 2015).
Ramayulis stated that the gist of teacher or education in Al Quran is someone who is responsible with the learners' development and tries to optimize holistically including learners' potency, affective, cognitive, and psychomotor (Kasenda et al., 2016).Education plays important role in Islam.Besides teaching Islamic Education, teacher becomes spiritual father by giving positive advices to the learners.Thus, education plays important role in Islam as what was written in hadits of Prophet Muhammad "that scientist ink stroke is more valuable than syuhada" Education becomes dominant factor and effects on the learning quality.The good learning quality may results on the great learning outcomes too (Wulandari & Surjono, 2003).

Character Education
Education in Arabic means al-Tarbiyah.Khalid al-Hazimi stated that al-Tarbiyah is rooted from Rabba, yarbu, tarbiyah which means growing up, growing to be great and mature.Thus, it can be defined that education or tarbiyah is a process which is aimed to build and mature learners in form of physical, social, psychological, and spiritual.In addition, Abudin Nata defined education as guidance received from children up to adult.Education also becomes improvement process and improving person where those things becomes an attempt to grow up and build the good values to the learners (Zakariya, 2020).
Character comes from Latin word 'kharakter", "kharassein", "kharax" and Greek word "charassein" which means sharpen, extent.Based on Kertajaya, the definition of character is thing as well as person that has identity.The identity is original and embedded in the personal thing and individual and it becomes pusher for person to behave, act, and speak and respond thing (Ainissyifa, 2014).So, education character is defined as an education process which is aimed to shape good individual that can be applied in daily behavior.
According to Rahardjo, character education is holistic education process where moral is related to learners' social life which becomes foundation of building high quality generation where they could live independently and have good and accountable principles.Gunawan defined education character as all things what teachers do that influence learners' character (Ainissyifa, 2014).
Character is known as al-khuluq or akhlaq in Islam that means habit or behavior that is done continuously.The letter of lam means al-dien (trust), al-thab'u (character) and al-sijiyyat (nature) which means someone inner feeling, character, instinct and other certain meanings which appear on real behavior, true and false, creating praise and disapproval.Khuluq is a pure condition in soul that simplify activities without any consideration and deeper thought.Al-Ghazali defined akhlak (moral) as character/ identity which grows in someone soul and it appears through his action smoothly without any thought and improvement.Ibn Miskawaih defined akhlak (moral) education as the attempt to create inner attitude to encourage someone to have spontaneous good behavior.While, the criteria of good and bad akhlak (moral) education refers to al-Qur'an and Sunnah as the reference of Islamic education .(Hasanah et al., 2021;Wally, 2021) According to Dharma Kesuma the purpose of character education quality process as well as education outcome refers to the formulation of integrated, whole, balanced good character and akhlaq (moral) in individual that is based on graduate competence in education institution.With the existence of character education, every student is expected to be able to improve and apply the knowledge, study, internalize, and personalize various character and moral education that can be realized in daily life (Hasanah et al., 2021).
Character education becomes an alternative to guide learners' behavior how to love, know, and do good thing.Thus, the main focus of character education is on the ethics seen through the process of listing appreciation and habituation.Theoretically, someone's character can be seen from three aspects: knowing good thing, loving good thing, and doing good thing.According to Socrates, the purpose of education is to create good and smart person.Prophet Muhammad asserted that the main purpose of educating people is to build good character.Based on Az-Zarnuji, beside as the entity of dedication to Allah SWT, the purpose of education also becomes the alternative to shape the individual, moral, intellectual, physical health, the building of good mental attitude amar makruf nahyi munkar, and to own responsibility toward society welfare without any personal intention (Ainissyifa, 2014;Ani, 2014;Hasanah et al., 2021).

The Role of Islamic Education Teachers to Shape Learners' Character at MTs Assalafiyah Tegal City
Islam has become an instruction that can build every Muslim individual in whole to realize the characters of faith, devotion, honesty, patience, discipline, justice, responsibility, and so on.Thus, Islamic education could take over Islamic values that can be built, so Muslim could have those characters.
In education context, student is rooted from Arabic noun "arada-yuridu-iradatanmuridun" that means someone who has desire and sincerity to learn, and respects to educator.In this concept, student means that having belief that teaching and learning is an obligation.Learner can be defined as development and improvement through physical and psychological to reach the learning goals at education institution.It means that learner is still a child and has not become adult where he needs guidance form adult person.It is like a thing that has not been finished in the education process so learner needs guidance.Teacher should make students understand in learning process because the misunderstanding in comprehending material will cause a fatal problem.
Learners have potency that can be raised and built.The learners' potency are: (1) potency to have instinct and useful to use when learners were born in this world; (2) Allah SWT has given senses as guidance for humans to accomplish their potency; (3) the other Allah's guidance is in form of intelligence potency used to think, create, and discover science; (4) the other potency is religion guidance to all humans consisting of faith and rules (Ramayulis, 2005).
Teachers need to consider the following things to cope the learners' problem.First, a child is not an adult miniature.He has his own world.Thus, teachers could not equalize children with adult in form of choosing learning method.Second, a child still follow his period and development and he has his own rhythm, so teachers need these development and rhythm.Third, learner has his own needs and goals to reach optimal learning.The learner's needs are in form of safety, affection, and so on.Forth, learner is different from each other caused by many factors: gene, environment that influence his interest, talent, social, intelligent, and society.Fifth, learner is seen as part of human system where as the human, he is regarded as the learner who has many unified aspects (Tafsir, 2006).
Education is an intended, planned, and organized effort to develop and change behavior.Formal education system is in form of school used as medium to reach education goal.Learners are able to learn through education institution by showing positive changes, so that in the end of the class, learners will improve their competence and skills (Hastuti, 2010).The success education benchmarking is based on what is delivered and taught by teacher and the teaching learning outcome that is not satisfying from any sides that is caused by many factors.First, the lack of education which fits with learner's needs and reality.Second, the lack of teaching learning strategy, technique and material.Third, the lack of facilities that support the learning process.Those three things will give high impact on education.Thus, teacher are believed to have responsibility to change and improve the learners (Juhji, 2016).
One of supporting factors in learning is learning process itself.It is crucial since it has impact on improving students competence especially on receiving knowledge from teachers (Basaria, 2018).Learning is the main activity in education in which teachers intentionally attempt to share knowledge to students, and is organized to create optimal learning atmosphere through applying any learning methods.Those are included in lesson plan which is planned in the first meeting.
The purpose of education characters proposed by Ministry of Education and Culture are; first, learners' affective potency are improved so that they could be citizen who have culture values and national characters.Second, it is expected to improve students' habit and behavior that are in line with universal values and religious based on nation tradition.Third, it is used to build learners' leadership spirit that will be the nation next generation.Forth, it is used to improve learners' competence to reach self-autonomy, broad insight, and creativity.Fifth, it also used to improve the school environment to create creative, honest, nationality and strength learning atmosphere (KEMENDIKBUD, 2003).
School is one of education institution which is responsible to the process of shaping learners' characters.In addition, teachers have dominant contribution to improve students' character' values.The characters that have been built step by step will be internalized through habituation that later on will be applied in their daily life ' (Wulandhari et al., 2019).
Mts Assalafiyah Tegal City applied character education based on the school vision and mission that are implemented in every subject and it also needs parents' involvement to implement it.Shaping students' character means that building character values by involving the following components: knowledge, awareness, and willingness and doing right values toward Allah SWT.The implementation of character building at MTs Assalafiyah Tegal city is applying eleven character values in every subject, they are: religious, honesty, tolerant, discipline, creative, appreciating achievement, communicative, environment care, social, democratic, nationalist.Those values have been implemented well by internalizing them in intra-curricular and extracurricular programs.The programs are managed effectively and intensively through character education planning, implementation and evaluation.
Mts Assalafiyah Tegal city has inserted character education in the syllabus and lesson plan.The teachers made sure that the character education has been inserted in both documents so that it will be implemented in teaching learning process.The character values are internalized through face to face meeting in the class and individual task outside the classroom.There are eleven character values that are shown in the programs; First, implementation of religious value are shown through the following activities: praying, sunnah prayer, obligatory prayer (dzuhr and Ashr) together, class jamiyah, Studying Aqidatul Awam book, istighozah, tahfidz, IPNU-IPPNU, hadrah.Teachers also becomes role model by giving example of being heartfelt.It means that what teachers have delivered to students do not insist instant result.
Second, implementation of honest value is appeared on being honest when students do the examination although there are not test controller around them.They are habituated with how they should do their task individually.Whatever result they receive, it is better than cheating of their friends works.Third, Implementation of tolerant value is reflected on how students respect each other when they have different idea.
Fourth, implementation of discipline value is seen when students come to school on time, go back to the class after school break, and be on time to move to the next subject, and so on.The success of teachers' role at MTs Assalafiyah in shaping discipline character cannot be separated with the supporting and obstacles aspects in implementing this character.Based on the field observation that had been conducted, the supporting factors that was found are students' self-awareness, active role from teachers, and the cooperation between school principal and teachers.The problems found in the implementation of discipline value are students coming late to school, students not doing homework, and so on.The factor that becomes obstacle in implementing discipline is less awareness and role from parents and society.
Fifth, implementation of creative value is shown when teachers gave big chances to students to elaborate their creativity to do their tasks.Sixth, implementation of appreciating the achievement is implemented on giving appreciation to learners academically and nonacademically.Seventh, implementation of communicative value is implemented on the interaction among teacher-students and others.Learners are also required to do three things (smile, greet, and salam) when they meet with friends or teachers especially when students need to ask permission going out from the class.
Eighth, implementation of environment care value is implemented on the program of planting trees in the school area and throwing rubbish in rubbish bin.Ninth, implementation of social value is reflected on the following activities: praying each other, giving charity, visiting sick friends or friends having problems, Youth Red Cross Organization (PMR), Boy Scout, and so on.Tenth, implementation of democratic value is seen in the activity of training students to have discussion to decide a thing related to students affair.Eleventh, implementation of Nationalism is seen in the appeal of loving national product and so on.
Evaluation of how character education is implemented through direct evaluation and observation.The direct evaluation are in form of inserting character education in the quiz or exercise and summative test.The observation is conducted through observing students behavior, devotion, and discipline.The calculation of education character score is yielded from the total number of character education reduced by the total number of violation that students do such as: school truant, school rule violation, and so on.
School provides a laboratory to support the implementation of character education.
It is used to support and facilitate learners to implement the character education.School also provides a practices that can be implemented in their daily life, that is conversation or muhadatsah where students could practice how to start the conversation with salam and greeting using English and Arabic.The school also has special program called PRIMA (Priority of Madrasah) consisting of indoor and outdoor activities.This program conducted outing class aimed to explore students' competence.Students are programmed to visit Meteorology Climatology and Geophysics Council.This program is purposed to give new experience and chance to students to learn to implement how to know, how to ask, how to answer, based on character education.The character education is also implemented on how students practice directly how to trade, bargain using polite language and they are required to be honest and never give up.
Character education concept is in line with what Ki Hajar Dewantara stated that education is not only sharing knowledge but also how to educate students to learn independently and implement their knowledge in their daily life.Based on Ki Hajar Dewantara's perspective, educator is defined as child servant, learner's servant, not the child ruler.He also defined education as an effort to improve child's character, thinking ability, and physical spiritual aimed to improve child's life skills so that he could accomplish his life that is in line with nature and society.All life teachings and goals need high understanding, awareness, and seriousness to reach it because knowing and understanding what learner learns is not enough.It needs self-awareness, exercise, and struggle.
Based on the research findings presented above, the implementation of character education as the focus of this research is categorized into good implementation that can be seen from how learners comprehend the material and how they behave.

The Impact of Character Education Implementation
There are always be obstacles when teaching learning process to reach the reach the learning goals.In fact, there are always new problems hampered that make teachers should solve the problems wisely (Darmadi, 2018).The implementation of education character implementation at MTs Assalafiyah Tegal city has great impact to its learners, such as: The implementation of character education is also implemented outside of school through parents' involvement.To reach the goal of outside school character education implementation, school management is promoting and socializing this program to parents through workshop so that parents could support school to supervise, guide, and implement positive values to their children.This effort was conducted by school as one of efforts to make the implementation of character education could be implemented successfully.It is because school institution believes that character education could not be implemented successfully if the character education is not internalized continuously, so it needs parents' involvement.Based on the statements above, it can be concluded that character education management can be conducted through internal and external school strategy.The internal strategy that is used consists of four pillars including: teaching learning activity in the classroom, school daily activities which integrate school culture, habituation activities, and extracurricular programs.
According to the Regulation Number 20 2003, educator is categorized into teacher profession in National Education System.Educator is a professional staff who has duty to plan, implement learning process, do a research and social service.An educator should have good attitude to be learners' role model and to be professional.On the other hand, we see many teachers in big cities tend to teach in the class without considering their attitude while they are teaching and tend to be selfish.AMEE stated that educating is one of duties that requires complex requirements.At least, there are twelve teachers' task that can be categorized into six proposed models: providing information in learning process, being role model in formal teaching and work, being facilitator for teaching learning process, assessing learners to evaluate curriculum and learning, planning curriculum and learning, creating material and teaching procedure guideline (Rahadian, 2018).
Character learning is not taught in certain subject but it is integrated into every learning material, various methods and strategies that cover the building of soft skills and habituation toward students (Zuchdi, 2006).In addition, Lickona said that there are six positive elements that support the development of character building: school principle, school discipline and role model, brotherhood, democratic leader, structured life, and moral awareness.Those six elements have been applied in the research.It is seen from the how school principle dominate and has high impact to the school management.The board managers of MTs Assalafiyah Tegal city is extremely great.It is seen from his creativity, wisdom, honesty, discipline, and regularity.Those aspects proves that MTs Assalafiyah Tegal city is categorized into good category.

CONCLUSION
Based on the statements above, it can be concluded that it needs social competence to improve teachers' professionalism.Thus, it needs to consider the teachers' task to be more active and productive.Teachers as professional do not only spend the time to have face to face VOL.7 NO. 1, JUNE 2022 meeting in the class transferring knowledge but also how teacher could be more aware of building students' character.On the other hand, the teachers' role in MTs Assalafiyah Tegal city is categorized into good category in building students character.It is based on the teachers' education background where the teachers graduated from.Most of teachers graduated from Islamic Boarding Schools and Islamic Universities.MTs Assalafiyah teachers have become good role models for their students by building self-discipline that becomes crucial and good element to build students' characters, such as: coming to school on time, using good and polite language, wearing neat clothes.Thus, learners imitate the discipline that their teachers do and habituate.Teachers also motivate and give reward and punishment aimed to improve learners' motivation to raise their discipline responsibility and to appreciate students as the implementation of discipline character building toward the students of MTs Assalafiyah.
Character education can be managed using internal and external school strategies.MTs Assalafiyah implemented four pillars of internal strategies including: teaching learning process in the classroom, school daily activities which integrate school culture, habituation activities, and extracurricular programs.
(a) motivating learners to be honest to each other; (b) avoiding learners to lie to each other; (c) making learners to respect and love older persons; (d) making learners to be always grateful to what Allah has given; (e) training learners to be more creative and positive; (f) making learners to be aware of their environment.The implementation of character education supports the extracurricular program especially in BTQ (Reciting and Writing Holy Quran) class.learners are accustomed to reciting holy Quran and improve their tajwid.
Character education has been implemented very well at MTs Assalafiyah Tegal city through intracurricular and extracurricular programs.The implementation of character education in intracurricular programs are implemented by integrating series of character education in every learning subject.It is managed intensively through character education plan, implementation, and evaluation.The character education plan at MTs Assalafiyah Tegal city was conducted by inserting character education values in syllabus and lesson plan.Teachers make sure that character education values have been inserted in both document.The implementation of character education is implemented on face to face activities in the classroom and individual task outside the class.The evaluation of character education implementation are conducted through assessment and observation.Teachers inserted character education while assessment is conducted in form of quiz or summative test.Then, teachers also observed learners' behavior, devotion, and discipline.The calculation of education character score is yielded from the total number of character education reduced by the total number of violation that students do such as: school truant, school rule violation, and so on.