Religious Characters-Based Physical Education Learning in Elementary School

Making faithful and pious human as the manifestation of religious characters has become one of the demands in the 2013 Curriculum (K13) that is currently implemented in Indonesia. It implies that instilling religious character is not only the duty of religious teachers but also physical education (PE) teachers. The dichotomy of religious and non-religious sciences has an impact on the lack of understanding and ability of PE teachers in developing learning methods based on religious character development. Therefore, this research aims at improving the competence of PE teachers in developing learning based on religious values. This research employs action research design done in three stages namely the pre-action stage, implementation and action stage and the post-action stage by involving 30 PE teachers in Sumedang Regency. This research found that: 1) There was an increase in the understanding of PE teachers regarding aspects of religious character in learning (21%); 2) This increased understanding was shown by the success of teachers in growing students’ behavior reflecting religiosity including behavior of faith and piety (88.67%), clean living behavior (88.89%), environment love behavior (88.89%) and behavior that reflects tolerance (87.78%); and 3) The success of PE teachers in developing religious character was based on the nine learning steps summarized as TADZKIROH acronym. These findings reveal that developing students’ religious character in PE learning requires the teachers to understand and apply the TADZKIROH method. https://doi.org/10.26803/ijlter.18.12.13