The Orientation of Islamic Educational Psychology in School and Pre-School Settings

Abstract

This study examines the orientation of Islamic educational psychology in the school and pre-school setting, addressing three questions: what Islamic educational psychology is, how it operates within formal schooling, and how it bears on pre-school education. A library research design was used, following a narrative review approach that drew on Google Scholar articles selected for open access, relevance to learning, and relevance to Islamic educational psychology, alongside classical Islamic sources and the Qur'an consulted as primary texts. The findings show that Islamic educational psychology is grounded in the Qur'anic conception of learning as a religious obligation oriented toward hikmah, wisdom, and character, exemplified in the Qur'an by the figure of Luqman. Within schools, this orientation is realised through four psychologically grounded practices: cultivating students' enthusiasm, offering realistic hope, giving reward, and directing behaviour through a relationship of mutual respect between teacher and student. Within pre-school education, it depends on parental consistency, a stable emotional confidant, a supportive community environment, and a curriculum that resists the drift toward academic content at the expense of play. Read together, these findings indicate that the disorientation documented in prior literature at the pre-school level is connected to a parallel disorientation at the level of formal schooling, and that both call for psychological literacy to be integrated throughout Islamic teacher-education curricula rather than treated as a separate track.