The Application of the Discovery Learning Method in Teaching Zakat to Junior High School Students at Safinatussalam Islamic Boarding School

Abstract

Zakat occupies a constitutive position in Islamic practice, yet its treatment in secondary religious instruction is frequently reduced to the memorisation of thresholds and ratios, producing computational fluency without moral or civic engagement. This study examines how the discovery learning method is enacted in zakat instruction and what forms of learning it generates in a setting where the subject matter is doctrinally fixed rather than empirically negotiable. Using a qualitative single-case design with embedded units, the study was conducted over one academic semester at Safinatussalam Islamic Boarding School in Indonesia, involving one fiqh teacher, twenty-four Grade VIII students, six focal learners, and two institutional informants. Data were generated through eight non-participant lesson observations, semi-structured and stimulated-recall interviews, one focus group discussion, and the analysis of 96 student work artefacts, and were interpreted through reflexive thematic analysis supported by NVivo 14. Findings show that the teacher relocated the object of discovery from the ruling itself to the reasoning that connects a ruling to a contemporary case, producing a pattern the study terms bounded discovery; that guidance was calibrated rather than withdrawn; and that gains in case-based reasoning and moral disposition outpaced gains in computation. Institutional time pressure, examination logic, and heterogeneous prior knowledge constrained the deepest phases of inquiry. The study contributes an epistemically differentiated account of discovery learning that specifies what is discoverable in a revealed-knowledge domain, extends inquiry research beyond its science and mathematics heartland into pesantren education, and offers teachers a defensible design logic for teaching normative content without abandoning learner agency.