Kertarajasa Buddhist College Inter-religious Learning from the Perspective of Self-Study of Teaching Practice

Using the self-study of teaching practice (S-STP), this research examines the process of inter-religious learning at Kertarajasa Buddhist College. The S-STP applied to this study is a potential alternative to answer many teaching challenges that were left out by other educational research approaches. Due to the Covid-19 Pandemic, the courses of inter-religious learning were offered online. These courses were designed and taught by the first author who is a non-Buddhist teacher-educator works in a Buddhist teaching institution. The courses were delivered using various online learning tools, assisted with scaffold learning, and included guest lectures. In the learning process, students were given opportunity to interact with the instructor and guest lectures. The guest lectures are liyan (the others) and subject-matter experts. The interactions mean to develop students’ awareness of other religious communities and the room for them to experience the religious moderation. This study reveals that the S-STP provides scientific method for the instructor to study own teaching practices. The S-STP as a research approach enables the course instructor to reflect on opportunities and challenges on teaching. The research approach also enables the instructor to self-assess the professional development as a teacher-educator. Moreover, feedback from the critical friend unveiled strengths and weaknesses of the teaching that were possible unseen by the instructor.

│ 119 ISSN 2715-9701 (online) carrying research about own teaching practices in serving learners (Samaras, 2011;Tidwell & Fitzgerald, 2004). Thus, S-STP is clearly a research on personal and inter-personal relationships in a learning community (Samaras et al., 2004). In this learning community, the educator can also involve a critical friend feedback on the study (Fletcher et al., 2016). Critical friend feedback here plays an important role to provide honest advice and criticism to help the educator to improve the quality of their practices (Samaras, 2011).
Conversation about personal practices in teaching with the critical friend can be done after the educator doing a reflection. The educator reflection is a way to unveil strengths and weaknesses in teaching (Kelly, 2020). A reflection of experiences is the best teacher for the educator (Fendler, 2003;Hatton & Smith, 1995). There are four steps in doing a reflection of teaching practices (Florez, 2001). The first step is to collect information about the class and the teaching. Then, analyze the information and plan the learning strategies. The third step is to plan the alternative arrangement for the primary learning strategies. Next, evaluate a learning plan that contains new perspectives and perceptions aimed at improving the quality of learning. Although reflection is very important, this activity is not the only way to complete the S-STP. In order to assure that the reflection is scientific and objective, the educator should not rely solely on calling the memory of the experiences while doing the reflection (Farrell, 2013;Samaras et al., 2004). A scientific and objective reflection should be established using information from various artifacts, documents, materials, and instructional learning (Loughran, 2004). In short, data can verify and authenticated the learning evaluation and improvement as stated by the educator in a reflection.
This research offers two new elements to the study of religious education in Indonesia. The first new element is the teaching of knowledge and awareness of inter-religion that can be applied in everyday life using online learning. The second new element is the use of the S-STP approach. Both elements, as the authors known, have not been included much in the research published in Indonesia. Many researches on religious education that have been published so far is still conducted under the perspective of mono-religion and be associated with practice in the in-group of the educational religious institutions. Take a case study conducted by Jati (2014) as an example. This research presented the successful story of implementing multicultural education of a catholic high school. Another descriptive research by Wiantamiharja (2019) observed activities in the pesantren (a Muslim boarding-school in Indonesia) and compare it to the actual and relevant contemporary social reality. One more to mention here is a descriptive research by Setioka and Pardjono (2016). This research is about the development of teacher-competence. However, it fails to explain the pedagogical aspects (the ways teachers facilitate the learning process to achieve learning goals) of religious education.

RESEARCH METHOD
In fact, S-STP is not a new method of educational research. This method emerges from a thought proposed by Schwab in 1970s (Connelly, 2013). According to Schwab, experiences in teaching are potential data for identifying and fixing learning impediments (Craig, 2008). Further, the reflective method proposed by LaBoskey (Turner, 2010) and the critical method of personal reflection developed by Loughran (2004) sharpened Schwab' idea. Nowadays there are many scientific publications in the field of education, especially in the US, that had used the S-STP as a method to research teaching. Sharing of

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The results are presented as descriptive and explanatory narrative follow these sequences: (1) the roles of researchers; (2) the teaching philosophy; (3) the learning process; and (4) the critical friend feedback.

The Roles of Researchers
In conducting the S-STP, researchers take their roles as the change agents of the learning process. In this study, the first author (next in this paper refers as TE-1, abbreviation for "the teacher educator 1") is the key agent of change in her college. For more than five years, TE-1 has taught Religious Studies I and Religious Studies II at KBC. The courses were taught as regular classroom meetings on campus. TE-1 does not have a degree and formal educational training for conducting teaching. She also had never taught any online class. TE-1 has a bachelor degree in Indonesian Language Literature; professionally trained in Center for Religious and Cross-Cultural Studies (CRCS), University of Gadjah Mada (UGM); and received a a master degree in Asian Studies from University of Hawaii at Manoa, USA. Independently, TE-1 acquires the knowledge about teaching pedagogy and andragogy by attending seminars or workshops and learned from personal learning networks. In addition, TE-1 has a great interest in doing research.
In collaboration with the second author (next in this paper refers as TE-2, abbreviation for "the teacher educator 2"), TE-1 conducted research related to her interests in the field of education as well. TE-1's educational researches have been published in Indonesia's National Journal. The publications included topics about experiential learning and self-efficacy (The & Latifah, 2019a), the multimodal analysis of book , and studies related to language learning (The & Latifah, 2019b). TE-1 obtained great benefits from conducting the researches mentioned, particularly by developing habit to learn independently and collaboratively skills needed to equip her teaching practices. Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, TE-1 had read and also observed the online learning of TE-2 and the MOOCs. In the master program, TE-1 also had taken online classes. As an auditor and a learner although are not the same as the designer and a facilitator in experiencing the online learning, at least TE-1 has the notion of arrangement in the online learning environment.
Being in a distance does not stop TE-1 and TE-2 to maintain their discussion and collaboration. The two teacher educators learn from each other about organization culture, obstacles in design engaging instructional, teaching strategies, and various actual topics in educational setting. Not only aligning their ideas, they do not hesitate to dissent from their counterpart. Bringing this strong friendship and connection as teacher educator, TE-1 requested TE-2 to take in a role as a critical friend of this research. As a critical friend, TE-2 was requested to provide his opinion about the course design and learning process; as well identify accomplishment, faults and mistakes.
TE-1 decided on TE-2 as a critical friend is due to his educational credential, experiences in teaching, and conducting research. TE-2 was trained as an instructional designer in the doctoral program. Add to the advantages of his doctoral training, TE-2 provided technical support of online learning and involved in the university instructional design training of faculties. Before TE-2 enrolled in the doctoral study, he was a teacher in Indonesia and worked as a project coordinator of information technology training for teacher. Although has been trained in the US, TE-2 now decided to carry his practice in China. TE-2 interests in practice include the learning design and technology, cultural awareness in learning, textbook and learning resources evaluation, semiotic and multimodal analysis, ecological perspective of language learning, and second language learning.

The Teaching Philosophy
Every teacher-educator has their own beliefs, thoughts, and values about the excellent learning, effective learning methods, and essential strategies to assist the learning process (Faryadi, 2015). These beliefs, thoughts, and values will determine the teaching philosophy of teachers (Sayani, 2015). The teaching philosophy is the teacher-educator personal view on ideal teaching and learning, and it is a reflection of personal experiences (Bowne, 2017). The context of teaching, personal and professional development as a teacher, and the environment have strong influenced on the teacher's teaching philosophy (Sayani, 2015). The teaching philosophy usually is written as a short narrative essay that explains the teacher's personal reflection on the learning and teaching, the experiences obtained while conducting teaching, as well as the development and challenges in applying new ideas to facilitate the learning process (Bowne, 2017). As a personal view, teachers generally write the teaching philosophy in a first-person point of view, using the pronoun of I or my (Bowne, 2017;Faryadi, 2015;Sayani, 2015). In the following subsection, you can read the researchers' teaching philosophies.
Teacher-educator 1's Teaching Philosophy. For me, education is a way to reinforce characteristics and experiences of each student, who are very distinct one from another. I am certain that all students are bringing their experiences as the prior knowledge that will affect their learning attitudes and motivation. Learners in my class have very diverse social and cultural background. They are coming from many other regions of Indonesia to settle and have their education in East Java. Their diverse social and cultural background are repositories of knowledge. They are not just white papers that are ready for the educator to doodle; instead, they are ready to be facilitated for developing their initial knowledge and experiences. As an educator, I have to encourage them to use their knowledge and experiences for the furtherance of continuous learning, both inside and outside the classroom. I try to be creative in providing motivation so that my students do not just learn when I am going along in the process with them. I challenge them to be independent and continue to learn from other sources of learning beyond the classroom wall; providing them structural-guided tasks. I emphasize that they have to take the experiences as their teachers. I am also constantly learning new skills, obtaining qualifications in my area of expertise, as well as carrying out instructive tasks with the quality in mind (Karaaslan, 2003). I am doing this as a role model for my student about long-life and continuous learning.
I can approach my professional development by doing many activities in addition teaching, such as having training, doing community service, conducting research, writing academic papers, and publishing my studies. I challenge myself to use cutting-edge research methods to answer the challenges of teaching. I am certain that the S-STP can also help me to do it. By doing S-STP, I can connect my teaching to research. From teaching and the students' learning activities, I have also learned that by doing S-STP regularly as a teacher I can identify my strengths and weaknesses. The S-STP that I conducted than can further be utilized to improve the learning process and the mentoring of learners. In doing the S-STP, I reflected on the effect of professional development programs that I had to the quality of students' learning. This S-STP generated innovative practices that can be applied by other educators. In this way, I not only develop my personal learning but also become an active agent in building new theories of knowledge and practices that will shape the change towards continuous improvement to achieve the general educational goals (Gheith & Aljaberi, 2018).
Teacher-educator 2's Teaching Philosophy. Living a profession as an educator and researcher for me is not a coincidence but rather an activity that is trained through formal educational experience and self-training (Dengerink et al., 2015;Mizell, 2010;Timperley, 2008). As an educator, I can't just be satisfied with the training provided by the institution I work for. Such training often does not provide adequate skills to be applied in carrying out tasks. By reading diligently, especially reading best practices in education and teaching from the latest journal articles, I was able to gain knowledge and at the same time inspire to develop instructional activities that I did.
In accompanying learners to achieve their learning goals, I emphasize the practice of completing tasks in accordance with the context of the skills to be achieved (Ahmadian & Mayo, 2017;Willis, 1996). In order for them to practice, I guide students to learn with systematic working steps, give examples and not examples, and provide appreciation and correction to the results of work (Muijs & Reynolds, 2017). I also give students the opportunity to continuously reflect on learning outcomes both in writing and verbally after they have completed a grand-project (Chang, 2019).
After completing the learning process in one semester, I made a brief reflection on the improvements that need to be done in the learning mentoring process (Denton, 2011;Florez, 2001). The note also contains information about the characteristics of the study participants I serve. By doing these activities periodically for more than 20 years, I discovered the uniqueness of different characteristics in each cohort of learners I accompanied. My study participants are also a very potential asset to prepare a new cohort because they can give them learning tips and tricks. In addition, I also made revisions and improvements to the entire instruction process, especially to achieve instructional clarity (Butler et al., 2015).
In doing the research, I was interested in exploring different types of methods and even using different methods as triangulation. Some of the methods I have used for educational research are multimodal analysis ), text analysis , internet research (The & Arnip, 2012), and S-STP (The & Latifah, 2018). By doing S-STP I can judge myself honestly. This method requires me to dare to see my advantages and weaknesses as a teacher of data. The implementation of the learning process provides a large amount of data. The data is a sharp knife that can dissect all my activities during the task of accompanying the study participants. The findings from S-STP were not only useful for the improvement of my teaching, but also hinted at new knowledge and skills that I needed to learn immediately.

The Learning Process
The discussion of learning process in this section is divided into three important elements: (1) learning goals and objectives; (2) the online learning; and (3) the inter-religious learning.
Learning Goals and Objectives. Religious Study I and II are compulsory courses of students at KBC in the third and fifth semester. Students are trained to have senses of agency and moral obligations to respect religious identity and beliefs; they also practically have opportunities to communicate and listen to the thoughts of other religious believers (Hudson, 2003). The learning objectives of the courses are presented in details in the following table 1.

Religious Study I
Religious Study II Students will be able to: Students will be able to: 1. Identify meaning of religions from the perspective of the liyan using the multidisciplinary approach. 1. Report the observation of religious practices in Indonesia.

2.
Evaluate the practices of religious moderation.

3.
Analyze the religious practices and moderation using multidisciplinary approach. The fields of discipline suggested are: anthropology, sociology, literature, politic, philosophy and gender study.
Students need to interact with their counterparts, the others who are other religious believers in experiencing and practicing their inter-religious knowledge. The popular term refers to "the others" that will be used in this study is liyan. The term liyan can be found in Javanese vocabulary that then was adopted by the phenomenological study to distinguish self from the others. In this study, the term liyan is used as other religious believers (Tejo, 2007). The existence of students as the self is only meaningful when they aware about the liyan; The liyan are sources for students to gain experiences about the practices and values of religious traditions and beliefs or other religions (Boys & Lee, 2008). In their interaction with the liyan, students will certainly hold to their own values and religious beliefs that potentially can expose to feeling of empathy (Goldburg, 2010). Lower levels of empathy may cause conflicts in social interactions; the moderate and high level of it certainly will improve tolerance. By having the feeling of empathy, students will be able to put themselves in others' shoes.
The Online Learning. On March 27, 2020 the General Director of Buddhist Community in Indonesia ordered all Buddhist Colleges in Indonesia to refrain from having the regular on-campus teaching in order to minimize the risk of students and faculties being infected by the Covid-19 virus. Complying with the national law, the teaching and learning are turned into online learning. Majority students of KBC are the samanera and atthasilani who live in vihara. The off-campus students are living in rent-houses nearby the campus.
Although the college was not used to widely implement the online learning on campus, most of the time the internet connection was reliable for most of the students to have the synchronous online class using Zoom. Admittedly, few students encountered intermittent with the network use. Few others stated that they spent extra money on purchasing data plan for having a better internet connection. According to these students, the campus internet speed was lacking and unreliable. All students acknowledged in the course evaluation that the synchronous meetings are very important for them to know the tasks' instructions, confirm with the instructor about the unclear learning points, and receive feedback from the instructor of the tasks that they had completed.
Prior to the use of Zoom, students used WhatsApp; and they created groups using the app. The groups were used to discuss about the tasks and submitted the tasks that they had completed. Most students noted that they prefer to have the synchronous discussion using zoom rather than using WhatsApp. The reason is that it is very challenging to keep up with the discussion when the boundary between on topic and off topic discussion were sent simultaneously to the group. By having the synchronous discussions, the student who went off topic could be quickly reminded and recalled on track.
Other than Zoom and WhatsApp, the online learning used Google Classroom as the learning management system. The instructor required students to take attendance, collect assignments, and access the course learning materials using Google Classroom. The learning materials shared with students are not only in the form of PowerPoint, but included podcast, prerecord mini lectures, instructions about the tasks, and links to the zoom live meeting. Students who could not attend the synchronous meetings admitted that the links to live meeting could help them to not missing the learning.
The Inter-religious Learning. The two courses of inter-religious learning are intensive reading courses. Students prepared themselves by doing intensive reading to discuss, analyze, and debate about real-life cases of religious practices. The reading sources provided by the instructor and the resources that they found by themselves were used as sources to support their arguments. In searching for quality reading by themselves, the instructor provided learners a brief handout to guide them for the Internet search. Students then attended the class-meetings not only just to receive information from the teacher, but they were ready to share what they have learned. The discussion with their counterparts during the class meetings could prepare students to realize bias views of the liyan that will affect the levels of tolerance. The discussion, moreover, means to lead students to notice that the religious diversity is influenced by the locality context and the time. By providing a "safe space" for dialogue, students learned from one another about the inter-subjectivity of religious studies and they have a model to explore their own religious experiences.
In assisting students to construct new knowledge and experiences, the instructor used different teaching methods and strategies. These methods and strategies are designed purposely to help students learn thoroughly. As students proceed the learning differently, some students may need more assistance than others. One way that the instructor found could avoid misinterpretation of the instructions is the scaffold learning. Scaffold learning can be defined as various instructional methods and strategies applied to engage students in learning and developed their own strategies for making progress (Rock, 2020). According to Zurek, Torquati, & Acar (2014), teachers can scaffold learning by asking probing-questions, making suggestions, introducing a prop, offering encouragement, posing limited-answer questions, providing support, and using demonstrations. In the inter-religious learning of this study, the instructor applied three of those seven methods: asking probing-questions, making suggestions, and providing support.
Asking probing questions that the instructor identified students really engaging in the discussion was those related to reflection of their experiences dealing with the liyan, identifying the similarities and differences of their characteristics with their counterparts, and compare as well as contract their living in the vihara to the living before they came to the vihara. Students were also very motivated to talk about their impression of different ways people in their hometown and people in Malang practice the religious teaching and interact with the liyan. They were very curious to receive immediate feedback on the quality of their works.
The spirit of sharing and disseminating online during pandemic has provided great benefits for learning. The instruction, in addition to producing own videos, can simply find good resources online and curating them to support students self-learning. Many religious educations and institutions are competing in making quality mini-lectures, recording their seminars and online presentations. An example of film that was highly favored by the students is "KTP" (identity card), which is a comedy that presented a story related to daily-life. Students, in the final evaluation of the course, mentioned that this film is helping them to make connection between their own experiences in the roles presented in the film in responding to the religion and citizenship issue.
The online meetings during pandemic also enabled the instructor to invite guest lectures. These guest lectures allow students to interact and discuss with the liyan who are professional and academicians from other institutions. Lectures cover the perspective of religious practices from the Islamic and Christian educators. These lectures were attended the Zoom meetings from a distance, Yogyakarta, Manado, as well as Malang. In addition to the primary purpose of the lectures, learning the inter-religious practices from the liyan, the guest lectures also provided students with information about various methodology to study religious practices from multidisciplinary perspective.

The Critical Friend Feedback
Although critical friend feedback on the S-STP can be considered as the evaluation of teaching practice but it is dissimilar to the supervision of teaching. The critical friend (TE-2) and the instructor (TE-2) are not in the position of ordinate and subordinate. The critical friend feedback can be cordially requested anytime, not just by the end of the semester. Practically, TE-1 and TE-2 have been frequently discussing collaborative research and many topics related to teaching and learning long before this S-STP. It cannot be avoided that the two teacher educators have included the discussion about this S-STP in daily conversations. The critical friend feedback narrated here was purposely selected according to the subtopics included in this paper. TE-2 provided the evaluation about the role, the professional development, and the teaching practices of TE-1.
First to mention, TE-1 is a very important agent of change of her college due to her non-Buddhist position who is holding the role of teaching religious studies courses for Buddhist students. TE-1's position is not only important for her college, but also an effective model for other religious teaching institutions in order to promote the "inter-religious in practice" immediately in the teaching and learning. When students and the instructor are not having the same religion, they can realize the existence of self and the liyan. TE-1 courses are not happening in the mono-religious setting as majority of religious-study courses are offering recently in Indonesia. Students learned in the mono-religious setting do not have the opportunity to interact and listen directly for the liyan, so will be difficult for them to develop the feeling of empathy. Certainly not all religious study educators can have their classes as the TE-1. This is due to the different of their teaching philosophy and professional experiences from the TE-1. Thorough her formal and non-formal education, TE-1 has been trained as a professional and academic that can analyze social problems in a multidisciplinary perspective. This ability is of course strongly influenced by her teaching philosophy as well as her educational background. TE-1 is perfectly willing to learn and be trained for innovative technology and ideas. At the time TE-1 enrolled in the CRCS Master Program in UGM, and studied for her post-graduate study in Asian Studies, UH Manoa, she had been taught to examine social issues, including the religious practices, using the perspective of various disciplines. The master and postgraduate study have provided TE-1 chances to expand her professional learning network.
Concerning the implementation of online learning and the facilitating of learning, TE-1 has some shortcomings as a novice online teacher. TE-1 encountered obstacles that are similar to many other novices when they just started to teach online. TE-1 has concerned that the poor network can affect students learning. Moreover, TE-1 still has not done much exploration about learning interactions involving technology, teachers, learning materials and resources, as well as learning participants. Analysis about the effectiveness of the use of technology in her classes has also not been supported by quoted statements from her students. TE-1 has merely generalized the effectiveness in her own arguments. One of the learning processes exemplary presented in TE-1' S-STP is about the scaffold learning she implemented in her courses. The scaffold learning provided can be a best example to other teachers that want to use the same strategy.
As a critical friend, TE-2 can help TE-1 to identify the strengths and weakness of the teaching practices that she may unconsciously miss. The critical friend feedback may not always in agreement with the TE-2 views on herself. This is due to the feedback are strongly influenced by the TE-2 teaching philosophy. Revisiting both teaching philosophy can then serve as the mediation for any disagreement in the discussion between TE-1 and TE-2.

CONCLUSION
Social justice of practicing any religious in daily life can only be achieved when religious communities have attitudes that ready to interact with other religious believers. These attitudes can be trained in inter-religious learning. The inter-religious learning is not only aimed at providing insight about other religions, but more importantly is to develop empathy and actions to show tolerance. This S-STP revealed that online learning of the inter-religious study courses of KBC has effectively provided students the skills to explore their experiences and connected them with the insights obtained from the learning resources. Students also had opportunities to interact directly with guest lectures who represented other religious groups as well as subject-matter experts in religious studies. Moreover, students learned about the overcoming technical issues in online learning and potentially inspired about developing professional networking online. Importantly to mention that the S-STP provided evidences that in inter-religious learning the pedagogical aspect is not less important than the scientific aspect of the study.