Co-curricular activities in enhancing students` islamic values at islamic private schools, Chana District, Thailand

Abstract

The approaches of Islamic studies in Islamic private schools in Thailand are mostly designed to teach students directly by lecturing in the class. Participating in cocurricular activities (CCAs) can benefit students in shaping them into becoming wellrounded individuals, and seem more student-centered than the regular classes. The CCAs could prepare students to practice for future opportunities in a case of teamwork, and to exercise leadership and taking initiative themselves. It is preparing students for the actual learning in real life situations. However, the CCAs in Islamic private schools do not seem to realize the importance of CCAs, even though the schools offer these activities to students in order to inculcate Islamic values. This study aims to examine the student’s perception on CCAs, the favoured CCAs participated by students, level of practice of Islamic values, and how they practice Islamic values in daily life based on gender. The quantitative method was applied to collect primary data through questionnaires from 240 final year students of Islamic private schools in Chana district, Songkhla Thailand. Descriptive statistic and independent T-test were employed to analyze data collected. The findings reveal that the majority of students had high perception on Islamic CCAs and they tended to participate in different types of CCAs. Likewise, it was discovered that the practice of Islamic values inculcated by CCAs was at the high level in the value of life, sincerity, social norm, morality, humanity, and time respectively with no significant differences between male and female students. Based on the findings of this study it was recommended that similar studies should be conducted on a nationwide basis where of their findings, suggestions and recommendations would be the source of developing CCAs in contemporary Islamic private schools in whole country.