Exploring the Lived Experiences of Santri Balancing Religious Education and Academic Demands in Indonesian Pesantren

Abstract

Religious education plays a central role in shaping identity and values, particularly within pesantren, which combine traditional Islamic studies with modern academic curricula. Previous research has highlighted institutional reforms in pesantren but has not sufficiently addressed how students themselves experience and interpret the dual demands of religious devotion and academic achievement. What remains unclear is how santri negotiate these overlapping responsibilities and what meanings they attach to the process of balancing them. This study applies an interpretative phenomenological approach to examine the lived experiences of santri and to uncover the essence of how they construct meaning in navigating religious and academic obligationsData were collected through in-depth, semi-structured interviews with twenty-four participants from various types of pesantren across different regions in Indonesia, ensuring broader contextual diversity and enhancing the generalizability of the findings. The collected data were then analyzed using systematic interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA).The findings reveal that students perceive their educational journey as a negotiation between tension and integration, drawing resilience from spiritual practices while striving to succeed academically. Their narratives highlight both the challenges of dual obligations and the creative ways in which they harmonize different spheres of knowledge. These results demonstrate that identity formation in pesantren is dynamic, characterized by resilience, adaptation, and meaning-making rather than conflict alone. The study advances understanding of religious education by showing how lived experience provides insight into the intersection of tradition and modernity, offering both theoretical contributions and practical implications for educational policy and practice.