Interpreting environmental education through religious values: teachers’ practices in Yogyakarta’s nature-based schools

This study examines how teachers in Yogyakarta’s elementary-level sekolah alam (nature-based schools) conceptualize religious values as a framework for environmental learning and enact them through everyday pedagogical practices. Using a phenomenological qualitative design, data were collected between March and June 2025 through semi-structured interviews, classroom and outdoor observations, and document review involving 18 teachers from three schools. The findings show that teachers frame environmental education as a moral and spiritual practice grounded in religious concepts such as khalifah (Steward of the earth), moderation in resource use, and the fitrah-based understanding of humans as caretakers of creation. These values are enacted through routine ecological activities combined with reflective dialogue, teacher modelling, and ritual practices. Peer reminders and shared routines reinforce everyday ecological habits. While students demonstrate emerging environmental awareness through participation in these practices, their engagement with broader structural causes of environmental problems remains limited. The study illustrates how culturally embedded religious ethics shape ecopedagogical practice and mediate early environmental learning in Indonesian nature-based schools.