The Influence of Leaders’ Socio-Religious Beliefs and Values on Leadership Practice in Indonesian Islamic Schools

This thesis critically explores the intricate dynamics of Islamic-based school leadership within Indonesia, examining how school leaders' socio-religious beliefs and values shape their school leadership experiences and practices. Engaging with 25 school leaders through snowball recruitment and collecting data through semi-structured interviews, the analytical approach melds some features of thematic analysis with grounded theory techniques. The findings offer a novel theoretical framework that integrates a dimension often overlooked by Western-centric educational leadership theories due to their secular and rationalist orientations. The framework is grounded in an Islamic and Indonesian cultural ethos, marking a distinctive leadership characteristic within Indonesian Islamic schools.