Local Wisdom-Based Cross-Cultural Education Model: Interfaith Tolerance and Sociocultural Resilience in the Ngadas Indeigenous Community
Indonesia Indonesia Indonesia 
Malaysia 
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Cross-Cultural Education, Interfaith Tolerance, Local Wisdom, Sociocultural Resilience, Tengger Community
Abstract
Background. Formal tolerance education often fails to build social cohesion, as text-based methods rarely connect with community life. Indigenous communities show natural interfaith tolerance through local wisdom, yet the literature lacks a systematic framework explaining how such traditions function as structured, informal learning models.
Purpose. This study examines interfaith tolerance in the Ngadas community as a model for cross-cultural education, exploring how tolerance is transmitted and sustains cohesion in multireligious society. It develops a conceptual model of indigenous wisdom as a mechanism for sociocultural resilience.
Method. Using a qualitative single-case design within a social constructivist paradigm, this study was conducted among the Ngadas community in Malang, East Java, Indonesia. Six months of fieldwork combined participant observation with semi-structured interviews involving 15 purposively selected key informants traditional leaders, religious representatives, and villagers supported by socio-cultural documentation, analyzed using Miles, Huberman, and Saldaña's (2014) interactive model.
Results. Tolerance in Ngadas is cultivated through layered educational processes anchored in two local concepts: titiluri (following ancestral wisdom) and ageman (separating custom from personal belief). These values are reinforced through rituals like Kasada, Karo, and Entas-Entas, and through daily social life, producing a cross-cultural learning ecosystem in which ritual adaptation and informal spaces transform tolerance into a lived habitus, fostering interfaith trust and intergenerational value transmission.
Conclusion. Indigenous wisdom offers a measurable foundation for sociocultural resilience. This study advances cross-cultural education theory by proposing a participatory learning model, showing that structural social spaces and communal involvement embed diversity values more effectively than formal classroom instruction, informing community-based approaches to national educational policy.
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Copyright (c) 2026 Mifdal Zusron Alfaqi, Alfian Fawaidil Wafa, Aprilianata Aprilianata, Alice Sabrina Bin Ismail
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