Examining the NARATIF Framework for Ethical Awareness among Indonesian Junior High Students: A Mixed-Methods Study
Indonesia Indonesia Indonesia 
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First Character Education, Ethical Awareness, Junior High School, Narrative Pedagogy, Transformative Learning
Abstract
Background: Character education is often delivered through advice, habituation, and rule enforcement, which may offer limited opportunities for adolescents to interpret moral complexity.
Purpose: This study examined the implementation of NARATIF, a seven-stage narrative pedagogy linking story interpretation, perspective-taking, critical reflection, dialogue, action rehearsal, and follow-up.
Method: An embedded mixed-methods, one-group pretest-posttest study involved 47 Grade VII-IX students at an Islamic junior high school in Jember, Indonesia, across six sessions. Evidence comprised a 25-item Ethical Awareness Scale, parallel narrative-dilemma tasks, implementation observations, six session journals from focal student R01, one interview each with focal students R01, R14, and R38, and one teacher interview.
Results: Scale scores increased from 82.79 (SD = 5.36) to 96.11 (SD = 5.53), Wilcoxon W = 1.50, p < .001, rank-biserial r = .997, approximate 95% CI .995, .998. Dilemma scores increased from 22.06 (SD = 3.70) to 27.19 (SD = 4.65), t(46) = 16.03, p < .001, dz = 2.34, 95% CI 1.78, 2.89. Fidelity rose from 65.6% to 92.2%. Qualitative records indicated more contextual judgment, perspective-taking, self-correction, and action planning, but two focal cases showed little or negative scale change.
Conclusion: NARATIF was associated with improvement in this cohort, but the magnitude cannot be attributed solely to the framework because there was no comparison group, the primary scale had modest internal consistency, scoring was not independently double-rated, and the compressed schedule permits testing and novelty effects.
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Copyright (c) 2026 Farahah Wahdiyah S, Siti Aisah, Ahmad Halid
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