Bibliotherapy: Increasing Understanding of Religious Moderation with Group Counseling

: Extreme thoughts about moderate Islam are often the beginning of divisions. A shallow understanding of religious moderation makes it easier for someone to be indicated by radical views. Counselors have an essential role in increasing students' understanding of religious moderation. This study aims to improve students' understanding of religious moderation in public schools through group guidance using bibliotherapy techniques. This study used a quasi-experimental method with a Non-equivalent control group design. The sample of this research was 20 students, consisting of 10 students for each experimental and control group, per Gazda's (1969) recommendations regarding the adequate number of group guidance participants, ranging from 8 to 10 participants. The sample has filled out the Religious Moderation Scale (RMS) developed by Monalisa (2022) and is indicated to be in a low category. Data were analyzed using the Wilcoxon signed rank test to determine the effect before and after the intervention was given. Then, to find out the average difference between the experimental group and the control group, it was analyzed using the Mann-Whitney test. The study's results showed a difference in understanding of religious moderation before and after the intervention, with a significance of .005. The research results showed that the group guidance intervention using bibliotherapy techniques was effective in increasing students' understanding of religious moderation with a Z score of -3.885 and a significance value of .000.


INTRODUCTION
The existence of religious moderation in the world of multicultural education is a hot topic for research.This is because education is the first step in implementing the values of religious moderation (Sutrisno, 2019).The same thing was expressed by Sofiudin (2018) that religious moderation can be instilled and realized through the world of education.Therefore, every educator has a role to socialize and provide an understanding of religious moderation to their students.However, so far religious moderation has been promoted in religion-based schools.Whereas students in public schools usually come from different religious backgrounds.This diversity makes students in public schools easy targets for spreading radical ideas.A research result conducted in Bandung revealed that as many as 44 people out of 100 students in high schools had indications of radical understanding (Maulana, 2021).This is an academic unrest that must be resolved immediately.
Lack of students' understanding of religious moderation often raises new problems.Not mutual respect and respect between religious communities.Be intolerant of other students who have different beliefs.Even being supportive of acts of violence on the basis of religion.This problem can occur and arise due to students' lack of understanding of religious moderation (Isnaini, 2017).Therefore giving an understanding of religious moderation to students is important to do.It is hoped that students will no longer misunderstand and apply a moderate attitude between religious communities.Thoughts of the extreme right and the extreme left can be trimmed through providing a correct understanding of the concept of religious moderation.
The understanding of religious moderation is mostly provided through the religious learning curriculum conducted by religion teachers at schools.For example, Khotimah's research internalizes religious moderation in the pesantren curriculum (Khotimah, 2020).The results of this study illustrate the role of religious teachers in providing an understanding of religious moderation to students.Efforts to provide an understanding of religious moderation to students should not only be the responsibility of religious education teachers.Efforts to provide this understanding can also be provided by other teachers who are in accordance with their scientific fields, including guidance and counseling teachers.School counselors can carry out various activities/services that can increase students' understanding of religious moderation at the school.One of the services is group guidance services.
Group guidance services are useful for expanding knowledge and new things to service participants by utilizing active interactions between students or service participants (Gazda, 1969).Group dynamics are the main key in group guidance services which are useful for developing the personal self of group members (Prayitno, 2017).Through group guidance it is hoped that all members will be actively involved in providing feedback, support and problem solving from the information provided by individual group members with their various thoughts, feelings and personal behaviors (Berg et al., 2018).Information about religious moderation will be discussed to increase students' knowledge, insight and understanding.
In order to achieve better results, group guidance services can be collaborated with bibliotherapy techniques.Bibliotherapy is the technique applied in this study.This assessment is based on the assumption that through bibliotherapy students can explore their understanding of the religious moderation material that has been provided by the researcher.According to Campbell & Smith (2003) stated that bibliotherapy aims to provide information, generate new insights, and stimulate discussion in one group.Then Erford (2015) explained that bibliotherapy techniques are literacy-based counseling activities where the counselor or client reads a story or book involved in counseling activities.
This study integrates bibliotherapy techniques in group counseling services to increase students' understanding of religious moderation.This action is used as a preventive measure so that students are not involved and fall into radical ideas.The research results of Sidiropoulou & Kountouras (2022) show that bibliotherapy is used to increase one's understanding.Research by Schlub et al. (2021) also shows the effectiveness of bibliotherapy as an intervention to provide understanding to someone.Based on the studies above, it can be concluded that bibliotherapy can be used to provide understanding to someone by providing appropriate readings.Bibliotherapy is seen as valuable to clients who benefit from exposure to reading material directed at their particular reading (Lenkowsky, 2016).This research directs one to specific readings about religious moderation and its implications in schools.The results of this study strengthen the design of this study, namely using bibliotherapy in increasing students' understanding of religious moderation.

Rationale of Study
An understanding of religious moderation is essential for all students.Religious moderation is not only the responsibility of spiritual teachers but also that of all teachers to provide correct knowledge to their students.Little research on religious moderation has touched public schools.Applying an attitude of religious moderation will be more pronounced in public schools where most students come from different religions.Providing a correct understanding of religious moderation can reduce radical understanding, increase tolerant attitudes and mutual respect, and respect, and be more accepting of existing differences and diversity.This research shows an effort for guidance and counseling teachers to provide students with an understanding of religious moderation.Understanding of religious moderation is provided through group guidance services using bibliotherapy techniques.Through group dynamics, students discuss their reading results and understand the concept of religious moderation properly and correctly.So this will create a peaceful school for all students.

Aim and Hypothesis
This research aims to test the effectiveness of group guidance services using bibliotherapy techniques to increase students' understanding of religious moderation.The hypotheses of this research are 1) differences in students' understanding of religious moderation before and after being given the intervention and 2) group guidance services with effective bibliotherapy techniques to increase the understanding of moderation of various students.

Design
This research was conducted at a high school in Serang City, Banten.The design of this study used a quasi-experimental with Nonequivalent control group design (Creswell, 2014).This design was chosen because the collection was carried out randomly based on the level of understanding of religious moderation in the low category (Sugiyono, 2014).The experimental group will be given group guidance using bibliotherapy techniques and the control group will be given group counseling using discussion and information techniques as described in the intervention procedure section.To anticipate threats to internal validity, researchers used the same instrument for the pretest and posttest for both the experimental group and the control group.Meanwhile, to avoid threats to external validity, researchers limit the characteristics of the sample (Creswell, 2014).

Population and the Methods of Sampling
The population in this study were students who were in class X in Serang City.The sample in this study was randomly selected with a low level of understanding of religious moderation.The sample for this study was selected as many as 20 people consisting of 10 people in the control group and 10 people in the experimental group.Because this study used group guidance interventions, the number of samples was limited, this was because the number of effective members in group guidance ranged from 8-10 people (Gazda, 1969).The characteristics between the control group and the experimental group must be the same.The more similar the control group and the experimental group, the more effective it will be in testing the intervention to be given (Creswell, 2014).

Instrument
Collecting data to determine the level of students' understanding of religious moderation, researchers used the religious moderation scale (RM-S) developed by researchers (Monalisa et al., 2023).RM-S consists of 4 aspects to be measured, namely 1.National commitment; 2. Tolerance; 3. Anti-violence; 4. Accommodating local culture (Ministry of Religion RI Compilation Team, 2019) .This scale consists of 24 items using 4 alternative answer scales.The RM-S details used are 8 items for indicators of national commitment, 6 items for indicators of tolerance, 7 items for indicators of nonviolence and 5 items for indicators of accommodation to local culture.The results of the validity of the instrument tested on 30 participants showed that each indicator had an r count value that was greater than r table 0.316 and the reliability result was 0.841 which means that the RM-S was declared reliable.

Research Procedures
The procedure for implementing group guidance using bibliotherapy techniques to increase students' understanding of religious moderation is adopted from the stages of the group guidance process (Prayitno, 2017), namely: the first stage of formation is the process of creating warm group dynamics with self-knowledge, self-involvement and self-inclusion in group guidance.The second stage of transition is an explanation of the activities to be carried out and reviewing the ability of group members to participate.The third stage of activity is carrying out core activities using bibliotherapy techniques.The bibliotherapy technique adopted from Erford (2015) consists of five steps, namely 1. Identification, namely the counselor identifies problems faced by group members related to religious moderation; 2. Selection, namely the counselor selects the problems faced related to the understanding of religious moderation.Then the counselor gave a pocket book of religious moderation compiled by the Ministry of Religion; 3. Presentation, namely group members conveying the results of their understanding of religious moderation and making comparisons of understandings of religious moderation; 4. Follow-up, namely the counselor and client discuss what the client has obtained and learned about religious moderation.The fourth stage of group guidance activities is inference, namely group members conclude the results of their understanding of religious moderation.Stage five closing, the counselor ends the group guidance process.
The experimental group intervention using group guidance with the bibliotherapy technique was carried out 4 times with discussions according to indicators of religious moderation.The control group intervention was also carried out 4 times by providing information about religious moderation.For each group guidance is carried out with a duration of 40 -60 minutes for each session/meeting for both the control group and the experimental group.

Data Analysis
The first data analysis uses descriptive to determine the difference between the results before and after the intervention, as well as to determine the percentage difference between the control group and the experimental group.The second data analysis used the Mann Whitney test to determine differences in understanding of religious moderation before and after being given treatment.The third data analysis was carried out to test the effectiveness of group guidance using the bibliotherapy technique using the Wilcoxon signed-rank test analysis.

Results
The results of the first study obtained demographic information about the study participants (table 1).The next results show the descriptive results of the pretest and posttest of the control group and the experimental group (table 2).Analysis of differences in understanding of religious moderation before and after being given treatment is explained in table 3. Then the results of the effectiveness test are presented in table 4.
Table 1 shows the demographic characteristics of group members.This study used two groups, namely the experimental group and the control group.This group consists of 10 participants in each group.The control group consisted of 6 people at the age of 15 years and 4 people at the age of 16 years.This group consists of 3 men and 7 women.In the experimental group it was shown that there were 7 people aged 15 years and 16 years old as many as 3 people.The experimental group has 5 women and 5 men.All samples of this study have a level of understanding of religious moderation in the low category.
Table 2 shows the number of research samples, each of 10 people for the experimental group and the control group.The control group at the pretest had an average of 60.With a standard deviation of 3.30.The minimum value is 53 and the maximum value is 63.After being given the treatment of group guidance services by providing information, an average understanding of religious moderation was obtained at 84.1, with a standard deviation of 1.91.The minimum score at the posttest is 80 and the maximum value is 86.If seen from the results of the descriptive analysis, it is known that there is a difference between before and after being given treatment, there is an increase of 24.1.Then the experimental group at the time of the posttest had an average of 60 with a standard deviation of 3.89.The minimum value at the posttest is 52 and the maximum value is 64.After being given group guidance treatment using bibliotherapy techniques, the average experimental group had a score of 90.1 with a standard deviation of .57.In the posttest the experimental group has a minimum score of 89 and a maximum value of 91.Based on the results of the analysis in the experimental group, it showed that there was a change before and after being given treatment of 30.1.
Table 3 shows the difference in understanding of religious moderation before and after being given the intervention.In the control group Z, the score for understanding religious moderation is -2.814 and a significance value of .005.The experimental group showed a Z score of understanding religious moderation -2.807 and a significance value of .005.The results of this study indicate that the significance value of the understanding of religious moderation in each group is smaller than the .000b critical limit of .05.So there are differences in understanding of religious moderation before treatment and after treatment with group guidance using bibliotherapy techniques.Table 4 shows a Z score of -3.885 and a significant value of .000.These results indicate that the significance value is less than the critical limit of .05,which means that there are differences in the posttest of the experimental group that were given the treatment of group guidance with bibliotherapy techniques and group guidance with conventional techniques.These results also require group guidance with effective bibliotherapy techniques to increase students' understanding of religious moderation.

Discussion
The results showed that group counseling services using bibliotherapy techniques were effective in increasing students' understanding of religious moderation.Understanding religious moderation for students is important.Especially with the diversity of students in the school.Religious moderation must be understood contextually, meaning how to understand religion which must be moderate (Fahri & Zainuri, 2019).Understanding religious moderation is an understanding of our perspective on religion in a moderate manner so as to avoid cracks in relations between religious communities (Munir et al., 2020).Religious moderation helps to make people live more broadly and not discriminate against certain religions.Through religious moderation avoid conflicts or divisions between religions.In principle, religious moderation is not to mix all religions into one.In fact, religious moderation emphasizes more respect for inter-religious life in the context of balance and justice (Junaedi, 2019).
Indonesia has a diversity of races, cultures, ethnicities and religions, these differences are often used as material for division due to a lack of understanding of religious moderation.The Ministry of Religion has determined four indicators of religious moderation, namely first, national commitment.This indicator looks at the extent to which a person's perspective, attitudes and religious practices are in accordance with national principles based on the law.The most important thing in this case lies in the commitment to accept Pancasila as the basis for the state (Ministry of Religion RI Compilation Team, 2019) .The issue of national commitment is very important to pay attention to when new religious understandings emerge that are not accommodating to national ideology.
The second indicator is tolerance, this indicator is an attitude of accepting existing differences openly and gracefully and thinking positively in response to existing differences.The Ministry of Religion of the Republic of Indonesia states that a person who has an attitude of tolerance is someone who is able to be open and not interfere with the lives of other people in terms of expressing his beliefs or expressing his views even though this is not in accordance with what other people believe.The basis of religious moderation related to tolerance shows a person's ability to express attitudes in religion to respect emerging differences (Husin et al., 2022).Mutual respect and respect for differences is clear evidence of tolerance in religious moderation.Difference is a beautiful gift if it is handled with tolerance (Sani et al., 2023).
This indicator places more emphasis on rejecting violent means or attitudes in accepting or promoting change.Choosing a peaceful way without violence in carrying out social changes that exist both physical and verbal violence.A person's narrow understanding of religion, misunderstanding in assessing and interpreting religious teachings is the beginning of the emergence of radicalism and violence in the context of religious moderation.As a result, it will give birth to views that are expressed in an extreme way and want to directly make a total change in political and social life by carrying out harsh methods, both physical and non-physical (Arifinsyah et al., 2020).
This indicator directs someone who is religious to be willing to accommodate local culture and traditions which is reflected through an attitude of respect for local traditions and culture in diversity.An accommodative religious attitude towards one's own culture and traditions is useful to see how far one is willing to accept religious practices that accommodate local culture and traditions.Someone who has a moderate attitude tends to be friendly towards local culture and traditions in his religious attitude, as long as this does not conflict with the basic principles of religion.The richness of cultural diversity is a local cultural wisdom that must be maintained.Every religion and culture has its own tradition of worshiping its god.As long as the traditions being carried out do not conflict with religious teachings, as a multicultural society, it needs strengthening to understand the concept of religious moderation properly.This effort has been made by several researchers such as (Trisnowali et al., 2022) to strengthen religious moderation through local culture-based learning.
Giving an understanding of religious moderation to students basically helps students to understand the implementation of moderate Islam.It is hoped that students can filter and avoid themselves from extreme attitudes in religion.The attitude that appears is not in the form of extreme right or extreme left.Religious moderation is a middle or just, balanced and proportional understanding and attitude in religion (Arif, 2021).An understanding of Islam that is wrong, fanatic and tends to be extreme will give birth to radical religious perspectives, attitudes and behavior (Parhan et al., 2022).
Many studies have attempted to increase understanding of religious moderation.Rumata et al. (2021) use digital preaching to increase understanding of religious moderation.Manshur & Husni (2020) research uses literature-based learning to increase understanding of religious moderation.(Anwar & Muhayati, 2021) research makes religious moderation part of the Islamic religious education learning curriculum.Some of the results of this study indicate that religious moderation is still mostly practiced by teachers of Islamic religious education.This research is the latest breakthrough in which school counselors can increase their understanding of religious moderation in schools through group guidance services using bibliotherapy techniques.
Providing an understanding of religious moderation besides emphasizing the cognitive aspect also integrates moderate Islamic attitudes and behavior.Bibliotherapy is a technique that can be used as an intervention to achieve these two aspects.Bibliotherapy is a technique based on a cognitive behavioral approach (Erford, 2015).Providing reading literacy about religious moderation will indirectly help students understand the concept of religious moderation.Bibliotherapy is a guide for the development of students' moral behavior, especially in the matter of behaving and behaving in religious moderation.So that students who are the main target of instilling radical values can fortify themselves from erroneous ideas about Islamic teachings.
Bibliotherapy is a technique needed by counselors in schools, because people are already familiar with the reading they can get digitally (Solikin, 2015).In simple terms, bibliotherapy is using books to help someone get out of the problems they are facing (Sidiropoulou & Kountouras, 2022).(Cook et al., 2016) stated that using bibliotherapy techniques could be one of the therapeutic options used to overcome problems experienced by adolescents.This is because through bibliotherapy, adolescents can be encouraged to think practically.has the ability to think easily, and cheaply and can be used by involving the youth's own independence effectively.This study uses pocket books issued by the ministry of religion as reading material to make students think critically and easily be understood by students.
The results of this study reinforce previous research that has used group guidance with bibliotherapy techniques as an intervention to increase one's understanding.In a study of research findings, Schrank & Engels (2011) showed several research results which described the effectiveness of bibliotherapy on academic achievement, changes in attitudes and behavior and so on.The results of his study recommend counselors to use bibliotherapy as an adjunct to counselling.In the research conducted using group guidance as recommended.
Islamic counseling in schools and in society in the context of understanding the values of religious moderation.First, religious moderation is not only the duty of religious teachers.But guidance and counseling teachers can also socialize with the various wealth of Islamic guidance and counseling knowledge they have.Second, people who live in a multicultural, religious and racial environment must uphold the values of religious moderation in maintaining the integrity of the unity and integrity of the Indonesian State.Third, guidance and counseling teachers or counselors can consider the results of this study to help with problems related to students' understanding of religious moderation.Fourth, providing reading material about religious moderation can provide benefits to students to support good and correct understanding.Avoiding the emergence of radical understandings, attitudes that do not uphold the values of tolerance, do not use violence in solving problems and be adaptive to the implementation of religion based on local culture.

Implication
The research results show that school counselors can provide an understanding of religious moderation through services provided in guidance and counseling.This research proves that group guidance services using bibliotherapy techniques can increase understanding of religious moderation among students in public schools.These findings can be used as a conceptual and practical reference for guidance and counseling teachers in schools.

Limitation and Future Research
This research uses non-parametric statistical analysis, so care needs to be taken to generalize the results of this research to a broader population.In the future, developing a more complex research design with a more significant number of groups and populations is necessary.It is also essential to develop interventions to help increase students' understanding of religious moderation, such as interventions through counseling based on culture and spiritual values.

CONCLUSION
The results showed that students' understanding of religious moderation before being given treatment was in the low category.However, after being given intervention through group guidance using bibliotherapy techniques, the level of understanding of religious moderation increased.This means that there is a difference in students' understanding of religious moderation between before being given the intervention and after being given the group guidance intervention using bibliotherapy techniques.The results of this study also show the effectiveness of group counseling with bibliotherapy techniques to increase students' understanding of religious moderation.This finding further strengthens the results of previous studies that have tested the effectiveness of group guidance using bibliotherapy techniques.Providing readings on religious moderation can increase students' understanding of national commitment by making Pancasila the basic ideology of the State.Mutual respect and respect, be tolerant.Reject acts of violence on religious grounds.Be accommodating towards the cultural wealth owned by the State.Providing an understanding of religious moderation can be done by school counselors using various types of other Islamic guidance and counseling services.

AKCNOWLEDGMENT
We would like to thank all parties who have helped and been involved in this research.Thank you to the Sultan Maulana Hasanuddin State Islamic University, Banten.

Table 1 .
Demographics of Participants in the Control and Experimental Groups