Faith Learning Integration as the Soul of Teacher Education

Christian universities often claim to integrate faith and learning, but few studies test that claim from the side of the students being formed. This study examines how Faith Learning Integration (FLI) shapes the self-esteem and self-leadership of pre-service teachers at a Protestant Christian teacher education faculty in Indonesia. Using an explanatory sequential mixed-methods design, it measured self-esteem, self-efficacy and self-regulated learning among 26 final-year Early Childhood and Elementary Education students at program entry (2022) and at graduation (May 2026), then used structured written interviews to confirm and explain the change. Handwritten gratitude cards to lecturers served as supplementary documents. Mean self-efficacy rose from 21.48 to 31.20 and mean self-esteem from 24.81 to 28.38, while self-regulated learning fell from 98.58 to 73.38. The interviews explained the gains through five themes: worth relocated from performance to identity in Christ, relational safety as the condition for risk-taking, mastery through field practice and responsibility, self-leadership as reframing and disciplined dependence on God, and the lecturer’s life as the integrating medium. The findings suggest that FLI reaches students mainly through modeling, relationship and structured responsibility rather than content alone, but that relational support does not by itself transfer academic self-regulation. Christian teacher education should therefore invest in lecturer formation and mentoring while teaching self-regulation explicitly.