Towards an Islamic spiritual model in increasing academic performance of accounting students / Rosliza Ghazali ... [et al.]

The purpose of commencing this study has been a shared belief among the researchers that the element of spirituality is fundamental in developing the potentials of students in a holistic and integrated manner so as to produce students who are intellectually, spiritually, emotionally, and physically balanced. Spirituality has been said to have a positive effect on students’ academic performances in many literature where many studies have proven that there is a positive association between spirituality and academic achievement due to high learning motivation and self-esteem among the students. This is due to the view that lacking of spiritual values could lead to the absence of a holistic objective in studies and create unfavourable attitude problems among the students, which results in poor academic performance. Thus, this paper aims at proposing a model of Islamic spirituality to be implemented at higher-education institutions and determining the impact of the model to the academic performance of the students. As such, this model has suggested an Islamic spirituality programme to be incorporated into students’ activities known as the Sharing-is-Caring (SIC) programme. Regularly attending the SIC programme, also known as the Usraṯṯ or Ḥalaqaṯṯ programme, is expected to provide positive impacts on the students’ academic performances because it emphasises on Islamic spiritual values, such as Islamic beliefs (‘Aqīdaṯṯ), duties and obligations (‘Ibādaṯṯ), and manners and etiquette (Akhlāq), which are crucial to the students’ successes as these values could increase their learning motivation and assist them in facing all sorts of challenges faced while studying. The methodology applied by this study is the quantitative method by using a questionnaire. 67 copies of questionnaire have been distributed to the final-semester students of Diploma in Accountancy, Faculty of Accountancy, UiTM Cawangan Terengganu, who have attended the SIC programme for five consecutive semesters. The analyses have been conducted by using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) 23. The findings of the study have revealed that the SIC programme could improve Accounting students’ Islamic spiritual values, namely their Islamic beliefs and Islamic practices. However, the results of the study have failed to actualise the expected positive relationship between the SIC programme and the academic performances of the students under study.