When Ancient Epistemology Meets Augmented Reality: Designing a STEM–Catur Pramana Digital Pop-Up Book for Elementary Science

Elementary science learning in Indonesia often relies on text-heavy materials, and efforts to bring local culture into science education have mostly treated culture as content rather than as a way of knowing. This study designed and validated an augmented reality (AR)-assisted digital pop-up book that uses Catur Pramana, the four means of valid knowledge in Hindu philosophy, to structure STEM-based learning. Direct observation, inference, comparison, and reliable testimony were paired with mathematics, technology, engineering, and science, respectively, across three topics: plant growth and reproduction, states of matter, and forces. Following the ADDIE model, a prototype without AR was tried out with 86 students and 15 teachers in four public elementary schools in Bali, Indonesia, and then revised into a final version with AR features, which three content experts and three media experts evaluated. Content and media validity were moderate (Aiken’s V  = 0.74 and 0.78), with the weakest ratings for curriculum alignment, the engineering and mathematics components, and the stability of AR objects, and agreement among the experts was moderate (intraclass correlation = 0.71 and 0.72). Students and teachers rated the prototype as practical (73.40% and 77.50%). The findings show that a local epistemology can serve as the structure, not merely the content, of a science learning medium. Because AR was not part of the classroom tryout and learning outcomes were not measured, the results establish the feasibility of the design rather than its effectiveness.