Islamic religious education and the plan against violent radicalization in Spain

ABSTRACT

This article analyses the importance of Islamic religious education in public schools in Spain as an instrument in the prevention and fight against violent radicalisation. In this article, we examine the legal status of Islamic religious education and the latest regulations on Islamic religious education that emphasise the fight against Islamist terrorism. We also study the regulation of teachers of Islamic religious education and their role in the counter-narrative required to deter the message of Islamist terrorists and prevent violent radicalisation.     

Empirical research: Challenges and impulses for Islamic religious education

ABSTRACT

The following article describes how empirical research can give new impulses to Islamic religious education. These impulses could lead to a reconciliation of the Islamic religious heritage with the fast-changing reality of Muslims in non-Muslim countries and societies. Due to the presence of Muslim children in public schools and the urgent question of their religious education, as an academic discipline, Islamic religious pedagogy (Islamische Religionspädagogik) has acquired a pioneering role among the various Islamic theological disciplines. On a scientific level, it has already taken its first steps in the scientific landscape in Germany and Austria and has established diverse references to modern science. Islamic religious pedagogy, as a young scientific discipline, necessarily requires empirical research to provide sound foundations for the quality of Islamic religious education and for a better understanding of religious educational processes. This calls for a dialogue between empirical educational research and theology and cannot be achieved based on purely theoretical assumptions.     

Islamic education and the challenge of democratic citizenship: a critical perspective

This article analyzes how concepts of liberal and progressive Islam, which have been developed in the political and theological academic literature, may inform the curriculum of Islamic education and the practice of religious educators in Islamic schools in the US. We investigate the meaning of in-faith Islamic education and how it can conform to the life in a democratic, multicultural, and multi-faith society. Liberal Islam challenges the transmission-oriented and rigid interpretations of Islam and seeks to appreciate and to contextualize the religious claims which are compatible with ideals of reflective education, rational thinking, mutual respect, and equal citizenship. It suggests that students become critical ‘consumers’ of Islam, its moral and civic purposes, and the cultural politics of religious interrogations.     

Modes of learning in religious education

This article is a contribution to the discussion of learning processes in religious education (RE) classrooms. Sociocultural theories of learning, understood here as tool-mediated processes, are used in an analysis of three RE classroom conversations. The analysis focuses on the language tools that are used in conversations; how the tools mediate; the dynamics they create between pupils and teachers; and how new language tools are created and enrolled. The following three modes of learning are found: distancing, dynamic and expansive. These modes are collectively enacted by teachers and students in the context of the classroom. The article therefore argues that RE classrooms can best be understood as social practices, rather than sums of individual cognition. Empirically, religion is in the making in RE – in the shape of bits, pieces and processes. In the material, however, RE is an educational practice, not a religious practice.     

A model for Islamic education from Turkey: the Imam-Hatip schools

The aim of this article is to examine the Imam-Hatip schools and their basic features, the characteristic model of Islamic education in Turkey that was proposed as an alternative model for other Muslim countries during their madrasa reform movements in the aftermath of the September 11 events in the USA. In the continuation of the madrasa tradition during the Saljuki period under state supervision, along with the modernisation efforts in education since the late Ottoman period, these schools have been revitalised and adapted to the contemporary conditions of educational institutions. At the foundation of these schools, there lay a notion of reconciliation between the ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’. Throughout the years of the Turkish Republic, these schools have constantly become a controversial issue in terms of their number, structure, and student and alumni profiles. Especially after the opening process of the Turkish people and Turkish foreign policies to the world, the issue has become an international one since the 1980s. After the events of 11 September 2001, these schools were offered as an alternative model for madrasas in Muslim countries and therefore drew international attention to themselves.     

The meanings,risk factors and consequences of religious extremism: The perceptions of Islamic education teachers from Israel

This multiple case study examines the attitudes of 14 Islamic education teachers from Israel towards the meaning, causes and consequences of religious extremism among students in their Arab and Muslim-majority middle and high schools. These teachers define religious extremism as belief in absolute religious truth, inflexibility in religious interpretation, or strict adherence to Islamic teachings. In addition, the teachers distinguish the personal (adolescence, family problems and psychosocial needs), religious (unquestioned following of extremist imams or religion scholars; adopting of selective, literal and decontextualised readings of the religious text; influence of partisan teachers) and socio-political factors (students' feelings of fear and anger towards Israel and its unjust and oppressive role in the Palestinian–Israeli conflict) that push students towards religious extremism. Religious extremism, the teachers conclude, may lead to hatred or violence against followers of other religions, antagonism between Muslims and Jews in Israel, increased Islamophobia in Western societies, the rejection of Islam, the oppression of female students and reduced student achievement and diminished future prospects.     

Open education and critical pedagogy

This paper argues for a revaluation of the potential of open education to support more critical forms of pedagogy. Section 1 examines contemporary discourses around open education, offering a commentary on the perception of openness as both a disruptive force in education, and a potential solution to contemporary challenges. Section 2 examines the implications of the lack of consensus around what it means to be open, focusing on the example of commercial and proprietary claims to openness commonly known as ‘openwashing’. Section 3 uses Raymond's influential essay on open source software ‘The Cathedral and the Bazaar’ as a framework for thinking through these issues, and about alternative power structures in open education. In Section 4, an explicit link is drawn between more equal and democratic power structures and the possibility for developing pedagogies which are critical and reflexive, providing examples which show how certain interpretations of openness can raise opportunities to support critical approaches to pedagogy.     

Contextual religious education and the actuality of religions

Contextual religious educators tend to view discrete religious traditions as artificially constructed systems disconnected from the ordinary experiences of children. This article sets out the case for the continued representation of religions as substantial social facts in religious education classrooms. Accepting Robert Jackson’s critique of essentialist readings of religion, it argues that the most appropriate alternative is not the nominal reduction of discrete religious traditions to the atomistic level of the individual spiritual lives of adherents, but a realistic identification of such traditions as actual socio‐cultural realities. It suggests two criteria for such identification: the collective intentionality of adherents and the presence of prototypical features within their lifeworlds.     

Half a century of Islamic education in Dutch schools

During the second half of the twentieth century, faithful followers of non-Western religions immigrated into Western European countries. Their children were a challenge for the respective educational system in the host countries. In the Dutch context, the educational system consists of public and private schools in which religion is the most dividing factor. Private schools are largely denominational schools with, as main denominations, Roman Catholics and Protestants, while state schools are presented as religiously neutral. How did this dual system cope with the import of a relatively new religion like Islam? In our contribution, we describe half a century’s history of Islamic children in Dutch schools by addressing the following questions. In what way did state and denominational schools on the one hand and the government on the other hand try to include Islamic pupils (and their parents) and facilitate their integration into the Dutch educational system and by consequence into Dutch society? And, the other way around, how did these new comers adapt themselves to the Dutch educational system, and did they stimulate, directly or indirectly, reflection on religion and values? We come to the conclusion that the most influential initiatives came from both Christian and Islamic schools as a consequence of their focus on the importance of the formation of pupil identity and life orientation and that teachers’ knowledge about and attitude regarding (religious) diversity are pivotal in processes of learning about and from each other as a precondition for integration into a society characterised by diversity.     

Negotiating and reshaping Christian values and professional identities through action research: experiential learning and professional development among Christian religious education teachers

In European societies, major patterns of plurality have changed over recent decades due to modernization and globalization. In schools, these new patterns of plurality have consequences for learning processes and may be challenging for students and teachers. This article investigates these issues, taking as its point of departure the way they surfaced in the Norwegian subject-oriented research project ‘Teaching about Religious Diversity in Schools. Applying and Developing an Interpretive Cultural Approach to Religious Education’ (2007–2010). Nine teachers and two researchers worked together in a community of practice, adopting an action research mode of collaboration. Each participant carried out and documented individual development projects, mostly within their own student groups. Developments and results were discussed in regular community-of-practice workshops. The data analysed in this article were generated from these workshops and from interviews with participants. The main research question raised is how an action research project in the field of religious education can lead to professional development for the participants. More specifically, the question is how such development can be described with respect to the relationship between personal and professional aspects of teacher identity and practice. The introduction of core concepts from theories of religious education and action learning triggered a collective inquiry among the participants into their own professional knowledge. Gradually a common professional discourse developed within the community of practice, and the participants became aware of and started to investigate critically how personal values and beliefs played a role in their professional work.     

Living and learning in the presence of the other: defining religious education inclusively

Recent developments in praxis and theory of religious education point to the growing interest in inclusive forms of didactics. Interreligious learning invites children and young people to deal constructively with religious diversity in the classroom. In this paper, philosophical and theological arguments for inclusive religious education are presented and widened for a learning environment in which people with and without special needs learn in each other’s presence. The experience of radical otherness, of difference and vulnerability of fellow learners, is the starting point to reframe religious didactics, religious pedagogy and theology. It is also the culmination point: radical inclusive religious education ends up with the experience of learning as ‘receiving the gift of friendship’ (Hans Reinders). This framework is helpful to plan different sorts of learning arrangements and to conceive of different sorts of learning relationships, even outside the religious education classroom.     

Situated learning theory and the pedagogy of teacher education: Towards an integrative view of teacher behavior and teacher learning

Lave and Wenger have greatly influenced existing views of learning and teaching, but relatively little has been written about the implications for the understanding of teacher behavior and teacher learning, and for the pedagogy of teacher education. Based on their work, a three-level model of learning is used to analyze the friction between teacher behavior in practice and the wish to ground teachers' practices in theory. Supported by empirical data on teacher learning and brain research, this model reconciles the situated learning perspective with traditional cognitive theory, and leads to concrete implications for the pedagogy of teacher education.     

Achieving social justice within and through higher education: the challenge for critical pedagogy

While the term critical pedagogy embraces a range of writers and literature, a common feature of all is a belief that education and society are intrinsically inter-related and that the fundamental purpose of education is to improve social justice. However there are perceptions that critical pedagogy has been more successful in critiquing educational and social practices than in achieving actual change. In this paper I explore two areas that critical pedagogy can address to move beyond critique: the importance of a movement formed by diverse elements, in which difference and disagreement are harnessed to help drive change; and the use of this diversity to direct change at a range of levels. My analysis draws specifically on literature that challenges managerialist assumptions about change as a simple, technical process, focusing instead on the complexities of the social world and the attendant complexities of achieving educational and social change.     

Validity in mixed methods research in education: the application of Habermas' critical theory

Mixed methods approach has developed into the third methodological movement in educational research. Validity in mixed methods research as an important issue, however, has not been examined as extensively as that of quantitative and qualitative research. Additionally, the previous discussions of validity in mixed methods research focus on research design and procedure, rather than validity per se. This paper presents another perspective by using philosophical and methodological insights generated from Habermas’ critical theory, especially his Theory of Communicative Action and validity claims. Theoretical assumptions and how they are consistent with principles of mixed methods research are introduced. Three types of validity claims are explained with an example and how they are applied to understanding validity in mixed methods research is further discussed. This paper concludes with implications for educational research and future directions.     

A conversational analysis of developments in religious education in Europe and in Turkey

This contribution is focusing on the question: ‘In what way is the issue of religious education in general and Islamic religious education in particular articulated in Europe and in Turkey, and what can be learned from the respective articulations for the interreligious dialogue?’ In the first section, the historical context is presented that makes up the diversity and situatedness of models of religious education (RE) in Europe, and its relation to citizenship education. Then the role of Islam in RE in Europe is addressed. In particular, Islam and RE/Islamic RE in the Dutch context is highlighted. In the second section, the Turkish educational system is described from the Ottoman Empire to the Republican Era, including the position of Islam. Turkey’s present day secularised educational system is presented and the changed position of Islam in education. In the third section, the authors introduce the concept of ‘conversational analysis’ by using ‘European tinted lenses’ to further explore the Turkish articulation of Islam in education, and ‘Turkish tinted lenses’ to explore the European articulation with regard to Islam in RE. Concluding, some interesting aspects are emphasised where European and Turkish educators can learn from and with each other, and some recommendations for further research are given.     

Religious studies,religious education and the aims of education

This article interacts with a recent article by Denise Cush and Catherine Robinson in which they call for a new dialogue between religious studies in universities and religious education, and identify a number of developments in religious studies that have implications for the practice of religious education in schools. Cush and Robinson are representative of an influential body of opinion among religious educators that looks to religious studies for inspiration. It is argued that they, along with others, fail to appreciate the difference between the aims of religious studies and those of religious education and that this unrecognised difference leads them both to engage uncritically and superficially with the history of post-confessional religious education and to fail to recognise that the roots of some of the weaknesses in contemporary religious education can be traced to the influence of religious studies over it. Showing that religious education has (and is required to have) a different set of aims from religious studies (though some aims may be held in common) alerts us to its distinctive nature, and this in turn facilitates a clearer understanding of its role in schools, which can serve both to direct and to evaluate educational outcomes.     

Autonomy and religious education: lessons from a six-year evaluation of an educational reform in an Israeli school network

This study investigated the tension that exists between promoting an educational agenda and practising an educational approach which emphasises autonomy within the framework of religious education. Our main thesis is that every educational deed contains a dialectical tension between endorsing an educational agenda and the promotion of autonomy. Moreover, this tension is not restricted to religious education. The intensity of such a conflict varies in accordance with the flexibility (or inflexibility) of the dogma, the conceptual cohesion of the educational agenda and the perceived importance of granting autonomy to students. The more cohesive and inflexible the educational agenda is, the greater the danger that autonomy will be discarded. The present research examined an educational reform implemented in the National-Religious School Network in Israel, which included the promotion of autonomy among principals, teachers and students. Conducted over a six-year period (2006–2012), the research employed both qualitative and quantitative methodologies and involved various stakeholders in the school network. The multifaceted picture that emerged of the relationship between educational autonomy and religious agenda is presented.     

A comparative study of how social cohesion is taught in Islamic religious education in Finland and Ireland

Abstract

Based on classroom observations and semi-structured interviews with teachers, parents and students, this comparative study looks at how social cohesion is promoted in Islamic Religious Education (IRE) lessons in Muslim schools in Ireland and non-faith schools in Finland. The study analyses teaching in the following areas: intra-religious cohesion; inter-religious cohesion and commitment to society. The findings reveal that despite differences in the governance of IRE as a subject taught in both types of schools, the IRE classroom emerges as a space, whereby teachers use power as agents for internal governance of religion. The authors conclude with some implications and offer some considerations for future research and practice.