A Pedagogical Framework for Teacher Discourse and Practice in Islamic Schools

Abstract

Parental expectations and understanding of what constitutes Islamic schooling are often diverse. Consequently, the ‘Islamic’ in schools tends to concentrate on compliance with expressions of the accepted norms of Islam as practised in the migrants’ original cultural context rather than an ‘Islamic’ founded in the principles of Islamic education. Currently, there is no pedagogical framework for teacher discourse and practice in Islamic schools that is consistent with the Australian Islamic context. It is proposed that the formulation of a pedagogical framework that is responsive to contemporary educational research embedded in a prophetic pedagogy could enable consistent teacher quality in Islamic schools thereby enabling the achievement of the ‘Islamic’ and enhanced student outcomes.

Introduction

Prior to the 1970s, mosques were established in Australia by small communities , usually of the same ethnic background. These mosques served both the small number of migrants from diverse backgrounds and the generations born in Australia. Since the 1970s, Muslims have migrated to Australia from over seventy countries,¹ and although the representation in the popular media is of a uniform and homogeneous group, they come from a range of theological traditions and encompass different cultural, sectarian, linguistic and ethnic values.² A large number of these migrants come from countries that are in themselves culturally and religiously diverse. Like other migrants, they come for a multitude of reasons including economic advantages, educational opportunities, family reunion and escape from political oppression.³

Muslims have followed the patterns of other migrant groups in settling close to each other. Moreover, given the importance of family and the mosque in Islam, subsequent generations have continued this tendency.⁴ With the increased migration of Muslims from different linguistic, ethnic and cultural backgrounds, many of these individual communities became sufficiently large to construct their own mosques and centres. Although attendance and particularly management of these mosques tended to be dominated by people who shared the same language and/or ethnicity of the founders, the mosques were not exclusively for worshippers of those backgrounds. In addition to prayer gatherings, the mosques and centres were also utilised as places for children’s religious education, particularly Qur’an recitation.

As with the Jewish⁵ and Greek⁶ communities , increased numbers of school-aged children prompted the development of a sentiment within the Australian Muslim communities⁷ that a quality Islamic religious, cultural and Arabic/ethnic language experience could be more readily realised by the establishment of full-time Islamic schools. By 1983, the first Islamic schools had been established in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth. In the following thirty-three years more than fifty Islamic schools were established across Australia (this includes schools that do not necessarily label themselves as Islamic but cater for the Muslim community). During the same period a similar growth in Islamic schools was experienced in other migrant Muslim communities across North America and Europe.⁸

Importance of Culture

Cultural experience⁹ is included above with religious experience because accepted indigenous cultural expressions within different Muslim communities over time have become harmonised with the universal norms of sacred law and, for those communities , essential parts of their Islamic and cultural identity.¹⁰ The Qur’anic basis for this harmonisation is contained in the Qur’an (7:199):

Accept (from people) what comes naturally (for them). Command what is customarily (good). And turn away from the ignorant (without responding in kind).

Eminent Muslim jurists have used this textual proof as a basis for legal decisions through the centuries. The Islamic cultural traditions of these countries have developed over time, and as Murad notes¹¹:

The traditional Muslim world is a rainbow, an extraordinary patchwork of different cultures, all united by a common adherence to the doctrinal and moral patterns set down in Revelation. Put differently, Revelation supplies parameters (hudud)¹² rather than a complete blueprint for the details of cultural life.

Muslims from different parts of the world can therefore be recognised, at the same time, as both Muslim and members of a particular culture. It is important to note that the seeds for the emergence of a distinctive Australian Muslim identity have already begun to grow. A recent quantitative study found that Muslim students in Years 9–11 in Australian Islamic schools¹³ identified most strongly with their religious affiliation, followed by their heritage culture and then with being Australian. However, their religious and cultural identification was not in opposition to being Australian, nor did it indicate a preference for separation from Australian society. The researchers proposed that the experience of negative public attitudes and racism weakened the students’ feeling of belonging to Australia. This is reflected in the comments of some Australian-born female teachers at an Islamic school recorded by Watson and Chen”¹⁴

Since the Cronulla riots we (Muslims) do not want to be seen as different … We want to just melt into the background and disappear. We know this will not happen because we (a group of women) dress differently … But we still don’t want to write that we want this difference. We feel ashamed. We shouldn’t feel like this … We just want to be Australians like everyone else. We love our religion and we want to be Australians.

However, the previous school experiences of migrant Muslims arriving in Australia can pose a number of issues for Islamic schools. These issues go well beyond seemingly mundane decisions, such as the style of an Islamic school’s uniform, in that they affect parental expectations as well as the curriculum and pedagogy of the school. One finds that most countries with large Muslim populations generally have two streams of education, the first being a government and private school system that tends to have an educational pedagogy¹⁵ similar to those of previous colonial powers’ systems,¹⁶ and the second a more ‘traditional’ system for reading and memorisation of the Qur’an. Many of these countries also have an extension of the Qur’an school, which teaches the Islamic sciences at various levels and degrees. The traditional systems have underlying pedagogical strategies that are universal but they also display significant differences according to time and place.¹⁷ Clyne conducted parental interviews to identify the reasons why Muslim parents send their children to Islamic schools in Australia.¹⁸ She found that among the more important reasons were that the Islamic school curriculum reflects Islamic values; there is strong discipline; they prefer a Muslim environment; the teachers understand about Islam; Qur’anic studies are taught; and children will learn correct behaviour.¹⁹ Sanjakdar adds that there is also a parental perception of a lack of quality education in Australian public schools.²⁰

These expectations and the individual educational experiences influence perceptions of what an Islamic school should and should not be and can often be the cause for heated debate and dissatisfaction and occasionally the impetus for the establishment of new Islamic schools which are perceived by the founders and supporters to be ‘more Islamic’. It is not surprising, therefore, that discussions in or about Islamic schools revolve around dress code, rules and regulations, curriculum, and the background, experience, quality, religiosity and/or piety of teachers. However, it is important to note that the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL 2017), in reflecting on the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers, points out that there is a broad national and international consensus ‘that teacher quality is the single-most important in-school factor influencing student achievement’ and that teacher quality is impacted by teachers’ pedagogical knowledge²¹ and the ability to adapt quality pedagogies to different school contexts.²² Given the different understandings of the Islamic in Islamic schooling and the importance of pedagogy in student achievement, it is instructive to return to the Qur’an²³ and Hadith²⁴ as well as contemporary research to identify appropriate pedagogical solutions that will inculcate an Islamic worldview²⁵ and practice while fulfilling the expectations of parents and the community and meet the needs of students.

Islamic Education and Pedagogy

The Qur’an and Hadith are the original sources for all things Islamic, including the various concepts and applications of education in Muslim-majority countries today.²⁶ The first educational concept, known as ta’lim , refers to instruction and learning about things, which develops reason and trains the mind. Evidence for this is found in the Qur’an (2:31): ‘And He [God] taught (“allama”²⁷) Adam the names of all things’, and the saying of the Prophet Muhammad (may peace and blessing be upon him), ‘the best of you are those who learnt (ta’allama) the Qur’an and taught it (“allama”)’.²⁸ The second concept, known as tarbiyah , refers to the development of human personality and the nurturing and rearing of a child (Qur’an 17:24), and the third concept, known as ta’dib , refers to the training of the mind and soul in terms of behaviour and ethical conduct. It encompasses the recognition and acknowledgement of one’s right and proper place and the self-discipline to enact one’s role in accordance with that place.^29,30 Each of these terms emphasises different aspects of the development of the whole person represented by the physical, intellectual, moral and spiritual dimensions.³¹

However, the opinion of Bin Omar is that an accurate definition encompasses all three aspects and is concerned with developing the essence of the human being (the soul-spirit, heart, self and intellect).³² Memon sees immense value in the definitions discussed above but argues that limiting a definition to one or the other does not give justice to the expansiveness of the Islamic teaching tradition.³³ Although he does not explicitly follow Bin Omar in his synthesis to define Islamic education, the same elements are embedded in his discussion. Memon analyses Islamic education in relation to instances from the Prophetic tradition by using the famous Hadith Jibril.³⁴ This analysis follows on from a 2006 article in aiming to move away from a reliance on modern conceptions of education and to use educative moments from the Prophetic tradition to envision what such practices may look like.

The Hadith affirms the three aspects of the religion—Islam, Iman (faith) and Ihsan ³⁵—and it is this last aspect that Memon³⁶ proposes has been in the main neglected by Islamic schools. His explanation of the relationship of these aspects to the dimensions of reality correctly draw out that Ihsan is the depth of Islam. The Hadith describes the desired level of Ihsan as that state in which a person worships God as though he can see Him. At this point a person has attained ma’rifah ,³⁷ and the resultant ability to fulfil the role of vicegerent (Khalifa). Ihsan , then, as the inner reality of worship, acts as the link between ma’rifah and vicegerency. The vicegerent has correct adab ³⁸ in that their behaviour is appropriate and fitting for the occasion and has been performed in due proportion in a conscious state of being, as if seeing God. Memon argues that Ihsan needs to be lived, modelled and nurtured as part of the ethos of the school culture,³⁹ and needs to be exemplified by the teacher. The initial stage of Ihsan is to worship God with the knowledge that He sees and knows every act. Muslim children are usually taught about this stage of Ihsan in any basic Islamic religious instruction during the lessons about Iman (faith), if not already at home prior to school commencement. However, Memon’s expectation that teachers will exemplify Ihsan appears to be based on a more developed ideal of Ihsan. Ihsan is the inner quality of a person’s worship, and the ideal is developed and nurtured over a lifetime and is the subject of an ongoing struggle for a Muslim. The level of attainment of Ihsan in any individuals’ act of worship is not easily identified by others, and is often misread. To some degree, correct adab can be learnt and performed for specific acts and circumstances without necessarily emanating from any sense of Ihsan .

Beautiful character needs to be modelled for the students, but consideration of teachers’ private lives when hiring, as proposed by Memon, is fraught with many potential pitfalls.⁴⁰ The reality for most Islamic schools in Australia, if not worldwide, is that there is generally a mixture of Muslim and non-Muslim staff. Muslim staff members themselves are very diverse in their practice and understandings of Islam and their spiritual development . Even within the community few people would claim that they have reached the desired level of Ihsan in even a small part of their worship. Consequently, any model of Islamic pedagogy, while necessarily in harmony with the purpose and guidelines of Islamic education, needs also to be responsive to the circumstances and environment of its implementation. The school, its ethos and pedagogy (which is the main concern here), can then foster the creation of a productive learning environment for all its participants. In such a pedagogical environment both teachers and students may then avail themselves of the opportunity to practise and evaluate ways of knowing and understanding in harmony with an Islamic worldview . The teacher is then a learner and ‘a model of adab ’ as a participant in an organic process of change and improvement rather than ‘the model of adab’, in contrast with the Hadith Jibril (see note 8) which captures for us an instance of the Prophet as ‘the model of adab’ both as a learner and a teacher.

Memon discusses a further three Hadiths of the Prophet Muhammad (may peace and blessing be upon him) to deduce examples of prophetic pedagogical teaching techniques, including the use of examples relevant to context, questioning that engages the attention of the listener and the use of images to ingrain meaning.⁴¹ As valuable as these techniques are, their value for Islamic education and pedagogy is not so much in their specific time and place applications, but rather in identifying the wisdom of what was taught and how, why, when, where and to whom it was taught.⁴² The analysis of these and other examples in Hadith can assist in the identification of the underlying pedagogical principles of the Islamic tradition. It can be argued that a process of a fertile synthesis⁴³ of the pedagogical principles of contemporary educational thought and the underlying pedagogical principles of the Islamic tradition could enable the development of a more appropriate pedagogical model for Islamic schools. Consequently, some of the possible outcomes of this synthesis are that students of Islamic schools will attain a deeper understanding of Islam and confidence in their Islamic identity , and possibly will be prepared for rich and positive participation in society by serving humanity.⁴⁴ Of course, such a fertile synthesis may also lead to other outcomes conducive to the making of a more effective and productive Islamic schooling experience.

Memon does not attempt to model this synthesis but encourages each school to develop workshops for the professional development of their teachers in the pedagogical practices of the Prophet.⁴⁵ The three examples that are outlined above are based on the valuable work of Abu Ghuddah, who analysed over one hundred sayings of the Prophet to elucidate his character and teaching strategies.⁴⁶ The work of Abu Ghuddah is very important in the field but does not readily lead to the creation of a framework of Islamic pedagogical principles that may be utilised by teachers in Islamic schools in the West (and possibly in majority Muslim nations). Such a framework is important as it gives teachers a tool that provides a common metalanguage and the opportunity for collegial collaboration, evaluation and reflection on classroom practice. This in turn could then enable a classroom environment where ways of knowing and understanding are in harmony with an Islamic worldview and the enhancement of student outcomes.

Development of a Prophetic Pedagogy

A challenge in the development of a framework of the pedagogical practices of the Prophet Muhammad (may peace and blessing be upon him) is that pedagogy is implicitly embedded in each Hadith since it covers the sayings, actions and tacit approvals of the Prophet. Therefore, any conclusion(s) of what constitutes prophetic pedagogical principles that are derived from an analysis of Hadith are subjective and open to interpretation(s). However, this is not problematic, since the intent in identifying the principles is to construct a framework that may facilitate best practice within an Islamic schooling context. What follows is an exploration of how best one can derive pedagogical principles from the Prophetic example, followed by a proposed framework that synthesises these principles with productive pedagogies for teachers working within an Islamic schooling context.

To facilitate the emergence of a prophetic pedagogical framework from Hadith a number of methodological methods can be utilised. For this research, the inductive process of grounded theory was used to identify core pedagogical strategies in the practice of the Prophet Muhammad (may peace and blessing be upon him). Grounded theory, as a coding method, is deemed appropriate for our purposes because it is a bottom-up technique in relation to the data and begins at the word or sentence level.⁴⁷ It aims, in as rigorous and detailed a manner as possible, to identify categories and concepts that emerge from the text, and to link these concepts into substantive and formal theories. It is an iterative process by which the analyst becomes more and more ‘grounded’ in the data, enabling increasingly richer concepts and models of how the phenomenon being studied works.⁴⁸

While there are multiple recognised and authenticated Hadith collections,⁴⁹ the author has chosen to work with Hadith found in the collection of Sahih Muslim. This compilation was chosen as it falls within the highest category of compilations for overall accuracy, reputation and acceptance.^50,51 In addition, the Hadith in Sahih Al Bukhari are often fragmented with different portions placed under different headings,⁵² while in Sahih Muslim this is avoided. The analysis of a portion of a Hadith independent of the complete text could give a different emphasis and have implications for the pedagogical principles. The coding was commenced from the beginning of compilation using the Arabic text of the Hadith. The coding result for each Hadith and the codes were then recorded in English:

From Abu Suhail from his father that he heard Talhah ibn Abdullah saying a man from Najd⁵³ came to the Messenger of Allah (may peace and blessings be upon him). He had unkempt hair and a loud voice which we could not understand until he drew near the Messenger of Allah (may peace and blessing be upon him). He was asking about Islam. The Messenger of Allah (may peace and blessing be upon him) said five salah in every day and night. He asked is there anything else than these. (The Prophet) said, no, except for voluntary prayers and fasting Ramadan. He asked is there anything other than this. (The Prophet) said, no, except for voluntary fasting and then the Messenger of Allah (may peace and blessing be upon him) mentioned zakat. (The Prophet) said, no, except for voluntary charity. He then turned round leaving saying, ‘I will not do more or less than this’. The Messenger of Allah (may peace and blessing be upon him) said (to us) indeed he has succeeded if he is true to this (or he has entered heaven if he is true to this).

The following codes with description were identified in this Hadith:

• 1. accessible not aloof;

• 2. patience with the mode of address;

• 22. addresses people at their level (however, the man is given possibility for extension).

• 24. clearly and concisely answers information;

• 28. takes great care to give very precise and clear information that includes only that which is necessary;

• 35. clearly sets out measurable minimum to be achieved or expected;

• 36. clearly sets out the criteria measurable by the individual for the required standard.

Based on analysis of the first 173 Hadith from the beginning of Sahih Muslim, a clear set of categories emerged (see Table 10.1). The resultant framework has been called a prophetic pedagogical framework (PPF) to emphasise that it should be understood as an enabling document rather than a prescriptive one. Memorisation was added as it has been a consistent part of Muslims’ pedagogy since the inception of Islam.^54,55

Table 10.1 A Prophetic Pedagogical Framework (PPF)

As coding proceeded, subcategories and later categories began to emerge. These categories became the elements and the subcategories descriptors within the elements (in italics below each element as sections). Up to five features were then listed for each descriptor that identified characteristics of a classroom supporting a prophetic pedagogy.

The PPF gives the teacher the opportunity when designing a unit or lesson plan to reflect on and consider the types of teaching practices, student activities and assessment that will support or hinder student learning. The PPF also gives a consistent framework for ongoing evaluation both during and after a unit or lesson plan and for future design. The PPF also facilitates consistent teacher collaboration in the design and evaluation. This is valuable not only for the students but also for teachers as it aligns our practice with accepted contemporary research as to what constitutes quality teaching and, an additional benefit for a Muslim teacher, with the practice of the Prophet Muhammad (may peace and blessings be upon him).

In Table 10.2 the features of the PPF are exemplified by Hadith from across the Sunnah.⁵⁶ For the sake of brevity, only the Hadith are included that exemplify some of the features from the first section, building relations: respect for others, humility and avoidance of shaming individuals in class.

Table 10.2 Examples of additional Hadith

An example of how the PPF in Table 10.1 may be synthesised with a contemporary pedagogical framework is demonstrated in Tables 10.3 and 10.4. This synthesis was developed in collaboration with a daily after-hours school for religious instruction. Since the school is in Queensland, the productive pedagogies framework was used as this is the framework that underpins the public school system in Queensland.⁵⁷ Other pedagogical frameworks can be used in place of productive pedagogies.

Table 10.3 A possible synthesis of Productive Pedagogies and a Prophetic Pedagogy (initial part of the framework)

Table 10.4 A possible synthesis of Productive Pedagogies and a Prophetic Pedagogy (continuation of the framework)

Tables 10.3 and 10.4 work together as one table. In Table 10.3 the first column gives the dimensions of productive pedagogies while the second column gives the items/parts of each of those dimensions. The third column is the alignment of these items to the elements and descriptors of PPF. In Table 10.4 the first and second columns are exactly the same as the second, and third columns of Table 10.3.

However, it is the critical questions from Table 10.3 and the features from Table 10.4 when considered together inform and give tools for teachers in the design and evaluation process. When planning, the critical question directs teacher consideration to the techniques, strategies and activities that will facilitate the manifestation of the features described. When evaluating , the critical question and features should be used positively in assessing what has been achieved and what further improvements are required. A process necessarily both continuous and organic.

Conclusion

The efforts of various community members over the decades to establish Islamic schools should be, and indeed are, appreciated. In saying this, it is important for those currently involved in the education of our future generations to keep in mind the words of Umar (may Allah be pleased with him) from Ja’far Al-Zubraqaan. It reached me that Umar wrote a letter to some of the officials and at the end of the letter was written: “take account of yourself in ease before the difficult account (that is the day of resurrection)” (Hayatus-Sahabah 3:442). In order for evaluation to occur, processes, procedures and frameworks need to be in place to enable the ongoing renewal of practices both within and outside the classroom. This renewal of Islamic schools should take place in the light of research embedded in an Islamic worldview of education and pedagogy. These processes, procedures and frameworks can then enable a common discourse and a shared vision for all members of an Islamic school community and enhanced learning outcomes for our students.