5th Warwick Islamic Education Summer School
Educational Empowerment & Cultural, Religious Diversity of 21st Century Learners:
Unpacking Learning Experiences of Muslim Children and Young People in European Education Systems
Convened by
Dr Abdullah Sahin
25-28 September 2022
Radcliffe House
Warwick Islamic Education Summer Schools
The Warwick Islamic Education Summer School brings together a distinctive learning community of researchers and practitioners coming from diverse disciplinary backgrounds with a shared interest in exploring issues framing the ‘education and Islam/Muslims’ intersection within the context of contemporary Muslim minority and majority societies. Inspired by the Islamic educational principle of taaruf, openness to know and learn from one another, WIESS facilitates a transformative educational space fostering collaborative research activities and the sharing of knowledge, skills and best practice. WIESS promotes values of an inclusive, transformative, and compassionate education that is vital for facilitating holistic human flourishing, forming a shared culture of living well with one another and advancing a cosmopolitan model of citizenship nurturing a sense of belonging to more than one world.
WIESS aims to contribute to the generation of a new transformative Muslim culture of learning, teaching, and reflective inquiry through rethinking Islamic Education within the context of a secular and culturally and religiously plural Europe and the wider Muslim-majority world. WIESS is part of the Warwick Islamic Education Initiative, a model collaboration between British Muslim communities and the university that is based on a shared transformative vision of education and values of social inclusion. During the gathering participants will learn more about Warwick Islamic Education taught, research and community outreach activities and the wider research expertise and pioneering courses offered at the Department of Education Studies.
The Summer School has led to the establishment of the Warwick Islamic Education Research Network that has over two hundred members. The network facilitates collaborative research activities among Muslim educators and the wider community of researchers, practitioners and policymakers in Education, Social Sciences, and the Humanities.
Who is the Summer School for?
The Summer School is open to all researchers and educators who are interested in developing their understanding of educational heritage of Islam, educational challenges facing Muslim communities and Muslims in mainstream schooling. . The issues raised will be explored within a cross cultural comparative perspective. Practitioners and researchers based in the Global South, Africa and the Middle East are welcome to apply.
Delivery and Opportunities to Contribute
The programme will be delivered through interactive workshops, lectures, and presentations. There will be opportunities for networking and special sessions for researchers and practitioners to present their work. The aim is to facilitate a cross-fertilization of ideas and to share the best practice among the emerging inter-disciplinary community of researchers, practitioners and policymakers. Participants will be supported in formulating and discussing their research interests and will receive peer support and an opportunity to interact with experts in the field. Participants are invited to share recently completed or ongoing research related to themes/questions explored and should indicate in 500 words the topic and delivery of their presentations. Please e-mail your abstract to a.sahin@warwick.ac.uk and claire.alkouatli@alumni.ubc.ca by 15 September 2022.
Themes for the 5th Islamic Education Summer School
The fifth Islamic Education Summer School will explore the case of Muslim children and young people within a complex intersecting set of dynamics (ethnicity, religiosity, gender, class etc.,) shaping their learning experiences within mainstream schooling and formal/informal Muslim education settings in Europe. The learning experiences of European Muslim children and young people are informed by both the religiously embedded cultures of their parental heritage as well as the wider secular and multicultural ethos of European societies. WIESS sessions will examine how young learners construct their learning identities and position their overall personal agencies within such a multi-layered matrix of educational cultures and pedagogical practices that often have conflicting expectations. The discussion will be framed within the Muslim minority context of Europe, examining the experiences of Muslim learners within diverse settings such a religious nurture, community-based education, mainstream schooling, and Islamic and secular higher education. There will be opportunities to examine challenges of being a 21st century Muslim learner and the complex issues facing effective learning about Islam within the Muslim minority and majority contexts of the Global South, Africa, and North America. The session will adopt an interdisciplinary analysis framework, critically comparing how the issues raised are experienced within the particularity of plural contemporary Muslim learning contexts shaped by distinctive geographies, histories, linguistic, cultural, and religious heritage.
For the details of programme including a list of interrelated themes and questions that will be explored see Full programme
The 5th Islamic Education Sumer school is supported by the IAS
