Islamic Education: Theory and Practice MA

Find out more about our Islamic Education: Theory and Practice, taught Master's degree.

Page Updates

We may have revised the information on this page since publication. See the edits we have made and content history.

P-X3V7;
P-X3V9 (2 years);
P-X3V5 (3 years)

MA

1 year full-time; 2 years or 2-3 years part-time

29 September 2025

Education Studies

University of Warwick

Islamic Education: Theory and Practice MA facilitates a critical dialogue between Western and Islamic approaches to education and enables teachers and Muslim educators to become research-based reflective practitioners. Join Warwick's flexible MA and engage with a transformative teaching and learning experience that nurtures your academic formation and your personal and professional development.

The programme is designed for opening up professional development pathways for diverse groups of educational practitioners, Muslim educators and faith leaders who work within the context of formal and informal Islamic and general educational settings. The programme is open to mainstream education practitioners who wish to deepen their knowledge and understanding of Islam, facilitate critical Islam literacy and be able to respond effectively to the educational needs of Muslim children and young people under their care.

Islamic Education is a new exciting interdisciplinary field of scholarly study, empirical research professional development. It has growing national and international interest among Muslim and wider education practitioners.

The programme enables students to develop critical academic competence in theory and practice of Islamic Education facilitating reflective practice among a specialist community of educational practitioners and researchers. Students will explore diverse perceptions of education and pedagogic practice in historical and contemporary Muslim societies, engage with modern educational theories, pedagogic models and develop essential research skills necessary to be able to identify personal areas of further research in the field. The course adopts an integrative approach to pedagogy which facilitates student engagement through strategies of self-organised and blended learning i.e. combining online resources, platforms as well as face to face workshops, seminars and lectures.

The emphasis on the course will be on the importance of contemporary educational research into Islamic Education, especially research springing from the Social Sciences directed towards pedagogy and curriculum development. The course will enable students to develop the competence to ‘think educationally’ about Islam and critically examine the theory and practice of Islamic Education in the modern Muslim world and across the Muslim communities in the West.

Students will have the opportunity of critically examining the existing Islamic Education textbooks, curriculum and the syllabuses. Furthermore, they will discuss the educational challenges facing Muslim communities in the Western Diaspora with special reference to exploring the educational needs of Muslim youth. The course will critically examine how best to develop appropriate educational strategies to tackle religious extremism and address issues concerning the faith development of Muslim young people in Britain.

The course attracts a wider range of practitioners within the field of faith-based and religion-related practitioner education by explicitly identifying and responding to the professional development needs of practitioners engaged in Islamic Education. As such the programme, in a distinctive way, opens professional development pathways for diverse groups of Muslim educators, faith leaders and those who wish to engage with Islamic Education as an area of further academic development.

This programme will also be of interest to RE practitioners and teachers who are interested in improving their understanding of Islam and the educational needs of Muslim children and young people under their care.

Skills from this degree

• Critically analyse and explain the origins and sources of Muslim Educational thought and practice as well as evaluate critically current theory, literature, research, advanced scholarship and methodologies in Islamic Education, Islamic Pedagogy and Education Studies
• Identify and critically analyse the contemporary educational issues and challenges facing diverse Muslim communities in contemporary Muslim majority and minority communities such as educational reform, gender gap in educational leadership within national educational systems of global Muslim societies
• Application of research skills in developing and evaluating scholarly and empirical research in Islamic Education
• Develop competence to identify areas of research and structure personal research interests and projects in the field
• Deal with complex issues both systematically and creatively, make sound judgements in the absence of complete data, and communicate their conclusions clearly to specialist and non-specialist audiences
• By adopting a learner-centred, inquiry-based delivery strategy, students will develop competence for reflective practice
• Demonstrate self-direction and originality in tackling and solving problems, and act autonomously in planning and implementing tasks at a professional or equivalent level

For full-time students, all of our modules are delivered in-person at our well-equipped university campus. Please note that if you wish to study on a part time basis you should be aware that most modules are taught during the normal working day and there is no out of hours provision. If this is a consideration for you please contact us prior to applying so that we can advise you further. Part-time students are able to complete some of their modules as asynchronous distance-learning modules.

Most modules include weekly teaching sessions, giving you the opportunity to join with your colleagues to discuss and debate the topics being explored. These sessions are delivered in a range of formats that suit the module (these may include lectures, seminars, group work and practical workshops, for example). In addition, you will be given various pre- and post- session tasks and readings to support your learning.

Class Size

You will attend one or two 3-hour lectures and/or seminars each week during the Autumn and Spring Terms of modules plus research methods training lectures and seminars throughout all three terms.

Assessment types vary depending on modules selected but may be a mixture of assignments and oral presentations. You will also complete a dissertation based on an individual research project, with support from a research supervisor.

Reading lists

If you would like to view reading lists for current or previous cohorts of students, most departments have reading lists available through Warwick Library on the Talis Aspire platform.  

You can search for reading lists by module title, code or convenor. Please see the modules tab of this page or the module catalogue.   

Please note that some reading lists may have restricted access or be unavailable at certain times of year due to not yet being published. If you cannot access the reading list for a particular module, please check again later or contact the module’s host department.  

Additional course costs

You may wish to undertake some research with children or young people that may require a Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check or a Certificate of Good Conduct for students from outside of the UK. A Certificate of Good Conduct can vary in price.

Please contact your academic department for information about department specific costs, which should be considered in conjunction with the more general costs below, such as:

• Core text books
• Printer credits
• Dissertation binding
• Robe hire for your degree ceremony

Find out more about our additional course costs.

Your timetable

Your personalised timetable will be complete when you are registered for all modules, compulsory and optional, and you have been allocated to your lectures, seminars and other small group classes. Your compulsory modules will be registered for you and you will be able to choose your optional modules when you join us.

2:2 undergraduate degree (or equivalent) in a related subject or successful completion of the Islamic Education PGA.

Minimum 3 years of teaching experience within formal and informal Muslim education settings. These institutions include Islamic faith-based schools, supplementary Mosque schools (Madrassahs), Islamic higher education institutions/Islamic study circles, chaplaincy and couching related youth work and community development centres. The candidates need obtain references from these institutions substantiating their formal and informal teaching and work experience relevant to the MA Islamic Education programme.

• Band B
• IELTS score to 7 overall, no more than two components at 6.0/6.5 & rest 7.0+

There are no additional entry requirements for this course.

Optional modules

This programme has a number of optional modules to choose from. Our optional module lists are subject to change each year to keep the student learning experience current and up-to-date.

Find the most up-to-date optional module list on the Education Studies website.Link opens in a new window

This programme has a number of optional modules to choose from. Our optional module lists are subject to change each year to keep the student learning experience current and up-to-date.  

Find the most up-to-date optional module list on the Education Studies website.

We have revised the information on this page since publication. See the edits we have made and content history.

This is a holding content block which does not currently display on the page. To make it live, update the copy above, change the Title to remove the brackets, and delete this sentence.