Islamic Education in the United Arab Emirates — Part II

Dr. Naved Bakali

In this two-part blog post we present key findings from our report “Islamic Education in the United Arab Emirates: An Assessment of Strengths, Gaps, and Opportunities”

Private vs Public schooling

Islamic Education in the public and private school systems are regulated by the Ministry of Education, with stringent rules in place to ensure strong standards of teachers and adequate time allotment for the subject. However, in the private sector, the level of importance given to Islamic Education is greatly influenced by the school culture and the administrative teams in the schools. Some private schools place a high priority on engendering Islamic values in their student body. Islam forms an essential component of the DNA of such private schools and is instilled within the administration of the school, who provide the vision for the educational landscape, through to the teachers who develop lessons that are engrained with Islamic and national identity values. At the other end of the spectrum, some schools have a culture that emphasizes academic excellence and may not promote Islamic values as a part of their core identity. Such schools view their institution as responsible for providing academic tools and training that will lead to the pursuit of higher education. Though these schools may not promote the notion that Islamic values are incompatible with academic success, they have ultimately devalued the importance of the Islamic Education subject in the process of attaining academic excellence. Most private schools in the UAE fall somewhere between these two types of school cultures in relation to their promotion of Islamic Education and values.

Curriculum

Most participants felt that the Islamic Education program did a good job of teaching the basics of Islam and provided a good foundation for essential Islamic values. Participants expressed that the curriculum had important and useful content and that genuine efforts have been made to make it adaptable and relevant to suit the needs of students in the context of the UAE in the 21stcentury. Participants described how the Islamic Education curriculum in the UAE made strong efforts to encourage tolerance, acceptance of diversity, and global citizenship, which they felt was refreshingly unique compared to other Islamic Educational curricula in the region. However, some stakeholders raised an important consideration. Though the current Islamic Education curriculum is designed to address the realities experienced in contemporary UAE society like diversity of peoples and cultures, it must also make provision for preparing students to engage the ideas, questions and values that a globalised world evokes.

Importance of Teachers

Overwhelmingly, all stakeholders who participated in this study described the paramount importance of the role of the teacher in Islamic Education. All participants clearly expressed that the effectiveness, the practicality, and the students’ enthusiasm for the course was dependent on the teacher. Teachers possess the power to make Islamic Education a vital component in the educational process, or a completely irrelevant course for students. Teachers that have been described as the most effective in teaching the program are able to connect the course content with real-life situations, as encouraged by the curriculum. These teachers avoided teacher centered approaches, such as lecturing or showing a video for the full period of the class. Rather, they incorporated multiple approaches to engage students as active participants in the learning process. Good teachers, according to participants, were not only passionate about the subject matter, but viewed the topic as an immense responsibility that they had been entrusted with.

Pedagogy

A number of participants observed that the methods employed to teach Islamic Education were often more traditional in nature and differed from most subjects in a primary or secondary school setting. One can argue the merits of traditional approaches to teaching Islamic Education, which resembles how theology is taught in seminaries. However, this style of teaching may be somewhat disconnected to how students in primary and secondary schools are accustomed to learning. Participants discussed how students engage with their Language Arts, Social Studies, Mathematics, Sciences, and other subjects in one way, but when they attend their Islamic Education courses, some of their Islamic Education teachers’ teaching style was very different and not conducive to stimulating student interest. Furthermore, this traditional style of teaching, described by participants, placed less emphasis on tying the course content with students’ everyday experiences. In other words, participants felt that these traditional approaches failed to make the course relevant for the students.

Recommendations

Based upon our extensive interviews and discussions with educational professionals, administrators, academics, teachers, and parents we developed the following three recommendations: (1) provide enrichment materials and Invest heavily in teacher training and professional development; (2) facilitate teacher specialization and support to become content experts of the curriculum; and (3) increase teacher retention, autonomy, and reducing risk aversion to encourage robust and innovative pedagogical approaches. These recommendations are by no means exhaustive, but rather, provide some insights on Islamic Education based upon the lengthy years of experience of educational experts in the field. We hope that this introductory exploration into the topic helps facilitate a more thorough in-depth analysis of the issues brought up by this report. ◼︎

For a copy of the report send us an email at: futuresinitiative at tabahfoundation.org