3. And that both have the broader aim of benefiting wider society, i.e. make Islam and Muslims widely recognised as a valuable, effective force for good in Britain, as was traditionally the case wherever the religion took root. See Islamic Education Conference #1; The Holy Trinity of Muslim Education for more information.
4. That schools survive the next two years, as controversies over British values, safeguarding, SMSC etc. multiply and intensify.
To Muslim faith schools with often limited resources, these four seem to be almost mutually exclusive requirements; the upcoming AMS UK course, 21st century British Muslim – the Solution? is a tentative first step at effectively unraveling this conundrum.
The solution – ?
The past 20 years have seen the development overseas of a structural approach to Cooperative Learning to create an effective version of the student-centred learning environment demanded by businesses and governments. (For full details on this issue and its connection to Muslim communities, see transcript of Edinburgh Seminar “The Student- Centred Classroom & The Self-Centred Student…”).
Cooperative Learning ensures tight classroom management and reliable assessment, is transferable across all subjects and levels, and fuses seamlessly with existing lesson plans and materials.
Though based on a comprehensive theoretical framework, it is a practical classroom tool, easily mastered even by NQTs and unqualified teachers, and may be deployed with immediate effect. Note that any lesson that integrates Cooperative Learning will comply with Ofsted student-centred ideals and the collaborative learning facilitated has been described by the Sutton Trust’s EEF Teaching and Learning Toolkit as the best use of Pupil Premium.
Values – deconstruction, reconstruction
More importantly, Cooperative Learning integrates subject matter with social skills, higher level thinking and advanced language needed for the fast, fluid and unpredictable nature of 21st century education requirements, job markets – and even constructed cultural conflicts such as “Islamic vs. British values.” We refer you to the recently published lesson plan dealing with the Paris attacks, which may be equally deployed in Muslim faith schools. We aim to present this lesson plan in the course as a seperate unit entitled Negotiating conflicting values & viewpoints: political, cultural and religious.
This instability means there is no conclusive answer; hence the question mark in the course title. Rather, the solution is precisely the open-ended, yet subtly guided, social constructivism of Cooperative Learning which may potentially facilitate both outstanding attainment and tools for empowered students to formulate authentic British Muslim identity ahead of media and politicians.
To quote Winston Churchill: “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”
For this reason, it is my intention that ideas and feedback from this course should be used to organically adapt and develop these strategies over time through a nationwide network of interested educationalists.
NQT video interview on Cooperative Learning, PSHE, peer support, social skills.
Deputy head video interview on Ofsted compliance.
Head Teacher video interview on Sutton Trust and Pupil Premium.
Healing Fractures, Islamic Awareness Week, Norwich, March 17, 2014