Educating Muslim children: Developing a culturally responsive pedagogy

With an attention on young British Muslims, this chapter focuses on the importance of an educational philosophy that is underpinned by a culturally responsive pedagogy. In light of neoliberal reforms in education, it is argued that there is a need to revert back to a more inclusive and collaborative form of education where the line between the school and the community is blurred. As a teaching philosophy, a culturally responsive pedagogy is premised on the idea that valuing culture is central to learning. Educators cannot trivialise or pay token attention to the cultural world and lived experiences of their students, and instead take time to understand their pupils and their sociocultural worlds, listen to them as well as valuing and recognising their cultural identities, histories and heritage within pedagogical spaces of the classroom. Where educational practises are inclusive of cultural diversity and responsive to local conditions, student engagement, empowerment, motivation levels and achievement are increased. This is especially the case where the student population and local community are of black and minority ethnic background who are often negotiating their identities within a wider social and structural reality of Islamophobia, poverty, misrepresentation, discrimination and racism.