Date of Award
January 2015
Degree Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Curriculum & Instruction
First Advisor
JoAnn Phillion
Committee Member 1
Anatoli Rapoport
Committee Member 2
Ayse Ciftci
Committee Member 3
Suniti Sharma
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to examine the perspectives of six teachers who have taught in Islamic schools in the U.S. to comprehend the general context of multicultural education in Islamic schools. This study was designed as a descriptive collective case study primarily to investigate how racial, class, national, language and gender diversity were observed in six different Islamic schools’ climates and classrooms. Designing this research as a collective case study fostered the exploration of various social dynamics among Muslim communities in the U.S., and exemplified different characteristics of Muslim communities through the six cases. Key findings and analyses have found that multicultural education and its improvement were not promoted effectively in six Islamic schools in the U.S.; which implied that multicultural education in Islamic schools cannot be conceptualized without peeling back the layers of pluralism in Muslim communities. The discussion of key findings and analyses concluded that the contexts of each difference (race, class, nationality, language, and gender) are part of a complex dynamic that depends on the Muslim community, administrator, teachers, parents, and policies of Islamic schools. The experiences and descriptions of six Islamic school teachers, most of whom had graduate degrees in education, showed that multicultural education curriculum cannot be generalized for Islamic schools in the U.S.
Recommended Citation
El-Atwani, Kadriye, "Cultivating Multicultural Education in Islamic Schools in the U.S: Teachers' Perspectives about Diversity in Islamic Schools" (2015). Open Access Dissertations. 1453.
https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/open_access_dissertations/1453