Puebla Learning Community: Leading Practice seminar series

In 2003, I was working at the National College as a research assistant and consultant on Islamic schools. My report, ‘Leading Islamic Schools’, is published online by them. I also co-hosted a ‘leading practice seminar’ on issues surrounding Muslim pupils in state schools during the invasion of Iraq.

Below is an adaptation of the latest leaflet from the NCSL on the ‘leading practice seminar’ series. It is very similar to what Abdullah Trevathan and I are planning for the Puebla Learning Community and we intend to put on a series of residential seminars during 2008-9. Information will also be available at http://theretreat-online.com/ inshallah.

The only difference is that we see leadership in Islamic schools as a collaboration between all of the stakeholders – pupils, teachers, parents and governors. If the following seems interesting, please visit our blog.


Puebla Learning Community: Leading Practice Seminar Series

A series of innovative and creative seminars to address Islamic school issues; 1st residential seminar 16th-23rd August 2008.

Our leading practice seminar series is designed to tackle issues at the forefront of Islamic school practice and policy. The seminars draw on the latest thinking about leadership in Islamic schools and are designed to respond to the needs of school stakeholders in innovative and interactive ways.

The seminars play a key part in our research and policy work by:

· Identifying current and significant themes for enquiry and exploring them with key individuals and groups

· Respecting the knowledge and practice of school stakeholders

· Providing a dynamic forum for dialogue

· Bringing together theory and practice to create new understanding that has relevance in schools and for policy development

· Developing processes to ensure that new understandings are widely available for application

We have a commitment to build from the best of what is known to create new understanding. Seminar programs are structured to give respect to the three fields of knowledge and ensure that we:

· Learn from and with practitioners – their significant practice, their perspectives on current experience or problems, their accumulated understanding and insights from prior experience and their enthusiasm

· Use national and international theory and research to frame, support, structure, illuminate or challenge the knowledge and thinking that school stakeholders bring

· Employ processes that enrich the dialogue between practitioners and researchers and provide opportunities or collaborative work to create new insights and understanding

(with acknowledgements to the NCSL)

This is the email that has most recently been circulated regarding the Family Retreat this summer and the general idea behaind the Puebla Learning Community. Please feel free to make a comment or a contribution.
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Suppose that many Muslims in the UK today are concerned about the education their children or grandchildren are receiving. Suppose that there are many different initiatives beginning to create new curriculums, new styles of school: home-schooling, small schools, Islamic Waldorf and Montessori schools and others. Suppose that organisations are beginning to build an infrastructure of conferences, publications and websites around the theme of education and teacher training in the Muslim community.

Now suppose that the answer lies, not in tinkering with and trying to improve British State education system, or even adopting a system already developed by someone else, but in combining the traditional understanding of Islamic spirituality with the most advanced developments in European philosophy within a practical context of participative action research and learning community development.

Suppose, further, that in adopting this approach, not only can the education of children be made more relevant and successful, but a new and dynamic approach created to establishing the deen of Islam, avoiding the twin pitfalls of ‘fundamentalism’ and ‘innovation’?

All of this is in fact happening now.

Abdullah Trevathan is already well known as the director of the Islamic Retreat, recently the subject of a BBC series. He was, for many years, the Headteacher of Islamia Primary School, the UK’s first, government funded Islamic school. He is currently a senior lecturer in Religious Education at Roehampton University and is preparing his PhD on the work of Ibn al Arabi, al Shaykh al Akbar in comparison with the philosophy of Martin Heidegger.

Ibrahim Lawson has been the Headteacher of 4 different Islamic schools and has conducted research for the National College for School Leadership on leadership in Islamic schools. He is currently preparing a PhD in action research in education.

Together, they are planning the development of an innovative approach to Islamic schooling and teacher training. The first public event will be a week long retreat program this summer for families and educational professionals at which the practical groundwork will be laid inshallah for a new form of participative, Islamic learning community.

If you are interested in finding out more, contact them at enquiries@theretreat-online.com or pueblalc@gmail.com. Visit also their blog at http://pueblalearningcommunity.blogspot.com/

A Family Retreat this summer

The Family Retreat and Islamic Learning Community
Summer 2008

This is to announce a program of events and activities entitled ‘The Family Retreat and Islamic Learning Community’ which is designed primarily for parents and children.

Applications from teachers and other education professionals will also be welcome.

The retreat will take place in the beautiful and isolated centre at Alqueria de Rosales, high in the Sierra Segura mountains of Andalusia, 2 hours drive from the city of Granada and also within easy reach of Almeria, Alicante and Murcia airports.
(See http://www.al-madrasa.com/eng)

· Venue: Alqueria de Rosales, Granada Province, Spain
· Dates: Saturday 16th August – Saturday 23rd August
· Cost*: Adults – 500 euros, children under 13 - 250 euros, including full board and lodging. Large, comfortable tent accommodation is available at a reduced cost.
*prices are flexible: a more detailed cost can be given when we know your accommodation preferences.

Program

· The program will be based on our successful ‘Retreat’ format which was the subject of a television series last year (see http://www.theretreat-online.com/)

· In addition to the sessions of Salah, Dhikr, Qur’an recitation and practical activities and walks normally offered on our retreat program, the theme of the week will be ‘education’. Participants will take part in workshops and activities with a focus on education designed to generate new thinking from shared knowledge and experience. The aim will be to lay the foundations for a new vision in Islamic education for both children and adults. Our hope is that this process will result in a new kind of school or learning community.

· There will be a variety of activities for children of all ages, including Islamic art and craft work, sports and games, including horse riding and swimming, and outings.

· Specialists in Islamic education may also be invited to share their experience and ideas with us.

· The design of the program will be in your hands and according to your interests and needs. For this reason, we would like to hear from you now in order to begin that conversation, even if you are not yet sure that you are able to attend you still have a role to play.

Retreat organisers: Abdullah Trevathan and Ibrahim Lawson

Abdullah and Ibrahim have both been in education for over 25 years. Abdullah is currently Senior Lecturer in Religious Education at Roehampton University; Ibrahim is Head Teacher at Al Risalah Secondary School in London, UK.

Contact us at pueblalc@googlemail.com or enquiries@theretreat-online.com

Visit our blog http://pueblalearningcommunity.blogspot.com/ to join in the conversation.

And please forward this invitation to anyone you think may be interested.

John Dewey on inquiry

I find 'pragmatism' an interesting approach to philosophy (slogan - "no proposition is immune to revision") and I think that inquiry is the basic form of education. His view of education was that it was 'the reconstruction of experience' and this seems to be an fruitful topic for discussion. The excerpt below contains some challenging ideas given the 'check or obstacle to successful human action' currently experienced by Muslims desiring change:

"John Dewey was a leading proponent of the American school of thought known as "pragmatism," a view that rejected the dualistic epistemology and metaphysics of modern philosophy in favor of a naturalistic approach that viewed knowledge as arising from an active adaptation of the human organism to its environment. On this view, inquiry should not be understood as consisting of a mind passively observing the world and drawing from this ideas that if true correspond to reality, but rather as a process which initiates with a check or obstacle to successful human action, proceeds to active manipulation of the environment to test hypotheses, and issues in a re-adaptation of organism to environment that allows once again for human action to proceed. With this view as his starting point, Dewey developed a broad body of work encompassing virtually all of the main areas of philosophical concern in his day. He also wrote extensively on social issues in such popular publications as the New Republic, thereby gaining a reputation as a leading social commentator of his time."

see http://www.iep.utm.edu/d/dewey.htm

Changing the whole

I very often have the impression, and it is one that I find is shared by many colleagues, that we are constantly fighting what can seem like a losing battle. This is not to say that there are not some notable successes, but the overall trend seems to be one of increasing struggle.

This is a very vague statement. The world of education is complex and has many stakeholders at different levels and degrees of participation, so pick any area you think this comment may apply to.

However, I believe it is true to some extent that overall, we are struggling, as we must, to find our way and some problems and difficulties seem to be constant.

Could it be then that we are not addressing the right issues? Could it be that the problems and difficulties we are dealing with continually in the world of Islamic education are in fact not specific to that domain?- do not have their causes exclusively within the world of Islamic education and therefore do not have their solutions within that world?

Suppose that the problems we are constantly having to deal with have their causes in the wider society, the global context. If we are not addressing those issues at source, then we will find ourselves endlessly dealing with the consequences as they arise in specific, localised domains within that overall context.

If I am right, then we have to deal with the whole of society in order to effectively address the issues we find in our part of it; our schools and our communities.

How do we deal with the whole of society? Perhaps there are two basic approaches: top-down and bottom-up.

The top-down approach is to come up with a solution in the form of an end product, a plan of how society should be. We then take that plan out and find ways to impose it on society. This is analogous to an conqueror marching in with his army and imposing control.

The bottom-up approach is to enable small groups of people to ‘grow their own’ solutions. As these grow, they spread and link up, gradually transforming society by re-writing its DNA, cell by cell. Think of it as the ‘viral infection’ approach.

Bottom-up change

Obviously, bottom-up change has to be led by a person or persons at the bottom. This is a paradox for change managers who hold senior positions in the formal hierarchy. The initiative for bottom-up change cannot come from them, authentically or even logically.

But you cannot just say to the pupils: what do you want to learn? You can’t say to ordinary people: what do you want for your community?. They need to be educated before they can answer such a question.

Someone once coined the phrase ‘inside-out’ to describe a process that was neither top-down nor bottom-up. I suppose it has something to do with realising values.

Supposing that as a change manager you want people to change because they want to themselves, as a part of their process of realising their values. Supposing you have experienced the power of authentic values realisation when conducted effectively and want that to be the driving engine of your organisation or colleagues.

They need first the thinking skills necessary to be able to implement an effective process of values realisation (the first one being the skill of recognising the need for change where it exists and accepting responsibility for your part in that).

The education that children and adults need is one that empowers them to take on the management of their own affair, design their own curriculum, develop and realise their own values.

Values realisation is one way of understanding the process of Action Research.

IBERR Forum

The IBERR forum took place in Leicester last weekend. Inshallah, some of you reading this were there, or some of you who were there are reading this.

I came away thinking that we should pay attention to the idea that educational change could be led by the students. More on this later.