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/