Teaching High School Students About Islam in a National Context of Islamophobia

This qualitative case study examined the instructional practice of one secondary social studies teacher to explore the following questions: What strategies and approaches does one world history teacher employ to teach about Islam and Muslims? To what extent might these strategies and approaches counter misconceptions and promote accurate and nuanced understandings of Islam and Muslims? The focus of this study is a Pakistani-Indian American Muslim who was chosen to participate because of his commitment to, interest in, and extensive experience with teaching about world religions, particularly Islam. Data for this study were collected through seventeen hours of classroom observations, semi-structured interviews, and the collection of instructional artifacts. A conceptualization of Islamophobia, provided by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (2010), guided the data analysis. The participant used four key strategies for teaching about Islam and Muslims: addressing misconceptions, humanizing Islam, exploring diversity within Islam, and highlighting similarities. Each of these approaches has potential for combatting misunderstandings and promoting more accurate knowledge and understanding. A key finding that complicates the claims of prior research (e.g. Merchant, 2015) is that comparisons can be made between Islam and other religions that promote understanding rather than ethnocentrism and Islamophobia.