Secondary and intermediate female Islamic studies teachers in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia: understanding their teaching

Thesis

The purpose of this study is to investigate how intermediate and secondary female Islamic studies teachers in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, make sense of their teaching. The overarching aim was to produce a descriptive and interpretive account of what is it like to be an IS teacher teaching in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia today. The key questions that frame this study are: 1) How do female Saudi Arabian Islamic studies teachers teach in the classroom? 2) How do female Saudi Arabian Islamic studies teachers make sense of their teaching practices? 3) What is essential however implicit to the experience of being a female Islamic studies teacher in Saudi Arabia today? The study is positioned within a qualitative interpretive tradition, drawing on phenomenology as a guiding conceptual paradigm. The data for this study were collected by means of semi-structured interviews and classroom observations conducted with 24 teachers in six different schools in the city of Jeddah. The analysis of the data began at the individual level, capturing the patterns that emerged for each teacher. A cross analysis was then conducted to elicit key emergent themes for the whole group. However, even where the analysis was carried out primarily at the group level, themes are still illustrated with examples taken from the talk of individual teachers. While the data indicated similarities in substance in the ways in which teachers made sense of their teaching, there were differences in the manifestations of the themes, which are also reported in this study. The themes that emerged from this investigation suggest that the teachers talked about their teaching by referring most essentially to maintaining discipline, teaching as persuasion and dealing with dissonance. The findings suggest that the participating Islamic studies teachers both described and used a set of distinctive pedagogical devices to maintain discipline and to persuade students regarding 9and by means of) pre-planned and well-crafted messages. In both their talk and their practice, the teachers reported a transition from understanding their teaching as a process of transmission of sacred knowledge to understanding it as a process of persuasion. The findings also show that, at the surroundings level, the teachers struggled to deal with issues of dissonance between their commitment to their values and religious beliefs and their required role as teachers teaching under institutional pressures. The research outlines the tension and paradox between the two roles, describing how the teachers maintain this balance in their teaching from the perspective of the teachers themselves.

Authors: Jamjoom, M

• Publication date: 2012
• DOI: 10.5287/ora-nzepq5wkq
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: Oxford University, UK
• Language: English
• Keywords: education
• Subjects: Education