Abstract
Abstract: This article researches how Muslim students in Canada negotiate identity in an extremely complex discursive terrain of the unofficial Islamophobia curriculum of family, schooling, and mass media. Critical examination of the exclusion of Muslims from school policies and the absence of Muslim experiences and perspectives in the Ontario Language Curriculum are highlighted. This article aims at developing teacher educators, in-service teachers and teacher candidates’ critical multicultural awareness of how Muslim minority students negotiate the absence of their culture in the secondary language curricula. Drawing from postcolonial feminist perspectives and curriculum theory this research was conducted with seven young Muslim women as participants. Findings indicate while absent in the official secondary language curriculum, the unofficial curriculum represents Muslim women as the cultural “other” sustained through the unofficial school curriculum and media portrayals. This study argues for a need to involve teacher educators, in-service teachers and teacher candidates in complicated conversations on cultural and linguistic differences, engagement with life-experiences of cultural minorities, development of complex pedagogies, critical media literacies and multicultural practices that are diverse and inclusive.
Highlights
Teacher educators, in-service teachers, and teacher candidates struggle with how to work successfully with students from different backgrounds against the backdrop of overseas conflicts, the terror attacks of 9/11, and the ongoing war on terror; attitudes towards Muslim students pose a particular challenge
As teachers, think we know about this diverse population is learned via the unofficial curriculum of the mass media, where Muslims are narrowly constructed as the embodiment of difference
Muslim female students who are visually marked by Islamic face covering have unique challenges negotiating their identities within a complex, shifting discursive terrain between family expectations, absence in the school curriculum, and mass media representations
Summary
In-service teachers, and teacher candidates struggle with how to work successfully with students from different backgrounds against the backdrop of overseas conflicts, the terror attacks of 9/11, and the ongoing war on terror; attitudes towards Muslim students pose a particular challenge. To grasp the complex positionality of Muslim youth in Canadian classrooms requires a nuanced approach to multicultural education that goes beyond race, class, and gender to include family, religion, and ethnicity, as well as the power of mass media in the construction of dominant ethnic and religious identities. Contrary to popular understandings of Muslim females as passive, oppressed, and exotic, their stories convey a strong sense of agency seldom portrayed in the media or school curriculum. Their narratives speak back to Islamophobia, widespread assumptions about Muslim female identity and the absence of their lived experience in the curriculum. Many young Muslim women share stories of how they powerfully assert their identities “in relation to the categories laid on them” (Khan, 2009, p. 40)
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
