STEP: From Collaboration to Innovation and from Innovation to Collaboration

Marodsilton Muborakshoeva

doi:10.22158/grhe.v2n1p21

Abstract

<em>Secondary Teacher Education Programme (STEP) is a collaborative program of the University College London’s Institute of Education and the Institute of Ismaili Studies in London. Qualitative research was undertaken to collect and analyse data. The findings demonstrate that the collaborative efforts at the senior institutional and lecturers’ levels led to the creation of this innovative programme, which had to constantly reinvent itself and keep the collaboration alive so that the unique features of the programme are sustained. It contends that the most innovative and unique feature of this programme is having an integrated approach to knowledge acquisition and production, where the teacher-candidates are equipped with the content knowledge about Islam and the updated pedagogies and methodologies of teaching to enable them to teach religious education to secondary students. In this endeavour, the teacher-candidates’ roles are immense.</em>

Highlights

Based on the analysis of available documents, qualitative interviews, and reflecting on teaching practice this paper contends that the Secondary Teacher Education Programme (STEP) is an innovative programme that has managed to create a conducive environment for collaborative teaching and learning
The senior scholars at Ismaili Studies (IIS) approached the management of IoE because of its programmes and high reputation and prestige in teacher education as well as the opportunities it presented: We looked at what were the strengths of the IoE and what were some of the things we would be interested in, for example, they had interesting programmes like Citizenship, Ethics, and we felt that the teachers needed to be grounded in those concepts so that the issues of identity, of being a global citizen, being ethically aware of and informed about the kind of teaching they did
While this paper was in the process of publication, further changes happened in STEP, where a new institution, the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) joined this collaborative venture and from 2019 the MA degree will be granted by SOAS

Summary

Introduction

Based on the analysis of available documents, qualitative interviews, and reflecting on teaching practice this paper contends that the Secondary Teacher Education Programme (STEP) is an innovative programme that has managed to create a conducive environment for collaborative teaching and learning. STEP is a collaborative program of the University College London’s Institute of Education (UCL-IoE) and the Institute of Ismaili Studies (IIS) (Memorandum of Agreement, 2011, 2015) The former is a public institution renowned for its research and teaching in the field of education and the latter is a private www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/grhe. Vol 2, No 1, 2019 institution conducting research on Islam and its Shia Ismaili branch and delivering educational programmes for the Shia Imami Ismaili Muslims ( Ismaili Muslims). It is a two-year post-graduate programme where the teacher trainees obtain two degrees, MA in Education (Muslim Cultures and Civilisations) and MTeach. In the attempt to fill the gaps in literature, this research aims to explore these two broad questions: Why was STEP created and how does the programme reinvent itself for continuous collaboration?

Objectives

Methods

Discussion

Conclusion