A Critical Analysis of Moroccan Muslim Migrant Mothers’ Perceptions on Teacher Attitudes and Discourses Towards Their Children in Spanish Formal Education

Abstract

Teachers can be transgressive agents to foster the inclusion of the growing migrant population in European schools. However, they are often faced by many challenges working with the ethnic/religious diversity in their classrooms. Moreover, they sometimes adopt stigmatised views about minoritised students that affect their attitudes and discourses towards them. Muslim migrant students tend to endure discrimination and essentialist discourses in their educational experiences. Thus, this study aims to analyse teachers’ discourses and attitudes towards Moroccan Muslim migrant students in their formal education, from the perspective of their mothers. A critical qualitative study with a mixed thematic content analysis was carried out. In-depth interviews with a total of nine Moroccan mothers were conducted. There are still cases in which teachers’ discourse and attitudes can marginalise Moroccan Muslim migrant students. This can be explained by the lack of teacher training. Teachers sometimes struggle to tackle discrimination, which is eased by well-established action plans. There is a need for contextualised and specific training for teachers. Furthermore, policies, schools and the community should support and involve teachers in the development of more inclusive practices that are aware of systemic inequality and privilege.

1. Introduction

In the last few decades, there has been an increase in child migration globally, with this group constituting around 12% of the total migrant population [1]. Furthermore, this movement has resulted in the influx of a high percentage of Muslims into Europe [2]. In the face of this reality, European countries and governments have focused their efforts on welcoming and accommodating Muslim migrant students, trying to respond to the new demands that this diversity entails [3].

This arising diversity in European schools calls for greater readiness of educators; however, there is a lack of evidence-based training that focuses on equity and social awareness for teachers [4]. In fact, many teachers manifest a need for professional development in multiculturality and difficulties regarding ethnic and religious heterogeneity [3,5,6,7,8,9]. This is key, since racism and Islamophobia can be extremely pervasive on the teachers’ mental schemas, modelling their behaviour in such implicit ways that are often hard to identify [5,6,10].

Preconceived socio-cultural ideas, policies, schools and the community tend to negatively influence teachers’ treatment and expectations of migrant minority students, thus limiting their access to educational opportunities and outcomes [10,11,12,13,14,15]. In fact, teachers’ negative discourses around migration and Islam hinder student participation and tend to create tensions within the classroom, which prevents these students from participating [3,5,16]. This is a serious concern, since exclusionary practices usually affect these students profoundly, both psychologically and academically [12,14,17,18].

This discourse and teaching expectations are embedded in the hidden curriculum itself, which subtly shapes classroom dynamics and formal learning, adhering to the hegemonic and ”conventional” norms and attitudes [19]. Thus, it continues to be noted that schools not only play a decisive role in the inclusion of these students, but also in their exclusion, based on practices that reproduce and strengthen systemic inequalities and a dominant-culture-based curriculum [20,21].

Numerous studies state that discrimination, racism and Islamophobia are pervasive obstacles that Muslim migrant students have to face in their educational contexts [22,23,24,25]. In Spain, Muslims are considered the collective who endure more discrimination, stigmatisation and Islamophobia, which is often fuelled by media and hate speech [26,27]. Moroccans are the biggest migrant Muslim collective in Spain [28], and according to several studies, they still face discrimination, alienation and Islamophobia in their educational and social experiences in the Spanish context [29,30,31].

Consequently, this study aims to analyse teachers’ discourses and attitudes towards Moroccan Muslim migrant students in their formal education, from the perspective of their mothers. Many studies focus on teachers’ attitudes and expectations towards minority migrant students and do not include the minority groups at the centre of said studies [10,11,12,13,15]; in turn, the minority groups’ perceptions tend to be overlooked. Since a critical approach guided this study, we tried to engage with Moroccan Muslim migrant mothers, as the minority collective concerned with this reality. Therefore, they can voice their perceptions about a situation that directly affects them and their children [32].

2. Theoretical Framework

2.1. Understanding Teachers’ Attitudes: Bordieu’s Cultural Capital Theory and Habitus

Bordieu’s [33] definition of cultural capital is key in understanding educational inequality, as those belonging to higher social classes tend to have greater access to resources, knowledge and experiences that, in turn, foster greater opportunities and social success. This, in part, explains the gap that migrant minority students face, since they can lack access to this cultural capital compared to their other dominant group peers, such as economic solvency, greater language knowledge, higher parental education, etc. [12,17].

In this sense, following the Social Reproduction Theory (STR), the hierarchisation of educational institutions enhances the legitimisation and reproduction of social inequalities [33], which directly affects the students who need education the most in the first place [21,34]. Teachers can act as transgressive agents against these ingrained socio-educational imbalances, by developing more inclusive practices that are sensitive to social justice [35]. However, their own preconceptions and prejudice can taint their behaviour and discourses about migrant minority students, which again, leads them to adopt discriminatory practices [11,12,20,23]. In this sense, Bordieu would introduce the concept of habitus, meaning that individuals would breed unconscious predispositions, which are often stigmatising, in their own belief system by interacting with different collectives [36].

This is especially concerning, since teachers tend to acquire dominant middle-class values and beliefs during their training, regardless of their background, hence forcing students to comply to specific notions of what is considered acceptable [29]. Furthermore, teachers who find it hard to relate to and understand specific social and/or ethnic groups also struggle to involve them properly in education [10]. This often denies the realities of ethnic and religious minority students, whose culture and religion tend to be unwelcome in the classroom [5,24,37]. Consequently, they are being denied a quality and inclusive education, with discourses that hinder their optimal development and that are impervious to the power imbalances of the system [6,13].

The negative representation of Moroccan Muslims in Spain can lead teachers to internalise tendentious attitudes, discourses and expectations [27,30,31]. This reality can also have serious repercussions on the development and academic performance of the students [11,14,17]. Therefore, it is important to raise teacher awareness about these systemic inequalities, because White hegemony, dominance and colonialism are extremely embedded in school organisation, clouding our judgement when identifying and tackling privilege [20]. In this sense, the new educational trends are focused on culturally responsive teaching and teacher training in this field [8,38]; this will be further developed in the next section.

2.2. Culturally Responsive Teaching

Current trends in education have focused on culturally responsive teaching as a way to develop educational practices that are inclusive and sensitive to ethnically diverse students [8,38,39,40,41]. This pedagogical model stems from the deficiencies identified in teacher training in western societies, and works as a guide for acquiring knowledge and abilities to work with the growing heterogeneity in schools [3,5,7,9,42].

In this sense, it is worth highlighting that this approach goes beyond acknowledging multiculturality and superficially addressing it in the classroom, as it aims at teachers showing more cultural competence as a whole [8,38]. Culturally responsive teaching does not seek an extensive knowledge in every culture and/or ethnicity, but rather encourages teacher criticism and awareness about systemic discrimination and how it affects minoritised groups on a daily basis [6,8,22,24]. In fact, it is expected that teachers address this marginalisation in their teaching in addition to fostering curriculum changes that include the history and voices of those marginalised groups [38,41].

As can be seen, the tenets of culturally responsive teaching focus mainly on criticality, as it encourages educators to question their essentialist ideas and stigmatised understanding of minoritised identities that can model the way in which they interact with them [6,8,40]. This aims to raise teachers’ awareness about their own actions and attitudes, which can sometimes be negatively biased and, in turn, have adverse consequences on their students [10,11,12,13,14,15]. Hence, this approach seeks the positive recognition of the identities of those minoritised migrant students, while responding to the real needs identified in their educational experiences [8].

In conclusion, it is worth highlighting Memon & Chown [6]’s suggestions to foster a culturally responsive teaching in regard to Muslim students. They call for the recognition of Islam as a strong asset in Muslim learners’ identities, and thus, the need for cross-cultural dialogues and debates within the classroom. Moreover, they call for structural changes in the school culture and curriculum that do not overlook religion, as this fosters educational equality. Teachers are contributing agents in fostering the inclusion of Muslim migrant students in their classrooms, as well as enhancing more tolerant and respectful attitudes towards diversity [3,39]. Adopting culturally responsive pedagogies can set the groundwork for greater inclusive and intercultural practices [8,38].

3. Materials and Methods

The data presented in this paper were generated from a larger study that sought to examine Moroccan Muslim migrant mother’s perceptions on their children’s school experiences in their formal education. This study aims to analyse teachers’ discourses and attitudes towards Moroccan Muslim migrant students in their formal education, from the perspective of their mothers. In order to do so, the following research questions were developed: What are the perceptions of Moroccan Muslim migrant mothers about the teacher’s attitudes towards their children? What are their opinions about the teachers’ training on discrimination and cultural and religious diversity recognition?

A critical qualitative study [43] with a mixed thematic content analysis was carried out [44,45]. A critical approach guided this study as we considered power dynamics and inequality thorough the understanding of the respondents’ experiences [43,46]. Moreover, we focused on the narratives of those minoritised groups as a way to denounce the barriers to equal access and treatment that they face [32,43,46]. This approach allowed us to answer the following specific objectives: (A) Investigate Moroccan Muslim migrant mothers’ opinions about teacher attitudes towards their children; (B) Examine mothers’ perceptions about the teachers’ training and ability to tackle discrimination and recognise cultural and religious diversity.

This study is framed under the principles of Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Critical Race Hermeneutics (CRH). The latter is included as it specifically focuses on the impact of discourses and narratives on the reproduction of racism and discrimination [46]. Therefore, CRH is necessary, as the study aims to analyse the teachers’ discourses and attitudes towards Moroccan Muslim students. Both approaches recognise that racism stems from historical and colonialists reasons that, in turn, perpetuate oppression and violence [43,46]. Moreover, they state that Whiteness and White Supremacy create power imbalances for minoritised students, as dominant White students have inherent, and often subtle, access to greater opportunities that position them in a privileged status [20].

CRT and CRH hold that racism is structural and is pervasive for those racialised and minoritised collectives [43,46]. In this study, we focus on Moroccan and Muslim students, recognising that their race and religious identity can act as elements that enable discrimination and inequity. Moreover, CRT calls for counter-storytelling by giving voice to minoritised groups; hence, the decision to interview Moroccan Muslim mothers [32,43,46] through in-depth interviews and a focus group. In this study, we are going to focus on the results obtained from the in-depth interviews with a total of nine participants.

Regarding the nature of this study, in-depth interviews were considered the right instrument. They allowed us to deepen our knowledge about a sensitive reality while voicing the experiences of those who actually have to endure them [32,43,44]. Moreover, they provided insightful information that could not be obtained through quantitative data collection [32,44]. In this sense, by choosing to conduct semi-structured interviews, we could obtain information about these experiences of discrimination while maintaining a sense of openness and reflection [44]—information that we could later analysed from a critical frame [43,46].

Face-to-face interviews took place in the mothers’ homes or in the locations of their choice (e.g., cafés, mosques, etc.), with a duration of approximately 40 to 60 min. They consisted of open-ended questions designed to investigate the mothers’ perspectives about their children’s education. In order to learn about more subtle forms of discrimination and exclusion, directly addressing discrimination and/or racism in questions was avoided initially. By doing this, the hope was to detect experiences of othering that can go unnoticed due to their ambiguous and implicit character. Participants were therefore encouraged to share their views about their children’s schools and interactions and relationships with their teachers. Finally, we asked if they had perceived any unfair, degrading or inconsiderate treatment on the part of any member of the educational community, directly addressing discrimination.

Following the principles of critical studies, we acknowledged our own positionality within the study and our role as resisting agents to this discrimination [32,43]. Therefore, a sensitive interview team was established considering ethnicity, age and gender as elements that could create tensions or gaps with the interviewees. Hence, the team consisted of a young Moroccan translator and a young female researcher/interviewer. This allowed us to draw an insider/in-betweener positionality [32]. Fortunately, thanks to this certain closeness with the interviewees and a thoughtful disposition, the women felt freer and more confident to talk about experiences of discrimination, religion, etc., without fear of reprisals. Moreover, they felt that the researcher could understand their experiences. In fact, most of the mothers expressed their desire to tell their experiences themselves, and the translator was only turned to if necessary.

3.1. Sampling

Moroccan Muslim migrant mothers were chosen as the study population because, as stated before, they are the biggest migrant Muslim collective in Spain [28]. In addition to that, as critical researchers, we were interested in giving visibility to the testimonies of those of minoritised backgrounds [43,46]. Mothers are able to provide broader perspectives about their children’s experiences in formal education, as children are of a young age and can sometimes be less aware about this reality. Moreover, we tried to avoid teacher responses that were biased based on social desirability, leading them to respond in ways that are considered acceptable, instead of their actual opinions [41]. Hence, the mothers’ perspectives could provide a new approach to this reality.

This study used purposeful sampling [44]: participants were recruited in specific places that were previously decided by the researchers, such as certain associations and mosques. The mothers were always introduced by someone they knew and that worked/was within the community (i.e., Imams, social workers, friends, etc.). The choice of this sampling method is explained by the reluctancy of many mothers to participate. In fact, numerous mothers refused to take part when they were approached in more direct ways, i.e., when they were recommended by other friends/acquaintances, but were not actually introduced in person to the interview team. Although informed about the research’s aim and their anonymity, they expressed concern for political persecution and scrutiny—reactions that can be understood, as Islamophobia has grown over the last few years in Spain [26,27]. Thus, accessing the sample was one of the biggest limitations of this study.

A total of nine mothers participated voluntarily in the study. Among the socio-demographic characteristics, it is worth highlighting that they were living in the metropolitan area of Seville, they were of Moroccan origin, and their children were all enrolled in public schools, attending from nursery to secondary education. Moreover, 11.11% had been living in Spain for 0–5 years; 11.11% from 6–10; 44.44% from 16–20; and 33.33% more than 20 years.

3.2. Data Analysis

The interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed. The data analysis was carried out with the program Aquad 7 (v. 7.6.1.1.) following a qualitative thematic content analysis with an inductive and deductive lens. During the deductive phase, the codes were generated theoretically [45] from a previous systematic review of the literature in the field [25]. After the transcription of the interviews, an analysis of the data was conducted, in which new codes and categories were created. A team was formed to analyse the pertinence of the new data-driven dimensions and their addition to the deductive codes. After the discussion and agreement of the team, some dimensions and codes were included, and some excluded. This allowed the subsequent interpretation of the data.

3.3. Ethical Considerations

Participation in the study was voluntary, and all potential participants received an information letter about the research study. Informed consent was designed to ensure the confidentiality and anonymity of the participants and included the possibility of withdrawing from the study at any time. In this document, it was ensured that the information would not be published without prior consent and that the analysis of the data and transcripts would be monitored by the participants themselves to ensure that the information provided was completely true. Participants were asked to sign this consent voluntarily. Pseudonyms were used and names of places mentioned by participants were altered to protect their identities.

4. Results

4.1. Teachers’ Discourses and Attitudes Towards Moroccan Muslim Migrant Students

Results show that mothers perceive that there are some teachers who have a racialised discourse and a negative view of the migrant population, as participants 4 and 5 state. This logically has a negative impact on these students’ and their families’ educational experiences. Their own habitus [36], preconceived ideas, stereotypes and ethnocentrism influence the treatment and expectations they have about migrant students and, therefore, the students’ well-being and academic performance [10,11,12,13,15].

E5: I do remember very much that the way teachers talked about foreign population when my son was little and how they talk about foreign population now, with my young children, has changed a lot. I think the perspective has changed for the worse in this case.

E4: It was a bit bad for me, the headteacher, the deputy headteacher, the teachers… they are all the same. It’s a bit weird […] they had it in for immigrant children and that’s it.

Unfortunately, these discriminatory attitudes are normally perpetuated in an implicit way; thus, teachers fail to recognise the impact of their racialised schemas on the development of impartial practices on minoritised students [10,40]. This aligns with E6’s excerpt, who claims she does not think they are intentionally racists towards them.

E6: Teachers can be racists sometimes… They unintentionally, accidentally say one thing to me, and the next time I remember more things they said.

However, this implicit nature is of great danger, since it can be justified in everyday teaching practices, and influences not only the teachers’ behaviours but students’ outcomes and identity [10,14]. This fact was confirmed by E4, who struggles when teachers and other school staff target her son as ”lazy”, while he is actually having severe difficulties communicating and interacting with his peers and teachers—a reality that changes when her son goes to a different school. This shows that, in the former school, staff adopted biased views towards this student that affected their expectations and the way they treated him [10,11,12,15].

E4: With one of my sons, we struggled a lot with him, because he didn’t speak, it was terrible. I had a very bad time with him because he didn’t speak, he didn’t have any friends too. And the teacher and the school psychologist was terrible. I was going to ask them, and they say: “it’s just that the child is lazy, the child…” and I was always crying all the time. But well, they always say the same word to me: “lazy”. But then, when they change school, everything was better. Many times the teachers…they say, this child is very affectionate, I haven’t heard this word in the other school. Look (she gets goose bumps). I also talk to the social worker and asked me about him, but he said it was alright.

In this same vein, E9’s son experienced another racist event with his history teacher. Her son needed the highest marks possible in every subject of his Baccalaureate (10 out of 10) due to his wish to study medicine. He got the highest grades and was even named valedictorian, but he got a lower mark in history. Although he asked for alternative forms of evaluation to improve his score, the teacher only gave him the option of doing a paper on Morocco within the negative discourse, which her son evidently refused to do.

E9: Well the teacher had given him a 9, but he wanted a 10 because he is looking at a medical degree and, in the end, as he has asked many times to do the exam again, to do it differently, to raise his mark, but the teacher gives him that paper, to present Morocco in a bad light and he didn’t want to do that. And in the end for that reason, thank God, my son has been named the best student in the school, for his mark and everything and has got into … well, into medicine yes, but that 9 has affected him a lot … My case, I speak of my case. Because he was the best high school record in his high school, but that has affected him a lot […] Well in the end when he was named the best in the school, then the teacher tells him that he is ashamed for not giving him his 10 because he deserves it … He has told him that he is ashamed not to have given him his mark. But after having gone through an awful year, because of stress, because of nerves, it has affected him a lot.

This teacher’s attitudes and discourse affected her son enormously, not only on an emotional level, but also to the detriment of his academic qualifications. This led to additional suffering and hardship for her son, who was already going through a delicate educational stage. This is Whiteness, which obliges this student to have to fight for a privilege that a non-migrant White student takes for granted [20]. Moreover, his culture of origin is judged and criticised from a White-dominant, colonialist perspective that enables racialised stereotyping. These prejudiced and preconceived ideas allow the teacher to behave in a discriminatory/racist way, justifying unequal treatment and minimising the access to opportunities for these students—a reality that is unacceptable, especially for education professionals [6,47].

In this sense, mothers agree with the overarching idea thorough this section. They recognise the value of teachers’ discourse and how this can affect students’ development, not only at the academic level, but also regarding their well-being. In fact, E9 expresses the relevance of this discourse and how it can directly affect the students’ progress or regression, if not used with care.

E9: If I’m bad, that’s it, I don’t have to change, I’m already bad, understand? So, the teachers’ discourse either pushes forward positively or pushes forward negatively.

This is concerning, since stigmatised discourses can be easily justified by the school’s hierarchised structure and its colonialist and hegemonic foundation [19,20]. In this sense, this can be prevented with more teacher training, specifically in culturally responsive pedagogies, that foster criticality towards systemic violence and inequality [5,8,33,38]. This idea would be developed in the next section.

4.2. Lack of Teacher Training

In terms of pedagogical practice, these mothers identify that teachers are not sufficiently trained or sensitised with cultural and religious diversity, as can be seen in E6’s excerpt. These results coincide with several studies that confirm that most teachers believe that their training does not sufficiently prepare them in terms of diversity and that they have a lack of skills to deal with conflicts arising from working in diverse multicultural contexts [3,5,6,7,8,9].

E6: But in the school, they have no idea about Islam or about Moroccan culture or other countries’ cultures.

Several authors justify this lack of knowledge and commitment to cultural diversity by the strong academic demands that are normally centred in very specific knowledge areas [3,7], thus limiting teachers’ possibilities to work with their own students’ interests and experiences [42]. However, the new social demands cannot accept this argument as valid, since having access to a quality education is a basic human right [47,48]. Hence, it is educators’ responsibility to be aware about their own privilege and positionality, while fostering more interculturality and inclusion [6,8].

In this sense, adequate teacher training in culturally responsive teaching can be a solution to foster interculturality within the classroom, as well as recognition of those minority students [8,38]. In fact, mothers recognise that when teachers have enough knowledge or training, they can make a difference in the educational experiences of their children by enhancing and valuing their own culture and religion, thus developing a more inclusive teaching style.

E2: Actually, this also depends on the teacher. But really, a teacher that is educated in terms of general culture… My kids had one in secondary school. He really knew about Islam and he always valued Moroccan culture and everything that was related to Arabic culture.

This lack of training is not only stated in cultural knowledge, but also when identifying and tackling discrimination. In fact, E1 experienced a lack of teacher training in exactly this area, where they were not prepared for these events. This reality shows that not only is a good predisposition on the part of teachers necessary, but also adequate training, especially when it comes to such sensitive issues of discrimination [22,23,40,48].

E1: We had a meeting after my daughter had a racist incident because of her afro hair. It’s true that we talked about it, but it’s true that I realized that they weren’t prepared for that kind of call. They didn’t know what they had to do… But they weren’t prepared, okay? That’s important. They weren’t prepared for that kind of call.

In particular, situations are identified where racism can be greatly reduced with a good action plan and appropriate teacher intervention and training. This makes these mothers and their children feel accepted and respected, as E2 manifests. This shows how individual actions and the teacher’s own approach to pedagogy and inclusion can have an impact on the inclusion of both pupils and their families [6,48].

E2: Well, when that happened, a classmate, I remember, in primary or in secondary school, I don’t remember when, who made a comment like that and, truthfully, I really liked the teacher’s reaction because my son told me that he practically silenced her with arguments and it was a good example for other ignorant classmates.

Hence, more teacher training programs and discussions around race, migration, colonialism and Islamophobia have to be developed in order to tackle the exclusionary practices that stem from systemic inequalities, assimilationist discourses, stigmatisation and power dynamics [21,40,49].

5. Discussion and Conclusions

Results show that there are still cases in which teachers’ discourse and attitudes can reproduce systemic inequalities and exclusionary practices that marginalise Moroccan Muslim migrant students. This is not acceptable, since educators are expected to show respectful teaching practices based on the principles of equality, inclusion and diversity [23,47,48]. Moreover, as stated above, these attitudes hinder students’ outcomes, inclusion and even their sense of belonging [10,11,12,13,23]. While it is true that these can be specific cases, thus not allowing generalisation, we have to acknowledge Whiteness. We cannot deny these realities under justifications of what teachers do right [20], as, unfortunately, racism is embedded in educational and social structures [5,6,10,20,21,22,23,24,25,43,46].

As critical researchers, we acknowledge our positionality and privilege to denounce this reality and criticize the still pervasive essentialist attitudes of teachers [32,43,46]. While they are expected to work on their own belief system and openness to diversity, it is extremely demanding, and even utopic, of us to expect all the work to be done by the educators only. In fact, these racialised discourses stem from the institutionalisation of education and the ingrained imbalances of the whole social and educational system of Western societies [21,31]. Therefore, there is a need for multidisciplinary measures to be adopted, such as policy, curriculum and organisational changes in the Spanish education system. In fact, the Spanish curriculum is quite vague when establishing guidelines for working with cultural diversity [50]; hence, there is a need for greater specifications that would allow teachers to better work with the diversity in the classroom and avoid negative expectations of minoritised groups.

At a micro level, the school culture should be redesigned to recognise cultural/religious diversity on a daily basis in the school life. In order to do so, the schools should adopt more intercultural conversations and discussions, inside and outside the classroom [8,38]. Hence, schools are responsible for creating safe spaces for these dialogues to happen, not only with students but with the whole school community (teachers, families, etc.). We believe that these discussions should be focused on working on understanding systemic inequalities, power imbalances, Islamophobia, racism and colonialism. This would ease the understanding of the realities faced by minoritised Muslim students. This can also have a positive impact on teachers’ attitudes, as teachers who are exposed to greater diversity also tend to show more respectful attitudes towards it [10,39]. Therefore, working with this diversity is key in fostering teachers’ intercultural competences [39,41].

We also think that it is necessary to develop a collaboration network between schools, in which they can share successful and inclusive educational practices. In this sense, we agree with Montero-Sieburth [51], who insist on the diffusion of evidence-based practices that are proven to have a positive impact on the teaching of minoritised migrant students. We believe that the shared experiences would enrich teachers’ pedagogical repertoires and lead them to adopt greater intercultural practices. Moreover, it would expose them to a wide variety of realities that would remodel their own stigmatised perceptions about different collectives [6,10,11]. In this specific case, we would recommend the creation of a network among schools with Muslim and Moroccan students that would help demystify and tackle discriminatory attitudes and views about them.

Interviewees state that teachers lack knowledge about Moroccan culture and the Muslim religion. In this sense, we recognise the benefits of training in culturally responsive teaching, as an asset to provide teachers with the knowledge and abilities to face the diversity of their classrooms [8,38]. While we acknowledge the benefits of this kind of training, we also believe it should be combined with a more contextualised training. That is to say, teachers should be trained in the cultural and religious diversity that constitute their classrooms, since general trainings can homogenise minoritised collectives, denying the multifaceted nature of ethnicity and identity, a reality that is really common, especially with migrant Muslim collectives [22,23,24,40]. In this case, they should receive specific training on Moroccan culture and Islam that would also increase their sensitivity and awareness, as well as their ability to introduce their students’ identity in everyday lessons.

Another concerning reality was that mothers reported teachers struggling to identify and tackle discrimination and racism within the classroom. The results also showed that when the school had a good action plan and they had the sufficient skills, they could actually deal with this situation. In this sense, we insist on schools having very specific anti-racism and anti-Islamophobia policies and protocols that would help teachers to act in these situations. Moreover, we advise this to be complemented by more specific anti-racism/Islamophobia trainings, as a tool to foster inclusion and protect vulnerable students.

Research has shown that Islamophobia is growing in the Spanish context, and Moroccans tend to face great racialisation and discrimination [27,30]. Therefore, we suggest that the previous proposals regarding intercultural discussions and training should be furthered to other members of the community (parents, other staff, students…), thus guaranteeing more understanding and tolerance not only towards Moroccan Muslim students, but towards all those of minoritised backgrounds that can be vulnerable to discrimination. We think it is necessary to develop an integrative approach in which different agencies (i.e., local agents, the school community, educators, parents, activists, etc.) work together to each make their own contributions and help develop greater measures and resources that foster the inclusion of minoritised migrant students.

6. Limitations and Future Research

This research is subject to several limitations. As explained before, accessing the sample was difficult. However, it was possible to conduct in-depth interviews with nine mothers, as well as focus groups with different participants. Although there were obstacles, it was possible to interview a significant number of mothers who provided insightful information about this topic. This is helpful for laying the groundwork for action. In this research, mothers’ perspectives were of great interest, as they gave a new perspective about this reality. Moreover, we tried to avoid social desirability biases in the responses of the teachers. However, future research should also focus on teachers’ and students’ perceptions, which would allow the triangulation of the data and the development of a better picture regarding the problem of this study.