Women’s Contributions to Islamic Schools in Muslim Diasporic Communities

Dear Colleagues,

Across disciplines, interpretational orientations, and cultural communities, women have played key empirical, theoretical, and practical roles in the development of the emerging and interdisciplinary field of Islamic Education. However, little educational literature has examined their specific contributions. Focusing on formal Islamic schooling in Muslim diasporic communities, including North America, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, this Special Issue examines women’s contributions, primarily via the heterogeneous voices of female Muslim scholars and educators themselves. This Special Issue aims to contribute new knowledge to the growing literature on women’s contributions to Islamic schooling with a focus on three overarching areas: a) empirical and theoretical scholarship, including leadership models and research paradigms; b) issues and advances in praxis within Islamic schools; and c) principles of and perspectives on gender across the content, processes, and objectives of Islamic schooling, and reconciliations with dominant-culture gender shifts.

We invite proposals for papers on women’s contributions including, but not limited to, the following topics:

• K-12 Islamic schooling: content, process, assessment, administration;
• school culture;
• curriculum design and implementation;
• pedagogies (including Islamic pedagogies);
• women’s career trajectories and barriers to advancement;
• school and social leadership;
• traditions of Muslim female scholarship: historical and contemporary;
• the politics of knowledge production in educational research and praxis;
• gender identity construction on sites of Islamic schooling;
• gender roles and responsibilities in philosophies of Islamic education;
• gendered pedagogical pathways;
• innovative educational contributions;
• embodied epistemologies;
• opportunities and challenges of gender segregation in schools;
• character development;
• social and emotional development;
• spiritual development;
• preparing young Muslims for complex futures.

Full papers: 6000–8000 words. Due: June 15, 2021

Prof. Mohamad Abdalla
Dr. Claire Alkouatli
Guest Editors

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