“You can’t teach your students something that is divorced from reality”: Palestinian citizenship teachers making sense of the relevance of Islam for citizenship education in Israel

Abstract

Even though religion plays a central role in many people’s lives, it is often omitted from citizenship education in secularized societies. Educational scholars have increasingly demanded that teaching about religion should be included in citizenship curricula to foster effective participation for all citizens. However, this is an enormous challenge, especially in societies like Israel where religion is politicized as an aspect of violent conflict. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with Palestinian Muslim educators in Israel, we explored how citizenship teachers refer to Islam in their citizenship lessons. The teachers in our study drew on Islam as an important resource to either resist predominant conceptions of citizenship education in Israel or to make the subject more meaningful and relevant to their students. We argue that incorporating religious epistemologies alongside critical pedagogies in the citizenship curriculum is a necessary educational task in diverse and conflict-affected societies like Israel.