Abstract:
The purpose of this thesis is to identify, describe, and explain the challenges faced by Muslim students in New Zealand’s public education system. This education system is committed to the inclusion of diverse cultures and religions in government funded state-secular schools and state-integrated religious schools. However, this research shows how such a commitment can lead to a deep paradox for Muslim students. The research focuses on how the secular education system responds to a group that has fundamentally different values and practices from those recognised by the system. In turn, this study seeks to understand how Muslim schools respond to a secular education system that has fundamentally different values and practices from those recognised by the Muslim community. The effect New Zealand’s public education has on a Muslim identity, a New Zealand citizenship identity, and on participation in a secular liberal society is examined. The research also addresses the challenges for liberal democracy in catering for religious diversity in a secular education system.
The empirical research included interviews with nine participants, comprising immigrant Muslim tertiary students and Muslim and non-Muslim teachers. Each participant provided insights into the ways in which schools regulate, restrict, and reproduce knowledge through their curriculum. Moreover, the participants’ stories revealed tensions experienced by the students to different degrees in their schools, homes, and in the wider New Zealand society. The tension was theorised as a ‘liberal paradox’, one made visible in state-funded integrated Muslim schools as they attempt to design a curriculum that aligns with their beliefs and that also meets the requirements of the national democratic-based curriculum values and principles. This national requirement is in tension with New Zealand’s shift to a community-responsive (i.e., localised) curriculum, a shift which gives greater weight to a school’s special character.
Participants who encountered a more moderate approach to Islam at school reported experiencing less tension, and felt more confident in their personal identity and ability to integrate into New Zealand’s secular liberal society. Those students who received a stricter religious education experienced considerable tension, were more conflicted in their personal identity, and more likely to withdraw from overly conservative forms of Islam. Students’ university experiences appear to have helped them to develop the confidence to socialise in wider secular life, regardless of the nature of their earlier compulsory education. Although the study was small, the findings suggest that Muslim schools are experiencing considerable challenges between the recognition of Muslim religious beliefs and practices allowed for in the design of a localised Muslim curriculum and the requirements to adhere to the values and principles of the national curriculum.