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Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books The Need For an Islamic Pedagogy LITERATURE REVIEW: WESTERN ANALOGUES TO ISLAMIC PEDAGOGY Education involves the cultural patterns that determine how a people pass on their values and accumulated knowledge/experiences to future generations. I have consciously used as neutral a definition as possible for our purposes here of presenting varying conceptions of education in the East and West.

Education involves two processes, official curriculum content and moral education; in other words while a particular subject matter is being taught, teachers also educate and socialize students into the accepted value system of their society either directly (through the curriculum) or indirectly (through their behavior and how they teach). How we teach is just as important as what we teach; undoubtedly they are intimately linked.

Pedagogy has various usages in the field of education; a common definition used is the “study of teaching methods, including the aims of education and the ways in which such goals may be achieved” (Pedagogy, 2010). Accordingly, the main factors to be addressed when discussing pedagogy are the educator, student, and content; however, this research strives to provide a pedagogy that can be utilized for theological or empirical knowledge (irrespective of content).

The pedagogical definition that will be used here is the teaching methods and corresponding relationship between teacher and student utilized to reach ones’ educational objectives. While much of the literature in the field of education has focused on the cognitive aspects of education, more recent research has highlighted the importance of discussing what kind of moral education goes on in the classroom (Lickona, 1991; Moore, 2007).

In America, values are often derived from the liberal arts public education system, citizens’ various personal religious beliefs, or some combination of both (Moore, 2007; pgs.1-10). The focus of this study is on developing a pedagogy culturally relevant to one particular belief system-Islam; however, it will be analyzed in comparison to existing literature on Islamic pedagogy as well as some analogues from the Liberal Arts value system.

I will present existing literature on Islamic pedagogy as background in the presentation of data section.