Distinguishing Features of the ARK Curriculum – Part I
Before we began designing ARK Academy’s Islamic studies curriculum, we reviewed a variety of Islamic studies curricula and consulted published research assessing such curricula (Memon, N. et al. 2021). This process led us to decide that our curriculum should be designed with several features in mind. In this post, we will examine two of these: (i) the avoidance of heavy repetition (across years of study) and (ii) conveying moral lessons in a way that invites reflection.
1) Avoiding Repetition
A common feature of many Islamic studies curricula is that they feature substantial repetition across years of study: often, the same material is covered year after year, with a slight increase in depth each year. For example, prayer (salah) may be covered yearly. While repetition can help protect against student forgetfulness over time, this benefit can come at the cost of student engagement: students who have already learned (or merely feel they have already learned) the material may find themselves bored. We are structuring our curriculum so that once students enter the first grade, major topics are directly revisited only every several years. Meanwhile, core skills (e.g., the method of performing prayer), will be reinforced daily, through the practice.
Of course, with large gaps between revisiting the same topic, students may gradually forget some fundamentals over time. Instead of featuring direct repetition, our curriculum seeks to counteract “retention loss” by aiding students by revisiting topics in a different fashion. Specifically, our curriculum will emphasize connections across the material learned in different subjects, units, and years of study. For example, in first grade, students will spend about two weeks learning about the story of Prophet Ibrahim (Abraham). They will learn about his life from his childhood to his death, including how his wife Lady Hajar (Hagar) searched for water for their infant son Prophet Isma’il (Ishmael), how Prophet Ibrahim was tested with sacrificing his son, and how the two later rebuilt the Ka’ba and performed Hajj as father and son. Later, in second grade, students will learn about the Prophet Muhammad’s farewell pilgrimage, which will also include coverage of the rites of Hajj. These rites will be connected to the aforementioned aspects of the story of Prophet Ibrahim that students learned in the prior year. Connections also allow for a deeper understanding of the material. With practice, students should eventually be able to make such connections independently.
2) Approach to Conveying Moral Lessons
A cornerstone of any Islamic Studies curriculum geared toward younger learners is the teaching of ethics (akhlaq). Often curricula include material that is already familiar to even young students. On the one hand, most children entering a kindergarten classroom already know that it is, for example, good to listen to one’s parents and bad to hurt others. But on the other hand, striving to improve one’s ethical behavior is a fundamental value of Islam.
Certainly, if there’s any way to improve student behavior with respect to listening to their parents and avoiding harm to others, it’s worth including in a curriculum! Where students—and indeed people in general—often fall short is in terms of acting on values such as these, rather than their awareness of these values in the first place. To that end, ethical behavior is taught by being modeled and practiced. It is modeled by the teacher through their actions and their disposition, and it is practiced by students in all that they do. Our curriculum will be grounded on four core virtues drawn from Islamic principles: courage, humility, integrity, and compassion. These four virtues will be introduced to students over time and then revisited in new contexts.
Moral lessons will also be imparted through coverage of the stories of great personalities, such as the prophets and imams. While many of these lessons are quite clear, our curriculum strives to introduce lessons that invite reflection. For example, in coverage of the story of Prophet Yusuf (Joseph), which will also span a week or two of instruction, students will be guided in contemplating the jealousy exhibited by Prophet Yusuf’s older brothers. The brothers’ jealousy can be framed as stemming from a lack of humility, while the harm they subsequently inflict on their brother as a result of this jealousy reveals a lack of compassion, and their willingness to lie to their father, Prophet Ya’qub (Jacob) shows their lack of integrity. As the story progresses, students will learn how the older brothers’ jealous actions did not benefit them, and indeed, led to the opposite of what they initially hoped. Their negative feelings toward their younger brothers will also be contrasted with Prophet Ishaq’s (Isaac’s) positive feelings toward his older brother, Prophet Isma’il, which students will have learned about in a preceding lesson.
What’s to come
In our next post, we will examine two additional distinguishing features of our curriculum.
Further reading
Memon, N., Alhashmi, M, & Abdallah, M. (Eds.). (2021). Curriculum Renewal for Islamic Education: Critical Perspectives on Teaching Islam in Primary and Secondary Schools. Routledge.