Browsing by Author "Kankaanpää, Suvi"

The goal of this study was to find out, what kind of challenges has Muslim parents and school experienced in their cooperation. According to earlier studies we can note three things. First, functional cooperation between parents and school has many benefits for the child’s schooling. Secondly, functional cooperation between parents and school supports child’s identity which is determined one of the schools’ mission. Thirdly, at the non-Muslim countries Muslims are diverse group which differ at least partly from the majority of people in terms of values, customs, and in culturally as well as religiously. Therefore, cooperation between parents and school is important to investigate especially from Muslim parents’ perspective. I executed my study as systematic literature review and I gathered my material using precise criteria from 1999–2018 articles. My final material consists eight articles which handle, at least part of the research, cooperation between Muslim parents and school in non-Muslim countries from the perspective of Muslim parents or school. All my articles are qualitative studies and data is gathered through interviews. I search answers to my research question by looking for themes from parents and schools’ interviews from the part the interviews answered to my research questions. From the Muslim parents and schools interviews I found many cooperation challenges of which the biggest ones are lack of teachers’ knowledge, recognition of Muslims values, unsuitable lessons and teaching material for Muslims, and lack of communication and its consequences. According to the research results we can consider ways to improve cooperation between Muslim parents and school. Increasing communication teachers could get more information on Muslims values and habits, and Muslim parents could get more information on schools’ customs. Via communication Muslim parents could help teachers and school to respect Muslims values and habits, and to support Muslim students’ identity, while still working along curriculum.