Muslim Female Students Confront Islamophobia: Negotiating Identities In-between Family, Schooling, and the Mass Media

Abstract: This article researches how Muslim students in Canada negotiate identity in an extremely complex discursive terrain of the unofficial Islamophobia curriculum of family, schooling, and mass media. Critical examination of the exclusion of Muslims from school policies and the absence of Muslim experiences and perspectives in the Ontario Language Curriculum are highlighted. This article aims at developing teacher educators, in-service teachers and teacher candidates’ critical multicultural awareness of how Muslim minority students negotiate the absence of their culture in the secondary language curricula. Drawing from postcolonial feminist perspectives and curriculum theory this research was conducted with seven young Muslim women as participants. Findings indicate while absent in the official secondary language curriculum, the unofficial curriculum represents Muslim women as the cultural “other” sustained through the unofficial school curriculum and media portrayals. This study argues for a need to involve teacher educators, in-service teachers and teacher candidates in complicated conversations on cultural and linguistic differences, engagement with life-experiences of cultural minorities, development of complex pedagogies, critical media literacies and multicultural practices that are diverse and inclusive.