Our tested, philosophical ideas in the fields of education and law are made concrete and useful to researchers, practitioners and opinion-formers in three main ways.
The academic and philosophical rigour of our ideas is the platform of all our work. We make full use of the academic peer-review process to develop and test our ideas before they reach the public domain more widely through our teacher-training, our judicial training and our policy work. Please click here to access our publications.
Our academic work also involves the writing of full-scale books to inform the practice of researchers and professionals:
As well as academic publications, we disseminate our ideas through academic conferences and seminars, of which we attend at least four carefully selected ones each year, and workshops for researchers into Islam and Muslims which we have given at SOAS, the University of Cardiff and the UCL Institute of Education.
Our ideas work directly to improve the practice of professionals and their impact on the lives of young people through face-to-face training.
Every year, we run:
Our History education workshops show teachers how an inclusive historical provision will also be more accurate, true to the discipline of History and interesting for all types of children.
Our Religious Education workshops suggest how the philosophy of critical realism can be applied to create an RE provision that allows pupils to reflect on, justify, critique and articulate the beliefs and values of their own faith traditions whilst remaining open to the wisdom of those of other faiths and none.
Our Judicial workshops examine cases of Serious Crime and procedural issues in court that appear to be Islam-related and interrogate the relationship between the principles of Islamic shari’a and those of English Common Law.
Our Media workshops show how journalists can make the presentation of Islam in the media more balanced, accurate and useful.
On occasion, it is necessary for ideas to effect change and transformation in the world on a macro-scale through the mechanisms of national policy-making.
Our three reports to the National Curriculum Review for History (2011-2012) were instrumental in articulating the strong case for the inclusion of elements of the Muslim contribution to the progress of humanity in the National Curriculum. After hard political work, many of these recommendations were included in the new specification of the National Curriculum for History for the benefit of all children in English schools.