How Teachers Experience the Contradictions Between Islamic Identity and Global Citizenship Education: A Phenomenological Study in Elite Schools in Pakistan

https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19368846

Abstract

This transcendental phenomenological research examines the experiences of teachers in elite schools in Pakistan who encounter contradictions between Islamic identity and global citizenship education (GCE). After conducting a phenomenological interview with twelve participants teaching in English-medium elite schools, this study is able to unveil the lived experiences of teachers who are facing conflict between the values of religious-cultural identity and cosmopolitan global citizenship values. The study used the transcendental phenomenological approach that involved the rigorous procedures of Epoché, Phenomenological Reduction, Imaginative Variation, and Synthesis to reveal meanings and textural-structural themes. The results show that five overarching themes exist that include negotiating sacred and secular pedagogies, experiencing identity fragmentation, embodying dual consciousness, navigating institutional pressures, and transforming through dialectical engagement. The nature of teachers' experience is characterised by a continuous ontological tension in which teachers are paradoxically committed to the same thing, which makes them work out lived spaces of pedagogical ambivalence that, in the end, results in the creation of transformative possibilities through rethinking citizenship education beyond binary thinking.