CAHSS Intellectual Conversations

Dr. Duckworth shares her research on the experiences of South Florida Muslim students. As a religious and ethnic minority group in South Florida, Muslim students would seem to be uniquely vulnerable in this time of rising xenophobia and Islamophobia. This particular study builds on the researcher’s prior work regarding the “school to terror pipeline” impacting France’s Muslim students (Duckworth 2016), and how teachers approach teaching about the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 (Duckworth 2014).

The study’s key methodology is qualitative focus groups, as they are especially well suited to eliciting data on group processes and dynamics, shared narratives and individual narratives (Cooper and Finley, 2014). Our focus groups explore youth experiences within schools of course, but also within the community at large. Neither schools nor students exist in a vacuum. We consider some of the following questions. How do local Muslim youth (defined here as 13-18 or so) perceive their schools, communities and world? What challenges, if any, do they feel they face particular to their identity as young Muslims, especially given the narrative and structural violence of the recent 2016 US election? If they perceive themselves as well integrated and valued as community members, can we determine what school and community leaders may be doing well?