STEP: From Collaboration to Innovation and from Innovation to Collaboration

Abstract

Secondary Teacher Education Programme (STEP) is a collaborative program of the University College London’s Institute of Education and the Institute of Ismaili Studies in London. Qualitative research was undertaken to collect and analyse data. The findings demonstrate that the collaborative efforts at the senior institutional and lecturers’ levels led to the creation of this innovative programme, which had to constantly reinvent itself and keep the collaboration alive so that the unique features of the programme are sustained. It contends that the most innovative and unique feature of this programme is having an integrated approach to knowledge acquisition and production, where the teacher-candidates are equipped with the content knowledge about Islam and the updated pedagogies and methodologies of teaching to enable them to teach religious education to secondary students. In this endeavour, the teacher-candidates’ roles are immense.