Educational deficits & life coping skills of selected Muslim Uighur youth in Taiyuan, China :a case study

Abstract

Muslim adolescents in China are getting more involved in antisocial behaviors; this study examined factors related to this phenomenon, from both the psychological and social policy perspectives of minority Uighur Muslims. Using the framework of Bandura’s social learning theory, this study examined the educational experiences and life coping skills of Uyghur adolescents in China to find the factors which influence their antisocial behavior. A qualitative phenomenological method is used to interpret 5 participants’ experiences and attitudes, with emphasis on the Islamic perspective, which is seldom seen in previous studies. Interview data highlight the participants’ educational experiences: dropping out of the formal educational system, learning life coping skills in the non-formal context (street smart), religious education at the local Muslim community center (the mosque), and other factors contributing to their antisocial behavior. The findings demonstrated that the compounding consequence of their educational deficit (dropping out from primary school), lack of proper training in life coping skills to survive in civil society, and misleading religious instruction from the local Imam (perhaps due to insufficient religious knowledge), contributed to the antisocial behavior of the Uighur Muslim adolescents in Taiyuan of China.