A Journey from Dualism to Commitment: A Critical Study of Matriculation Islamiat Textbook

Activities and material related to cognitive development and critical thinking skills in Pakistani textbooks have been a matter of debate for decades. Pakistani textbooks are often accused of posing a little cognitive challenge to the students, which is widely considered their inability to cope with real life socio-structural settings. The study aims to examine activities and question items given in the Matriculation Islamiat Textbook. Perry’s nine-point scheme of Cognitive Development is adopted for analysis. A rubric has been developed to assign point-value to each activity presented in the textbook. The results reveal that all the activities presented in the textbook fall under ‘dualism.’ The study recommends tailoring the textbook to invite multiple viewpoints on a subject, presents a debate on us-vs-them, and provides a bifurcated worldview to the students.