In the early nineteenth century, several scholars and intellectuals like Maria Montessori, Rudolf Steiner, John Dewey etc ... created innovative educational school concepts which were later called progressive education movement, and today Barz shows Fethullah Gülen (b. 1938), a Turkish Islamic scholar, as a new player in Progressive Education(1). This is mainly because, education is the core activity of the Gülen Movement and primarily Gülen, and all other followers, place a great importance on the schools and educational activities. According to Barz, in addition to religious and scientific components, the emphasis on the teacher as a role model plays a decisive role(2). As an example, Gülen presented teaching as a holy duty (kutsi vazife) and highlighted that only people with a strong moral can adequately perform it(3).

Gülen’s educational movement, the so-called Gülen movement or Hizmet (Service) movement, founded private education institutions, like tutorial centers, universities and schools, which are named as Gülen Inspired Schools later(4) and they have achieved remarkable success in the private education sector of Turkey(5). Throughout the disintegration of Soviet Union in 1990-91 and the independence of Central Asian Republics, the movement founded its first schools outside of Turkey in these newborn Central Asian Republics. Later roughly 2000 different Gülen inspired educational institutions were expanded to the whole world. However, after the failed coup attempt in Turkey in 2016, Fethullah Gülen and his movement were labelled as a Terror organization by the Erdogan regime and, only in Turkey, 2,213 private schools and private (tutorial) courses, 1,005 dormitories and boarding houses and 22 universities and affiliated hospitals were appropriated because of their affiliation with the movement(6). Despite this situation, according to unofficial statistics today, there are more than a thousand GISs running in different parts of the world(7).

In this study, we will examine the diversity of teachers in Gülen Inspired Schools and how, despite this diversity, Gülen's understanding of education is realized in Gülen Inspired schools. Therefore, initially in this study, we will first examine the criteria that Gülen schools pay attention when recruiting new teachers and questioned what kind of teachers these schools recruit to their schools. Besides, how different Gülen inspired schools in Europe, Africa and the USA realized Gülen’s educational concept with local teachers and the relationship between teachers who are inspired by Gülen and other local teachers are also analyzed in this paper.

This topic is a crucial and much-debated issue, since Gülen is a retired charismatic imam. One of the main criticisms of Gülen Inspired Schools is that they are missionary schools(8)  and the main motivation of the teachers is to invite students to Islam and spread Islam in their local environment(9). On the other hand, It was observed in different studies that none of these schools teaches Gülen’s philosophy or any subject related to the movement and according to the same studies there is no direct official connection between Gülen İnspired Schools and Fethullah Gülen(10).  Similarly, religion classes, in this case “Islam”, are taught depending on the local conditions and vary from one country to another(11).  Therefore several other scholars debated against these critiques and they are reluctant to consider the Gülen inspired schools educational engagement as being solely missionary in intent and impact(12).  

Of course, in this context the profile of the teachers and the role they play in the schools is very important. Therefore, Gülen’s approach to education, how he influenced these teachers, how diverse the profile of the teachers, how the teachers are recruited and how do they realize Gülen’s philosophy are questioned under the shadow of the mentioned critiques in this study.

In this study, in addition to content analysis, a qualitative research method was selected in the field study to understand this controversial subject(13). One of the main reasons in this choice is the research questions which are based on a "how" question. Besides, the unique structure of the Gülen Movement and the lack of research about the Gülen inspired schools also plays an important role in this choice. In the data collection part, only the "expert interview" method is available because of the several reasons depending on the controversial structure of the subject. However, expert interview fits very well to this research. Participants of this study could be categorized into four groups. In the first group, nine school managers (3 in the U.S., 3 in Europe and 3 in Africa) in six different countries of the world were visited and interviewed. The reason behind the selection of these regions are the sustainable conditions of the GISs which helps the researcher to get reliable data. The second group (3 Experts) is members of the Gülen Movement as an insider who participated in different projects of the movement for many years. The third group (3 Experts) is the scholars or journalists outside of the movement who have a neutral-positive approach to the movement. The last group (3 Experts) consists of the experts who have a skeptical approach and criticize the movement from different aspects. In total, there were 18 structured expert interviews, which enables the comparison of different thoughts and understandings. Besides, the researcher conducted a countless number of talks and discussions with teachers, parents and students of these schools. All data was collected by face-to-face semi-structured interviews which are recorded and transcribed so that the detailed analyses can be easily carried out(14). Mainly because of the actual situation of the movement, the researcher of the study decided to anonymize all the participants’ names. In the data analysis part, Maxqda program was used because of its special features and availability and Gläser and Laudel’s procedures was followed(15). Besides, the researcher of the study practiced five general criteria for qualitative researchers which Mayring explained in his book, such as procedural documentation, rule structured construction, argumentative interpretation assurance, proximity to the object and communicative validity(16). Conducting the field study in the mentioned three continents and only having one data collection method available for the research are several important limitations of the study.

The results show that unlike the other progressive education models, the education model of the Gülen Movement depends on reforming the management of a traditional education system, instead of reforming teaching or pedagogy. Therefore, unlike Montessori, teachers working in Gülen Inspired Schools do not need any special certification, nor do they need to know Gülen or accept the educational philosophy of the Gülen Movement. In this context, it was also observed that the recruitment criteria did not differ much from other schools. Likewise, it was seen in the field study that 75% of the teachers in the nine schools studied were selected from the local community and most of these teachers were not familiar with Gülen's educational philosophy. At this point, with all teachers working in the same environment, more and more varied extracurricular activities than in other schools, and the extreme importance that Gülen Inspired Schools place on teacher development programs, it has been observed that there is a cohesion between Gülen-influenced teachers and other local teachers and a common school culture has emerged. In addition, the fact that only two of the nine schools examined had religion classes, whereas all of them had ethics-based programs, suggests that moral values, rather than religion, take precedence in Gülen schools. In the same context, it can be said that Gülen schools have an education and science-centered concept that emphasizes the academic success of students rather than a religious or ideological axis. It can be easily said that this understanding is also behind the importance given to teacher development programs in these schools. In the same manner, this understanding of academic success is the reason why these schools, which have opened to the world, have been able to hold on in the countries they have been in for so many years.

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