Bulletin: Education in Israel

Books

• Barry Chazan, A Philosophy of Israel Education
• Anat Even Zahav and Orit Hazzan, Risk Management of Education Systems. The Case of STEM Education in Israe
• Malka Muchnik et al, Elective Language Learning and Policy in Israel
• Miri Yemini, Internationalization and Global Citizenship. Policy and Practice in Education

Articles

• Audrey Addi-Raccah and Yael Grinshtain, Forms of Capital and Teachers’ Views of Collaboration and Threat Relations With Parents in Israeli Schools
• Audrey Addi-Raccah and Yael Grinshtain, Teachers’ capital and relations with parents: A comparison between Israeli Jewish and Arab teachers
• Orly Alaluf, Dorel Ungureanu, and Alina S. Rusu, Israeli Teachers’ Attitudes Assessment regarding Parental Involvement of Children with Special Needs
• Ayman K. Agbaria, The ‘right’ education in Israel: segregation, religious ethnonationalism, and depoliticized professionalism
• Khalid Arar and Asmahan Masry-Herzalla, Gender, Ethnicity, and Social Justice Leadership: Female Jewish and Arab School Principals in Israel
• Nimrod Aloni, Humanist Schools in the Face of Conflicting Narratives and Social Upheaval: The Case of Israel
• Iris BenDavid-Hadar, Education for All: The Israeli Ultra-Orthodox Schools
• Miri Goldratt and Eric H. Cohen, Non Formal Education: A Case Study of Personal Education in Israeli Schools
• Eyal Kaminka, Teaching about the Holocaust in Israel
• Ofer Katchergin, The Medicalizing Power of Rhetorical Images in the Israeli Learning Disabilities Field
• Adam Nir et al, School autonomy and 21st century skills in the Israeli educational system
• Iair G. Or and Elana Shohamy, English Education Policy in Israel
• Oren Shlomo, Sub-formalization in East Jerusalem Schooling
• Benzi Slakmon, Educational Technology Policy in Israel
• Tina Waldman, Efrat Harel, and Götz Schwab, Getting their feet wet: trainee EFL teachers in Germany and Israel collaborate online

Reviews

• Toni Rickenback, on Zvi Bekerman’s The Promise of Integrated Multicultural and Bilingual Education

Theses

• Tamar Bulmash, iPosture: A Closer Look at the Lifestyle Practices of Jewish Israeli School Children

 

New Book: Bekerman, The Promise of Integrated Multicultural and Bilingual Education

Bekerman, Zvi. The Promise of Integrated Multicultural and Bilingual Education. Inclusive Palestinian-Arab and Jewish Schools in Israel. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2016.

 

 

The Promise of Integrated and Multicultural Bilingual Education presents the results of a long-term ethnographic study of the integrated bilingual Palestinian-Jewish schools in Israel that offer a new educational option to two groups of Israelis–Palestinians and Jews–who have been in conflict for the last one hundred years. Their goal is to create egalitarian bilingual multicultural environments to facilitate the growth of youth who can acknowledge and respect “others” while maintaining loyalty to their respective cultural traditions. In this book, Bekerman reveals the complex school practices implemented while negotiating identity and culture in contexts of enduring conflict. Data gathered from interviews with teachers, students, parents, and state officials are presented and analyzed to explore the potential and limitations of peace education given the cultural resources, ethnic-religious affiliations, political beliefs, and historical narratives of the various interactants. The book concludes with critique of Western positivist paradigmatic perspectives that currently guide peace education, maintaining that one of the primary weaknesses of current bilingual and multicultural approaches to peace education is their failure to account for the primacy of the political framework of the nation state and the psychologized educational perspectives that guide their educational work. Change, it is argued, will only occur after these perspectives are abandoned, which entails critically reviewing present understandings of the individual, of identity and culture, and of the learning process.

 
Table of contents

• Introduction
• Part 1
• 1. Positioning the Author
• 2. Theoretical Perspectives
• 3. Methodology: From Theory to Implementation
• 4. Schools in Their Contexts
• Part 2
• 5. The Parents
• 6. Teachers at Their Work
• 7. The Children
• Part 3
• 8. School Routines: Culture, Religion, and Politics in the Classroom
• 9. Ceremonial Events
• 10. Conflicting National Narratives
• Part 4
• 11. The Graduates
• 12. Conclusions
• Author Index
• Subject Index

 

ZVI BEKERMAN teaches anthropology of education at the School of Education and The Melton Center, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His main interests are in the study of cultural, ethnic, and national identity, including identity processes and negotiation during intercultural encounters and in formal/informal learning contexts. He is particularly interested in how concepts such as culture and identity intersect with issues of social justice, intercultural and peace education, and citizenship education.

 

 

 

New Book: Burla and Lawrence, eds. Australia and Israel

Burla, Shahar, and Dashiel Lawrence. Australia and Israel. A Diasporic, Cultural and Political Relationship. Eastbourne: Sussex Academic Press, 2015.

 

 

Australia and the State of Israel have maintained a cordial if at times ambiguous relationship. The two countries are geographically isolated: strategic, economic and cultural interests lie increasingly with Asia for one, and with the US and the EU for the other. But for all that divides the two states, there is also much they share. Australia played an important role in the Jewish state’s establishment in 1948, and is home to the most Zionist centered Jewish diaspora globally. Jewishness for most Australian Jews has been shaped and defined by engagement with and support for Israel. At the heart of this engagement is a small but thriving Israeli community within the larger multicultural Australia.

Australia and Israel: A Diasporic, Cultural and Political Relationship draws attention to the important historical and contemporary nexus between this diaspora and its imagined homeland. The collection also considers the ways in which these two states mobilise national myths and share environmental challenges. In recent time relations between the two states have been tested by the illegal use of Australian passports in 2010, the mysterious death of dual national Ben Zygier, and growing disquiet within the ranks of the Australian Labor Party and the Australian Greens over Israel’s handling of the Israel-Palestinian conflict. One prominent world-wide issue is the Palestinian BDS (Boycotts, Divestments and Sanctions) movement, which has attracted sympathy and support that has brought about substantive differences of opinion regarding its legitimacy within the Jewish Australian community. These issues demonstrate the multifaceted and complex picture of two very different nations, that nevertheless share an abiding connection.

 

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Introduction: Why the Book?
Shahar Burla and Dashiel Lawrence

Part One Australia and Israel – Diasporic Relationship

1 Rewriting the Rules of Engagement: New Australian Jewish
Connections with Israel
Dashiel Lawrence

2 The Personal, the Political and the Religious: Bnei Akiva
Australia and its Relationship with Israel
Ari Lander

3 Israeli Government and Diaspora Mobilisation: The Flotilla
to Gaza and the Australian Jewry as a Case Study
Shahar Burla

4 The Place of Hebrew and Israel Education in Australian
Jewish Schools
Suzanne Rutland and Zehavit Gross

5 The Ausraeli Approach: the Diasporic Identity of Israelis
in Australia
Ran Porat

Part Two Australia and Israel – Political and Cultural Relationship

6 Overcoming Water Scarcity and Inequity in Arid Lands:
Comparing Water Management in Australia and Israel
Dominic Skinner and Stephanie Galaitsi

7 Ben Zygier’s Story and Australia–Israel Relations
Ingrid Matthews

8 A Fight Worth Having: Rudd, Gillard, Israel and the
Australian Labor Party
Alex Benjamin Burston-Chorowicz

9 An Alliance of Forgetting: National Narratives of Legitimacy
on the Occasion of Israel–Australia’s Joint Stamp Issue
Commemorating the Battle of Beersheba
Micaela Sahhar

Part Three Australia, Israel and the Boycott Divestment and
Sanction Scheme

10 The Australian Greens and the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict
Philip Mendes

11 Academic Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions: Implications
for Australian–Israeli Relations
Ingrid Matthews and James Arvanitakis

Conclusion: First Cousinhood, Political Unease, and the Limits
of Comparison
Fania Oz-Salzberger

The Editors and Contributors
Index

 

Shahar Burla is a research Associate at the Sydney Jewish Museum. He is the author of Political Imagination in the Diaspora: The Construction of a Pro-Israeli Narrative (2013). He has received several awards, including a President’s Fellowship for outstanding PhD student, Bar-Ilan University and the Menahem Begin Foundation academic award.

Dashiel Lawrence is a doctoral candidate at the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies, University of Melbourne. His research interests include Jewish diaspora–Israel contemporary relations, and Jewish critics of Israel.

 

 

New Article: Mendel, ‘Practical’ Arabic in the Hebrew Reali School in Haifa, 1913-48

Mendel, Yonatan. “From German Philology to Local Usability: The Emergence of ‘Practical’ Arabic in the Hebrew Reali School in Haifa – 1913–48.” Middle Eastern Studies (early view; online first).

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00263206.2015.1061508

 
Abstract
This article examines the pedagogical shifts in the study of Arabic at the Hebrew Reali School in Haifa, the leading school for Arabic studies in the Jewish education system. Analyzing the moulding of Arabic studies in the crucial years of educational institutionalization (1913–48), it demonstrates an inevitable tension with regard to Arabic studies: between the German philological approach and the ‘practical’ approach. In light of this tension, it shows the gradual emergence of a new ‘practical’ approach in the Jewish education system in Palestine, which was not only the result of a clash between different pedagogical methods, but was propelled by another, powerful, clash: that of the heated political conflict in Palestine. Using primary sources from seven different archives, in Israel, Britain and Germany, this article reveals that the shift towards practicality was motivated by political developments and ideological shifts as much as by pedagogical considerations, and therefore has had significant ramifications for the emerging field of Arabic studies in Jewish schools in Palestine/Israel.

 

 

New Article: Ganayim and Ibrahim, Number Processing in Arabic and Hebrew Bilinguals

Ganayim, Deia and Raphiq Ibrahim. “Number Processing in Arabic and Hebrew Bilinguals. Evidence Supporting the Compatibility Effect.” Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 46.4 (2015): 565-78.

 

URL: http://jcc.sagepub.com/content/46/4/565

 

Abstract

In the current study, a direct assessment of the effect of presentation language and format on the compatibility effect of two-digit numbers was made by contrasting performance of Arabic/Hebrew bilinguals in a digital (Hindi digits/Arabic digits) and verbal numerical comparison task (Arabic an inverted language: units-decades and Hebrew a non-inverted language: decades-units). Our data revealed in digital presentation format a regular compatibility effect in Hindi digits and Arabic digits characterized by lower reaction-time (RT) means for compatible number pairs than incompatible ones with no difference in the RT means of participants in the two languages, Arabic language–Hindi digits as a mother tongue and Hebrew language–Arabic digits as a second language. However, in verbal presentation format, different patterns of compatibility effect were found in Arabic and Hebrew verbal numbers. In Arabic number words, a regular compatibility effect was found, while in Hebrew number words, no compatibility effect was found. This reflects the influence and modulation of the lexical-syntactic structure of the language in two-digit numbers comparison. Evidently, these differences in the compatibility effect advocate and strengthen the claim that two-digit numbers comparison is influenced by the numbers presentation format. Different modes of presentation of two-digit numbers (digital vs. verbal) can lead to different number comparison styles. The parallel model accounts for the numerical comparison in digital presentation, while for the verbal numbers presentation, a revised sequential-syntactic model is preferable.