New Article: Netz & Lefstein, Disagreements in Classroom Discourse: England, US, Israel

Netz, Hadar, and Adam Lefstein. “A Cross-Cultural Analysis of Disagreements in Classroom Discourse: Comparative Case Studies from England, the United States, and Israel.” Intercultural Pragmatics 13.2 (2016): 211-55.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/ip-2016-0009

 

Abstract

How do cultural and institutional factors interact in shaping preference structures? This paper presents a cross-cultural analysis of disagreements in three different classroom settings: (1) a year 6 (ages 11–12) mainstream class in England, (2) a fifth-grade class of gifted students in the United States, and (3) a fourth-grade mainstream class in Israel. The aim of the study is to investigate how disagreements are enacted in these settings, exploring the influence of cultural communicative norms on the one hand and pedagogical goals and norms on the other. The study highlights culture-specific discursive patterns that emerge as the teacher and students manage a delicate balance between often clashing cultural and educational motives.

 

 

 

New Article: Arar et al, Educational Leadership for Social Justice in Israel and Turkey

Arar, Khalid, Kadir Beycioglu, and Izhar Oplatka. “A Cross-Cultural Analysis of Educational Leadership for Social Justice in Israel and Turkey: Meanings, Actions and Contexts.” Compare (early view; online first).

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03057925.2016.1168283

 

Abstract

The research compares principals in Israel (Jewish and Arab) and Turkey and how they perceive and practice their role in promoting social justice (SJ) in their schools in order to bridge socioeconomic and pedagogic gaps. It poses three questions: (1) How do Turkish and Israeli SJ leaders make sense of SJ? (2) What do SJ leaders do in both countries similarly and differently? (3) What factors facilitate or hinder the work of SJ in both countries? The qualitative study employed in-depth semi-structured interviews to collect the narratives of 11 school principals in Turkey and Israel. A comparative, holistic analysis was employed to identify the principals’ perceptions and daily practice of SJ in their schools. The principals reported different sociocultural, national and personal trajectories that shaped their perceptions of SJ, and described strategies used to promote SJ in their daily scholastic policies, processes and practices that meet the school stakeholders’ backgrounds and needs.

 

 

 

New Article: Walfish & Brody, How Religious Teachers View Problems in Bible Teaching

Walfish, Ruth A., and David L. Brody. “‘Students get bogged down’: How Religious Israeli Elementary Teachers View Problems and Solutions in Bible Teaching.” British Journal of Religious Education (early view; online first).

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01416200.2015.1134442

 
Abstract

Bible teachers in contemporary society confront serious problems related to the nature of the biblical text and the socio-cultural context of their teaching. This study, based on semi-structured interviews, examines the problems that five expert religious Israeli elementary school teachers encounter in their teaching and the solutions they employ. Our findings show two major domains of pedagogic issues: unfamiliar biblical linguistics and problematic content. Teachers reported student difficulties in understanding biblical Hebrew. Problematic content includes irrelevant topics, emotionally laden material, and age inappropriate issues. Linguistic solutions relied on reading comprehension techniques and use of features specific to Bible reading such as diacritical marks. Regarding content issues, teachers were motivated by faith in the sanctity of the text to find effective solutions. These include selectivity, reinterpretation using homiletic tools, a holistic understanding and contextualising the narrative. Though teachers felt ill-prepared by their pre-service training in dealing with these challenges, they demonstrated resilience in their solution-oriented pedagogy. These findings suggest attention to mentoring and professional development, and to the creation of a community of practice to support teachers’ dealing with the ongoing challenges in their teaching.

 

 

New Article: Gor Ziv, Teaching Jewish Holidays in Early Childhood Education in Israel

Gor Ziv, Haggith. “Teaching Jewish Holidays in Early Childhood Education in Israel: Critical Feminist Pedagogy Perspective.” Taboo 15.1 (2016): 119-34.

 

URL: http://search.proquest.com/openview/40522e5877f96e9463985043f68d6e85/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=28753

 

Abstract

Teaching Jewish holidays in secular kindergartens in Israel is a major part of the early childhood education curriculum and often revolves around myths of heroism. The telling of these stories frequently evokes strong nationalist feelings of identification with fighting as they describe survival wars and conflicts in which the heroes are mostly male fighters and Jewish victory over the enemy is celebrated. Thus the teaching of the holidays hidden agenda strengthens ceremonial, patriarchal and national ideas. This paper proposes a number of educational alternatives in accordance with critical feminist pedagogy and Jewish values of social justice. The article focuses on three major holidays: Hanukah, Purim and Passover. It shows in each one of them the conventional reading of the holiday which is the traditional way it is being taught in secular kindergartens, the holiday through a critical feminist pedagogy lens and application in early childhood classrooms.

 

 

 

New Article: Cohen, Competing Conceptions of Civic Education

Cohen, Aviv. “Navigating Competing Conceptions of Civic Education: Lessons from Three Israeli Civics Classrooms.” Oxford Review of Education (early view, online first).
 
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03054985.2016.1194262
 
Abstract

The concentration of this study was the documentation and analysis of ways in which competing conceptions of citizenship play out in actual classroom settings. Examining three cases in the context of the Israeli education system, its findings show that civics teachers’ views and beliefs influenced ways in which they interpreted the curriculum standards and reacted to schools policies and atmosphere, even in cases where these views contradicted. Nevertheless, when confronted with competing conceptions of citizenship as presented by their students, the teachers were less willing to open true democratic conversations, resulting in lessons that did not necessarily create a true democratic atmosphere.

 

 

 

New Article: Tal & Peled, Environmental Education Programs in 10 Israeli Elementary Schools

Tal, Tali, and Einat Peled. “The Philosophies, Contents and Pedagogies of Environmental Education Programs in 10 Israeli Elementary Schools.” Environmental Education Research (early view; online first).
 
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13504622.2016.1153047
 
Abstract

In this study, our aim was to understand how environmental education has been implemented in Israeli elementary schools. We selected ten schools that had implemented Education for Sustainability programs and analyzed their mission statements and curriculum documents. We observed each school’s activities and interviewed teachers. Our analysis shows ambiguity with respect to the rationales and the theoretical foundations of the programs. It also shows much didactic teaching of content, a strong focus on behavioral outcomes, especially with respect to reducing resource consumption and to increasing the levels of recycling, as well as some degree of working with the community. The unclear status of environmental education in Israel, in terms of its structure within the education system, prevents it from having sufficient resources for teacher education and curriculum development. It is suggested that this lack of clarity is the main cause of the ambiguity and for the use of the traditional pedagogies we found in our analysis.

 

 

 

New Article: Alayan, The Holocaust in Palestinian Textbooks

Alayan, Samira. “The Holocaust in Palestinian Textbooks. Differences and Similarities in Israel and Palestine.” Comparative Education Review 60.1 (2016): 80-104.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/684362

 

Abstract

The article explores how the Holocaust is represented in history textbooks for Palestinian pupils in the Palestinian and Arab-Israeli curricula from a pedagogical perspective. Since no mention of the Holocaust was found in Palestinian Authority textbooks, the study seeks to explain why this is so, while examining representations of the Holocaust in the Arab (Palestinian) Israeli textbooks. It pursues four principal objectives: (1) to investigate the extent to which Israeli and Palestinian history textbooks discuss the Holocaust, (2) to examine how it is portrayed, (3) to contextualize these portrayals in relation to collective memories of other events (e.g., the Nakba), and (4) to consult with Israeli and Palestinian curriculum policy makers regarding the inclusion or omission of the Holocaust from the curriculum.

 

 

 

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 Article: Berger and Paul, Teaching Cultural Aspects of Trauma Practice in a Study Abroad Immersion Course

Berger, Roni, and Marilyn S. Paul. “Teaching Cultural Aspects of Trauma Practice in a Study Abroad Immersion Course: Challenges and Strategies.” International Social Work (early view; online first).

 
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0020872815611198
 
Abstract

Advantages, phases, challenges, and strategies related to the process and procedures involved in planning, implementing, and evaluating study abroad programs, and addressing emergencies have been discussed as being issues in teaching trauma and diversity content. However, very little has been written about study abroad programs dedicated to specific topics and no studies address teaching trauma content by means of international immersion courses. This article discusses pedagogical and logistic aspects of teaching about trauma in diverse cultural contexts using a recent intensive immersion study abroad course in Israel to illustrate the issues under discussion.

 

 

 

New Article: Alkaher & Tal, Making Pedagogical Decisions to Address Challenges of Joint Jewish–Bedouin Environmental Projects

Alkaher, Iris, & Tali Tal. “Making Pedagogical Decisions to Address Challenges of Joint Jewish–Bedouin Environmental Projects in Israel”. International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education (early view; online first).

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10382046.2015.1106115

Abstract

This interpretive study identifies challenges of working with Bedouin and Jewish Israeli youth in two multicultural projects: education for sustainability and place-conscious education. It also describes the ways the adult project leaders addressed these challenges and their views on the effectiveness of their decisions. Participants comprised 16 Bedouin and Jewish educators. Data collection included interviews and observations of project meetings and staff meetings. Project leaders reported challenges related to (1) intergroup differences in environmental viewpoints, knowledge, and learning styles, (2) embedding issues of environmental justice in the multicultural discourse, and (3) Bedouin–Jewish interactions. To address these challenges, the leaders separated groups for some learning activities, directed discourses, adopted bilingual teaching strategies, and emphasized unique socio-cultural characteristics. Their level of satisfaction with most of their decisions is high. They avoided discussing the broader socio-political Arab–Jewish conflict. The findings highlight dilemmas that multicultural environmental projects pose and suggest the need to adopt critical pedagogy of place to address such dilemmas and challenges. The findings also emphasize the need to better prepare educators for environmental education in multicultural settings.

 

 

 

New Article: Cuhadar and Kampf, Does Conflict Content Affect Learning from Simulations?

Cuhadar, C. Esra, and Ronit Kampf. “Does Conflict Content Affect Learning from Simulations? A Cross-National Inquiry into the Israeli-Palestinian and Guatemalan Conflict Scenarios.” Negotiation and Conflict Management Research 8.4 (2015): 243-60.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/ncmr.12062

Abstract

It is important to find out whether the content of a simulation has any effect on learning, whether students learn better when the simulation is about a conflict they directly experience as opposed to a conflict they have hardly heard about, and whether learning about a specific conflict changes from one identity group to another. In this article, we address these questions in a five-group experimental study, with direct parties to the conflict (Israeli-Jewish, Palestinian, and Guatemalan), third/secondary parties to the conflict (Turkish, American, and Brazilian), and distant parties to the conflict. Our results indicate that learning varies not only from one group to the other, but also with the salience of the conflict. While the simulations increase the level of knowledge about that particular conflict in almost all situations, when attitude change is concerned, the effects diversify from one group to the other.

 

 

CFP: Seeking panelists for AIS on teaching Israel Studies

I’m seeking presenters for a panel entitled “Primary Sources for Teaching Israeli History,” at the upcoming AIS (June 2016). Instructors often look for ways to engage students in topics far removed from daily college life. Using non-traditional primary sources – posters, art, music, cookbooks, songs, film, material artefacts – is an effective way of bringing history to life. Panelists will share an innovative primary source they use in their undergraduate classes. They will explain how they use this source in the classroom and why they find it successful. My field is history, but other fields of Israel Studies are welcome, like anthropology, sociology, film studies, etc.

Please email your ideas to sklein@chapman.edu.

 

Shira Klein, Chapman University.

New Article: Jäppinen et al, Collaborativeness as the Core of Professional Learning Communities

Jäppinen, Aini-Kristiina, Martine Leclerc, and Dorit Tubin. “Collaborativeness as the Core of Professional Learning Communities beyond Culture and Context: Evidence from Canada, Finland, and Israel.” School Effectiveness and School Improvement (early view; online first).

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09243453.2015.1067235

 

Abstract

Professional learning communities (PLC) have been widely accepted as effective with respect to good atmosphere, adequate leadership practices, and functional working practices. However, the outcomes for school improvement depend on case-specific issues. To identify less culturally and contextually bound issues in 3 PLC settings in Canada, Finland, and Israel, we examined our cases through the notion of “collaborativeness”. It refers to a systematic and shared process consisting of efforts, ideas, and activities that aim at achieving synergy. By combining the 3 data sets and applying a special model, we were able to distinguish, through qualitative content analysis, ingredients of collaborativeness beyond culture and context that we consider particularly essential. The crucial factor proved to be a dynamic relationship between mutual and deep learning, realized through 5 different ways. We further believe that our results could serve other organizations striving for school improvement in other kinds of cultural and contextual settings.

 

 

New Article: Desai, Books Reviewers Assess Children’s Literature Set in Israel–Palestine

Desai, Christina M. “Reviewing Political Controversy: Books Reviewers Assess Children’s Literature Set in Israel–Palestine.” International Research in Children’s Literature 8.1 (2015): 45-60.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.3366/ircl.2015.0148

 

Abstract

Because book reviewers influence which books are purchased for libraries and schools, it is important to understand the explicit or implicit criteria they employ. Reviewer practices with books on politically controversial topics set in Israel/Palestine and available to a US audience often reflect partisan views, with the dominant political discourse favouring the Israeli position, although this is far from ubiquitous. While some reviews avoid addressing the books’ politics, others are decidedly partisan. Many base their evaluations on their estimation of the degree of hope and political balance achieved in the works, yet these expectations are applied selectively. Some expect stories told from a pro-Palestinian perspective to be hopeful and balanced by sympathetic Israeli characters and opinions, but do not measure stories told from an exclusively Israeli perspective by the same yardstick. The strength of the dominant discourse is apparent in this selective application. Another common criterion is the educational usefulness of these books as teaching tools. Reviewers seldom evaluate them on their literary merits. This phenomenon illustrates Norman Fairclough’s assertion that the dominant political discourse is so internalised as to appear to be commonsense, and this obscures both its influence on one’s own worldview and the possibility of alternatives.

 

 

New Article: Fischer, Religion and Education in Israel

Fischer, Shlomo. “The Crises of Liberal Citizenship: Religion and Education in Israel.” In Religious Education and the Challenge of Pluralism (ed. Adam B. Seligman; Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2014): 119-49.

 

 

Excerpt

The religious Zionist community is starting to understand the place of civics and citizenship within the new Israeli public discourse, and it wishes to be part of that discourse. It understand, too, that it can make its own unique communitarian or republican contribution to that discourse, but it understands two further things as well: it understands that if it entirely disregards the liberal citizenship discourse of individual human and civil rights, of tolerance and of pluralism, it will lose its ability to communicate with the larger Israeli public. Much to its chagrin, it has all ready experienced such a break in communication during the Disengagement from Gaza in 2005. It discovered then that it had no allies in the Israeli public sphere to help it prevent the evacuation of seventeen settlements in the Gaza strip. It wishes very much to reestablish lines of communication in order to prevent a reoccurrence of that event. Secondly, it understands that it cannot seriously offer a citizenship discourse for the entire community if it offers no modicum of inclusion, of membership, and of tolerance to the non-Jewish minorities of the country. Alongside its communitarian and republican orientation, and alongside its integral nationalist demands that Israel remain a Jewish country, it must find room for the other non-Jews, even the Palestinians. Hence, it seeks from within the Jewish tradition resources of tolerance and inclusion. Only time will tell whether it actually achieves a new synthesis of nationalism and democracy, and of republicanism and inclusiveness.

 

 

New Article: Katzin, a Jewish Education Teachers’ Training Program for Outstanding Students

Katzin, Ori. “Teaching Approaches of Beginning Teachers for Jewish Studies in Israeli Mamlachti Schools: A Case Study of a Jewish Education Teachers’ Training Program for Outstanding Students.” Journal of Jewish Education 81.3 (2015): 285-311.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15244113.2015.1065633

 

Abstract

This article presents findings from a longitudinal qualitative study that examined teaching approaches of neophyte teachers in Israel during their 4-year exclusive teachers’ training program for teaching Jewish subjects and first two years of teaching. The program wanted to promote change in secular pupils’ attitudes toward Jewish subjects. We found a high incidence of teaching using positivistic approaches of knowledge transmission and the teachers adopted a particular teaching approach early into their training program that they continue to employ. Can teaching oriented in the transmission of central cultural value knowledge, with pupils as passive receptacles, create a meaningful encounter?

 

 

New Article: Kizel, The Presentation of Germany in Israeli History Textbooks between 1948 and 2014

Kizel, Arie. “The Presentation of Germany in Israeli History Textbooks between 1948 and 2014.” Journal of Educational Media, Memory, and Society 7.1 (2015): 94-115.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.3167/jemms.2015.070105

 

Abstract

This article reviews an extensive study of Israeli secondary school general history curricula and textbooks since the establishment of the state in 1948 until the present day. By analyzing the way in which Germany is presented in various contexts, the findings of the study indicate that, while the textbooks reflect a shift from an early censorious attitude to a factual approach, the curriculum continues to present national Jewish Zionism as the metanarrative. In this context, Germany is framed as a victimizer.

 

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: Hager, A Jewish Israeli Teacher Grapples with Arab Students’ Underachievement

Hager, Tamar. “Seeing and Hearing the Other: A Jewish Israeli Teacher Grapples with Arab Students’ Underachievement and the Exclusion of Their Voices.” Radical Teacher 101 (2015): 46–53.

 
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.5195/rt.2015.113

 

Abstract
This paper addresses my political and pedagogical resistance to the institutional discrimination of Palestinian Arab students in Israeli academia. Describing my instinctive negative reactions (frustration, helplessness, anger) towards what seems at first sight as their reluctance to study, I go on to criticize my own and other lecturers’ tendency to blame the victim by analyzing the structural, cultural, political and social obstacles encountered by Arab students in Israeli institutions of higher education. The paper mainly focuses on the story of my resistance to this prevailing social and political structure. Adopting feminist critical pedagogy in my course “Representing Disability in Literature and the Cinema”, I have created a space for my Arab students to overcome at least temporarily their repression by the Israeli academic system. The process of empowerment and the subsequent educational transformative and liberating exchange has enabled all participants to grant Arabs’ transparent and excluded knowledge a significant social, cultural and political place, thus creating new and more culturally sensitive knowledge. Confronting the empowering effects of this method, I conclude my paper by suggesting some explanations as to the rarity of critical feminist pedagogies in Israeli academia.

 

 

New Article: Blonder and Rap, Exploring Israeli High School Chemistry Teachers’ Use of Facebook

Blonder, Ron, and Shelley Rap. “I like Facebook: Exploring Israeli High School Chemistry Teachers’ TPACK and Self-Efficacy Beliefs.” Education and Information Technologies (early view; online first).

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10639-015-9384-6

 

Abstract
The goal of this research was to examine how Israeli chemistry teachers at high school level use Facebook groups to facilitate learning. Two perspectives were used: Teachers’ TPACK (Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge) and the self-efficacy beliefs of chemistry teachers for using CLFG (chemistry learning Facebook groups). Three different case studies were chosen and qualitative and quantitative research tools were used to learn about the teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs and knowledge. More specifically, a validated questionnaire for measuring teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs for using Facebook and for integrating Facebook into teaching was developed. We show that the initial beliefs (not based on a real acquaintance of Facebook) were replaced by more realistic efficacy-beliefs after the teachers started to work with the CLFG and that the technological support provided to each teacher, together with their mastery experience, supported the development of strong self-efficacy beliefs regarding the use of CLFG. Teachers’ TPACK was investigated by analyzing their interviews and the interactions in their CLFG. We found that the notion regarding what constitutes learning in the CLFG had not changed during the experiment but rather, the teachers knew better how they can facilitate this leaning. In addition they better integrated links to videos and visualizations that supported understanding abstract chemistry concepts. Interestingly, the intervention that was conducted did not influence teachers’ perceptions of learning; however, it was found to serve as an additional tool for supporting their self-efficacy beliefs by providing vicarious experience for the teachers. We therefore recommend performing a longer intervention in the future.