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The paper discusses the collective identity of the Palestinian citizens of Israel as it is filtered to school students through the state-commissioned school textbooks. Since it was established in 1948, Israel has maintained two separate education systems, one for Palestinian-Israelis, who are now ∼ 20% of the population, and the other for Jewish Israelis. Each system has its own curriculum, transmitting its own cultural and national messages. This paper compares Palestinian school textbooks (grades 5-12) currently in use to earlier textbooks of the 1960s. The analysis shows how the segregated school system for Palestinians in Israel forges a mechanism of domination of the national history and collective memory of the Palestinians. Through processes of exclusion and selection, the state narrative, as it is manifested in the Palestinian school textbooks, renders the Palestinian identity non-existent and rootless. Palestinians are presented as a collective detached from their past and from their immediate surroundings in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines the implementation of an external written curriculum in the classroom. The study is based on observation of and interviews with 26 Israeli Bible teachers who followed a formal curriculum and used a teachers' guide. The study identified three types of curriculum narrative: the frame narrative, the task narrative, and the meta-narrative. Whereas both curriculum writers and teachers were conscious of the existence of the frame and task narratives, neither group was aware of the existence of the curriculum meta-narrative. Moreover, most teachers felt no obligation to adhere to the curriculum writers' frame narrative and suggested curriculum activities, and, indeed, some 80% of the curriculum tasks analysed in this study were devised by teachers, not suggested by curriculum writers. Teachers were also unaware of the curriculum writers' meta-narrative and constructed their own meta-narratives, which differed almost completely from that of the writers. This study reveals that the conception of teachers as 'obedient' to a written curriculum, which they interpret and adapt while preserving its essential principles, is inconsistent with the teachers' own curriculum thinking. That thinking, founded on narrative thought, understands both curriculum and teaching as revealed stories which are used as a source of stimulation and inspiration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper advances the analysis of multiculturalism by examining multiculturalism in a contextualized manner. To understand multiculturalism and assess its effects on the recognition of migrant children, researchers need to analyse multicultural practices in schools by taking into account the social mirrors resulting from different social and structural conditions, such as national ideologies and the ethos of reception. The analysis of multicultural policies in four different types of daycare centres enrolling migrant workers' children in Israel—community, Catholic, municipal, and those supported by private associations—points to three types of contextualized multicultural models: contextualized misrecognition, contextualized recognition, and de-contextualized recognition. By juxtaposing recognition or misrecognition appearing at the daycare level with legal and ideological social mirrors, multicultural patterns can acquire a different meaning. Municipal daycares with a few migrant children as well as daycares supported by private associations that adopt a 'blind-homogenizing' approach reflect an absence of recognition that is contextualized in the larger society. Community daycares adopting a survival approach, Catholic daycares applying a 'business as usual' approach, and municipal daycares enrolling a large number of migrant children adopting a multicultural approach reflect different degrees of cultural and religious recognition. However, when analysed in the larger local or national context, this recognition results in a de-contextualized recognition that suppresses the beneficial character of the multicultural education provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1978, more than 100 science educators from Israel and ∼ 50 leading science educators and researchers representing 13 countries convened at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot (23-28 July) and The Hebrew University, Jerusalem (30 July-2 August) to discuss problems and issues of curriculum development and curriculum implementation in science. 1 Forty years ago, when the revolutionary reform in science education emerged, many of these issues were new. Before that time, curricula had been developed locally, by those who planned to teach them; as a consequence, terms like dissemination, diffusion, utilization, and implementation were rarely used. The importance of such terms became evident as the movement of curriculum development at the national level gained prominence, especially in science. Today, drawing on the experiences of the last 30 years, we are not only able to specify what curriculum developers have to consider in terms of implementation, but we can also draw some significant conclusions from our experiences with implementation for curriculum development in the future. The most important general conclusion is that curriculum development and implementation should not be viewed as two separate processes, but rather as one interactive process. The purpose of this paper is to describe the nature of this interaction and the factors which may influence it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bible studies are one of the foundations of Israeli education. Nevertheless, this content area has been neglected for many years and it is now bordering on crisis. Passive learning style and classroom discussions that lead to predetermined conclusions are prevalent in Bible classes in both elementary and high schools. In this article, we present the Teaching Thinking in Bible Studies Initiative that seeks to facilitate active Bible studies where students construct the meaning of the text autonomously. The initiative also encourages students to use core thinking strategies when reading the Bible. Our model proposes a Bible lesson directed at well-defined thinking goals that unfold throughout the lesson, and that includes explicit discussions of thinking processes and strategies. The first section of this article explores theories and research, identifying the characteristics and principles of teaching thinking, and reviews previous studies about Bible education. In the second, we present the initiative's pedagogical principles and the structure of a thinking-based Bible lesson. In the third section, we provide two examples of teaching thinking in Bible lessons focused on argumentation and asking questions. Finally, in the discussion, we examine how our initiative corresponds and adds to other initiatives and the teaching thinking literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Once teaching-learning events are conceptualized as inter-discursive encounters, it becomes clear that mathematics classroom talk is rife with invisible pitfalls. There are many types of unacknowledged discursive gaps, some of them necessary for learning and some potentially harmful. Such gaps may exist also between the teacher's intentions and her habitual moves, most of which are too brief and automatic to be controlled. Unbeknown to the teacher, her basic communicational routines may deprive her students of proper learning opportunities. Some seemingly innocent teaching routines may also constitute invisible crevices through which prejudice and injustice enter the conversation on mathematical objects. In this talk, I argue that if the devil is in the finest detail of classroom communication, it is the detail that must be considered in the attempts to exorcise the devil. I begin with illustrations of these claims and conclude with a reflection on what teachers can do to sensitize themselves to discursive pitfalls and to eradicate or change those routines that carry the greatest risks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper discusses the collective identity of the Palestinian citizens of Israel as it is filtered to school students through the state-commissioned school textbooks. Since it was established in 1948, Israel has maintained two separate education systems, one for Palestinian-Israelis, who are now approximately 20% of the population, and the other for Jewish Israelis. Each system has its own curriculum, transmitting its own cultural and national messages. This paper compares Palestinian school textbooks (grades 5-12) currently in use to earlier textbooks of the 1960s. The analysis shows how the segregated school system for Palestinians in Israel forges a mechanism of domination of the national history and collective memory of the Palestinians. Through processes of exclusion and selection, the state narrative, as it is manifested in the Palestinian school textbooks, renders the Palestinian identity non-existent and rootless. Palestinians are presented as a collective detached from their past and from their immediate surroundings in the region. (Contains 37 notes.)

This paper focuses on an innovative curriculum for teaching culturally valued texts and the issues around the curriculum's implementation by teachers. The writers of this curriculum considered the subject-matter of this curriculum as a cultural "language" containing specific concepts, attitudes, and modes of thought. The curriculum itself is seen as a "literature" by means of which the subject-matter is formed into an educational approach. I argue that the actual encounter between the teachers and the written curriculum can be seen as an encounter between different subject-matters and different educational approaches of the curriculum and the teachers. In the encounter the teachers create their own approaches for teaching the culturally-valued texts, and this is different from the one offered them by the writers of the curriculum. I contend that the lack of compatibility between the subject-matter and educational understandings of the curriculum writers and teachers may explain why the teachers failed to adopt the approach of the curriculum. (Contains 1 note.)

Building on sociocultural theories of teaching and learning, rooted in constructivist traditions, this study examined the teaching of civics in relation to contextual sociocultural factors in the Israeli educational system. The study focused on ways in which three civics teachers conceptualized and framed notions of good citizenship in relation to the teaching of the civics subject matter, and on the ways in which such notions manifest in their planned teaching. The main finding points to how the teachers framed their civics lessons in a manner that was in congruence with their perceptions of their students' approaches to citizenship. Thus, the study reaches the conclusion that teachers' perceptions are a key element in framing and conceptualizing civics lessons, resulting in a reality in which students from different backgrounds may experience significant differences in their orientation to the notion of good citizenship, limiting their exposure to multiple views. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study reveals the views of future teachers from Israeli-Jewish and Palestinian-Arab communities regarding the desired school history curricula. We applied a quantitative and qualitative survey to a sample of 528 students studying in teachers’ preparation programmes in three higher education institutions: one research university with a large Jewish majority and only Jewish respondents to our survey, one Palestinian-Arab college and one Jewish secular college. In both Jewish and Arab sectors, we found a major gap between teachers’ perceived desired curriculum and the official (nationalistic) one. The results indicated that the university students, who come from higher socio-economic backgrounds, prefer significantly more internationally oriented curricula than Palestinian-Arab students and Jewish students in colleges. In addition, students who are studying in the university were found to attribute more importance than all college students to globally oriented curricular content for their pupils’ future success. Notably the Jewish students choose to include more globally oriented subjects than are currently found in the official curriculum. On other measures, there was less difference between Jewish and Palestinian-Arab students. The qualitative phase of our research revealed that this seeming anomaly is due to the relative lack of sector-specific content in the formal curriculum covering the history of Palestinian-Arab population. This study yields important implications for history curricular design in the context of the global-local nexus, particularly within conflict-ridden societies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Jewish history is unique in the sense that it expands over a vast period of time and takes place in almost all places in the world. This creates a major potential for historical debates. The state of Israel, which views itself as the high-point of Jewish national identity, has inherited these debates but attempted to find a way between them by creating a unified history curriculum for its state educational system. This attempt has failed, and on-going 'history wars' between various interpretations of Jewish and Israeli history sometimes turn into fierce political battles between the political left and right, between secular and orthodox, and between sectors of different cultural origins. This study describes and analyses the four history curricula published since the foundation of the State of Israel in 1948, and discusses the social context which defined the values they were supposed to promote. The fundamental issue for history curricula writers was finding the correct balance between national (Jewish) and general (non-Jewish) history. In the secular school system there has been a gradual rise in general history at the expense of Jewish history, while in the religious school system the process was the opposite. The significant differences between the curricula reflect today's deep-seated rift between these sectors of Israeli-Jewish society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on an evaluation of an Israeli project developed to promote and foster Arab–Jewish co‐existence, this study illustrates some of the educational problems that can arise as a result of ideological commitment. The programme was designed to emphasize the commonalities and the similarities between the two nationalities. The evaluation revealed different reactions and perspectives towards the programme by teachers and students. Teachers were active, enthusiastic, and happy to meet each other. Students were passive, less enthusiastic, and tended to remain within the boundaries of their ethnic group. The observations indicated that much of teachers’ enthusiasm might be the outgrowth of teachers’ workshops which aimed to produce believers in the ideology and ideas of the project. As a result, teachers often misread students’ reactions to activities and failed to interpret correctly students’ dissatisfaction. Extreme commitment may create a blindness which leads to uncritical transfer from teacher to student activity and to a loss of touch with reality. Such conduct may become harmful especially, when ideological commitment overcomes pedagogical considerations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, the predominance of the nation-state as the sole arbiter of curricular matters has eroded. New actors and organizations, especially local schools, have acquired greater discretion over the definition of school subjects and curricular emphases. This study investigates whether and how different patterns of educational governance influence the actual curriculum that local schools put into place. It is argued that uniformity/diversity in the implemented curriculum reflects macro-level factors (i.e. structural and institutional characteristics of national educational systems), and meso-level factors (i.e. community and local school characteristics). Specifically, it investigates between-school variation in curricular implementation in two major sectors of the Israeli public educational system: Jewish (secular), and Arab. School-based differences are reported in course offerings and time-allocations to subject areas in each sector. In addition, it compares actual curricular implementation in relation to official guidelines established by central authorities. Implementation patterns between and within sectors are discussed in light of educational governance differences and key macro- and local-level factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This qualitative study examines mentors' interpretations of their practice as revealed through writing and discussing their cases in a university postgraduate course in Israel. The data were examined for emergent features of the practice of in-service mentoring in the Jewish and Arab sectors within the Israeli school system. Content analysis of the cases and of the discussions that followed their presentation in class revealed a unique 'discourse of mentoring' or 'language of practice' that reflected mentors' concerns over issues of accountability and boundaries of roles in their practice. From a programmatic perspective, the study reveals that a university teacher-education course based on case-method pedagogy constitutes a safe and challenging context for mentors to voice dilemmas inherent in their field experiences that are often silenced by the system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examined expert literature teachers' coping with a novel textbook, integrating literature with visual arts, which is a particular interdisciplinary case of text-image relations in textbooks. Examination was performed within the framework of teachers' responses to curricular changes and of theory regarding strategies of interdisciplinary instruction. Data regarding teachers' coping was collected via video recorded deep interviews and analysed qualitatively using the phenomenological approach. Findings revealed four phases of a recurring pattern of performance: (a) retrieving prior knowledge about texts, (b) cycles of processing and refinement (comprising comparing-identifying-matching, making meaning of elements in contexts, eliciting themes and deeply examining artworks' devices), (c) mindful evaluation of the juxtaposition, and (d) pedagogical reasoning. Four potential roles of the textbook visual artworks, for promoting literature learning, were inferred. The study shed some light on the involvement of teacher cognition and culture of teaching in the reading, evaluating, and adapting of novel curricula. A deeper understanding of the factors involved in the introduction of novel materials, examined from a cognitive perspective, may inform teachers' professional development and curriculum developers as well as promote implementations of curricular reforms. (Contains 2 figures.)

This paper shows some mechanisms as well as the paralysing implications of the perpetrator-victim positioning in the context of inservice education with Jewish- and Palestinian-Israeli teachers who teach in Palestinian-Jewish integrated schools. It examines how these teachers remain rooted in the hegemonic historical narratives of their own community, even when their attitudes are challenged and clearer alternatives to the reigning narratives are considered. The findings highlight failures in terms of the potential of educational efforts to help overcome situations of intractable conflict, even within contexts specifically devised for this purpose. However, some openings become apparent in the process of negotiating competing narratives and inventing new dialogic possibilities. The implications of this work suggest that schools and their historical traditions are difficult places in which to effect change and that teacher training may not always be the answer for the need to bring about change. Ongoing agonistics of raising critical issues regarding one's identifications with hegemonic narratives offers openings to take responsibility for both the challenges and the dialogic possibilities that are created in the process. (Contains 9 notes.)

Local schools increasingly play a mediating role between intended curricular directives and actual classroom practice. This paper highlights how macro factors such as decentralized governance and subject's institutional status affect school-based decisions to diverge from official curricular policies. Specifically, it reports a three-dimensional comparison from the Israeli education system, i.e. comparing educational levels (elementary and lower-secondary), sectors (Jewish secular, Jewish religious, and Arab), and school subjects (with varying institutional status), to investigate patterns of diversity/uniformity in curricular structures. Between-school variation in curriculum implementation tends to be greater under conditions of increased decentralization and school autonomy. Highly institutionalized subjects are more likely to be taught in conformity with official directives, thereby increasing between-school uniformity. Important political and educational factors have a contextual influence on subject implementation, especially in certain sectors and levels. Ongoing trends toward educational decentralization not only encourage school autonomy, but also heighten curricular diversification. Local schools increasingly determine the educational knowledge students are offered, and effectively enable or constrain what teachers teach. (Contains 6 tables and 25 notes.)

This paper advances the analysis of multiculturalism by examining multiculturalism in a contextualized manner. To understand multiculturalism and assess its effects on the recognition of migrant children, researchers need to analyse multicultural practices in schools by taking into account the social mirrors resulting from different social and structural conditions, such as national ideologies and the ethos of reception. The analysis of multicultural policies in four different types of daycare centres enrolling migrant workers' children in Israel--community, Catholic, municipal, and those supported by private associations--points to three types of contextualized multicultural models: contextualized misrecognition, contextualized recognition, and de-contextualized recognition. By juxtaposing recognition or misrecognition appearing at the daycare level with legal and ideological social mirrors, multicultural patterns can acquire a different meaning. Municipal daycares with a few migrant children as well as daycares supported by private associations that adopt a "blind-homogenizing" approach reflect an absence of recognition that is contextualized in the larger society. Community daycares adopting a survival approach, Catholic daycares applying a "business as usual" approach, and municipal daycares enrolling a large number of migrant children adopting a multicultural approach reflect different degrees of cultural and religious recognition. However, when analysed in the larger local or national context, this recognition results in a de-contextualized recognition that suppresses the beneficial character of the multicultural education provided. (Contains 30 notes.)

The paper examines the implementation of an external written curriculum in the classroom. The study is based on observation of and interviews with 26 Israeli Bible teachers who followed a formal curriculum and used a teachers' guide. The study identified three types of curriculum narrative: the frame narrative, the task narrative, and the meta-narrative. Whereas both curriculum writers and teachers were conscious of the existence of the frame and task narratives, neither group was aware of the existence of the curriculum meta-narrative. Moreover, most teachers felt no obligation to adhere to the curriculum writers' frame narrative and suggested curriculum activities, and, indeed, some 80% of the curriculum tasks analysed in this study were devised by teachers, not suggested by curriculum writers. Teachers were also unaware of the curriculum writers' meta-narrative and constructed their own meta-narratives, which differed almost completely from that of the writers. This study reveals that the conception of teachers as "obedient" to a written curriculum, which they interpret and adapt while preserving its essential principles, is inconsistent with the teachers' own curriculum thinking. That thinking, founded on narrative thought, understands both curriculum and teaching as revealed stories which are used as a source of stimulation and inspiration. (Contains 5 notes.)

In 1978, more than 100 science educators from Israel and approximately 50 leading science educators and researchers representing 13 countries convened at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot (23-28 July) and The Hebrew University, Jerusalem (30 July-2 August) to discuss problems and issues of curriculum development and curriculum implementation in science. Forty years ago, when the revolutionary reform in science education emerged, many of these issues were new. Before that time, curricula had been developed locally, by those who planned to teach them; as a consequence, terms like dissemination, diffusion, utilization, and implementation were rarely used. The importance of such terms became evident as the movement of curriculum development at the national level gained prominence, especially in science. Today, drawing on the experiences of the last 30 years, we are not only able to specify what curriculum developers have to consider in terms of implementation, but we can also draw some significant conclusions from our experiences with implementation for curriculum development in the future. The most important general conclusion is that curriculum development and implementation should not be viewed as two separate processes, but rather as one interactive process. The purpose of this paper is to describe the nature of this interaction and the factors which may influence it.

Suggests teaching modes of thought other than the scientifically based theoretical mode. Urges teaching students to nurture practical thinking. Describes a case study of a program of Israel studies in Israelis Jewish schools that includes a variety of disciplines. Offers a plan for monthly conferences organized by students with assistance from supervising teachers and resource persons. (DK)

The successful use of Decker Walker's curriculum development model in different educational settings in Israel and Australia demonstrates that inductively derived models can assist educational practice in a way that deductive models cannot. However, Walker's model should not be viewed as a general panacea. Issues that must be examined are discussed. (RM)

A seminar held on a kibbutz in Israel in which educators from the United Kingdom, Canada, and Israel discussed school-based curriculum development is described. (RM)