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This qualitative study addresses the issue of the cultural transition of Arab women who for the first time leave their secluded villages and traditional society in the Northern Galilee to access Western-style Israeli institutions of higher education located in the region in which they will study in Hebrew, their second language. This study uses several models of acculturation in order to better understand these women's experience of acculturation, cultural diversity, ethnic identity and at times discrimination as they come into contact with students belonging to a diversity of Arab and Jewish ethnic groups. Content analysis of semi-structured interviews conducted with 42 female Arab students of Druze, Muslim and Christian origin, revealed that parental and/or husband support, lower college admission requirements, and the geographical proximity of the colleges to the villages allowed gave these women the opportunity to access higher education without compromising their traditional values of modesty and virginity. Hebrew language proficiency, seldom spoken in the villages, and consequent academic self-efficacy perception were for these women key factors for academic success and integration in the dominant Israeli socio-economic structures. Lack of tolerance for cultural diversity, discrimination, and inter-groups conflict were at times, reported not only between Arab and Jewish but also between Druze and Muslim students and/or their instructors. Factors mentioned to be reducing cultural shock and acculturative stress were the presence of other female Arab students from the same or neighboring towns studying in the college and the going back and forth between cultures as these women returned every day back home to their villages. Exposed to other values and traditions these women sorted the values they cherished in their own and in other cultures while maintaining a strong sense of cultural identity.

Background: Poor single mothers in Israel are stigmatized in public discourse as lazy and relying on the taxpayers' money yet are seldom given the opportunity to access higher education to achieve economic independence. Objectives: This work sought to find (a) the sources of empowerment and resilient self‐efficacy motivating poor single mothers to pursue a degree and (b) examine the transformative growth of mothers and children in the process of acquiring knowledge. Participants and settings: Twelve poor single mothers enrolled in the Katzir antipoverty program who were about to graduate. Methods: In‐depth private interviews and content analysis examined the similarities among these women's experiences. Results: Motivations to pursue a bachelor's degree included mothers' desire to prove to themselves that they could complete a degree and secure a better future for their children. Although initially overwhelmed, they developed resilient self‐efficacy as they passed their exams and surmounted financial and other crises related to their children's health and lack of childcare. Relationships with their children had improved, and by sharing their progress and achievements with their children, they had become a proud team, motivating each other to achieve. Conclusion: Given the centrality of children well‐being in mothers' motivation to study and complete a degree, children's needs for subsidized daycare and after‐school programs cannot be ignored. Implications: Two‐generation programs that assist mothers to pursue a degree while providing daycare and after‐school programs for children must be implemented to offer fair opportunities for poor single mothers in Israel to complete a bachelor's degree. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on in-depth qualitative interviews, this article gives the opportunity to 145 sixth graders to tell, in their own words, how they felt and reacted when verbally and emotionally abused by their classmates. Content analysis of interviews revealed gender differences in students reactions to verbal aggression. Another interesting finding was the differentiation between verbally aggressive messages meant to be for fun from those that were not so meant based on (1) contextual cues, (2) other peers reaction, and (3) the malleability of the personal features that were the topic of the attack. Observing friendly peers were found to play an important role in reducing tension and preventing the escalation of violence. However, when the verbally aggressive message targeted a permanent physical characteristic or the student's social or ethnic identity, then suffering, anger and humiliation legitimized the escalation from verbal to physical aggression for students of both genders. (Contains 1 note.)

This study examined the extent to which a multiethnic sample of 900 Israeli high school students supported date-rape and victim-blaming attitudes and the predictors of such support. Findings indicate wide support for stereotypes justifying sexual coercion by time and the location of the date, the victim's behavior, and the minimization of the seriousness of date rape. A regression analysis indicates that students' gender and age are the strongest predictors of rape-tolerant and victim-blaming attitudes. Socioeconomic status and religious orientation explain a small proportion of the variance in the support of such attitudes. By contrast, no significant relationship is indicated with ethnicity. Alternative sex-education and rape-prevention programs must address date-rape and victim-blaming attitudes and make students of both genders aware of various factors that continue to be misread as an invitation to have sex and put them at high risk of experiencing sexual coercion on a date.

Adopting the perspectives of the philosophers Plato and Rawls, addresses the issues of juvenile offenders' rehabilitation and consent. Focuses on paternalistic intervention, autonomous decision-making ability, and moral immaturity. Discusses Plato's theme of rehabilitating offenders' sick souls, whether they agree or not, and Rawls more democratic perspective. (RJM)

This study examines the process of identity negotiation of 15 Muslim women who resisted severe abuse by their husbands and extended family by becoming mentally ill and thereafter, divorcing. Content analysis of the interview narratives shows that these women were poor, married young, and endured years of battering, isolation, and silencing for the sake of family honor and children’s well-being. Entrapped within a web of sociocultural norms legitimizing wife beating, and abusive extended family relationships that annihilate their voice by branding them as maj’nuna/insane, these women explained that they were terrorized helpless victims fearing the stigma of being labeled insane and the resultant harm to their children. With the deterioration of their health, threat of annihilation, and imminent danger to themselves and their children, these women broke through the normative oppressive framework by becoming maj’nuna/mentally ill. Detached from the extended family and no longer caring to endorse a label that discredited what they said or did, these women overtly resisted by escaping to the family of origin and/or mental health clinic to reveal the abuse, divorce, and seek treatment. Severing all family ties, and now residing in public housing, these women felt safe to renegotiate a favorable identity and reclaim the right to live with dignity. Implications/recommendations: (1) The criminalization of battering and prosecution of batterers is not enough to deter when cultural norms sanction battering, (2) additional diagnostic categories are needed to identify the precursors of battering within the strategies of overt and covert resistance battered women adopt in collectivistic cultures such as mental and neurophysiological dysfunctions, and (3) it is necessary to transcend the individualistic model titling battered women within the false dichotomy of victimization or agency as it fails to reflect battered women’s experience in collectivistic cultures and their resistant strategies to abuse in the extended family. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the values of Israeli prisoners as they prepare to leave prison. The authors maintain values of easy money, partying, loyalty to friends, and excitement were the main concerns of the offenders, and drug abuse contributed to sinking deeper into a life of corruption.

Lack of discipline is a chronic problem that teachers face in the classroom. The manner in which this problem is handled will determine the amount of learning that takes place. In this study, 35 teacher-education students were assigned to separate K through 8th grade classrooms throughout Southern New Jersey in order to observe for ten 50-minute sessions students-teacher interaction on the topic of discipline. Coding was performed based on predefined behavioral categories for the discipline problems and the disciplinary techniques that teachers adopted to solve them. The most frequent discipline problemsaetalking-whispering, out-of-seat, fidgeting, and inattentiona:were found to be similar throughout the grades, albeit varying in frequency. The techniques most often used to solve them were the ones that did not interrupt the flow of instruction. Suggestions are made to channel discipline problems into positive learning experience., Introduction Lack of discipline has several times since 1968 topped the annual Gallup Poll of Public Attitudes towards public schools as the major problem schools have to face (Schottle & [...]

This study invited 10 of the 22 sex offenders enrolled in a prison-based rehabilitation program in one of the prisons in Israel to engage in the two first of the 4-D ( Discover, Dream, Design, and Deliver) stages of the Appreciative Inquiry . Consistent with the responsivity principle, and the IA tenets, program participants were interviewed to Discover components to which they were responsive and Dream/envision additional ones that would increase engagement and progress. Content analysis of the interviews indicated that despite the initial decision to enrol based on external incentives, participants eventually engaged in group therapy and expressed the desire to understand and regulate their sexual behaviour. While the the modules of Cognitive Behabioral Group Therapy (CBT) were viewed as assets, the lack of sufficient recruitment criteria, the large therapy group size, and its open-ended structure were mentioned as impediments reaching therapeutic goals. Social workers/therapists were criticized for their request that they be informers, and for their accusative therapeutic style whenever sexual issues were broached. Recommendations derived from the offenders' narrative were to increase staff professionalism to create a therapeutic alliance that promotes trust and open communication. Criminal justice practitioners may then take up the challenge of the never-ending process of Appreciative Inquiry to Design and Deliver program components envisioned by the participants to increase participants' responsivity to the program and thus its effectiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research examines the accounts of 10 out of 22 incarcerated sex offenders undergoing therapy in one of the prison-based sex-offender rehabilitation units in Israel and their ability to renegotiate reality to reject stigmatisation and maintain a favourable identity. The research participants had been convicted either of child molestation or of date/statutory rape against an acquaintance. This differentiation was maintained when analysing the individual interviews conducted in prison. Prior to the provision of accounts, to establish the soundness of their character, the interviewees resituated themselves within a normative background in terms of setting, routine activities, and interactions preceding and following the offence. Offenders convicted of child molestation attributed their behaviour to a sudden unpredictable shift in the setting and interactions with the child that resulted in an erection and consequent impulsive sexual behaviour of which they could not be held responsible. Offenders convicted of date/statutory rape admitted responsibility for their action, yet minimised its harm by attributing it to the dynamic chain of interactions with the victim whose behaviour had deviated from the 'good' girl or 'macho' man on a date and thus had precipitated the act. Rather than discounting sex offenders' accounts as cognitive distortions of a sick mind, prevention and education programme are to rely on such accounts to increase youth and young adult awareness to traditional gender-role schemata and dating scripts espoused by Israeli macho men that facilitate date rape and to the dynamics of interactional and situational factors placing young children at risk of sexual victimisation. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]