Search

There are histories describing in detail the development of early childhood education (ECE) around the world, yet not enough is known about this in the Middle East and the information on the origins of ECE in Iran is scarce and fragmentary. This article is the first of its kind to present an overview of the main developments rendering possible the establishment of the first kindergartens in Iran. In our account, we connect this genealogy of early childhood education in Iran to various trajectories: 1) the work of intellectual reformers; 2) the Iranian feminist movement; 3) the Constitutional Revolution in Iran (1906-1911); 4) religious reformist beliefs in Shia; 5) the missionaries' schools; 6) the Armenians' schools and 7) the age of girls' marriage. As we demonstrate, early childhood education in Iran emerged before the industrial revolution. It was mainly provided for intellectual and influential families, focused on physical education accompanied by music, while religious education was marginal. Our genealogical explorations indicate that compared to kindergartens in Britain and Europe, Iranian early childhood education has been an instrument for intellectual societal reform. It was the fruits of a transplanted tree nourished by various local cultural-socio-political trends and religious beliefs. The paper concludes with an assessment of the importance of local and international influences on the emergence of early childhood education and the need to explore this history with an intersectional approach.

This article focuses on how the relations between Ottoman and Iran, which are important states of Islamic history, are discussed in Iranian high school history textbooks. The shadow of collective belief and identity constructed through history education reverberates across the fields of international and foreign policy. Past relations affect two peoples not only politically but also socially and culturally, which mostly manifest themselves in the field of education. The way bilateral relations are addressed in textbooks directly affects the way two peoples perceive each other. The aim of this study is to determine the portrayal of the Ottoman Empire in Iranian high school history textbooks in terms of the relationship between history and identity. Document analysis was used to collect data from high school second- and third-grade history textbooks published between 2017 and 2018. A descriptive model was used. Qualitative research method was used for data collection, analysis and interpretation. Iranian history textbooks depict the Ottoman Empire as a neighboring state that sees itself as the protector of Islam and pursues anti-Shiite politics because it does not want a strong state in its east. They also portray the Ottoman Empire as an aggressive and opportunistic state that uses the internal weaknesses of the Iran State, which sees itself as the protector of Shiism.

In this study we examined the impact of four teaching sessions on the history of ancient Mesopotamian mathematics, in a 10th -grade classroom. The sessions were taught primarily with historical objectives by researchers in the history of ancient mathematics. We reconstructed historians' practices and ethos. The presence of the researchers provided the opportunity to study a sequence in which history was taught 'as a goal'. Moreover, there was no intermediary between the historians and the teaching given to the students, which allowed us to study directly the transposition choices that interested the researchers. We cross-referenced the qualitative and quantitative results of some of the previous findings with the researchers' task design and discourse. We focused on two aspects, namely, students' relationship to mathematics as a scientific activity, and the effects of the students' encounters with the tools and ethics of the history researcher. We found evidence suggesting that students may have made progress in their perception of mathematics 'as an activity' and that a certain 'dépaysement' emerged. Further, the emergence of debates on the nature of historical sources suggests that the teaching of history 'as an endeavor' also seemed to have affected the students. We conclude by proposing some methodological guidelines for future studies.

Birzeit University (BZU)--established in 1924 by the Nasir family--was born out of struggle and developed as a microcosm of the Palestinian national movement against the Zionist settler colonial state of Israel. This article explores specific moments of solidarity with BZU and beyond. I map out a genealogy of three modes of solidarity with Palestine analyzed in light of the political thought and praxis of Amilcar Cabral, Albert Camus, and Hannah Arendt. BZU has been an important and contested site for individual, collective, and universal solidarity initiatives, as gestures of solidarity have been made since 1974 and have continued since then, including the establishment of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel in 2004. In this article, I trace the shifting apathy, empathy, and sympathy expressed with the Palestinian struggle and BZU with a particular emphasis on initiatives by Jewish and Israeli intellectuals. Although this article is neither a chronology nor a moral taxonomy, it aims to produce an indigenous, de-orientalized, and de-colonized account of the meanings of solidarity with Palestine.

This article offers reflections and proposes practices that embody principles of diversity and inclusion while embracing spirituality in higher education. This approach to integral education is informed by the philosophy of Sri Aurobindo and Haridas Chaudhuri, founders of the California Institute of Integral Studies. It blends Eastern philosophy with Western thought, towards holistic education and experiential learning. This integral frame values both spirituality and diversity in experiential learning, emphasizing the role of the teacher in the educational process. In this pedagogy, the professor facilitates learning and transformation through deep personal inquiry of multicultural identity, group dynamics, productive dialogue, inclusion of diverse perspectives in classroom lectures, and practices of yoga and meditation. Relational and embodied, the instructor explores cultural, social, and political positionalities that lead students to further learn from their cultural backgrounds and relational patterns, opening up the possibility for a spiritual experience in an educational setting. These classroom explorations lead to the improvement of interpersonal capacities, multicultural awareness, self-knowledge and authenticity, expansion of consciousness, and ultimately better citizenship. The self-actualized instructor embedded in a transpersonal worldview within a spiritual epistemology of teaching further develops the efficacy of their role by acknowledging the multicultural fabric of students' lives. This pedagogy may contribute to the evolution of consciousness.

This article probes the socially embedded musical pathways and learning strategies followed by professional Palestinian Arab wedding musicians active in the Galilee region of northern Israel from the late 1960s until the present day, from their first childhood experiences of music until the point when they step onto the platform for the first time to perform for payment at a wedding party. Following Susan O'Neill's model of the thick learning ecologies -- interconnected and situated learning environments -- that young people draw upon in order to build their musical competence (2017), and based on data from narrative interviews, we examine the processes by which young Palestinian Arab musicians in the Galilee acquire the musical, technical, social and entrepreneurial knowledge required to enter the wedding scene.

This paper examines two research questions: How do teachers refer to historical figures when teaching difficult past events? Which approaches to teaching difficult past events are reflected in teachers' ways of talking about historical figures? The paper is based on an analysis of lessons by three 11th grade history teachers in Israel on the controversial Altalena Affair. Each teacher assigned a different role to the historical figures. We argue that awareness of the relationship between the way teachers present historical figures and the way they handle controversial events may provide them with a tool for reflecting on their teaching practice.

Americans know very little about the Middle East in general despite the fact that the region is at the heart of American foreign policy. While no one doubts the importance of teaching the history, culture, and politics of the Middle East in the United States, lack of basic knowledge coupled with the strong antipathy toward Arabs and Muslims make classroom teaching about the region quite challenging. Given that the current Islamophobic discourse in mainstream media and imperialistic American foreign policy misinform students about who Middle Easterners are, the so-called "war on terror" causes educators to be uneasy about discussing the Middle East in their classrooms. A strong pro-Israel lobby and other pressure groups make it even more difficult to have an independent intellectual discussion of the Middle East because of intimidation and anti-Semitism accusations that follow discussions of the Palestinian plight or the issue of the Palestinian refugees. This essay will address the challenges and dilemmas the authors confronted when designing and teaching two courses on the Middle East at California State University, San Bernardino (CSUSB) in Southern California. San Bernardino is the poorest county in California and therefore the university has an important role in serving the most underprivileged student populations, both in terms of economic class and race. CSUSB has the second highest African American and Hispanic [especially Hispanic] enrollments of all public universities in California and seventy percent of those who graduate are the first in their families to do so (Office of Institutional Research, 2013). Taking into account the added challenge of the socioeconomic, ethnic, and racial composition of the university's student body, this essay describes the two classes developed under the grant, and identifies the challenges of teaching them and some of the pedagogical strategies and tools used to overcome these challenges

Previous research has discussed the difficulty of teaching topics related to the Middle East. In our experience, one reason for this difficulty is that students are strongly biased with respect to these topics. This research attempts to systematically identify these biases through surveys and then test the effectiveness of targeted lectures that are specifically tailored to challenge the biases. We collected our data over 2 years through surveys conducted in three sections of Introduction to Comparative Politics. We measured the difference of bias in the prelecture and postlecture surveys by using the statistical method of "randomized block design". Our findings demonstrate that students hold a significant degree of bias in four major categories and also have negative images about the region. We find that targeted lectures are effective in lowering both explicit and implicit bias, although a high degree of bias remains for some topics. Our findings are applicable to all courses that cover issues related to the Middle East.

This paper discusses the basic tenets of Islam and the Islamic view of nature that were influential in the development of science in the so-called "Golden Age of Islam". These findings have been the catalyst for present day Muslim scholars, who have emphasized the importance of Islamic science, as the means of understanding Western science. There is also a strong body of opinion within researchers of Islamic science that the abandonment of Islamic values and the rapid adoption of Western science and technologies have led to conflict in social, educational and scientific fields in Islamic countries. The article examines how these two views can be reconciled in order to build bridges between modern science and Islamic science. (Contains 7 footnotes.)

Using transcripts of 6 classroom debates that took place in 4 urban schools, the present study takes a closer look at what middle school students do during classroom debates in the context of a social studies curriculum designed to support student argumentation in debate. Two coding schemes were used to analyze student comments in the transcripts: argumentative moves and the quality of grounds (reasons/evidence used to support a claim). Results show that: (a) students used textual evidence to support their arguments over a third of the time (37.6%), which is a higher rate than what might be expected given previous studies; (b) students connected their evidence to their claims 20.3% of the time (also a much higher rate than what might be expected given previous studies); and (c) argumentative moves were related to text-based grounds quality at a statistically significant level (p = 0.006). Students were more likely to support positions with textual evidence than support oppositions and supporting comments with textual evidence. Implications for middle school practice are discussed.

"Children of Our Future" was a short essay published in 1929 in the Hebrew Teachers' Association jubilee book. It boldly claimed that future offspring of European Jews in Palestine were all fatally doomed due to the degenerative characteristics of the local climate. Such concepts stood in clear opposition to the dream of creating a regenerated type of New Jew in Palestine (referred to symbolically as "Hebrew," which was the ancient denomination of Jews in Palestine). What were the cultural concepts that inspired the article? Did it express a unique idea of the writer or, on the contrary, reflect deeper hidden fears and concealed disappointments of the Hebrew community? To what extent were such concepts a cultural reflection of wider European ideas about degeneration? This article tries to elucidate these issues. The Jubilee book was particular for two reasons: it represented one of the most influential activist groups in Jewish Palestine of that period--the Hebrew teachers--and it was, for its time, an unchallenged intellectual achievement by the wide scope of educational issues it treated as well as by the depth of its analysis. The article, in fact, was unique in trying to reconstruct a pupil "type" and in trying to understand the origin of its particular features. It was also seemingly unique in its interpretation of environmental influences, which stood in apparent contradiction to regenerative ideas that dominated the Jewish ethos in Palestine. But was it indeed unique or rather a reflection of alternative concepts that considered the regenerative trend with more critical views? In order to answer this the article should be placed in the larger context of psychological, medical and pedagogical European concepts concerning degeneration and regeneration and their reflections in the intellectual sphere of Jewish Palestine.

American K-12 school curricula are often bereft of acknowledgements of the historical contributions of Arab societies to our present-day intellectual heritage, an oversight most apparent in the sciences. Teachers in a thriving democracy are obliged to introduce contemporary scholarship that reflects the contributions of Arab scientists between the period of 850 and 1200 in the larger area of the Middle East. This article illuminates significant Arab scientists in history and offers appropriate resources for the K-12 classroom. Additional Readings and Resources for Educators are provided.

This essay analyzes the place of Israel in American Jewish schooling from the beginning of the 20th century until the early years of the 21st century. It utilizes curricula, textbooks, and instructional units, as well as other primary and secondary sources to delineate four distinct periods of Israel education. The subject of Teaching Israel is contextualized in the larger frameworks of both general developments in education as well as the dynamics of Israel in contemporary American Jewish life. The article concludes by delineating emergent 21st century patterns of Israel education that represent new directions.

This essay addresses the challenges of teaching to myths and misperceptions through a discussion of two books that the author uses to frame her course on the history of women and gender in the modern Middle East: (1) Geraldine Brooks' "Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women" (1995); and (2) Heather Raffo's "9 Parts of Desire" (2006). These two books provide examples of the most prevalent types of literature about Middle Eastern women in the modern era. Using these texts as bookends, at the beginning of the semester and at its end, helps structure a course that opens with the advent of European imperial presence in the region, replete with its powerful distortions of non-Western women's realities, narrates the relationship between the emergence of the modern nation-state and the position of women in Middle Eastern societies, and closes with women struggling to maintain a footing in period of vast challenges to Middle Eastern nation-states. The books demonstrate the connection between stereotypes and the interventions of outside powers, and highlight the importance of context for challenging myths and for producing accounts of women that reflect change over time. The essay examines each book's content and strategies, and discusses classroom activities associated with their use.

Education can cease to be a showcase for political projects and start serving women's lives only when the agency of women in their own education is acknowledged. In this paper I have addressed issues concerning harem education to emphasise that possible solutions to issues of girls' education require an awareness concerning the history of girls' education in different geographies. In this article, this agency is pursued in the homosocial production of knowledge in the harem, which is an exoticised space. Questioning the limitations and benefits of the concept of the harem is especially important in understanding processes such as the accommodation of public practices of education in women's homes. Using Foucault's concept of heterotopia, the harem is contextualised to shed light upon its liberating and dominating aspects, as a sphere where public and private practices of education converge. (Contains 14 notes.)

Background/Context: Emotions often accompany discussions of ethnic matters, yet there have been few sustained investigations in education of how, and with what implications, emotional responses are (de)legitimized in the classroom, especially when conflicting historical narratives are involved. Emotions have remained in the margins of educational research about the ways in which historical narratives are dealt with in schools, or at best, they are regarded as epiphenomena rather than constitutive components in teaching practice. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: The main objective of this article is to help us better understand how both emotions and historical narratives are constituted and operate interactively at the level of both the individual and the social-political structures within school and the wider society. The particular event on which we focus the present analysis--a classroom activity on the death of Yasser Arafat--was chosen because it is representative of multiple other events in which similar phenomena were identified. Its analysis offers insights into how those involved in education (even in the context of integrated schools) draw selectively from formal and informal sources to support their emotional identification and sense of belonging within their particular political, national, and religious communities. Research Design: The events presented are based on rich data gathered from a long-standing ethnographic research effort in the context of the Palestinian-Jewish integrated bilingual schools in Israel. Conclusions/Recommendations: We highlight two main implications of the analysis developed in this article. The first concerns the importance of teachers critically analyzing the emotional discourses/practices through which historical narratives are authorized by, implied by, and embodied in schools; this position also entails the recognition that such discourses/practices have consequences for the ways in which affective spaces and communities are constituted within the classroom and beyond. The second is that the findings of this study concerning the teaching of controversial issues in the classroom suggest an imperative need among teachers working with multiethnic children to increase their competence in dealing with conflicting historical narratives at both the cognitive and emotional levels. This competence can be partly developed through preservice and in-service teacher education that pays attention to the emotional complexities of teaching conflicting historical narratives.

Nakheel, a Dubai World Company has created the world's largest themed mall based on the narrative of Ibn Battuta, a 14th century Muslim explorer whose world travels are well documented. The Ibn Battuta Mall is located in the city of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates and utilizes a communication strategy called edutainment: a neologistic portmanteau whose goals are to educate and entertain an audience. Through the use of diffusion theory and its five innovation attributes, this paper recognizes that the architects and designers of the Ibn Battuta Mall have placed edutainment goals into the context of a mall expressing a predominantly Arab and Muslim identity. This paper argues that the mall has failed to achieve many of its educational goals and has replaced historical fact and authenticity in favor of expressing a message of opulence and social prestige, which defines the mall as a place of commerce rather than a stimulating learning environment. (Contains 15 figures and 1 table.)

The authors offer a brief introduction to the history of women of the Middle East, with a focus on three major religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam). Schools are paying increased attention to teaching world history, but they are giving too little attention to incorporating women as part of world history. One of the major dividing lines within the Middle East has been religion, a fixed feature of the world history curriculum. The authors attempt to provide insights, based on new research about women in the region, into how religion and culture influence women's lives in this area of the world. They conclude with a brief consideration of how women are organizing for change in the Middle East.

The article describes the social and cultural roles of Mesopotamian mathematics and the interplay of these roles with such patterns of mathematical thought as can be traced through the sources; it covers the period from the first formation of a genuine state, shortly after the mid-fourth millennium b.c.e., until the end of the Old Babylonian epoch, c. 1600 b.c.e. The picture presented is a historical reconstruction; little of what it asserts can be found directly in a single source. Full documentation would ask for a bibliography longer than the article. This being both impossible and without purpose, some publications of importance are listed in the concluding "Bibliographic Remarks" (Section 4); in these, further bibliography can be found. The description of the many interconnected aspects of Mesopotamian mathematics evidently has no implications for how mathematics should be taught. It is meant as inspiration for how mathematics educators and didacticians think "about" mathematics, and to give input to the teaching "about" mathematics.

During the Vietnam War, and the years following the conflict, history teachers were often hesitant to examine the war in the classroom for a variety of reasons. This article explores some of the factors that prohibited the effective teaching of the Vietnam War. Implications regarding how these inhibiting factors might affect teaching about the present conflict in Iraq will then be discussed.

A preliminary survey of formal concepts of "disability" from the Twelve Tables of Rome of the 5th century BCE to the Prerogativa Regis in English law of the late 13th century CE is presented. Firm conclusions are restricted by problems in translation and other limitations in available data. However, it appears that the concept of intellectual disability and its distinction from episodic mental illness first emerged in several subcultures of Western civilization during the height of ancient imperial Rome and during the early medieval period in Northern European and Arabic civilization.

This article discusses the relationship between teachers, classroom controversy and the media. It also features the story of Ayesha, who coincidentally is one of the authors of this article. Ayesha's story is a social studies teacher's bad dream featuring one of her worst fears: (1) public criticism; and (2) controversy over something that has been taught in class. An experience like Ayesha's causes a powerful ripple effect: other teachers become concerned for their own professional safety and quickly examine their curriculum for anything that might make them vulnerable to a similar onslaught. Such self-imposed censorship is a direct threat to academic freedom through prior constraint. Educators are generally not practiced in responding to negative newspaper or television reports much less the fairly new phenomenon of talk radio. The relationship between the educational community and the media is complex and while it is not possible to address all of its many dimensions here, the authors touch on the dilemma of whether to avoid or prepare for possible controversy and on the effects adverse media attention can have on teachers. Increasingly, the debates about education are taking place on the radio, on TV, in newspapers, and on the web. The media has the potential to be either a formidable foe, carelessly or deliberately creating controversy through misrepresentation and exaggeration, or a powerful ally, providing an avenue for teachers to explain their objectives and actions, describe their achievements, and answer their critics. Because of its multidimensional qualities, the outcome of any media engagement is impossible to predict. Consequently, most teachers and administrators are slow to respond to media criticism due to the fear that any reaction may simply fan the fire. Undoubtedly, engaging in a talk radio shouting match is bound to be viewed as especially onerous. The understandable tendency in a case like Ayesha's is to develop an official statement and hope the furor will just go away. Becoming a player on the media stage is fraught with pitfalls and, in spite of the best planning, what gets reported can be incomplete, mistaken, or completely distorted. It would be naive to suggest that what we propose is easily accomplished or doesn't require a generous amount of determination and fortitude. Good planning combined with a knowledge of how the system works will go far in enabling educators to play an effective role on the media stage. (Contains 11 notes.)

History is the study of the past; some of the past is more recent than a glance over many schemes of work might lead us to think. Chris Culpin makes the case for ignoring the 20 year rule and tackling head on--and, crucially, "historically"--the big issues of the very recent past. He shows that critical historical study is precisely what is needed to aid students' understanding of the news. He provides guidance on where to find the resources to study events so recent that they do not appear in any textbooks. Intriguingly, he also suggests that one measure of historical understanding might be found in asking questions which are not about the past, but the future. Here is the Modern World Study of the Schools History Project GCSE brought right up to date.

Arabic is the language of the Arab minority in Israel, the Palestinian Authority, and the neighbors of Israel (Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon). Hence, learning Arabic and Arab culture is very important to promoting understanding between Arabs and Jews. The concept of using the internet to promote learning and communication between students in the field of Islam and the history of the Middle East is not a new one. Dr. Corinne Blake from Rowan University in New Jersey became interested in this subject a few years ago and published an article named "Teaching Islamic Civilization with information technology" in the "Journal of MultiMedia History" in 1998. A short time afterwards, the author published a Hebrew version of this article in the periodical of Levinsky College of Education. In this article, the author describes the method of teaching Islam and Arabic through the Internet in the classroom.

Barbara Petzen began working as a part-time outreach coordinator at Harvard University's Center for Middle Eastern Studies (CMES) a week before September 11, 2001. She was finishing her dissertation in Middle Eastern studies, specializing in the Ottoman Empire and Arab history, and thought it would be a good job to have while she completed her Ph.D. Needless to say, within days her job became "an entirely different thing." Her part-time job had become full-time and she was busy trying to figure out how to provide teachers with the tools they would need to learn and teach about the Middle East and Islam. The challenge for teachers today is how to teach about the Middle East in a political and emotional environment that is extremely tense. How can educators convey the complexities of both historical and current events? Where can they find unbiased information? How can we teach our students to be critical analysts without being labeled or perceived as "unpatriotic"? This article offers some suggestions for teachers on how to teach about the Middle East. A list of curricula-related resources on Women in the Middle East is included.