Knowledge and skills are the central themes of an education system. Nowadays, the main focus in on skills generally and on thinking skills specifically. The principle adapted currently is that education is not just transferring knowledge to learners or students but rather it is a process that is also directly related with the cognitive, emotional…

Encounters with dignity are learning moments that foster humanization and communal values, even in settings of radical difference. This article probes the potential of such learning, reviewing pedagogies of encounter and analyzing the values of dignity implicit in that work. Diving more deeply into the phenomenon of dignity, the authors analyze…

Global citizenship education (GCE) has recently been promoted by national education systems and supranational organisations as a means for facilitating social cohesion and peace education. We examined the perceptions of GCE held by teachers from the three main education sectors in Israel: secular-Jewish, religious-Jewish, and Palestinian Arab, and…

Located in Israel's contested city of Jaffa, The Church of Scotland's Tabeetha School is a faith-based, colonial-international school featuring an unlikely combination of Arab-Palestinian pupils, Christian ethos, Scottish spirit, and globally oriented curriculum. Drawing on an ethnographic case study of the Scottish School, this article unpacks…

Using the Israeli case, our study delves into teachers' and students' notions of social justice, exploring how they are shaped by both world culture trends and local conditions. We first identify social justice notions in the world culture perspective and Israeli society. Then, we empirically examine how these notions are understood by educational…

We frequently encounter the claim that a particular Jewish educational experience will be "transformative" for the participants. The language may be hyperbole. But it may also point to educators' aspirations to affect not just knowledge and practice but character and identity. In order to understand this phenomenon--not the phenomenon of…

This study examines the nature and extent of extracurricular activities in the Palestinian Arab, Jewish Religious and Jewish Secular educational sectors (Israeli education system also includes the Ultra-Orthodox sector with its own management, monitoring and governance apparatus.) in Israel, in order to characterise the contextual variables that…

The teaching of religion raises opportunities to reduce prejudicial beliefs and attitudes among students. In this study, 30 religion, history, and civics teachers in Israel, East Jerusalem, and the Palestinian Territories were interviewed about their motivations for teaching religion. This study found that teachers expressed a variety of…

In Jewish primary schools, religious education is centred on the study of Torah. At Sinai, according to Jewish tradition, Moses received the Torah in two parts: a written tradition (Hebrew scripture) and an oral tradition. The oral tradition contained much scriptural "interpretation" known, in Hebrew, as midrash. Midrash continued to be…

The article argues that, in the teaching of religion at undergraduate level, many students approach understanding the historical or contemporary Middle East in ways that are coloured by what they think is biblical knowledge or basic Christian beliefs. This is less noticeable for students in disciplines such as history or politics. Many history or…

"Trajectories of Education in the Arab World" gives a broad yet detailed historical and geographical overview of education in Arab countries. Drawing on pre-modern and modern educational concepts, systems, and practices in the Arab world, this book examines the impact of Western cultural influence, the opportunities for reform and the…

The chapters in this volume do not represent the whole of the Middle East and North Africa, as such a collection would have been too large for one volume. Rather, the selection here is intended to present different perspectives on a range of educational issues, relevant to a particular focus or country, or common to a number of countries in the…