This article demonstrates how stories serve as effective methodology when scrutinizing the meaning of social and political conflicts in diverse classrooms. I base my argument on a story about a distressing conflict among students from different ethnic, and national backgrounds occurring in an academic course at an Israeli college. A detailed…

Purpose: This research explores the pivotal role of educational research in supporting democratic civic education amid armed conflict. The study uses the recent experiences in Israel to examine how research can maintain democratic values and foster reconciliation during tumultuous times, aiming to illuminate the transformative capabilities of…

The authors chronicle developing and teaching a National Endowment for the Humanities-funded trauma literature seminar at a public Historically Black University. The course focused on how literary and visual art from different countries and historical eras address two questions: "Can people survive and heal after trauma, not just physically,…

The aim of this article is to examine the frameworks that educators use, especially how they conclude teaching and learning about genocide, and to suggest readings and other sources for use. The narrative arc that educators establish by choosing where to begin and where to end is a powerful indicator of their course goals and teaching rationales.…

The purpose of this study was to explore how learners make meaning of their experiences at exhibits depicting narratives of the Polish Righteous Among the Nations of the World, free-choice learning contexts. The study focused on two exhibits at a university in the mid-Western United States. The conceptual framework of the study integrates…

I consider in this paper the question of balance in popular education between what we can call annunciation and denunciation, inspired by the work of Paulo Freire. By annunciation, I mean the role of love, affirmation, encouragement and profound encounters with otherness; by denunciation, I have in mind the spirit of critique and challenge to the…

How can we bridge the emotional and cognitive study of Holocaust testimonies in Israel? Can empathy be used as a stepping stone to critical reflection? And how can teachers address the manipulative popular interpretation of these testimonies in Israel, which seemingly place them beyond critical reflection? We examine these questions through an…

The reader is taken on a journey spanning some 30 years devoted to the author's involvement in practicing, teaching and studying peace education. The core concept in this journey is active "bystandership," which implies the capacity to disengage from our ethnocentric narratives and perceptions and to face the emotional challenges of…

Visual History Archive, or VHA, is the world's largest database of videotaped and digitized Holocaust video testimony. The VHA originated with filmmaker Steven Spielberg, who consulted camp survivors when making his blockbuster film "Schindler's List" in 1993. Inspired by this collaboration, Spielberg went on to establish the Survivors…

In this article we analyze moviemaking as a unique pedagogy that is used in a preservice semester in Israel program for the preparation of Israel educators: Students create their own short films about an aspect of Israeli society and/or their relationship with it. We analyze the students' movies, together with students' reflective papers about the…

This case study examines the contours of culturally relevant pedagogy in an undergraduate preservice teacher education program for Jewish women. The case describes how the assigned reading of Albarelli's (2000) narrative of teaching in a Hasidic Jewish school, "Teacha! Stories from a Yeshiva", disrupts the classroom community,…

In this article, the author shares a little background on the life of William W. Brickman as his adoptive father. His father's parents immigrated to the United States from Jedwabne, northern Russian Poland around 1908. His father was born on June 30, 1913 in a tenement house located at 200 Eldridge Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. His…

College provides a developmental context for examining students' deeply rooted beliefs about sexuality and religion. We conducted an analysis of 95 written narratives from undergraduate students regarding their perspective on how their study of sexuality has challenged, informed, or strengthened their own childhood and current spiritual and/or…

In this article, the author talks about his encounter with Brickman and the things he admired of him as his teacher. The author had the good fortune of having two great teachers over a twenty-three-year period of formal education, one at each end of the educational spectrum. The first was the Reverend Vincent Eaton, his English teacher during the…