Contemporary literature reveals that many educators, especially those in elementary schools and in conflict-effected societies, are reluctant to engage in the teaching of current public issues, even more so social controversies. However, this qualitative study examined the successful experience and the perspectives of educators from two elementary…

Educating students to become participatory citizens in their country is one of the explicit tasks of public education in a democratic-liberal state. In this article, I use civics education in Israel as a case study for the examination of the justification and the practicability of implementing political education in schools, as opposed to…

Collaborations between public schools and non-system actors (NSAs) raise questions regarding the influence of such external partners. Focusing on the case of civic education, this study asks how such cross-sector alliances (CSAs) impact the citizenship conceptions promoted in Israeli classrooms. Thirty-two interviews were conducted with teachers…

Purpose: Educators are recognized as key agents of social change, responsible for shaping future citizens. Beyond imparting knowledge, teachers are crucial in addressing societal challenges such as sustainability, democracy and social equality. This study aims to investigate the attitudes of Jewish and Arab students toward democratic values and…

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…

Over the past decades, neo-Zionist discourse has gain prominence in Israel. This approach, which gives preference to the definition of Israel as a Jewish state over its definition as a democracy, is a specific version authoritarian populism. This paper explores how educational discourses, policies and curricular changes are being shaped by…

Civic education research in different national settings points to how citizenship conceptions act as factors that frame and steer practice. This review of research conducted in Israel over the last 40 years questions a reality in which the choice of a leading civic ideology is controversial, due to the fundamental aspects of citizenship in Israel…

The aim of this qualitative research is to investigate how religious Zionist female adolescents (N = 40) construct and deconstruct their perceptions of democracy within the 'postsecular' Israeli society as a result of their intensive, religious Zionist education and socialization process promoted by Israeli schools which subscribe to this ideology…

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…

In recent years, a number of studies have explored the link between Zionism and the latent racism prevalent in Israeli society. As a result of these studies, it has become clear that successive generations of Israeli citizens (and non-citizens) are exposed to a single historical and cultural narrative. Such a narrative is intentionally designed to…

This article will juxtapose the goals and implications of two pedagogical programmes that promote education for belonging in Israel. Representing the official knowledge of the Ministry of Education, the first is the "100 Concepts in Heritage, Zionism and Democracy" curriculum. The second, which embodies the counter knowledge produced and…

This annual publication serves as a forum for new ideas and dialogue between scholars and the larger public. Essays explore ways that students, administrators, and faculty can initiate and sustain an ongoing conversation about the public life they share. Following a Foreword by Deborah Witte, this issue of the "Higher Education Exchange"…

The author demonstrates that entry-level students can achieve a more comprehensive understanding of complex problems through an explicitly interdisciplinary approach than through a merely multidisciplinary approach, using the process described in Repko's (2014) "Introduction to Interdisciplinary Studies." Repko takes the…

The Kettering Foundation's research has been focused on putting the public back into the public's business for more than thirty years. Some questions that have recently been useful to Kettering researchers as the foundation focuses on its work with institutional actors--especially higher education and its relationship with the public--have…

This article argues that in divided societies, civic education fails to fulfill one of its most important social role: creating a more inclusive society that allows a democratic dialogue to flow across different ideological, religious, and cultural communities. This failure is grounded in two main reasons. First, civics teachers are socially and…