One of the most controversial problems regarding educational inclusion is the inherent contradiction between high demands and special needs. Faced with this challenge, many general education teachers turn to training programmes to compensate for special education knowledge they lack and to acquire special education teaching techniques. In this…

A growing number of studies have suggested that teachers' personal competencies, and more specifically Emotional Intelligence (EI), are particularly important for teacher effectiveness. Recently, there has also been a growing recognition of the importance of social-emotional competencies to students' learning and academic achievement. However,…

English is solidly entrenched in Israel as the "first foreign language", as defined in the Policy on Language Education in Israeli Schools. The English curriculum published in 2001 expresses the view that English is the world's most important language and therefore requires the highest standards of teaching. This research examined how…

Teaching mathematically gifted students is a challenging pursuit, especially at the secondary level. However, characterizing teachers who can successfully meet this challenge has so far been scarcely addressed directly. In this paper, elements of the desired profile of such teachers are extracted from the general literature on mathematical…

This article reports on difficulties related to the concepts of inheritance and polymorphism, expressed by a group of 22 in-service CS teachers with an experience with the procedural paradigm, as they coped with a course on OOP. Our findings are based on the analysis of tests, questionnaires that the teachers completed in the course, as well as on…

This paper describes a four-year program to advance electrical and electronics studies and their implementation in eight northern Israeli high schools. The program was begun with four schools participating, increasing to eight schools toward the end. This paper presents the teaching and learning processes of teachers and students during the…

Nanoscience is an important new field in modern science. It deals with the ability to create materials, devices, and systems having fundamentally new properties and functions by working at the atomic, molecular, and macromolecular levels. Many teachers in the educational system have relatively limited knowledge related to nanochemistry and…

Due to a program reform in Israel, experienced CS high-school teachers faced the need to master and teach a new programming paradigm. This situation served as an opportunity to explore the relationship between teachers' content knowledge (CK) and their pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). This article focuses on three case studies, with emphasis…

The impact of a continuing teacher guidance system was studied. The system provided to teachers consisted of in-school guidance, written guidance, and in-service teacher training. The guidance system was developed in connection with the more comprehensive project of developing a new mathematics curriculum for junior high schools in Israel. (DWH)

Confidence in subject matter knowledge and in teaching ability, as well as actual subject matter competence of 157 grade 7-9 teachers were measured in order to assess the impact of an inservice course in mathematics instruction. Results are discussed. (Author/MT)

How teachers restructured their professional knowledge (PK) was studied using data from a Tel Aviv (Israel) University workshop for experienced writing teachers that was designed to change their professional orientation from technical rationality to reflection in action. Workshop participants included 18 teachers with 10 to 35 years of teaching…

Since biology is one of the most dynamic research fields within the natural sciences, the gap between the accumulated knowledge in biology and the knowledge that is taught in schools, increases rapidly with time. Our long-term objective is to develop means to bridge between the dynamics of biological discoveries and the biology teachers and…

To improve science, mathematics, and technology education, Israeli high school teachers received training involving inservice courses and school supervision. Surveys, reports, observations, meetings, and student achievement tests indicated that the program was useful for teachers who had acquired basic knowledge in their disciplines. It took 3-6…