Adult citizenship requires a gradual acquisition of political culture--knowledge, attitudes, skills and patterns of behavior necessary to engage in political action. This is especially the case in democratic societies, which are based on citizens' participation. Hence, education for citizenship is uniformly considered as a major mission of the…

This paper presents and examines the first school change program focusing on violence and caring based on self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 2012). The program aimed at promoting teachers' capacity to cope with violence and enhance caring without becoming more controlling. Comparisons of the effects of a 22-month-long program in three…

Israeli schools expressly forbid a student to hit back after being attacked. In semistructured interviews, 71 Israeli educators were asked for their views on the hitting-back tactic. The interviews compared their attitude toward hitting back as teachers with their take on the matter as parents. The results, analyzed using grounded theory, show…

In this paper, I examine how student academic achievements and behavior were affected by a school finance policy experiment undertaken in elementary schools in Israel. Begun in 2004, the funding formula changed from a budget set per class to a budget set per student, with more weight given to students from lower socioeconomic and lower educational…

The purpose of this study was to explore the associations between aspects of control (self-control capability and the need to control others) and forms of aggression (reactive and proactive). Data were derived from a structured questionnaire administered to 660 male and female adolescents with an average age of 14.99 years, from two urban schools…

This study tested the hypothesis that values, abstract goals serving as guiding life principles, become relatively important predictors of adolescents' self-reported violent behavior in school environments in which violence is relatively common. The study employed a students-nested-in-schools design. Arab and Jewish adolescents (N = 907, M age =…

Ensuring a safe learning environment for students is a major responsibility of educators and policymakers around the world. Based on the secondary analyses of the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) data collected from 33 countries in 1999, the study found that 8th graders who witnessed their friends' violence…

Examined the effects of awareness of peers' risky behaviors on elementary students' experiences of school victimization. Surveys of Arab and Jewish students indicated that students' awareness of risky peer behaviors in school was one of the strongest predictors of their own personal victimization at school, controlling for gender, ethnicity, and…

This study examined the relationship between children's experiences of domestic violence and their adjustment at school. Sixty-three children (28 girls), in Israel, their classmates and teachers took part in the study. Children were divided into four groups: (1) those who were victims of physical abuse; (2) those who witnessed abuse; (3) those who…

In a comprehensive survey of the literature title "Coping With Violence in the School System," Benbenisti, Astor, and Marachi (2003) map out the programs being deployed throughout the school system today. Those programs listed are "peace builders," "second step," "Richmond's youth against violence,"…

This study explores whether the association between substance use and involvement in youth violence is a unique association resulting from the properties of the drugs, or whether it is part of a larger behavioral cluster. The sample was composed of 1,571 10th grade students from the Israeli secular and religious state school systems, including…

Examined how risky peer group behaviors at school impacted junior high students' experience of victimization, extending findings from an earlier study of elementary students. Surveys of Arab and Jewish Israeli junior high students indicated that risky peer behaviors in school were one of the strongest predictors of victimization in both elementary…

Maintains that, during the intifada (the revolt of Palestinians against Israeli occupation), the social order and power bases in Arab schools in East Jerusalem were transformed by significant social change. Discusses the rapid decline in teachers' authority and students' abuse of teachers and their property. (CFR)