Narratives, or stories, are used every day by people as a way of making sense of and communicating events in the world. Narratives can be highly useful as a learning tool in science education. Though research on narrative-based pedagogy in science education and communication is very common, most of that research was done in formal settings. Our…

Dialogic pedagogy aims to promote deliberative democratic skills, virtues and practices within an equitable and empowering classroom environment. This article problematizes the practice of setting classroom ground rules in light of dialogic pedagogy's democratic aspirations. Specifically, we explore the space for dissenting voices within the…

The purpose of this paper is to exemplify a "grass-roots" change based on Dewey's experimental progressive education model employed in the "Bridge over the Valley" bilingual school, a Palestinian-Arab and Jewish school in Israel. In order to identify the progressive "approach" underlying this change, the…

New generations are using and playing with mobile and computer applications extensively. These applications are the outcomes of programming work that involves skills, such as computational and algorithmic thinking. Learning programming is not easy for students children. In recent years, academic institutions like the Massachusetts Institute of…

This study examines attitudes to school science classes amongst primary school children, based on the assumption that these will influence their attitudes and choices later in life. 1298 primary school students in grades 4-6 were given a Likert-type questionnaire and asked to provide verbal explanations for their agreement/disagreement with each…

The authors investigated effects of metacognitive instruction at different phases of reading scientific texts on elementary school students' scientific literacy and metacognitive awareness. In all, 108 Israeli 4th-grade students in 4 science classrooms read the same scientific texts and completed the same scientific tasks. From them, 3 treatment…

This paper reports on an exploratory, longitudinal study that analyzes and interprets the evolution of teachers' beliefs regarding learning, teaching, and technology, and their instructional practices, in the context of integrating technology-based information-rich tasks in six 4th-6th grade classrooms. The study used multiple research tools,…

A science lesson (observing yeast) was taught demonstrating that when a guided inquiry instructional method is encountered there is a change from subjective to objective thinking. Describes steps in the lesson and analysis of pupils' responses and behavior. Suggests an instructional model to increase perceptive level of thinking in biology…

Advocates the use of little puppet plays for teaching English as a foreign language to elementary school children. (Available from English Inspectorate, Ministry of Education and Culture, P. O. Box 292, Jerusalem, Israel.) (CHK)

Describes the achievement of Israeli fourth and eight graders on the performance assessment of the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). The Israeli educational system has stressed practical tasks, and as expected, performance of Israeli students on the TIMSS performance assessment is quite high. (SLD)

This journal, published in Israel, contains articles of interest to teachers of English as a second language, particularly those in Hebrew-English situations. This issue contains the following articles: (1) "Thirty Years of Israel -- in the English Class," by A. Sotto and L. Marnin; (2) "English in Grade Four," by E. Gelber;…