This article seeks to shed light on the dilemma facing history education in regions beset by a protracted, and as yet unresolved ethno-political conflict. The article will examine this issue by means of a unique test case that observes a dramatic war event in Israeli textbooks. The event in question is the Six-Day War of 1967 and the study of its…

Research has shown the Holocaust to be the primary component of Jewish identity (Farago in Yahadut Zmanenu 5:259-285, 1989; Gross in Influence of the trip to Poland within the framework of the Ministry of Education on the working through of the Holocaust. Unpublished M.A. thesis, Ben-Gurion University, Beer Sheva, 2000; "Herman in Jewish…

This study engaged Israeli-Jewish and Israeli-Arab students in a joint investigation of their common past by means of secondary historical sources. The hypothesis was that a triadic interaction among agents of groups with opposing views and historical texts can foster historical thinking. It was expected that while ethnic identity would drive both…

How do visual representations (VRs) in curriculum materials influence theoretical curriculum frameworks? Suggesting that VRs' integration into curriculum materials affords a different lens for perceiving and understanding the curriculum domain, this study draws on a curricular perspective in relation to multi-representations in texts rather than…

This paper shows some mechanisms as well as the paralysing implications of the perpetrator-victim positioning in the context of inservice education with Jewish- and Palestinian-Israeli teachers who teach in Palestinian-Jewish integrated schools. It examines how these teachers remain rooted in the hegemonic historical narratives of their own…

Background/Context: Emotions often accompany discussions of ethnic matters, yet there have been few sustained investigations in education of how, and with what implications, emotional responses are (de)legitimized in the classroom, especially when conflicting historical narratives are involved. Emotions have remained in the margins of educational…

The purpose of this article is to explore the meanings and implications of dangerous memories in two different sites of past traumatic memories: one in Israel and the other in Cyprus. Dangerous memories are defined as those memories that are disruptive to the status quo, that is, the hegemonic culture of strengthening and perpetuating existing…

This essay is based on the author's book, "The Palestine Mandate and the Creation of Israel." As the sixtieth anniversary of Israel's independence in May 2008 approaches, that country remains a focal point of world attention. Israel's origins do much to explain why the Arab-Israeli conflict has been so hard to resolve, but also provide a…

In this essay, Shoshana Steinberg and Dan Bar-On present the work of a team of Israeli and Palestinian teachers who developed a history textbook that includes both groups' narratives of the same events side by side. These teachers then tested the effects of its use in both Israeli and Palestinian classrooms; for the first time, students on each…

My study explores a curriculum development project for Israel education in a liberal Jewish high school. Through an action research framework, I investigate the tensions between teaching about Israel to achieve critical thinking goals and to facilitate students' development of positive affinity for Israel. I also explore the affordances and…

This study guide has been developed to accompany the film "Blessed Is the Match: The Life and Death of Hannah Senesh." The guide is organized in two sections: Preview and Postview. In the Preview, students are introduced to Hannah Senesh. They learn the historical context of her story, and they begin to consider some of the main themes…

Today's students were born into a world of digital technology. We investigated the impact of computers and the Internet on the learning preferences of students whose schools do not use this technology in class, specifically, (a) the usability they attributed to the technology for tasks requiring the processing of information; and (b) their…

This handbook encompasses a range of disciplines that underlie the field of peace education and provides the rationales for the ways it is actually carried out. The discipline is a composite of contributions from a variety of disciplines ranging from social psychology to philosophy and from communication to political science. That is, peace…

The paper discusses the collective identity of the Palestinian citizens of Israel as it is filtered to school students through the state-commissioned school textbooks. Since it was established in 1948, Israel has maintained two separate education systems, one for Palestinian-Israelis, who are now approximately 20% of the population, and the other…

Jewish history is unique in the sense that it expands over a vast period of time and takes place in almost all places in the world. This creates a major potential for historical debates. The state of Israel, which views itself as the high-point of Jewish national identity, has inherited these debates but attempted to find a way between them by…