Promoting creativity is considered an important goal of education, but creativity is notoriously hard to define and measure. In this paper, we make the journey from defining a formal creativity and applying the measure in a practical domain. The measure relies on core theoretical concepts in creativity theory, namely fluency, flexibility, and…

The aim of this paper is to provide an objective overview of the impact of teacher salaries on the educational achievements of students. It is often debated about teacher salaries and improvement or jeopardizing their standard, but educational consequences that may ensue as a result of these intentions are rarely addressed. Teacher's role in…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the communicative strategies used by two effective first grade teachers whose students came from lower SES communities marked by a high incidence of school failure. One school was in Akko, Israel and one was in New Jersey in the US. In both settings, the teachers taught lessons in a language that was…

War bereavement has excruciating consequences for the families of victims. To examine the cultural differences in mourning, wartime bereavement, and psychopathology among United States and Israeli families, 20 American families of soldiers who died in the Vietnam War and 20 Israeli families of soldiers who died in the Yom Kippur War were…

This study, carried out in two phases, was conducted to examine the sources of stress and burnout among faculty developers and the coping strategies the faculty use. In the first phase, in-depth interviews with individual faculty developers and their superiors were carried out in the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Western Europe, and…

The effects of stress on the physical and psychological well-being of people in different professions and occupations have become a focal interest of researchers and clinicians. There is growing evidence that stress adversely affects the performance, productivity, job satisfaction, health, and the general quality of life of professionals and of…

Differences between 50 Israeli and 87 American students in grades 9 through 12 were investigated using the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking-Figural Form A. Results showed that Israeli students scored higher than the American students in grades 9, 10 and 12 on fluency and flexibility. Israeli students scored higher on originality only in grade…

An investigation was conducted to better understand the interaction between physical and social settings, culturally based customs for parenting, and the ideology of caretakers in two Israeli cultures undergoing modernization. Yemenite and Kurdish parenting systems were examined by observing mother/infant interactions in unstructured naturalistic…

The effects of obstetrical medication on neonatal behavior were studied using a sample of 64 Israeli infants from medicated and non-medicated mothers. Most medicated mothers received a base dose of 75 mg. of Meperidine plus a base dose of 25 mg. of Phenergan. Other drugs used included Demerol, Valium, Butalgan, Pitocin, Pantopon, Trilene, Naline,…

This paper describes the examination of a national rehabilitation system in Israel which was undertaken to identify and understand that country's vocational rehabilitation strategies and methods and to evaluate their potential for use with older disabled persons in the United States. A study visit to Israel is described which focused on policies…

A study of the current expressed reading interests of children in the first two years of school conducted in ten countries--Austria, Canada, England, Israel, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Panama, Sweden, and the United States--is reported in this paper. Over 2,000 children drew pictures about what they would best like to read or have read to…

This study used data from the 1991-93 Carnegie International Survey of the Academic Profession to examine the perceptions of college faculty in regard to the emphasis on research over teaching in advanced-industrialized higher education systems, the compatibility of research and teaching, and job satisfaction. It focused on data from 8 countries…

Employing data from 12 industrial societies, investigates differences in the labor force behavior, occupational distribution, and attainment patterns of ever- and never-married women. Finds little support for the dual-career theory, which attributes womens' concentration in low-paying employment to gender differences in marital and childrearing…

This research forum addresses the question: what is the nature of the mathematical knowledge that is needed for secondary teaching? Six international contributors: (1) Australia (Kaye Stacey); (2) Brazil (Marcelo Borba); (3) Israel (Ruhama Even); (4) Norway (Bodil Kleve and Barbara Jaworski); (5) Taiwan (Fou-Lai Lin); and (6) USA (Helen Doerr)…

A study investigated the effectiveness of the Success for All (SFA) program developed at Johns Hopkins University. The program emphasizes prevention of failure, personal tutoring, family-school program, and regular evaluation of student progress. In 1996, the program involved schools in northern Israel--Arabic and Jewish, religious and secular.…