The French Saint-Joseph school in Jaffa is one of the few educational institutions in Israel that have survived, since 1882, three political regimes without relinquishing pedagogical or managerial autonomy. This article examines the emergence of "circumstantial multiculturalism" in the midst of radical political changes in a…

This article presents a comparative analysis of a metasynthesis of Israeli and US studies on parental choice of two-way bilingual education. My analysis reveals that the reasons majority-language and minority-language parents expressed in the US and Israeli studies converge in some aspects but, significantly, also diverge. I argue that the…

The article focuses on bilingual kindergartens in Germany and Israel offering education in both host (German or Hebrew) and immigrant (Russian) languages. The main questions are how teachers of bilingual kindergartens understand and explain the organizational and pedagogical principles of the kindergartens and how they negotiate home and host…

This article examines how majority-language teachers coping with additive education view their roles in a bilingual framework, how they perceive issues of culture and language in young bilingual children, and how they understand the term "bilingual education" in an L2 non-additive context. The study has been conducted in the context of…

Under the Israeli language education policy, the mother tongue is learned first for several years, followed by a second language (English for Jews, Hebrew for Arabs) and then a third language (English for Arabs, Arabic/French for Jews). This type of limited bilingualism seems to suit the Israeli reality in the context of the Israeli-Arab conflict,…

In this article, the authors examine how teachers in four troubled societies--Israel, Cyprus, Northern Ireland and South Africa--understand and implement reconciliation in light of the increasing diversity of these societies. The authors particularly pay attention to a dialogical encounter between reconciliation and inclusion, as they look for…

In May 2006, a group of experts in language education from Europe, Canada and Israel gathered to discuss and reflect in a conference entitled: "Into the Future--Towards Bilingual Education in Israel." The conference, held at the University of Haifa, was initiated and organized by the Jewish-Arab Center and sponsored by the Zeit Stiftung…

Country Updates is a new section of "Intercultural Education." Starting in "Intercultural Education," Volume 16 No. 5, this column will focus on recent developments during the last two to three years in the field of intercultural education in one particular country. These updates can include recent policy decisions, the main…

The 75th anniversary of a city honored among other things for its role in the revival of the Hebrew language is an appropriate occasion to remind ourselves of the complex effects of language policy on education. In choosing to establish Hebrew as its standard language, Israel was working to proclaim both present and historical unity. The rapidity…