Purpose: The aim of the current study was to explore emotional closeness and emotional distance between Arab teachers who teach in the Jewish State Educational System and their Jewish counterparts in the school. Design/methodology/approach: The research used semi-structured interviews with 16 Arab and Jewish teachers in Israel. Findings: The…

The two studies presented here examine the effects of teachers' enhanced sense of meaning at work (SOM) on their burnout and engagement. In the first study, 41 teachers in two Arab schools were randomly assigned to a meaning-induction group--in which they were prompted daily to acknowledge meaningful incidents at work for 2 weeks or to a control…

Purpose: The current study explored the process of emotion regulation among Ultra-Orthodox female teachers in Jewish educational system in Israel. Design/methodology/approach: The study employed a semi-structured interview comprising 13 Ultra-Orthodox female teachers in single-sex education for girls. Findings: The teachers preferred to suppress…

In recent years, the topic of self-compassion has attracted increasing attention in the literature, yet little is known about teachers' perceptions of self-compassion in their daily practice. This qualitative study adopted a phenomenological approach to deepen the understanding of self-compassion among this population. Thirty-four teachers in…

Convinced of the value of a good textbook as a teaching and learning resource, Alex Diamond set out to understand teachers' thinking about Holocaust textbooks and what it would be for a textbook to represent Holocaust history adequately. As Diamond's discussion shows, this is a multi-faceted issue. Evaluating textbook representation involves…

This case study reports on a history teacher in a multicultural classroom in the Netherlands who is confronted with students' conflicting perspectives on a sensitive topic, namely the Holocaust. We have used Dialogical Self Theory in combination with the historical multiperspectivity framework to make sense of the teacher's considerations and…

Israeli teachers who teach Eritrean and Sudanese asylum-seeking children find themselves struggling to accommodate these children against the background of a polarized environment. The strategies teachers employ to cope with this tension are shaped by the broader socio-political context and the hostilities directed toward African asylum seekers in…

In this case study, we explore pedagogical practices that could promote powerful knowledge in school history. We analyse teaching sessions conducted by two teachers. The cases were selected from an observation study that focused on historical literacy in Finnish schools. While Michael Young's ideas of powerful knowledge have gained considerable…

This study examined an online professional development program designed to support meaningful acquaintance and reduce stereotypes and prejudices among teachers from different cultures in Israeli society. The rationale of the online program was based on the premise that indirect online contact might improve intergroup relations in diverse…

In this endeavour to examine teachers' willingness to discuss controversial political issues in class, we focused on four variables that received little attention so far: teachers' vested interest, knowledge, the topic of discussion, and teachers' ethnicity. 1130 teachers in Israel, 832 Jewish and 298 Arab, answered an online questionnaire that…

This study reports five Dutch expert history teachers' approaches to multiperspectivity in lessons on three topics varying in moral sensitivity (i.e., the Dutch Revolt, Slavery, and the Holocaust) and their underlying considerations for addressing subjects' perspectives in different temporal layers. The lessons were observed and videorecorded, and…

The phenomenon of adopting a religious lifestyle is growing worldwide in general and in Israel in particular. In the Israeli context, the transition from a secular lifestyle to a religious one is defined as "repentance". Sociologists define the repentant as someone who has changed his or her beliefs, opinions and behaviours in the…

Building on sociocultural theories of teaching and learning, rooted in constructivist traditions, this study examined the teaching of civics in relation to contextual sociocultural factors in the Israeli educational system. The study focused on ways in which three civics teachers conceptualized and framed notions of "good citizenship" in…

In this longitudinal study, carried out over a period of 6 years, the curriculum approach of student-teachers in the fields of Jewish Studies was examined, from their 1st year of studies until their 6th year when they took their places as full-fledged teachers in schools. This article focuses on the student-teachers' approaches to curriculum and…

This article describes a self-study pursuant to a clash between a lecturer and a student concerning the teaching of literature in a politically fraught context. The learning group is composed of Arab and Jewish teachers at a college in northern Israel. The work read by the group expresses a Palestinian perspective. The incident, discussed with…