Evolution is a fundamental part of biology and thus it is essential that biology preservice teachers understand and accept it. The relationship between knowledge and acceptance of evolution, and specifically human evolution, has not been fully investigated in Israel. We sought to learn about that relationship amongst Israeli Jewish religious…

Within Orthodox Jewish early childhood programs, gender roles of the Shabbat Party promote heteronormative gender expectations that contend with values about children, teaching, and Judaism. Interviews with 15 educators suggested tensions between gender flexible attitudes and beliefs that gender unfolds naturally. Pretend play was considered a…

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…

What do Jewish day school students believe constitutes good understanding and worthwhile learning in the context of their encounter with rabbinic texts in the classroom? This article shares findings from an interview study of Jewish day school students in grades 9 through 12 regarding their attitudes toward the study of Talmud. I argue that high…

Pedagogue's fallacy occurs when epistemological principles are applied by educators that in fact do not tell of, or explain, or help understand, the subject at hand. It is identified and introduced in this article to raise an important issue in the construction of pedagogical models of religious education: knowledge is reduced and/or distorted to…

In a recent volume of the "Journal of College and Character," Matt Mayhew and Alyssa Rockenbach presented their frameworks by which they have designed and utilized their IDEALS study over the past several years. In this present article, the authors contend that despite their rigorous research, the researchers and measurements oftentimes…

Modern historical research challenges religious education by undermining the arguments in favour of the existence of a supreme power who is responsible for patterns of reality. This article explores how the new generation of history textbooks of Religious Zionism, one of Israel's ideologically most influential populations, cope with this dilemma.…

This article offers a detailed study of one child's relationships to Israel from kindergarten (2012-2013 academic year) through 7th grade (2019-2020 academic year). By tracing Avigail over the course of eight years, I argue that children do not develop "a relationship" with Israel but rather many different relationships over time. Using…

This article reports on students' and faculty members' experience of their pluralistic Jewish day school's educational mission to nurture students' Jewish identity exploration within a broader social and cultural world. It articulates these stakeholders' perceptions of the ways teaching and learning of Jewish values, customs, and knowledge are…

With a fertility rate that nearly triples the national average and increased political power that accompanies demographic growth, Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) Jews in Israel are becoming an increasingly important piece of the country's diverse national mosaic. This raises economic concerns: Haredi women earn low wages, while most Haredi men do not…

Students in "community" (nondenominational) Jewish high schools represent a diversity of denominational affiliations, including those who affiliate with more than one denomination and those that affiliate with none. These schools strive to create communities in which students with varying Jewish beliefs and practices are, at the very…

These three articles deal with the issue of faith in the classroom--whether one should teach "to," "for," or "against" faith. While their institutional settings and experiences are different, the authors all contend that more serious reflection needs to be given to the matter of how religious commitment plays out in…

The thoughts of Mordecai Kaplan and Michael Rosenak present surprising commonalities as well as illuminating differences. Similarities include the perception that Judaism and Jewish education are in crisis, the belief that Jewish peoplehood must include commitment to meaningful content, the need for teachers to teach from a position of…

Michel de Montaigne's "L'art de Conférer" offers a moral groundwork for students' learning of "havruta," a traditional Jewish form of studying in pairs, based on collaborative critical text-based learning, that can be applied to students everywhere. The article attends to the nature of "havruta" learning and to…

The study explored the understanding and implementation of inclusive education in an independent Jewish community school; a school with a community ethos of care and belonging, whose context is, by definition, exclusionary on the grounds of a particular social category--religion. However, this exclusionary agenda positioned the school as inclusive…