This article focuses on the role of the civics teacher against the backdrop of the recent political developments in Israel, where the political elite increasingly seeks to underpin citizenship education with a national-religious ideology. As in previous work on this topic by other academics, we draw on Gramsci's work on cultural hegemony to locate…

Over the past decades, neo-Zionist discourse has gain prominence in Israel. This approach, which gives preference to the definition of Israel as a Jewish state over its definition as a democracy, is a specific version authoritarian populism. This paper explores how educational discourses, policies and curricular changes are being shaped by…

Civic education research in different national settings points to how citizenship conceptions act as factors that frame and steer practice. This review of research conducted in Israel over the last 40 years questions a reality in which the choice of a leading civic ideology is controversial, due to the fundamental aspects of citizenship in Israel…

The aim of this qualitative research is to investigate how religious Zionist female adolescents (N = 40) construct and deconstruct their perceptions of democracy within the 'postsecular' Israeli society as a result of their intensive, religious Zionist education and socialization process promoted by Israeli schools which subscribe to this ideology…

This study identifies major preferences for combinations of rights and duties (henceforth, citizenship orientations), as reflected in the political worldview of Israeli junior-high school students. Two distinct orientations were found, termed here as "liberal" and "ethno-republican". In order to contextualize the examination of…

Conducting discussions on controversial political issues is an important vehicle to promote students' democratic values and critical thinking in schools. This schoolwide task cuts across all disciplines and different subject matter. Israeli civics and social studies teachers are often required to touch upon such issues and manage the situations…

Focusing on recent developments in the field of education, this article grapples with the educational activism of Arab civil society in Israel. Specifically, it presents a case study of a recent initiative to establish an independent Arab Pedagogical Council (APC). I argue that this initiative, although controversial and challenging to the very…

This paper explores the normative role of civic education in responding to war, and in preparing society for the possibility of peace. The paper describes changes in the conceptualization of citizenship in times of conflict. It notes that during wartime, democratic societies tend to transform their notion of citizenship to a militaristic one that…

Purpose: Most writings on Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB) to date have focused on analysis at the individual level and paid less attention to other analytical frameworks at the group level (i.e., team, unit, or organization). This article approaches OCB from the less conventional perspective of group-level activities and uses it to…

The purpose of this study was to examine and compare how Israeli-Arab and Eastern-Jewish adolescents view the role of the citizen. Both groups share a minority status within Israeli society, but have different socializing environments and different political and cultural status. The study population consisted of 118 Israeli-Arab and 279…

Describes a study which compared the views of Israeli kibbutz and urban youth on the role of the citizen. Two hundred and twelve urban and 98 kibbutz adolescents rated 36 items according to their importance for good citizenship. In the kibbutz, the citizen's role is much more balanced than in the city. (AM)

Among 734 Israeli high school students, political involvement, sense of political efficacy, and support of freedom of speech were more strongly related to students' political socialization experiences in school than to their social and ethnic backgrounds or academic/vocational school placement. Schooling effects were stronger for males than…

Describes a survey of Israeli high school students to determine the books they considered most impressive in developing national and civic values. Reports that the majority of books selected were fiction and were perceived as very useful in developing national knowledge and less useful in developing civic values. (MKM)