In troubled societies narratives about the past tend to be partial and explain a conflict from narrow perspectives that justify the national self and condemn, exclude and devalue the 'enemy' and their narrative. Through a detailed analysis, Teaching Contested Narratives reveals the works of identity, historical narratives and memory as these are enacted in classroom dialogues, canonical texts and school ceremonies. Presenting ethnographic data from local contexts in Cyprus and Israel, and demonstrating the relevance to educational settings in countries which suffer from conflicts all over the world, the authors explore the challenges of teaching narratives about the past in such societies, discuss how historical trauma and suffering are dealt with in the context of teaching, and highlight the potential of pedagogical interventions for reconciliation. The book shows how the notions of identity, memory and reconciliation can perpetuate or challenge attachments to essentialized ideas about peace and conflict.

A broad consensus exists among people familiar with Janusz Korczak’s life, work and writings regarding the fact that he was a very gifted, original and exceptional pedagogue – one of the twentieth century’s most outstanding humanist educators. This consensus notwithstanding, Korczak is not usually considered a world-class educational theorist or philosopher. A concentrated attempt to consolidate and formulate his educational positions and practices into a philosophical-educational theory, based on an analysis and interpretation of his literary and pedagogical works, is absent in Hebrew works on Korczak’s educational thought and humanist legacy. This book aspires to fill  this void. Acknowledging and working through the highly narrative style of Korczak’s writings, this book seeks to conceptualise his educational thought. It systematically presents Korczak’s world-view and the educational theory derived from it; it depicts his rich and innovative array of educational practices and endows them with philosophical analysis and interpretation.

Respect for the child as a person, as a full-fledged, ever-growing human being, constitutes the very heart and core of his educational thought. In Korczak’s eyes, the open, direct and sincere demonstration of such respect to children by educators is a precondition for the very possibility to educate children and engender positive changes in their personalities.

The narrative of the book includes the analysis and interpretation of many passages from Korczak’s numerous, rich and diverse writings. Selections from his works for the readers’ exploration are offered at the end of each chapter, accompanied by suggestions of issues for possible discussion.

The book addresses a wide audience including master educators, master teachers, educators, teachers, students and all intelligent, reflective and critical people interested in furthering their knowledge and understanding of decisive cultural-educational issues of our time. The encounter with Korczak’s educational thought and practices is likely to contribute to our current educational thinking and practice and assist us in our quest for compelling responses to central educational questions that concern and challenge us today.

Dr. Marc Silverman is a senior lecturer in the Hebrew University’s School of Education and Melton Centre for Jewish Education. He teaches, researches, writes and publishes articles in two main interrelated educational fields: moral, progressive, radical and Jewish educational thought; and the intellectual history, sociology and ideologies of current Jewish cultural and educational movements and trends.

The International Handbook of Jewish Education, a two volume publication, brings together scholars and practitioners engaged in the field of Jewish Education  and its cognate fields world-wide. Their submissions make a significant  contribution to our knowledge of the field of Jewish Education as we start the second decade of the 21st century.  The Handbook is divided broadly into four main sections: Vision and Practice: focusing on issues of philosophy, identity and planning –the big issues of Jewish Education.Teaching and Learning: focusing on areas of curriculum and engagementApplications, focusing on the ways that Jewish Education is transmitted in particular contexts, both formal and informal, for children and adults.Geographical, focusing on historical, demographic, social and other issues that are specific to a region or where an issue or range of issues can be compared and contrasted between two or more locations.This comprehensive collection of articles providing high quality content, constitutes a difinitive statement  on the state of Jewish Education world wide, as well as through a wide variety of lenses and contexts. It is written in a style that is accessible to a global community of academics and professionals.

First international effort which challenges the discourse of culture in minority/migrant educational policy and practice

An important contribution to critical educational theory which focuses on ‘the social’ and ‘the in-between’.

Over 40 theoretical and empirical studies which cover more than 20 locations in Europe, America, Australia and Asia.

Migrants and minorities are always at risk of being caught in essentialized cultural definitions and being denied the right to express their cultural preferences because they are perceived as threats to social cohesion. Migrants and minorities respond to these difficulties in multiple ways — as active agents in the pedagogical, political, social, and scientific processes that position them in this or that cultural sphere. On the one hand, they reject ascribed cultural attributes while striving towards integration in a variety of social spheres, e.g. school and workplace, in order to achieve social mobility. On the other hand, they articulate demands for cultural self-determination. This discursive duality is met with suspicion by the majority culture. For societies with high levels of migration or with substantial minority cultures, questions related to the meaning of cultural heterogeneity and the social and cultural limits of learning and communication (e.g. migration education or critical multiculturalism) are very important. It is precisely here where the chances for new beginnings and new trials become of great importance for educational theorizing, which urgently needs to find answers to current questions about individual freedom, community/cultural affiliations, and social and democratic cohesion. Answers to these questions must account for both ‘political’ and ‘learning’ perspectives at the macro, mezzo, and micro contextual levels. The contributions of this edited volume enhance the knowledge in the field of migrant/minority education, with a special emphasis on the meaning of culture and social learning for educational processes.

Content Level » Research

Keywords » acceptance - adaptation - assimilation - belonging - conflict of cultures - cultural - culture - differences - education - educational research - emancipation - ethnic - exclusion - governance - heterogeneity - immigrants - integration - international - learning - learning process - migration - minorities - minority education - multiculturalism - networks - recognition - school policies - schooling - self-determination - social - social change - social cohesion - social learning - social limits - social mobility - socialisation - transculturality

Related subjects » Education & Language - Population Studies - Social Sciences

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ספר זה בוחן אהדה רומנטית מודרנית לתנועה החסידית כפי שהופיעה בפתח המאה העשרים, כמו למשל בעיבודים אמנותיים חדשים לסיפורי חסידים או בהיסטוריוגרפיה מוקדמת של החסידות. החיבור מוצא מכנה-משותף אידיאולוגי ביצירות ניאו-חסידיות של מרטין בובר, י"ל פרץ, ברדיצ'בסקי והורודצקי ומציג את התדמית הרומנטית שהודבקה לחסידות כנסיון מגמתי לנסח בהשראתה של החסידות אפיק אקטואלי של זהות יהודית אלטרנטיבית, מודרנית במהותה, ואנטי-רבנית. 

ד"ר ניחם רוס מלמד במחלקה למחשבת ישראל ע"ש גולדשטיין-גורן באוניברסיטת בן-גוריון בנגב, ומכהן כמנהל מכון גנדל להשכלה יהודית באוניברסיטה העברית בירושלים. עניינו המחקרי במורשתה ועולמה של החסידות, בהגות 'דור התחייה' העברי, בגלגולם הספרותי והחדשני של מקורות ומוטיבים מסורתיים ובניסיונות מודרניים להבנייתה של זהות יהודית חדשה; כל אלו משתלבים יחדיו בחיבור שלפנינו.

A Case Study of Jewish Day School Leadership: How Way Leads on to Way surfaces core challenges confronting Jewish day schools today: how schools can develop productive ways of working with one another and with other communal agencies; how leadership transition can enable the healthy renewal of institutions; how the conditions of financial sustainability might be cultivated in schools; and how day schools can contribute positively to the ecosystems of Jewish communal life. This groundbreaking publication was featured at the 2010 PEJE Assembly for Advancing the Jewish Day School Field.

At one time or another every person of faith asks himself questions like these: What must I do to deserve some Divine intervention in my life? Is there anyone really listening to my prayers? When do miracles happen, and when do they not? Where s my miracle? Am I not worthy? Here is a fresh, new, thought-provoking approach to the eternal mystery of the miracle, based on the multiple texts found in Jewish tradition as well as lessons learned from experience. The Al Aksa Intifada and its bloody consequences serve as backdrop for the many important messages about belief contained in this book. The Intifada forced Jews and rabbinic leaders to actively confront the difficult philosophical questions that arose in the wake of continual, random acts of violence in Israel. Having made aliyah just weeks before the onset of the bloody violence, the author took note of the reactions of survivors and spiritual leaders throughout the years of violence and was struck with the pat, simplistic, and often not-well-thought-out reactions and explanations offered by Israeli spiritual leaders to give meaning and purpose to the violence. Rabbi Morey Schwartz, an only child, orphaned by age twenty, has spent more than twenty years searching for a satisfying answer to his personal misfortune. Searching traditional Jewish responses, he never found a response that addressed his need to believe in a benevolent, merciful and all-powerful divine being, while simultaneously honoring what he considers his right to understanding. To believe in a God that was less than all-powerful seemed pointless, and to accept that we just cannot understand seemed to be meaningless. The author, is a graduate of Yeshiva University and Bernard Revel Graduate School, and musmach of the Rabbeinu Yitzchak Elchanan Theological Seminary. During his twelve years in the American rabbinate, helping others to deal with suffering and loss, the author found himself expressing a refreshing theological approach to this question, one which has helped countless individuals work through these difficult issues in their own lives. The book provides a look at the way the sages dealt with the suffering of the innocent throughout the centuries, providing the reader with easy to read rabbinic texts arranged in a text and counter-text format, for the purpose of presenting multiple Jewish approaches to some very difficult questions. In addition, the author provides a new, inspiring way of looking at the whole business of miracles. The age-old idea that miracles arise for those who deserve them is reconsidered, and a whole new perspective on the function and incidence of miracles is proposed. Any person of any faith will want to read these words and ponder the Divine s role in our lives, in the good times and the bad. This book will become a source of great comfort to Jews looking for alternative Jewish approaches to suffering and to God s role in suffering. This book is a must for those who counsel, for they above all need to be sympathetic to the deep sensitivities of those who seek consolation.

Challenging conventional understanding of humans as selfish and competitive at their core, At Home in the World asserts that we have evolved as a profoundly social species, biologically related to the rest of the natural world, and at home on the only planet for which we are adapted to live. Eilon Schwartz traces the history of Darwinism, examining attempts of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to apply Darwin's theories to educational philosophy and analyzing trends since the reemergence of Darwinism toward the end of the twentieth century. Identifying with the Darwinian interpretations of Peter Kropotkin, John Dewey, and Mary Midgley, Schwartz argues for a compelling educational philosophy rooted in our best scientific understandings of human nature.

About 350,000 Jewish children are currently enrolled in Jewish day schools, in every continent other than Antarctica. This is the first book-length consideration of life in such schools and of their relationship both to the Jewish community and to society as a whole. It provides a rich sense of how community is constructed within Jewish schools, and of how they contribute to or complicate the construction of community in the wider society...