Jewish history is unique in the sense that it expands over a vast period of time and takes place in almost all places in the world. This creates a major potential for historical debates. The state of Israel, which views itself as the high-point of Jewish national identity, has inherited these debates but attempted to find a way between them by…

Parents' involvement in their children's schooling can be justified on various ideological, psychological, philosophical, and educational grounds. Two dominant attitudes prevail toward parent participation: (1) the authoritarian-paternalistic view featuring a one-way teacher-parent relationship; and (2) the parents-as-equal-partners view. The…

The three voices presented here are those of women teachers affiliated with Hebrew-speaking and Arabic-speaking branches of the Israeli educational system at different levels. Brought together when a curriculum on multiculturalism oriented to narrative as a teaching tool was implemented and tested in an in-service programme, each of the three had…

Computer Science formal education brings together old-timers from two computer-literate cultures. The curriculum is oriented toward the academic community, whose interest is in the abstraction, solution, and proofs of algorithmic problems, whereas many students are technology users, whose main interest is the manipulation of the products of…

These 12 lesson plans for third graders feature key questions that examine various social and cultural aspects of life in Israel and Jordan. For example, in Lesson No. 2, the key question is: What is it like to live in a kibbutz?; in Lesson No. 10, the key question is: What are the messages that Arab tales teach children? Each lesson provides…

Based on intensive interviews and observations in a scientifically selected sample of over 100 Israeli schools, this study presents a detailed picture of the characteristics of school curricula and cultures, and the attitudes and expectations of students, teachers, principals, and parents with regard to curriculum and school culture in the…

This social studies unit for elementary school students concentrates on comparing the different cultures of the neighboring countries of Israel and Jordan. The unit describes the educational objectives and explains that a variety of strategies are used to reach those objectives. It lists materials needed and procedures for evaluation, provides…

This paper describes two new family life curriculum development projects at Carnegie-Mellon University and presents the results of an evaluation of two mini-courses using a modified Solomon four-group experimental design. Based on historical, sociological, anthropological, and psychological research, the first unit presents family life in Japan…

This volume contains papers submitted to the 11th Annual International Conference of the Bulgarian Comparative Education Society (BCES), held in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, 14-17 May 2013, and papers submitted to the 1st International Distance Partner Conference, organized by the International Research Centre "Scientific Cooperation,"…