Purpose: It has been suggested that coherency between primary stakeholders involved in an educational reform is a key determinant of its success. The "Meaningful Learning Reform" is defined as an open reform, serving as a bottom-up solution to promote school autonomy. This reform allows school leaders to exercise considerable discretion…

The French Saint-Joseph school in Jaffa is one of the few educational institutions in Israel that have survived, since 1882, three political regimes without relinquishing pedagogical or managerial autonomy. This article examines the emergence of "circumstantial multiculturalism" in the midst of radical political changes in a…

An in-depth understanding of field-level educational school goals and educational leadership action trajectories as embodied and represented in school vision "content" is of scholarly and practical importance. This is even more true in an era of expanding social pluralism and rising school autonomy owing to the leadership and policy…

The study evaluates an alternative initial teacher education programme launched nationwide by the Israeli Ministry of Education (MoE) at the height of the COVID-19 crisis. The programme aimed to attract unemployed academics to teaching, thereby providing a response to the teacher shortage. To advance the programme, the MoE relaxed its strict…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to analyze two parallel processes in the Israeli educational system: first, the idea of school autonomy, exploring its origins and its pedagogical implications and effectiveness; and second, the development of the progressive education evident mainly in the cognitive domain of twenty-first century skills (21st…

Similar to many other countries, an educational reform anchored in a managerial discourse was proposed in Israel in 2004 by the Dovrat Committee, encouraged by the "inter-state education gap" social problem that economist Dan Ben-David formulated on the basis of international examinations, such as PISA and TIMMS. Through a neo-Weberian…

There are large differences across countries in instructional time in schooling institutions. Can these differences explain some of the differences across countries in pupils' achievements in different subjects? While research in recent years provides convincing evidence about the effect of several inputs in the education production function,…

Discusses the reasons for, and the reactions to, the marginalization of drama/theater education in the Israeli school system. Curricular reform introduced in the mid-1980s resulted in some improvement, however, school principal autonomy remains a major stumbling block. Recommends drama teachers seize the initiative and implement programs on their…