The current field of Israel engagement has been significantly challenged by young North American Jews' reported alienation from contemporary Israel. Literature in the last decade has addressed this challenge in depth, offering a wide variety of theoretical analyses and recommendations for program development. The present study is the first to…

Understanding the nature of science (NOS) is one of the challenging objectives in science education due, in part, to the complex relationship between religion and science. This study examines how NOS teaching affects the perception of the NOS amongst religious, as compared to secular, students. The participants included 205 religious and secular…

The purpose of the present study was to recognize the factors influencing social work students' evidence-based practice (EBP) behaviors. The authors sought to examine the roles of attitudes, EBP feasibility, and familiarity with EBP in implementing EBP behaviors. Social work students (161 in total) completed a self-report questionnaire measuring…

This paper describes a workshop held as part of preparations for a large scale implementation of a mobile game designed to support learning of the topic "my hometown". The study reveals teachers' attitudes towards the incorporation of smartphones in teaching and learning in school and whether these attitudes changed after experiencing…

This research investigates the ways in which undergraduate courses dealing with the environment address sustainable development (SD), and contribute to the development of sustainability learning outcomes (SLO). The participants in the study were 13 instructors, and 360 students who were enrolled in 13 courses that addressed the environment in a…

Purpose: Empirical evidence links transformational school leadership to teachers' autonomous motivation and affective organizational commitment. Little empirical research, however, has focused on the emotional mechanisms behind these relations. Following the argument in the literature that transformational leadership can transform followers'…

Hoshen, the Hebrew acronym for "Education & Change", is a nonprofit, nationwide education and information center for the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community in Israel. The main educational method Hoshen uses is the personal story told by volunteers. The present study aimed to examine whether this activity,…

The current studies explored (a) the extended external validity of social-goal-orientation framework; (b) the mediating role of social goals between classroom goal structures and students' engagement; and (c) whether changes in social goals can be explained by classroom goal structures and engagement. Study 1 was cross-sectional (N = 317), and…

Two cross-national experimental studies examined the effects of PeaceMaker and Global Conflicts on knowledge acquisition and attitude change regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. PeaceMaker and Global Conflicts are role-playing computerized simulations of this conflict. 248 undergraduate students from Turkey, Israel, Palestine and the US…

This is a five-year study conducted with junior high school students studying in a 1:1-laptop program in order to test the effects of the program on various measures related to the students: their attitudes, motivation, perceived school norms, self-efficacy, and behavioral intention towards learning with laptops, according to the Theory of Planned…

In this paper we report on the first year of an online competition in which 480 students took part. After a brief presentation of the organizational structure of the marathon and general data about students' participation, we discuss findings from questionnaires about participants' attitudes towards mathematics, technology, and their perception of…

This is a sequel to previous theoretical papers (Gamliel, Reichental, & Eyal, 2007a, 2007b) that proposed a Model of Knowledge in Volume 33 of this journal. The study examines the effects of digital education on intergenerational empowerment and social interaction among participants in the Israeli Multigenerational Connection Program (MCP).…

This study examines the effect of a program that aimed to encourage girls to choose a science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) career in Israel. The program involved school visits to a high-tech company and meeting with role model female scientists. Sixty ninth-grade female students from a Jewish modern-orthodox single-sex…

This paper reports the results of a qualitative research study designed to examine the effectiveness of an attempt to make a conceptual change among pre-service teachers to their role as trainees and the role of their pedagogical advisor. The participants are six Arab-Muslim female student teachers who are highly influenced by their first learning…

The New Horizon ("Ofek Hadash" in Hebrew) educational reform agreement was signed between the Israeli government and the Teachers' Union in 2008. The purposes of the educational reform document were (a) to improve students' achievements, (b) to provide fair recompense to teachers, and (c) to strengthen teachers' status in society.…