Advocacy strategies are characterized by collaborations amongst various stakeholders working together to create changes and reforms. In language education policy, this refers to various types of initiatives and activities intended to create language policy reforms on local and/or national levels. In this paper such activities are traced, analyzed…

This article examines the encounter between two Arabic dialects, one in use in Arab communities in central Israel (originally a community of farmers -- Fellahin) and one in use among Bedouins who migrated to the area from the southern Negev area. We relied on semi-structured in-depth interviews with 18 participants representing four Bedouin…

This paper reports on a study that examined a Shared Education program recently implemented in Israel based on the Northern Ireland model. Sixth-grade children from two schools -- one Jewish and one Arab, who study in separate education systems and have very limited contacts with one another -- met to learn English (as an additional language)…

Israel, a multilingual and multicultural society, has an indigenous Arab minority distinguished from the Jewish majority by national, religious, cultural, and linguistic characteristics. Jews and Arabs live mostly in different geographical locales and education systems are also split. In recent years, the number of Arab students attending Jewish…

Israel's Education Ministry invited proposals for the development of a new multilingual policy for the country's education system. We submitted a proposal for an 'engaged language policy' approach, which helps schools to conceptualize and develop a policy that best fits them ideologically and demographically. This study aimed to map teachers' and…

Notwithstanding the introduction of education multilingual policies worldwide, testing and assessment procedures still rely almost exclusively on the monolingual construct. This paper describes a study, part of a larger project fostering a new multilingual education policy in Israeli schools, exploring bi/multilingual assessment. It included two…

This paper examines the relationship between language and identity in the Israeli conflictual situation, exploring the perceptions of Israeli Arab adolescents in two different contexts: a mixed city and a homogeneous Arab town. Adolescents in the mixed city, although more exposed to Hebrew and to Jewish culture, develop a stronger sense of…

One hundred and forty-three Jewish and Arab 6th grade children in Israel participated in this study, which explored several attitude dimensions and willingness to communicate (WTC) in the language of the other. Analysis of variance indicated differences between groups, with Arab children having in general more positive attitudes and higher WTC in…