A Chaldean Catholic immigrant mother from Iraq kept a journal about how her Arab American daughters (ages 9 and 15) visited museums for the first time and participated in museum-related activities that focused on them (1) understanding and developing empathy for all new immigrants coming to the U.S.; (2) understanding and developing appreciation…

The authors describe how Middle Eastern Muslims are represented in a text set of award-winning picture books. Most were written by authors with outsider perspectives who wrote about (a) antiquated times and practices and (b) war-stricken countries and dangerous journeys. Although most of the books are not problematic on their own, the large number…

Background: The existence of many conflicted cities like Jerusalem creates a need for intercultural professional development (PD) for teachers. It is important to understand what teachers learn from their participation in such programs and how they are affected personally and professionally by their encounters with the other. The current study…

The context of this exploratory study is a "Language Café," a bottom-up initiative in which Jews and Palestinians, residing in the same multilingual neighborhood in Jerusalem, learn Hebrew and Arabic from each other. The study explores the features of the bilingual pedagogy which has evolved in the "Language Café" and the…

There is no doubt that culture represents a vital component of the foreign language curriculum. Over the past decades, foreign language textbooks, as a key element in the teaching and learning process, covered culture differently qualitatively and quantitatively, and the Arabic textbooks are no exception. This study aims to evaluate the presence…

This article presents an educational approach that merges ideas of critical pedagogy with those of visual culture. According to this approach -- termed "visual critical pedagogy" -- art is an integral part of the textures of society and culture and their manifold and complex visual expressions, including the more controversial and…

Minorities encounter barriers to integrating in higher education. However, only a few studies have examined these barriers from the perspective of faculty members. The present study aimed to understand the barriers that Arab students in Israeli higher education face, from the perspective of deans and department heads. Using the naturalistic…

Diverse university campuses present an ideal context for fostering transcultural learning. Despite the potential that this diversity presents, universities in Australia have yet to make use of this opportunity. The pilot study described here investigates an informal learning experience created by the hosting of the Department of Foreign Affairs…

This quantitative study aimed to investigate the influence of incorporating English-culture learning into English-language learning by observing the perspectives of Saudi EFL learners. It illustrated if there is an effect of learning culture on English language competence to the students of Prince Sattam bin Abdulaziz University. The study's…

As part of a joint European-Israeli project for developing modernised curricula on migrants' lives (DEMO), academic courses were adapted to meet the needs of a population served by a Palestinian teacher-education college in Northern Israel. Arab minority students, in many cases descendants of displaced people, attended two courses within the…

Pressures build in Middle Eastern and Arabic-speaking societies to diversify economies and democratize social relations. Educators and scholars, contributing to these shifts, have experimented with classroom reforms that aim to advance higher-order thinking skills and the social agility of students. This article reviews 52 empirical studies of…

The paper is dedicated to the characteristics of the proposal regarding the cultural and regional knowledge curriculum of the Arabic language area whose realization should be correlated with practical teaching of the Arabic Language, both in universities and in language courses. The prototype and the basis for the development of this curriculum…

This article describes how to help students connect what they learn in the language classroom to the outside world as they learn to understand, produce, and analyze spoken, written, visual, and cultural information in their second language (L2). As learners make connections between course material and the physical and virtual spaces where the L2…

Though the relevance of language teachers' native/non-native (N/NN) background has been researched extensively, little is known about its applicability to cases where the lecturer uses English as the medium of instruction (EMI). This study's purpose, which was conducted in Israeli higher education institutions, was to elicit students' perceptions…

When entering the permanent exhibit titled "Living in America" in the Arab American National Museum (AANM) in Dearborn, Michigan, visitors are greeted with a sign that reads "Ahlan wa Sahlan." It is a greeting that translates in English to: "Your path is easier now that you are with us." The visitor, "you,"…