This paper is based on a study of daycare center managers participating in a project aimed at changing the communal approach in early childhood education (ECE) centers. The project was implemented by the ECE system of Israel's Association of Community Centers for ages birth to three, based on the Ecological Systems Theory (Bronfenbrenner, 1979).…

This paper presents the major findings and recommendations from a formative evaluation of the first of a 2-year in-service training program. This program was designed for the professional development of math teachers. It was developed following an educational reform, which was meant to enhance the teachers' ability to generate changes in their…

The study focused on how principal mentors perceived the mentoring process by means of the metaphors they used to represent it. Semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with 18 principal mentors. Findings were analysed qualitatively, generating themes as an inductive process, grounded in the various metaphors articulated by participants.…

Socio-environmental projects involving Arab and Jewish youth in Israel are uncommon. In this study, we interviewed 16 adult leaders of two projects that were carried out in the Galilee in northern Israel, to better understand the views of the leaders and their motives. The two projects focused on mutual environmental issues and dealt with social,…

The paper develops a descriptive model of different aspects of involvement by academic staff in social planning; for example, involvement in different stages of planning, level of influencing decision-making processes, and involvement in development and action roles for promoting change. Using a structured questionnaire, research conducted in…

This study investigates through structured questionnaires how teacher educators perceive current teacher education practices in Israel and at their colleges. An open-ended question provides their metaphorical viewpoint. The findings indicate that teacher educators believe teacher education in the country is at a high level. They perceive teacher…

This evaluation used a change transition model to explore the processes of development of a three-phase professional programme devised by two teams of researchers to support teachers' expertise in six domains of science teaching. The full programme operated over two years. Interviews with developers at the end of each phase (21 interviews) and…

The authors report the environmental attitudes and knowledge of 765 1st-year students in 3 teacher-training colleges in Israel and examine the relationship between these variables and background factors and their relationship to environmental behavior. Although the students' environmental knowledge was limited, their overall attitudes toward the…

Correlation of the Learning Environment Inventory with a semantic differential attitude test indicated that three learning environment variables (goal direction, satisfaction, and classroom organization) fostered positive attitudes toward chemistry. Course difficulty, interpersonal tension, and course speed were related to negative attitudes. (CP)

Students ranked 15 subjects separately by importance, usefulness, and interest. As expected, academic subjects were rated highly and agriculture was rated poorly. Students in experimental classes using the discovery approach rated agriculture significantly more highly, indicating that an experimental curriculum can change the image of school…