Over a period of 13 years, I taught a class in photography to high school students, using a taxonomy I developed based on my own understanding of what makes for excellence in photography. Five of the elements of this taxonomy are explained and illustrated by photographs taken by my students; I submit these as evidence of my success in this…

In an era of profound antisemitism, it is essential that higher education leaders and campus communities provide additional, direct support to Jewish students. In this space, we introduce recent literature on Jewish identity expressions and campus climates for bolstering Jewish appreciation in hopes of catalyzing necessary conversations with…

This study explores Israeli Americans' use of popular music from country of origin (PMCO) as a cultural mediator, which assists in maintaining and imparting parents' identity to their children. Highlighting a sociocultural aspect of music consumption in the streaming era, the study focuses on music as a personal and interpersonal tool among…

Background: The sociocultural turn redefined learning in terms of shifting identities. In recent years, learning scientists have explored the connections between learning and various types of identities, including disciplinary identity, gender, race, and more. In this article we focus on national identity, to understand how it is constructed and…

Recently, there has been a focus on the experiences of students who belong to society's dominant groups. One aspect of this focus is on the resistance to multicultural concepts. While some studies have explored cultural identity as a cause of this resistance, more explorations from a social-pedagogical perspective are needed. This qualitative case…

Educating immigrant children requires teachers who are responsive to their complex and unique needs and who advocate for their education and well-being. Yet, few studies have examined teachers who teach immigrant children and their teaching practices, particularly in the field of early childhood education. Framed by the construct of funds of…

This book uses an intersectional lens to explore the lived experiences of sexually traumatized girls in school. It provides a deep understanding of the students' experiences, viewed through the prism of their multiple identities. The author employs a qualitative phenomenological study to investigate the psychological, social, and academic impacts…

The out-group homogeneity effect has been found to contribute to adults' inter-group biases. Three studies examined whether 5- and 8-year-old Arab (i.e., minority) children in Israel also manifest this effect (March 2017-January 2020). Arab children from different religious affiliations and social environments (N = 272, 54% females) were asked to…

This research investigates Palestinian students residing in both urban and rural areas who are enrolled in an elite high school located in a mixed Arab-Jewish city in northern Israel. We investigate how these divergent backgrounds influence their experiences and perceptions of their elite identities and how elite identities within national…

The post-October 7th period has been a period of redefinition for many Jewish American undergraduates and particularly for those who identify as politically left-of-center and who found themselves encountering anti-Israel and antisemitic attitudes among peers and organizations they had been part of previously. Via in-depth interviews with Jewish…

For Jewish Ethiopian refugees at the Tikvah summer camp in Gondar, Ethiopia, Jewish informal education keeps their dreams of Jerusalem alive while simultaneously reinforcing Israeli gatekeeping practices. The ethnic and religious ideologies underlying Israeli nation-building and statecraft surface in the campers' exterritorial encounter with…

There has been a continued increase in antisemitic activities at colleges and universities over the last decade. Media reports and research about perceptions of Jewish college students add face validity that student organizations are often targets of Anti-Jewish rhetoric. In particular, Jewish fraternities and sororities have been targeted by…

The vast majority of Haredi schools for boys in Israel focus almost exclusively on religious studies. This study explores Haredi (Jewish ultra-Orthodox) activism aimed at promoting secular education in these schools. Data collection drew on semi-structured interviews with 20 Haredi activists. The findings compared two patterns of Haredi…

As emerging adult college students ponder their religious/spiritual beliefs and identities, those in religiously diverse countries (e.g. the USA) often encounter beliefs different from their own. These encounters can prompt new perspectives on their own beliefs and elicit responses from rejection to incorporation of the diverging belief, thus…

Using an original data set of task-based interviews, this paper presents findings on how Jewish day school students make sense of Biblical Hebrew verses in Biblical Hebrew. This paper pushes back against the convention in Jewish communal discourse to evaluate and label knowledge, shifting the focus instead to understanding how knowledge is…