Even though religion plays a central role in many people's lives, it is often omitted from citizenship education in secularized societies. Educational scholars have increasingly demanded that teaching about religion should be included in citizenship curricula to foster effective participation for "all" citizens. However, this is an…

While once forbidden in classrooms, laughter is increasingly encouraged as contributing to a positive learning environment. However, analyses of laughter in conversation show that laughter performs multiple social functions, some of which are not necessarily positive. Applying this lens, this study investigates the interactional functions of…

The current research explores the effect of principals' ambidexterity on creativity. A model of principals' ambidexterity as predictor of school ambidexterity and organizational support of creativity, further predicting creativity-fostering teacher behavior (CFTB); organizational support of creativity and school ambidexterity as mediators between…

The study suggests a moderator-mediation model: teacher organisational commitment mediates the relationship between the interaction of participative decision-making (PDM) and paternalistic leadership (PL) and a school's cultural attributes to school effectiveness (student academic achievement, teachers' organisational citizenship behaviour, and…

Previous studies have paid little attention to teachers` self or collegial considerations when making decisions about their students, precisely their tendency to avoid being blamed for students` failure. When a teacher is blamed for a student's difficulties, her/his public image ('face') is threatened, and s/he and her/his colleagues can be…

This research explored teachers' readiness for teaching in times of uncertainty and in global crisis situations through the perspective of teacher agency. Understanding the mechanisms by which teachers exercise their transformative agency was the main research aim. Teacher agency is conceptualized as a phenomenon that emerges ecologically from the…

Kindness signifies a way of behaving towards other individuals. Kindness is a desirable and admired conduct of schoolteachers but is less expected in higher education. During the Covid-19 pandemic, on-campus learning shifted completely to online learning settings, requiring lecturers to adopt behaviours that may not have been part of their…

The pandemic affected the most on the student population in the shortest time. The number of students whose studies were discontinued in March 2020 was about 300 million. The number reached to 1.6 billion on April 2020. To provide basic education for the students during the pandemic, many countries transferred to a mandate of distance learning for…

Purpose: Previous studies have examined the empowerment of individual teachers, while neglecting the fact that such a phenomenon might grow within a team. Building on the crossover model and social exchange theory, the aim of this study is to explore whether team empowerment among school management teams (SMTs), is transmitted to the school level…

The purpose of the current study was to explore the meanings, regulation, and sources of male teacher empathy in the ultra-Orthodox Jewish schools in Israel from a cultural perspective. More specifically, the study posed three questions: (1) What are the particular meanings attached to empathy by ultra-Orthodox teachers? (2) How do ultra-Orthodox…

The study explores the mediating effect of teacher's empowerment on the relationship between instructional leadership (IL) to teacher's organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) toward student, team-members, and school. 395 Israeli teachers completed PIMRS, SPES, OCB, and demographic questionnaire. Path analysis showed a good fit of the data to…

Relying on the contingency theory, the present study examines the influence of school characteristics and principal-teacher gender (dis)similarity on the relationship between principals' systems thinking (PST) and teacher withdrawal behaviours of absenteeism and intent to leave. Data were collected from two sources: 111 school management team…

In line with the literature that describes conflicts between commitment to work and to family in patriarchal societies undergoing cultural changes, including the cultural empowerment of women, this study examines whether such a development is evident among teacher-mothers in Arab society in Israel, and if so, how it affects their functioning in…

One-to-one laptop initiatives have become prevalent in schools aiming to enhance active learning and assist students in developing twenty-first-century skills. This paper reports on a qualitative investigation of teachers in a junior high school in Northern Israel, who were gradually implementing one-to-one computing. The research reported in this…

Higher education is a crucial pathway for socio-economic mobility, particularly for minorities. The events of October 7th in Israel and the subsequent war in Gaza (referred to as "Swords of Iron" in Israeli terminology and "Al-Aqsa Flood" in the Palestinian narrative) exacerbated tensions between the Arab minority and the…