This article reveals the intrinsic connection between the constructs normality, identity, meaning, cultural tracking, and school achievement. In particular, it illuminates the indirect connection between cultural tracking and a reduction in the meaningful engagement of school tasks. As documented elsewhere, learning proceeds in a meaningful…

Using data collected in Israel as part of the Civic Education Study of the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA), this study explores how the divide between Israeli Jews and Israeli Palestinian Arabs is reflected in youngsters' citizenship orientations. To put this case study in context, the article first…

This study probes the practice of multiculturalism in two teacher training colleges, with ten interviews of high-ranking officials in the colleges and mainly by questioning 439 students. The findings, according to nationality, point to the wish of Arab students towards the actualization of multicultural practices significantly more than among…

This study examined a structural model of mathematics achievement of 2 culturally different groups of Jewish and Arab 8th graders in terms of 5 learner-related variables, namely, gender, epistemological beliefs, self-efficacy, attitudes, and mathematics anxiety. Multigroup structural modeling analysis indicated that the goodness of fit of the…

This article examines the practice of teaching content-based disciplines through visual art. Qualitative and ethnographic methods are used in researching the teaching practice of a Bible teacher in a Jewish day school. The teaching method under study provides for active learning of the biblical text and demonstrates sensitivity to students'…

This article describes the collaborative work of three teachers -- two Arab and one Jewish -- as they taught first grade together in a then new bilingual/bicultural school in Israel. The article is based on an ethnographic study the author conducted at the school during the school's first year (1998-1999), examining in particular the interactions…

The purpose of this study was to examine the contributions of attachment, separation, and Jewish identity to psychological well-being in a sample of 115 late adolescent Jewish women. Results from multiple regression analyses demonstrated that attachment to parents, separation from parents, and Jewish identity collectively accounted for variance in…

Gerda Weissmann Klein was 15 years old in September 1939 when Germany invaded the city of Bielitz (present-day Bielsko), Poland. In her memoir, "All But My Life," she recounts the horror of losing family and friends, of life in concentration camps, of the death march and of liberation in 1945 by an American soldier named Kurt Klein, who…

Laurence R. Veysey's The Emergence of the American University--one of the densely textured, lucidly written, always thoughtful accounts of the history of higher education?has been largely superseded, especially after the 1980s, in part by histories that unlike Veysey's, maintain close attention to religion, both during the period that he focused…

The author describes the issues raised for him by team-teaching a course on the Shoah that aimed to incorporate familial, historical, and rhetorical perspectives. Considering firsthand testimonies, songs written by camp inmates, renderings of others' stories such as Art Spiegelman's "Maus," and works of fiction and poetry by writers without…

This study focuses on the utilization of different Jewish languages by student-teachers in a two year teacher education program. The study examined the Jewish language used by these students while teaching Jewish content, making the distinction between their personal Jewish language and the cultural Jewish language of the program, which they were…

This article presents the author's response to Joseph Reimer's article titled, "Beyond More Jews Doing Jewish: Clarifying the Goals of Informal Jewish Education." The author discusses the "role" of teacher, which includes: engaging students in an academic subject each teacher has mastered, mentoring a particular small group of students about the…

The author discusses the content included in an online course on "Multicultural Materials for Young Adults and Children." This graduate course (LIS 5937) for Library and information Science students at the University of South Florida, is a very popular offering for those who plan to work with youth in libraries. The class teaches…

Worldwide surveys indicate that the number of women studying undergraduate-level Computer Science is constantly decreasing. Based on data collected in Israel, significant differences were found in the percentages of female high school students studying advanced-level Computer Science among different sectors. More specifically, while the percentage…

A number of studies in the United States have found that Jews obtain higher average IQs than white gentiles. This paper examines whether this is also the case in Britain. Three early studies are summarized that found that Jews in Britain have mean IQs in the range of 110-113. New data are presented for two nationally representative samples of 7-16…