Facilitated dialogues with teachers in conflict‐ridden areas: in search of pedagogical openings that move beyond the paralysing effects of perpetrator–victim narratives

Abstract

This paper shows some mechanisms as well as the paralysing implications of the perpetrator–victim positioning in the context of inservice education with Jewish‐ and Palestinian‐Israeli teachers who teach in Palestinian–Jewish integrated schools. It examines how these teachers remain rooted in the hegemonic historical narratives of their own community, even when their attitudes are challenged and clearer alternatives to the reigning narratives are considered. The findings highlight failures in terms of the potential of educational efforts to help overcome situations of intractable conflict, even within contexts specifically devised for this purpose. However, some openings become apparent in the process of negotiating competing narratives and inventing new dialogic possibilities. The implications of this work suggest that schools and their historical traditions are difficult places in which to effect change and that teacher training may not always be the answer for the need to bring about change. Ongoing agonistics of raising critical issues regarding one’s identifications with hegemonic narratives offers openings to take responsibility for both the challenges and the dialogic possibilities that are created in the process.

Keywords:

• historical narratives
• in‐service teacher education
• integrated education
• Palestinians/Jews
• peace education
• victimization

Acknowledgements

The research project on which this paper is based was funded by the Bernard Van Leer Foundation. We are profoundly grateful for the assistance of all teachers who participated in the workshops; they are a continuing source of inspiration and hope in our conflict‐ridden societies.

Notes

1. To facilitate the readers’ identification of the teachers involved in the dialogue we have added in parentheses a ‘J’ after the name of Jewish teachers and a ‘P’ after those of Palestinians. All the names used throughout this paper are pseudonyms.

2. In this paper, translations from Hebrew were made by Z. Bekerman; those from Arabic by N. Shhadi.

3. See Bekerman and McGlynn (2007), McGlynn et al. (2009), and Zembylas (2008).

4. For a detailed and updated review of the Arab educational system in Israel, see Coursen‐Neff (2004).

5. See Bekerman (2004, 2005, 2007), Bekerman and Shhadi (2003), Gavison (2000), and Glazier (2003).

6. See Apple (1979), Bourdieu (1973), and Luke (1988).

7. See also VanSledright (2008).

8. See also Zembylas and Bekerman (2008).

9. See Conway (2003), Kosicki (2007), and Wineburg et al. (2007).