Immigration policy vis-à-vis teachers’ views regarding immigrant students: the Israeli case

ABSTRACT

Over the years, perspectives in Israeli society on the integration of immigrant students into the country’s education system have moved from a melting-pot to a multiculturalist principle. We investigate whether and to what degree the official discourse on education policy endorses either of these approaches and the extent to which teachers’ views about the integration of immigrant students correspond to the mainstream education policy. The study is based on a qualitative analysis of 20 interviews with teachers who work with immigrant students. Findings show that the official policy and teachers’ views alike manifest three major profiles, which we term ‘melting pot,’ ‘multiculturalist,’ and ‘dualistic.’ Data suggest that, in today’s era of globalization, marked by a prevalence of multicultural discourses, both the education policy and teachers’ views concerning social integration in Israeli society are ambivalent, and not necessarily multiculturalist.

KEYWORDS:

• Multiculturalism
• melting pot
• teachers’ views
• education policy regarding immigrants

Acknowledgments

We are thankful to Nina Luskin for editing our paper for publication in Multicultural Education Review.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Adi Binhas

Adi Binhas – PhD: She served as Head of the Department of Public Administration and Policy and the Organizational Development and Conflict Resolution Program at the Beit-Berl Academic College in Israel. She completing post-doctorate studies at the Mofet Institute in the area of educational policy towards immigrants, teachers’ perceptions and the identity of immigrant teachers. Researcher and lecturer in the field of: Policy of the education system towards immigrants, Immigration policy and NGO involvement in policymaking.

Clara Sabbagh

Clara Sabbagh (B.A., M.A., Ph.D. Hebrew University of Jerusalem) is a sociologist of education by training, she is currently chair of the Department of Leadership & Policy in Education at the University of Haifa. She also an associate editor for the journal Social Justice Research. In the past, she served as president (2010-2012) of the International Society for Justice Research (ISJR), and the Social Psychology Research Committee)RC42 (2014-2018) of the International Sociological Association. At the heart of Sabbagh’s work lies an ongoing inquiry into key aspects of conceptions of social justice that underlie the basic structure of society. Sabbagh’s work has appeared in journals such as Social Psychology Quarterly, Social Justice Research, Journal of Social Policy, Acta Sociologica, Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology and other edited volumes.