Navigating competing conceptions of civic education: lessons from three Israeli civics classrooms

Abstract

The concentration of this study was the documentation and analysis of ways in which competing conceptions of citizenship play out in actual classroom settings. Examining three cases in the context of the Israeli education system, its findings show that civics teachers’ views and beliefs influenced ways in which they interpreted the curriculum standards and reacted to schools policies and atmosphere, even in cases where these views contradicted. Nevertheless, when confronted with competing conceptions of citizenship as presented by their students, the teachers were less willing to open true democratic conversations, resulting in lessons that did not necessarily create a true democratic atmosphere.

Keywords:

• Civics
• social studies
• Israel
• enacted curriculum

Acknowledgments

This study is a development of a PhD dissertation conducted at Teachers College Columbia University under the guidance of Professor William Gaudelli, to whom I wish to extend my thanks. I also wish to thank the editors and reviewers for their constructive remarks.

Notes

1. Israel’s geopolitical context and the ongoing conflicts influence all aspects of life, including citizenship and civic education. Intentionally, these issues were not examined as part of this study due to my fear that they would dominate the research and create a divergence from my main interests. For more on these topics see Bekerman (2002); Ben-Porath (2009).

2. Conducting research in Israel, it is important to point out that I am a secular Ashkenazi Jew of European origin who identifies mainly with the humanistic Jewish culture as it has developed in the Israeli context. It is my belief that my personal position and acquaintance with this culture helped in understanding the deeper levels of the information gathered. I have decided to exclude both the Jewish religious schools and the non-Jewish schools from this study owing to my fear that my presence would arouse suspicion on behalf of the teachers and the students, since my position as a stranger would have been clearly apparent.

3. Jerusalem was proclaimed as Israel’s capital in 1950. Nevertheless, the UN, the EU countries and the USA do not recognise its status due to the ongoing dispute with the Palestinians and other Arab countries. Therefore, most countries maintain their embassies in Tel Aviv (Israel, 2012).

4. At the end of 2010 the population of Jerusalem was estimated at 789,000 (Choshen & Korach, 2011).

5. See Table 1: Data Collection Summary.

6. All of the names mentioned, including the names of the schools, the teachers and the students are pseudonyms. The following information was obtained from the schools’ websites as well as from the website of the Israeli Ministry of Education and the website of the Jerusalem Municipality that detail information regarding the schools in the state and in the city. In order to protect the participants’ confidentiality, the addresses of these websites will not be exposed.

7. See Appendix A: Observation Protocol; Appendix B: Teacher Interview Protocol.

8. See Appendix C: Sample List of Codes and Appendix D: Sample Quotes Compiled Under Code ‘Participatory Conception’.

9. For more on this aspect of this study see Cohen (2013b).