Teachers’ perspectives on 40 years of reform: the case of the Israeli junior high school

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to trace junior high school teachers’ perspectives regarding the strengths and weaknesses of their type of school, and to glean more information concerning their preferable type of grade configuration. To this end, 25 teachers filled out an open questionnaire and six of them were further interviewed to provide more insight into the teachers’ responses. Surprisingly, most of the teachers tended to strongly support the 1–8 type elementary schools rather than the current situation of 1–6, 7–9, 10–12 in which they have ever worked. Theoretical and practical implications are suggested.

Keywords:

• educational reform
• junior high school
• school change
• teachers’ perspectives

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to express their thanks to the chief scientist of the Ministry of Education, which funded the interviewing project upon which this paper is based.