Secondary Students’ Evolving Relationships and Connections with Israel

Abstract

This article presents a qualitative practitioner research study designed to understand how a morally complex Israel curriculum impacts the nature of secondary school students’ relationships with Israel. The research was conducted with 31 students enrolled in an elective about Israeli society at a Jewish high school in Canada. At both the start and conclusion of the course, students used a predetermined list of relationships to determine the one that most closely reflects the way they relate to Israel. At both junctures, students also wrote explanations justifying their decision. Results from the beginning of the course showed that 19 students chose relationships that reflected a personal and emotional bond with Israel and 12 students chose relationships that prioritized intellectual connections to Israel. When the survey was administered at the end of the course, none of the 19 students who initially chose personal relationships changed their responses to intellectual ones but 7 of the 12 intellectual responses changed their response to personal relationships. The data indicates that a curriculum built around morally complex narratives and texts in Israeli society can help lead to the formation of strong emotional bonds between students and Israel.

Keywords:

• Israel education
• secondary school
• morally complex learning
• Jewish education

Notes

1 Students were not asked about their Israel interactions at this juncture. The rationale for this was that since students will have just completed almost 10 weeks studying about Israel for two hours a day, all students would be able to write daily or weekly for all markers, thus rendering the question irrelevant. Even if the question was narrowed in scope to ask about outside of the class, students would likely struggle differentiating between a strict dichotomy between what is considered classwork and what is independent enrichment.

2 All student names have been changed in order to protect their identities, and consent to use reflections and to conduct interviews was received from students’ legal guardians.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by a grant from Brandeis University.

Notes on contributors

Matt Reingold

Matt Reingold is a member of the Jewish History and Jewish Thought departments at TanenbaumCHAT in Toronto, Canada. He earned his PhD from York University and his doctoral research focused on the intersection between arts-based learning and Jewish Education. He has published articles on Jewish and Israeli graphic novels, Israel education, and arts-based Jewish education. His forthcoming book, Gender and Sexuality in Israeli Graphic Novels, will be published by Routledge in 2021.