The Impact of Socio-environmental Projects of Jewish and Bedouin Youth in Israel on Students’ Local Knowledge and Views of Each Other

Abstract

This study is part of a first study of collaborative socio-environmental projects that engage Jewish and Arab students in Israel in learning about their local environment and about each other through outdoor learning and environmental action. We used ideas of social learning and environmental citizenship to frame our research. We investigated students' knowledge regarding their local environment and their knowledge of each other's community. We also studied the participants’ views regarding their project-partners'environmental knowledge, awareness and behaviour in comparison to their own. Initially, differences were found regarding various aspects of the students' socio-environmental knowledge and in students' views of their counterparts' environmentalism. At the end of the projects, students showed better understanding of local socio-environmental issues and demonstrated changes in their original views towards the environmental awareness and behaviour of their counterparts. These findings suggest that projects which involve students from segregated communities not only promote environmental awareness but contribute to a reduction in mutual prejudices. We suggest that the differences we found are not related to ethnicity, but rather to students' socioeconomic status and experience in environmental education programmes.

Keywords:

• Environmental education
• Education for sustainability
• Socio-environmental projects
• Multicultural learning
• Social learning
• Environmental citizenship

Notes

1. Bedouins are Muslim Arabs, who in the past were nomadic tent-dwelling tribes that moved from one place to another, according to availability of resources. Most Bedouins in what is now northern Israel relocated about 200–300 years ago from what is now Syria. Since the 1930s most of them have settled in villages.

2. In Israel, the Jewish and Arab students attend separate schools. Arabs and Jews commonly live in separate towns and villages and speak different languages.

3. The names of the creeks, villages, local authorities and the organizations that were involved in the study are pseudonyms due to the authors’ commitment to the participants to respect their anonymity and confidentiality.