Perceptions of ‘the other’ in children’s drawings: an intercultural project among Bedouin and Jewish children

Abstract

This article presents research on an intercultural project supervised by teacher trainers and implemented by two Jewish student teachers in a Bedouin school in the south of Israel The student teachers developed and taught an English language unit on the differences and similarities between Jewish and Arab cultures for the purpose of promoting intercultural awareness and acceptance. Figure drawings of Jewish and Arab people made by the children were analyzed qualitatively as measures of changes in attitudes and stereotypes before and after the educational intervention. We found that many negative stereotypes were changed as a result of the culture unit taught by the student teachers. As teacher trainers and researchers, we present this project as an example of an educational intervention for the promotion of intercultural understanding.

Keywords:

• teacher training
• multicultural education
• intercultural intervention
• children’s drawings
• Jewish and Arab children

Introduction

This article presents a research project carried out by student teachers under the supervision of their teacher trainers (the authors) in the framework of the English department of an Israeli teacher training college. Our teachers’ college is situated in the south of Israel and seeks to meet the educational needs of the diverse populations of the area. Among these ethnic and religious minority groups are the Bedouin of the Negev, who have enrolled in the college in increasing numbers over the last few years due to the high birth rate of the population and the need to certify teachers to serve the rapidly expanding number of schools. Graduates of the college now fill diverse positions in Bedouin schools. In addition, the college is home to a growing number of first‐generation Bedouin women who have been given permission by their extended families to partake in higher education (Pessate‐Schubert 2003).

The English department of the college has seen its task not only as the preparation and certification of English as a Second Language teachers, but as instrumental in the promotion and implementation of democratic values deemed important to Israeli society, among which is improvement in Jewish–Arab relations. In addition, English department policy strives to provide opportunities for student teachers to undergo diversified practicum experiences in order to prepare them for a wide range of teaching roles in different multicultural contexts in the education system.

For all of the above reasons, we chose an elementary school in the largest Bedouin city in the south of Israel as one of our sites of teaching practice. Two Jewish student teachers volunteered to do their student teaching practicum in the sixth‐grade (11 and 12‐year‐old children) classes of this school. The student teachers developed and taught a unit on the differences and similarities between Jewish and Arab cultures for the purpose of promoting intercultural awareness and acceptance between children of the two cultures.

The purpose of the research project was:

1.	To investigate the children’s perceptions of stereotypes towards the two cultures, as well as the organization of human social distances and contacts through analysis of children’s drawings.
2.	To promote understanding and acceptance between Jewish and Arab children through the multicultural content of the teaching unit.

Theoretical background

The concept of stereotypes

The origin of the word ‘stereotype’ comes from the Greek stereos, meaning ‘form’ or ‘solid’ and typos, meaning ‘impression’ or ‘image’, ‘a particular kind, class or group’. ‘Stereotype’ means a standardized mental picture that is held in common by members of a group and that represents an oversimplified opinion, emotional attitude or uncritical judgment (Webster’s New Encyclopedic Dictionary 1996). Hilgard and Atkinson (1967) claim that one of the results of frustration is stereotypical behavior, behavior that is blind, repetitive and fixed. Everyday problem solving demands flexibility and openness to new directions. When individuals are frustrated, they lose some of their behavioral flexibility and react by repeating activities or thoughts without variation despite the fact that the results may be unsuccessful.

Social psychologists define stereotypes as a set of beliefs about attributes and behaviors of members of a social category in which individuals are attributed characteristics of the category to which they are believed to belong. Sani et al. (2003) question the accepted assumption of the cognitive‐structured view that stereotypes are fixed and rigid concepts that are stored in memory and automatically activated in order to categorize or evaluate people. Their research gives evidence that stereotyping is inherently comparative, flexible and variable. They found that children as young as five to seven years old possess the ability to vary their stereotypes of an ‘out group’ in comparison with different ‘out groups’.

In coping with the concept of stereotypes among children, we gained much insight from the developmental theory of Raviv, Oppenheimer, and Bar‐Tal (1999) on how children understand war and peace. They claim that an awareness of how children and adolescents understand the concepts under question and what kind of meanings they ascribe to them serve as an important basis for attitudinal and behavioral change. In their formulation, children’s understanding of concepts is shaped by three developmental factors: maturation, external sources of information, and experience within socio‐cultural settings.

Developmentally, knowledge that is acquired during childhood and adolescence is crucial for the way the world is perceived in adulthood (Hakvoort and Oppenheimer 1999). Children move from the beginning stage of egocentric viewpoints to higher‐level stages of role‐taking ability. The stage in which one places oneself in the position of the other in order to understand the feelings, attitudes and opinions of others is seen as a fundamental condition of maturity for qualitative change in concepts to occur. The understanding of the reciprocal nature of interpersonal relationships (stage 3) emerges between the ages of 10 and 15, the age of our population sample.

The second factor was external sources of information that were provided by the student teachers in the form of lessons that focused on the concepts of friendship and cultural information about the similarities and differences between Jews and Arabs. Sleeter and Grant (1988) recommend presenting children with positive information about their own group to counter negative perceptions and thus build self‐esteem in the minority group. When bringing a minority group into contact with a more dominant group, the minority’s self‐identity needs to be supported (Salomon 2002).

Experience within socio‐cultural settings was the third factor. It occurred through authentic whole experience within the children’s own environment, rather than merely in settings in which adults teach children. The opportunity for the Bedouin pupils to write and receive real letters from Jewish children served as a circumstance for ‘seeing and remembering’ (Raviv, Oppenheimer and Bar Tal 1999, 3). Raviv, Oppenheimer, and Bar‐Tal (1999) write that the personal socio‐cultural construction of concepts is the product of co‐constructivism in which each individual child and the environment actively participate. Sleeter and Grant (1988), also based on a cognitive development theory, believe that direct contact with members of another group during carefully structured situations will provide accurate information about that group that will challenge stereotypes.

Our student teachers’ lesson plans were designed to create carefully structured situations as they moved from the general subject of friendship to friendship with people of other cultures around the world to friendship between the two cultures, Jewish and Arab, based on similarities and differences between Jewish children and Arab children.

Initially, Bedouin children perceived Jewish people to be very different from themselves. An example of a lesson plan based on the research of Sani et al. (2003) was a worksheet showing pictures of traditional Native Americans, Japanese and Chinese people. When compared to these images, Bedouin children perceived these people as very different from themselves. However, when subsequently presented with pictures of people in Israel, Jews and Arabs, they perceived Jewish people as more similar to themselves than the other ‘out groups’, thus resulting in a reduction in stereotypical thinking.

Self‐categorization theorists (Sani et al. 2003) believe that stereotypes are only possible in relation to the stereotypes of the ‘in group’, that usually creates stereotypes of the other in order to see themselves in a more positive light in comparison. For this reason, much attention was given in the student teachers’ lesson plans to comparisons between the Arab and Jewish cultures, focusing on traditional foods, holidays and dress.

Multicultural education

Due to the increase in global immigration and migration trends, multiculturalism is a major phenomenon whose influence is felt throughout the world today (Berry 1990). In different countries, there is an approach to multiculturalism on a national level that is translated into goals, aims, missions or visions that guide educational policy‐making and principles on which the curriculum is based. There are those that focus on educational outcomes and the obstacles to achievement of these outcomes (Boutte 1999; Cohen and Manion 1983). Multiculturalism is a world view that rejects the global centrality of any single culture or historical perspective. It is a principle, an approach or a set of rules of conduct that guides the interactions and influences the perceptions, beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors of people from diverse cultural backgrounds. Multicultural education is an umbrella concept that refers to educational practice that is directed toward social equality regardless of race, culture, language, social class, gender, handicap or other characteristics (Boutte 1999). Although many of the generalities found in the literature about the effects of absorption or acculturation have been based on a single type of group, it is clear that there are numerous types, and adaptations may vary depending upon this factor. Five different groups were identified by Berry (1990) that include immigrants, refugees, ethnic groups, sojourners and native peoples. The generic term ‘ethnic group’ is most frequently used to refer to people who identify with, and exhibit, a common heritage in the second or subsequent generations. The term ‘indigenous group’ refers to those groups that were resident prior to immigration of the dominant group and who remain as nations (in the cultural sense) within the larger society (Berry 1990). The goals of acculturation of indigenous groups are not necessarily directed toward modernity, although the dominant culture might believe this to be true and articulate it in its policy statements. The preferred attitudes of individuals and leaders of indigenous groups may be to retain their cultural heritage while moving to participate as an integral part of the larger social network. When this occurs out of choice and desire on the part of the dominated culture, it is called integration. However, the term ‘marginalization’ describes the situation of groups that are on the margin of two cultures; neither accepted nor supported by either one.

In the case of the Bedouins in Israel as an indigenous minority group, Banks’ (1981) typology applies. He speaks of stages of ethnicity in which people perceive themselves and their ability to move from lower to higher stages. The lowest stage of ethnic psychological captivity is the stage in which people of minority groups internalize society’s negative perceptions of them. Banks suggests helping children of minority groups reexamine stereotypes about themselves, as well as others, in order to increase self‐esteem. In the education system, the knowledge that majority group teachers possess is not necessarily relevant in relation to minority groups (Michael 2000). Pre‐knowledge assumptions of the dominant culture often prevent children of minority cultures from learning. Pre‐knowledge assumptions related to language, nonverbal communication and examples from history, humor, etc. give rise to different problems. Words that seem trivial to a teacher may be unknown to the pupil; similarly, concepts that teachers attempt to explain may be clear to the majority culture, but unknown to the minority pupil. Connections to current events and associations may confuse pupils of the minority culture because they don’t make the same connections. In summary, pre‐knowledge is assumed when this is not always true (Michael 2004).

Our approach to multicultural education adopts the human relations approach (Sleeter and Grant 1988) that seeks to help pupils communicate with people who are different from themselves, who feel good about themselves and about their group membership and who reduce or eliminate stereotypes that children have about themselves and others.

Children’s drawings

The notion that drawings can serve as a tool for psychological analysis of the individual recognizes that a key part of thinking and communication is visual. The study of children’s drawings has been developing as a field of research since the late nineteenth century.

Analysis can be performed on various features of drawings: the topic of the drawing, proportions, usage of space, perspective, quality and strength of the line, colors, profusion or lack of details, and so forth (Kreitler and Kreitler 1972). Some studies use a fixed topic for the drawing (such as a human figure drawing, a tree drawing or a house‐tree‐figure drawing), while some examine free drawings (Wimmer 2005). Over the years, researchers (Kellogg 1959, 1970) have tried to identify similarity among drawings of children from different countries and cultures and have identified basic forms and compositions common to all children’s drawings and scribbles, which characterize the various stages in their development. The conclusion arising from these studies is that drawings can indicate much about the child’s motor, cognitive and emotional development. Various researchers (Goodenough 1926; Goodnow 1979; Harris 1963; Koppitz 1968) have tried to quantify the quality of drawings and create scales which categorize ages and developmental stages as these are reflected in drawings.

The development of drawing among children parallels their age and cognitive development. Therefore, the attempt to measure the stages of children’s drawing is in accordance with the age‐related averages that parallel children’s developmental growth. The determination of characteristic age boundaries of the different developmental stages aids in the diagnosis of individual differences that are above and below the standard.

A drawing can reveal not only the child’s cognitive developmental stage, but also his or her mental world, values and experiences. Drawings reflect the child’s social experiences and the influence of meaningful figures in his or her life, parents and family, pedagogic figures and influential social factors. A drawing can demonstrate the child’s fears, wishes and perceptions of himself or herself and of the other. For example, fears can be manifested through the choice of intimidating drawing themes, through a fragmentary and wobbly line or through the use of excessive pressure. An organ that is drawn particularly large or with a vigorous line might indicate that the organ or something related to it is of concern to the child, and a figure drawn large in proportion to others is often of great significance to the child (Machover 1949). The relation between the drawn figures and their characteristics can reveal much about the relationship between the people they represent and about the way the child perceives them (Wimmer 2005; Rimmerman 1975). The individual meaning that can be seen in the drawing expresses not only objects and events, but also feelings, emotions and moods, abstract concepts and metaphorical and symbolic interpretations (Kreitler and Kreitler 1972).

Many studies have been conducted among minority groups to examine the influence of social status, political conditions and social conceptions. Comparisons have been made between drawings of children from differing ethnicities (Wimmer 2005; Rimmerman 1983). A few studies have compared drawings of Bedouin children and Jewish children from the Israel’s Negev region and drawings of Jewish children and Israeli–Arab children (Wimmer 2005).

We used the concept of ‘inner group’ (Abraham 1990) in our study to better understand the existing images and stereotypes of the children. The ‘inner group’ is an individual’s intra‐psychic construct based on one’s internalized experiences with the primary group, the family, and fantasied experiences with various secondary membership groups throughout life. The primary group images are whole (those of mother, father and siblings), while the secondary images are partial, contaminated by internalized common cultural stereotypes. Drawings, more than verbal modes of expression, provide the best means for projection of the unconscious levels of the individual’s inner group (Abraham 1990). Pictorial images, therefore, contain both group heritage of the collective unconscious together with the individual’s most genuine and creative way of expressing perceptions of nature, the human world and the inner world. Emotional content will appear directly or symbolically as exaggerated forms in line and color. In the interpretation of children’s drawing, more attention is given to the quality of the drawing than to the final product.

The best way to diagnose children psychologically through drawing is through the human figure drawing that gives us information about the children’s self‐image, their social interaction, their developmental level and their identification with the surroundings (Harris 1963). The children whose drawings are analyzed in this study are in the third stage of psycho‐social development, the pseudo‐naturalistic stage, which gives social expression to emotions and eases the entry from the stage of childish expression to the stage of expression that is acceptable to adults (Hakvoort and Oppenheimer 1999; Lahav 1987). Children of this stage attach much importance to the final product of their drawing. They begin to become more aware of external standards and only partially express their personality in a direct way. We requested that the children draw an Arab and a Jewish person in order to investigate the children’s perceptions of stereotypes towards the two cultures, as well as the organization of human social distances and contacts (Abraham 1989).

The Bedouin culture and society

The Bedouin community in the Negev has numerous tribes that are among the minority population of indigenous Arabs who remained in Israel after the 1948 War of Independence. In the early 1970s, the confiscation of lands and forced urbanization of the Negev Bedouins by the Israeli government resulted in the end of traditional nomadic living patterns and loss of livelihood from agriculture, animal herds and animal products.

The transition from a traditional tribal society of nomads into a semi‐urban society has created many changes in all aspects of life. This process was joined by another, the international phenomenon of Islamic radicalization. These factors have brought about conflict and uncertainty in perceptions regarding, among others, self‐image, the role of the family and tribe in the individual’s life, leadership and authority, the relationship between the Bedouin community and Israeli rule, the preservation of tradition versus the integration into the general Israeli society and the status of women (Glaubman and Katz 1998).

The Bedouin community in Israel is a culture apart from mainstream Israeli society. Being a traditional society, outsiders in the country, the Bedouins have kept themselves more separated than other cultures, perhaps in order to maintain their identity. Their unique position in Israeli society is due to the fact that they are not seen by many Arabs as Arabs because of their participation in the Israeli army and, on the other hand, they are seen as Arabs by the Jewish population because of their native language, Arabic, and their religion, Muslim with Bedouin customs. Bedouin communities in Israel are known for their custom of hospitality that they extend to all visitors within their midst, based on the ancient tradition of housing wanderers in the desert for three nights. The student teachers wrote, ‘At first, we were overwhelmed by the reception and the warm hospitality of the school staff’.

The Bedouin minority in Israel is left out of mainstream society socially, economically and educationally (Kedar 2002; Weissblai 2006). Schools, on a large scale, were first introduced into the settled villages in the 1970s and over 90% of the women and 55% of the men have never had any formal education. According to Ministry of Education statistics, the Bedouin dropout rate is the highest in the country: between the fifth and the eighth grade, 60% of boys and 70% of girls will leave the school system. Only 28% complete high school with a matriculation certificate (Weissblai 2006).

Despite the poor physical conditions in the schools (for example, electricity is used sparingly), the high ratio between students and teachers and the generally low level of training and education that teachers receive, there have been substantial improvements over the last decades. The number of schools and kindergartens has grown considerably, as has the number of students, particularly girls. The percentage of Bedouin teachers has grown significantly: only a third of the teachers of Bedouin schools were Bedouin in 1978, compared to 65% in 1992 (Glaubman and Katz 1998). Social services and counseling services have also developed. These changes both create and reflect the Bedouin society’s growing recognition of the importance of formal education.

The socio‐political setting in which our project took place was the academic year of 2002–2003 during the second intifada and the then upcoming second Gulf War in Iraq. Bedouin children underwent a period of anti‐western and anti‐Israeli propaganda broadcast on satellite television. During this period, there was also a decline in educational programs aimed at meetings between Jews and Arabs, resulting in Bedouin children’s isolation from children outside their city.

English as an authentic language of communication

Hebrew is the dominant language in Israeli society, and minority groups learn Hebrew in order to participate in the economic, health and welfare and political networks of the larger society. Bedouin schools are under the supervision of the Israeli Ministry of Education and belong to the Arab sector in which the language of instruction is in their native language, Arabic. Hebrew is taught as a second compulsory language and English is taught as a third compulsory language.

Since Jewish children do not know Arabic and Bedouin children do not know Hebrew well, English, as a compulsory language learned in the schools, was seen as a neutral language that allowed for equality of communication between the children. In addition, the lack of a common native language placed the Jewish student teachers in a context of ‘English only’ as the means of instruction. In the words of the student teachers: ‘For two Jewish student teachers knowing only two words in Arabic – Salam Alekum – coming to do fieldwork practice in the Bedouin city of Rahat was very challenging’.

Despite anti‐American attitudes during the period of our study, there existed great motivation among the children to learn English. As Hasman (2000) writes, English is losing its political and cultural connotations as more people realize that English is not the property of a few countries, but a tool that is used globally to open up opportunities. People no longer fear that English will replace other languages. They see English supplementing or co‐existing with the native language and making it possible for strangers to communicate across linguistic boundaries (Hasman 2000). The Bedouin English teachers who served as cooperating teachers of our student teachers in the practicum site offered a variety of activities and materials and succeeded in attaining an adequate level of English in their classes in the elementary grades.

According to the rationale of the newly revised English curriculum of the Israeli Ministry of Education (2001):

English is the customary language…for overcoming barriers to the flow of information, goods and people across…boundaries. It is the language that, after Hebrew and Arabic, is considered the most valuable asset of a plurilingual Israeli citizen. (9)

The goal of the curriculum was to set standards in four domains: social interaction, access to information, presentation, and appreciation of culture and language. The unique context of the student teaching site, in which native languages were ineffective for purposes of communication, presented the student teachers and the pupils in the classroom with an authentic learning situation that reinforced the goals of the curriculum. The student teachers wrote: ‘All lessons were in English with a large variety of materials and body movements for illustration’.

In our case, the pupils were extremely motivated to find out more about Jewish children. Determining an authentic audience provides relevance that goes past the confines of the classroom that cannot be achieved in any other way. When learners interact with others meaningfully, they become emotionally involved in the task and utilize both cognitive and affective social strategies (Abu Rass 2000). The currently popular term ‘whole language’ means making the classroom part of the real world and the real world part of the classroom (Akstein 2000) in which the language goal is communication. Doye (1999) claims that the guiding concept for the overall aim of foreign language education since 1990 has become intercultural communication competence.

We based our goals of communication between the student teachers and the pupils, as well as between Jewish and Arab children, on the principles of a ‘whole language’ English‐speaking and writing environment.

Method

Sample

The participants were 54 Bedouin children, citizens of Israel, in two sixth‐grade classes in a local elementary school in one of the largest Bedouin cities in the south of Israel. The school included a kindergarten and an elementary school from first to eighth grades. It was made up of old buildings and caravans spread all over the school ground. Electricity existed, but was used only when necessary, rendering computer use unavailable.

Procedure

The student teachers taught two sixth‐grade classes one weekly hour each over the span of the 2002–2003 school year. The teaching unit was built by the student teachers and included the following subjects: friendship as a positive value, differences and similarities between Arabs and Jews, religious artifacts, traditional foods, customs and dress. All lessons were in English with a large variety of materials, visual aids and body movement for illustration.

The research included a pre‐test and a post‐test figure‐drawing task for pupils. Under the guidance of their teacher trainer, the student teachers designed the tasks and the English teacher of the pupils translated the task instruction into Arabic for the pupils. The English teacher administered the figure‐drawing task when the student teachers were not present in order to obtain the most unbiased data from the pupils. The figure‐drawing task was anonymous. The directions for the figure‐drawing task were given to the pupils in Arabic in order to allow for the free expression of opinions and feelings. The purpose of the task was to learn about the pupils’ stereotypes, knowledge and familiarity with Jewish people in general and about their attitudes towards friendship with Jewish people in particular. In addition, the task aimed to elicit stereotypes connected with the pupils’ own culture and the Jewish culture. A more comprehensive questionnaire was administered. This article reports the results only of the figure‐drawing task.

The directions given to the children were to draw a Jewish person and an Arab person (with no gender indicated). The children drew pictures twice, once before the educational intervention and once after. The authors, together with a developmental psychologist, analyzed all the drawings from the two groups.

Data analysis

Each drawing was initially labeled for elements depicting violence or friendship. Drawings that included neither of these were labeled as neutral. Blank pages were labeled separately. From the analysis of the data, four qualitative categories emerged: (1) drawings containing signs of violence, (2) neutral drawings containing neither signs of violence nor signs of friendship, (3) drawings containing signs of friendship, and (4) empty pages in which no drawings were made. Subsequently, the drawings of each group were analyzed according to the following elements: cultural and national symbols, comparison of size between the two pictures of the same pupil, comparison of elaboration of decoration, comparison of detail of body parts, and comparison of the physical connection or interaction between the two images depicted.

Results

The majority of children did not want to draw pictures of Jewish and Arab figures before the educational intervention. The few drawings obtained before the educational intervention were analyzed. These drawings were clearly characterized by signs of violence and no signs of friendship. After the educational intervention, 54 drawings were obtained. All the drawings were analyzed and categorized into the four categories for each of the two sixth‐grade classes. The results are shown in Table 1.

Table 1. Distribution of frequencies and percentages of children’s drawings after the educational intervention according to categories.

	Violence	Neutral	Friendship	No drawing	Total
Class 1	39.7%	722.6%	1238.7%	929.0%	31100%
Class 2	417.4%	834.8%	834.8%	313%	23100%
Total	713.0%	1527.8%	2037.0%	1222.2%	54100%

From Table 1, we can see that after the educational intervention, the number of drawings with signs of violence was small (13%) and the number of drawings with signs of friendship was much larger (37.0%). The number of neutral drawings was average (27.8%) in comparison to the other two types of drawing. The number of pictures that were not drawn was also average (22.2%).

Children’s drawings before the educational intervention

We chose to illustrate the results of the pre‐test based on two representative examples of drawings, one of a boy and one of a girl. In general, it can be seen that the drawings are characterized by cultural and national symbols and that there is no connection between the two figures, although the same pupils drew them.

In Figure 1.1 (see Appendix 1), both figures in the top picture are characterized by cultural symbols: the Jewish figure was drawn with hair locks and skullcap and the Arab figure was drawn with headdress and sword. The cultural symbols are of a violent nature: the Arab figure contains weapons of war, a knife in his belt, a sword protruding from his back and a stick in his hand. Both contain nationalistic symbols: above each figure is the national flag. There is no connection between the two figures and they are equal in size. Although the Jewish figure is drawn with no weapons of aggression, the arms of the Jewish figure are raised upward and the fists are possibly clenched in an aggressive stance. The fists of the Jewish figure are smaller than the hands of the Arab figure and the Arab figure appears to be the stronger of the two, being more equipped with weapons of war. In the bottom picture, the drawing of the Arab girl is considerably bigger, more elaborately drawn and decorated with more investment in comparison to the drawing of the Jewish girl. Also, in these drawings, we see cultural characteristics in the modest dress of the Arab girl in comparison to the exposed dress of the Jewish girl. As in the first (top) drawing, there is no connection between the two figures, either in hand contact or in eye contact.

Children’s drawings after the educational intervention

The drawings were divided into four categories:

Category 1

In general, the characteristics of this group include weapons of war, baring of teeth as a sign of violence, and lack of facial features and/or limbs that represent signs of anxiety. This category of drawings included figures with weapons of war, clenched teeth in the mouth of a Jewish figure in comparison with no teeth in the mouth of an Arab figure and a figure with no facial features or hands that are symbolic expressions of anxiety. In this category, we chose to illustrate characteristic ethnic and cultural symbols in Figure 1.2 (see Appendix 1). The Jewish figure was drawn as a traditionally religious figure of a Jew with a pistol in his hand. The Arab figure was a warrior with a sword. However, we can see hope for the future in the olive branch drawn between the two national flags. The word ‘peace’ was written in Hebrew at the bottom of the picture placed between the two figures.

Category 2

What distinguished this group of neutral drawings is that there were no signs of violence or signs of peace or friendship. This category of drawings contained cultural and ethnic symbols, such as modest and exposed dress, head coverings, beards for religious male figures (both Jews and Arabs) and the carrying of objects on the head. It appeared that the majority of drawings in this category were drawn by girls according to the gender of the figures: the modest dress of the Arab woman was dominant. There is no contact between the two figures. Figure 1.3 (see Appendix 1) included a clear boundary line separating the two figures. Figure 1.4 (see Appendix 1) illustrated this category in which there were cultural signs of carrying an object on the head, clear differences in the style of dress and, more significantly, the Jewish figure has no hands, a sign of lack of contact and availability. The Arab girl’s hands are in the air, signifying that she attends to her matters with no regard for the Jewish figure next to her.

Category 3

Signs of friendship and peace are what distinguished this category from the others, including the holding of hands, flowers in the hands of the figures, figures of equal size and captions coming from the mouths of the figures with the words ‘friends’ and ‘peace’. Further, the investment in the graphic details of the drawings shows equal investment of effort. We can also see signs of peaceful activities, such as talking about peace, holding hands and holding flowers. There are weapons in this group of drawings, but they are smaller and placed at the side. This category of drawings containing signs of friendship still includes ethnic and cultural signs; however, there are drawings in which this has disappeared. We found a gradation from low to high degrees of signs of friendship in this category. The pictures with the lowest degree of signs of friendship contain figures with ethnic symbols of dress (including a sword in the belt) in which contact between the figures is limited. The next group of pictures includes figures, predominantly of girls, that are equal in size and in attractiveness, similarly decorated and drawn close together. The third group of figures is still identifiable as Jews and Arabs due to their ethnic dress, but they are in direct contact. In Figure 1.5 (see Appendix 1), we see two figures of characteristic ethnic appearance who are in direct contact, holding hands with a branch that has a flower between them. These figures are equal in size, have similar investment in the details of their appearance and the motion of their hands are similarly emphasized. The group of pictures with the highest degree of signs of friendship depicts the figures as interchangeable. In Figure 1.6 (see Appendix 1), we cannot differentiate between the Arab and the Jewish figures. They are both drawn in the same size, decorated in the same manner, equally pretty in appearance and holding hands in a graphically emphasized way. This is possibly the optimal drawing of friendship and peace between the two groups.

Category 4

This category contained empty pages on which children made no drawings for various reasons. We included this category in our analysis based on our assumption that refusal to draw made a kind of statement, although we had little evidence on which to base an interpretation.

Conclusions and discussion

The results of the children’s drawings of a Jewish and an Arab person show that stereotypes, both negative and positive, decreased to a significant degree as a result of the educational program designed and implemented by the student teachers.

This finding is in accordance with the research literature that claims that children’s stereotypes are flexible and variable (Sani et al. 2003) and given to change through external sources of information (Sleeter and Grant 1988) provided in this case by the student teachers in the form of lessons that focused on the concepts of friendship and cultural similarities and differences. Knowledge about Jewish people appeared to be a significant factor that affected the Bedouin children’s attitudes toward Jewish people. One possible explanation for why some Bedouin children initially failed to draw pictures of Jewish people might have been their lack of knowledge. The Bedouin children who participated in this study reported in the pre‐test questionnaire that they and their parents had no, or very little, knowledge about and acquaintance with Jewish people. After the educational intervention, in which the Bedouin children received information about Jewish people and their culture, the empty pages decreased dramatically.

Based on the drawings of the children in our project, we learned that ethnic and cultural symbols play an important role in the perceptions of the Bedouin children. We conclude from this that cultural differences can be seen as an asset, rather than a hindrance (Michael 2006), and that should be emphasized in designs for intercultural teaching units. Classroom activities designed by our student teachers that focused on the concept of friendship between children of different cultures included comparisons of traditional clothing, food and holidays of both Jews and Arabs.

Language, as part of culture, religion and national identity, was seen by the children as a source of difference and a barrier to communication and connection in the pre‐test (Rajuan and Michael 2008). The use of English as a neutral language enabled communication and bridged the gap between diverse social and cultural worlds. It appears that providing the Bedouin children with an opportunity to get to know some Jewish children on a personal basis through a neutral means of communication changed the Bedouin children’s perceptions of them from external appearances to internal characteristics. We recommend the use of English between Arab and Jewish children to help bridge the communication gap. Multicultural teaching units between different cultural groups leads to external sources of information and experience within socio‐cultural settings that are prerequisites for the acquisition of knowledge for changing stereotypes (Kierman and Mosher‐Ashley 2002; Raviv, Oppenheimer, and Bar‐Tal 1999).

In addition, the results support our claim that the educational intervention was age‐appropriate in terms of the children’s developmental stage, at ages 11 and 12, in which the ability to take roles and empathize from the point of view of the ‘other’ was sufficiently developed (Hakvoort and Oppenheimer 1999). We make no claim regarding the developmental stage in which changes in stereotypes are optimal, but recommend more comparative research in this area.

This study was designed by student teachers within the framework of the requirements of the teacher education program of our college. One of the objectives of the project was for the student teachers to learn about and implement the elements of the research study under the supervision of their teacher trainers. There was an attempt to allow the student teachers to design the experiment and the research tools on their own. For this reason, methodological limitations were often overlooked and resulted in a situation in which we were unable to perform more sophisticated analysis on the data.

Our student teachers had limited access to the pupils in the classroom. However, their identities as Jewish people served to reinforce the principle of structured contact with members of a different cultural group. Another limitation of the project presented here was that it was not comprehensive or school‐wide, as recommended by Stendler and Martin (1953). Despite these limitations, the positive direction of the research findings points clearly to the influence of the educational intervention on the change in Bedouin children’s perceptions of stereotypes towards the Jewish children. We were not able to investigate the change in attitudes among the Jewish children who participated in this project, but we hope to do so in a future project including more schools.

Our study suggests that an educational intervention can make a difference in the micro context of the classroom that affects the macro context of society, in a limited amount of time with no additional funding, in the way children perceive the ‘other’ in times of conflict and animosity. The project resulted in many positive attitude changes among the participants that included the student teachers, the cooperating teachers and the principals in both the Jewish and the Arab schools involved. We end this article with the words of the school principal: ‘If it were up to the children, we would have peace long ago.’

Notes on contributors

Orly Michael has a PhD from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. She is a senior lecturer at Achva Academic College of Education and a lecturer at the School of Education of Bar‐Ilan University in Israel. She was head of the pedagogical advisors’ teaching staff at the teachers’ college, member of management of the School of Education and head of the national forum of pedagogical advisors of the teachers’ colleges in Israel. She specializes in and publishes articles on teacher training, pedagogical instruction, multicultural education, mentoring and tutoring projects and distance learning in multicultural environments.

Maureen Rajuan was born in the USA and immigrated to Israel in 1969. She earned her BA and MA degrees from the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, in education and English literature. She received her PhD in teacher training from the Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands. She has been a teacher trainer for many years in the English Department of Achva Academic College of Education in Israel. In addition, she teachers EFL at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, and translates manuscripts from Hebrew into English. She is a certified educational counselor and worked in the public school system as a counselor and English high‐school teacher before entering teacher education.

Acknowledgements:

The authors would like to express their appreciation to Aliza Ben‐Menachem, Clinical Psychologist, for her expert analysis of the children’s drawings and help with the relevant theoretical literature. We also want to thank our student teachers, Limor Rozenbaum and Tal Brown, for sharing their materials, research data and experience in the writing of this article.

Appendix 1. Children’s drawings

Figure 1.1 Drawings with signs of violence and neutral drawing before the educational intervention.

Figure 1.2 Drawing with signs of violence after the educational intervention.

Figure 1.3 Drawing with no signs of violence or friendship (neutral) after the educational intervention.

Figure 1.4 Drawing with no signs of violence or friendship (neutral) after the educational intervention.

Figure 1.5 Drawing with signs of friendship after the educational intervention.

Figure 1.6 Drawing with signs of friendship after the educational intervention.