Teaching Traumatic History to Young Children: The Case of Holocaust Studies in Israeli Kindergartens

Recently, the Israeli Ministry of Education initiated a mandatory nationwide curriculum for Jewish kindergarten children focusing on the study of the Holocaust. This initiative raises general questions regarding the inclusion of sensitive historical issues in curricula for young children. In this article, we use the new Holocaust curriculum as an instructive case through which to address the broader questions about what might constitute an appropriate and acceptable curriculum in early childhood. We discuss the initiative from three disciplinary perspectives: a developmental sciences perspective, an anthropological/cultural perspective, and a learning sciences perspective. As we demonstrate, these three perspectives not only represent different disciplines but also highlight different aspects of this issue, thus exposing the complexities of this discussion. We show that understanding these perspectives separately and then trying to combine them may enable a richer and more complex look on the broader questions that this specific curriculum raises. We conclude with an endeavor to integrate the three perspectives, all of which should be taken into account when constructing a curriculum for young children.     

Losing is Not an Option! Women's Basketball in Israel and its Struggle for Equality (1985–2002)

The current paper sheds light on a process that has changed Israeli sport between the years 1981 and 2002. The paper traces, conceptually and historically, the multiphase nature and struggle for equality of the Israeli women's basketball team. Through examining interrelated processes, this paper illustrates that although women have gained some ground as far as visibility and awareness is concerned, it is far too early for a ‘victory lap’. The rapid increase in women's participation in sports in Israel over the last decades expresses the change in the status of women in sports itself and in many other social areas, but in parallel also exposes staunch thought patterns in regard to women's and men's involvement in sports.     

Patterns of Verbal Mediation During Problem Solving: A Sequential Analysis of Self-Explanation

The explanations that participants give themselves (self-explanations) while learning or solving problems have been shown to be positively associated with various performance measures. The major aim of this study was to identify patterns of self-explanation that distinguish between good and poor problem solvers. Thirty-two Grade 9 students were asked to solve 3 mixture problems—1 warm-up problem and 2 test problems—while thinking aloud. The problem-solving process was videotaped, protocols were transcribed, and 5 content categories were identified. Through a sequential analysis, patterns of self-explanation that differentiate between good and poor problem solvers were identified.     

Situational and Personal Causes of Student Cheating

The causes of students’ academic dishonesty behavior were explored using survey and experimental vignette methods. Participants were surveyed about their own cheating behavior, neutralizing attitudes, performance/mastery orientation and perceptions of peer attitudes and behavior. As predicted, neutralizing attitudes influenced cheating behavior directly, but also indirectly, increasing the effect of individual attitudes. Observing others cheating was strongly correlated with one’s own cheating behavior. These variables are also shown to have different effects on exam cheating and plagiarism and cases of giving and receiving unauthorized information. Correlations were tested using experimental vignette methods, which supported the claims made from survey data.     

Item Response Models for Multiple Attempts With Incomplete Data

Allowance for multiple chances to answer constructed response questions is a prevalent feature in computer‐based homework and exams. We consider the use of item response theory in the estimation of item characteristics and student ability when multiple attempts are allowed but no explicit penalty is deducted for extra tries. This is common practice in online formative assessments, where the number of attempts is often unlimited. In these environments, some students may not always answer‐until‐correct, but may rather terminate a response process after one or more incorrect tries. We contrast the cases of graded and sequential item response models, both unidimensional models which do not explicitly account for factors other than ability. These approaches differ not only in terms of log‐odds assumptions but, importantly, in terms of handling incomplete data. We explore the consequences of model misspecification through a simulation study and with four online homework data sets. Our results suggest that model selection is insensitive for complete data, but quite sensitive to whether missing responses are regarded as informative (of inability) or not (e.g., missing at random). Under realistic conditions, a sequential model with similar parametric degrees of freedom to a graded model can account for more response patterns and outperforms the latter in terms of model fit.     

When Classrooms Matter: implications of between‐classroom variability for educational policy in Israel

This study assesses several policy implications of within‐school, between‐classroom variability in pupil achievement. It diverges from current school effect studies by directly modelling pupil achievement in the Jerusalem public primary school system. This three‐level study includes pupils, classrooms and schools, thus allowing an appropriate estimate of the variations between these three levels. The findings show that between‐classroom variability is consistently greater than the estimated variation between schools. These findings contrast with traditional school‐level analyses that usually ignore within‐school variability. In the light of these findings we address three educational and policy issues. First, we probe into the moral consequences of between‐classroom, within‐school variability, specifically focusing on issues of choice and commitment. Second, we scrutinize the administrative policy of ‘social integration’ and reflect on some educational consequences that result from our findings. Third, we assess the Israeli version of ‘school league tables’ and discuss their usefulness as a means of resource allocation     

A “Thinking Journey” to the Planets Using Scientific Visualization Technologies: Implications to Astronomy Education

We present a novel approach to teaching astronomy and planetary sciences, centered on visual images and simulations of planetary objects. The basic idea of the Thinking Journey concept is to take the students to other celestial objects as tourists, and to teach science through the observatio of various natural phenomena in these new environments. The power of scientific visualization, through still and dynamic images, makes such a journey an exciting learning experience. The introduction of new technologies (3D animations, virtual reality) greatly enhances the visualization capabilities the teacher can use, allowing him to simulate actual flights over the terrain of other planets and to study them as if observing from a spaceship in orbit. The present program focuses on the study of the Moon and of the planet Mars, by means of observation, interpretation, and comparison to planet Earth. Students learn to recognize geological and atmospheric processes, discuss astronomic phenomena, and discover that the same basic physical laws govern all objects in the solar system.     

Role-based Association of Verbs,Actions, and Sentiments with Entities in Political Discourse

A crucial challenge in measuring how text represents an entity is the need to associate each representative expression with a relevant entity to generate meaningful results. Common solutions to this problem are usually based on proximity methods that require a large corpus to reach reasonable levels of accuracy. We show how such methods for the association between an entity and a representation yield a high percentage of false positives at the expression level and low validity at the document level. We introduce a solution that combines syntactic parsing, semantic role labeling logic, and a machine learning approach—the role-based association method. To test our method, we compared it with prevalent methods of association on the news coverage of two entities of interest—the State of Israel and the Palestinian Authority. We found that the role-based association method is more accurate at the expression and the document levels.     

Virtual Patriot Games: American Football in The Times of London, 1888–1910

Abstract

This study examines the American football press coverage in the Times of London from 1888 to November 1910. The time span covers the paper’s first mention of the game to the first game played in England. This period also coincides with increasing anxiety about the strength of the British Empire and unwanted American influences. During this time, athletic contests between the two nations turned into sites for the construction of national identities. Adapting the sport scholar Emma Poulton’s concept of ‘mediated patriot games’, the author argues that the American football coverage of the Times of London could be considered ‘virtual patriot games’, as the absence of domestic American football teams did not allow for direct competition. Two related narrative elements. The stories in the Times framed gridiron football as the pastime of the ‘other’, including translating rules and comparing the merits of rugby and American football. The reports also focused on the American game’s violence, confirming older traditions in British imaginations of America. Advancements in communication technologies, especially the telegraphic wire, were critical for the immediacy with which British readers consumed American sporting news. Contrary to current scholarship, British interpretations of American culture through gridiron football developed much earlier than the post-1970s information age.     

Friend or Foe? Perceptions of Qatar in the Israeli Online General and Sports Press

The current paper is looking into the way in which Qatar’s investment in sport, both directly and indirectly, is being perceived by the Israeli press. In order to accomplish the task set above, a content analysis of Qatar’s media coverage in the Israeli online press was conducted. Our analysis includes 1199 articles appearing in the mainstream online Israeli press and the findings point out to an interesting trend; there are significant differences between sport related stories, which present a political context and those who do not deal with politics which are significantly more supportive of Qatar.