The politics of mourning in Cyprus and Israel: educational implications

This paper suggests the need for a critical analysis of the nationalization of mourning and its educational implications, especially in conflict‐ridden areas. Our thoughts are grounded in a comparative study on mourning that has been conducted as part of our long‐standing ethnographic research in schools in Cyprus and Israel during the last 10 years. Through this study on mourning, we highlight two ideas. First, we want to show how a comparison of our studies in Cyprus and Israel highlights the difficulties for alternative interpretations to be translated into educational policies and teacher practices in the absence of changes in political structures. Second, we want to show that despite the forces that nationalize mourning, there are educational openings for alternative interpretations about mourning and the encouragement of reconciliation pedagogies. To this end, the education literature on teaching controversial issues and examples of pedagogies for reconciliation might be relevant to provide concrete ideas for education theory, policy and practice on issues of mourning.     

Switching-Type Servosystems in an Elementary Undergraduate Curriculum

The paper discusses how the concept of switchingtype servosystems can be introduced into an undergraduate curriculum without requiring a more advanced background in mathematics on the part of the student than is ordinarily expected. A differential equation approach is used to study the response of a second-order system which is excited with a step function input. The system starts to respond in a linear mode of operation with an over-all positive feedback and switches into a different linear mode with an over-all negative feedback at a predetermined instant. The system is designed so as to respond with no overshoot. The response time is shorter than that of a conventional critically-damped linear negative feedback system with the same major physical components. The results of a rigorous study by means of a phase-space representation are also given.     

From “Trust Me” to “Show Me” Journalism

This study explores the potential of an online platform that encourages journalists to post the documents behind their news stories to help restore the deteriorating public trust in news media. Based on content analysis of 200 news items and 315 accompanying documents posted on DocumentCloud, findings indicate that contrary to journalists’ traditional reluctance to rely on documents, the platform succeeds in boosting massive use of documents, both by mainstream and alternative journalists. Findings show that documents serve mainly to support factual claims (in 96 percent of items) and enhance the transparency of news processes, allowing audiences’ unmediated access to raw materials, and greater capacity to evaluate information independently. However, there are no apparent signs that journalists verified the content of the document. The article suggests that DocumentCloud is a unique example of a technology that may succeed where the former technology that promised to serve as a journalistic reference system, hyperlinks, had failed. If the DocumentCloud experiment is implemented on a wider scale, it might have serious theoretical and practical implications, which are discussed here.     

Teacher Education in Israel: the present situation

After presenting the essential principles relevant to the education of teachers, according to which the Israeli educational system is organised, the article examines teacher education patterns in the various institutions in Israel. These are divided into institutions for the education of teachers in nursery schools and elementary schools run by the State, and schools of education in the universities which train teachers for secondary schools.

Ideological concepts divide the institutions of both kinds into those that train teachers for religious and non‐religious nursery schools and elementary schools.

The teacher training institutions in Israel (together with the whole educational system) have been immersed, during recent years, in a process of reform which reflects the changes that Israeli society has undergone since the establishment of the State.     

Recurring patterns in the development of high school biology students’ system thinking over time

The goal of this study was to identify and understand the mental models developed by 67 high school biology students as they learn about the human body as a complex system. Using concept maps, it sought to find an external way of representing how students organize their ideas about the human body system in their minds. We conducted a qualitative analysis of four concept maps created by each student throughout the 3-year learning process, which allowed us to identify that student’s systems thinking skills and the development of those skills over time. The improvement trajectories of the students were defined according to three central characteristics of complex systems: (a) hierarchy, (b) homeostasis and (c) dynamism. A comparative analysis of all of our students’ individual trajectories together revealed four typical learning patterns, each of which reflects a different form of development for systems thinking: “from the structure to the process level”, “from macro to micro level”, “from the cellular level to the organism level,” and “development in complexity of homeostasis mechanisms”. Despite their differences, each of these models developed over time from simpler structures, which evolved as they connected with more complex system aspects, and each indicates advancement in the student’s systems thinking.