PERCEPTIONS OF THE PURPOSES OF EDUCATION AMONG RELIGIOUS TEACHER EDUCATION STUDENTS IN ISRAEL

This research examines the purposes of education perceived by teacher education students preparing for a career in Israeli public religious schools. Participants were 164 men and 364 women in their first or final year of teacher education. They responded to questionnaires that explored educational purposes in four ways. Twenty-four students also were interviewed. Major results indicate that: 1) universal and religious purposes of education are considered highly important; 2) men attribute greater importance than women to religious- Torah purposes; 3) academic-intellectual growth is not considered an important educational purpose. Implications of these and other findings are considered for educational policy and practice in public religious schools.     

Involving Older Adults as Co-researchers in Social Work Education

This article examines the contribution of older adults as co-researchers to the evaluation of a gerontological social work course. The evaluation was conducted at an Israeli college as part of a collaborative project with a United Kingdom university. Here, we follow the older adults who are service users through their transition to the role of co-researchers and reflect on their experiences in the process. Insights gained by the different stakeholders from the co-researching experience are discussed, and the growing interest in service-user contributions to social work education in various fields such as aging and disabilities is recognized.     

Joint storybook reading and joint writing interventions among low SES preschoolers: differential contributions to early literacy

This study compared two interventions: one focusing on language and storybook reading and the other on alphabetic skills and writing. Seventy-one preschoolers aged 3–5 from a low SES township in central Israel (35 in the reading program and 36 in the writing program) participated in evaluation of the interventions. Twenty-four untreated preschoolers served as a control group. The children were tested twice, at the beginning and at the end of the school year, in: phonological awareness, word writing, letter knowledge, orthographic awareness, listening comprehension, receptive vocabulary, and general knowledge. Both programs involved games and creative activities. The writing program encouraged letter knowledge, phonological awareness, and functional writing activities. The reading program utilized 11 children's books for focusing on language and exploring major concepts raised by these books. Results indicated that children in the two literacy programs progressed significantly more than the control group on phonological awareness and orthographic awareness. However, the joint writing group significantly outperformed both the joint reading group and the control group on phonological awareness, word writing, orthographic awareness, and letter knowledge. We also found that children as young as 3–4 years gained from literacy programs as much as did older children, aged 4–5, on all the measures assessed in our program.     

A Conspiracy of Fishes,or, How We Learned to Stop Worrying About #GamerGate and Embrace Hegemonic Masculinity

Recently, the margins between gaming and feminism have become increasingly contentious (Salter & Blodgett, 2012 Salter, A., & Blodgett, B. (2012). Hypermasculinity & Dickwolves: The contentious role of women in the new gaming public. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 56, 401–416. doi:10.1080/08838151.2012.705199[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] [Google Scholar]). This article addresses a cultural moment where masculine gaming culture became aware of and began responding to feminist game scholars by analyzing GamerGate conspiracy documents and social media discussions related to the now infamous “DiGRA fishbowl.” Worries about the opacity of academic practices and a disparaging of feminist knowledge-making practices dominate these documents. By looking at these discussions and practices through the lens of conspiracy theories (Fenster, 2008 Fenster, M. (2008). Conspiracy theories: Secrecy and power in American culture (2nd edition). Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. [Google Scholar]; Hofstadter, 1952 Hofstadter, R. (1952). The paranoid style in American politics and other essays. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. [Google Scholar]) and counterknowledge (Fiske, 1994 Fiske, J. (1994). Blackstream knowledge: Genocide. In Media matters: Everyday culture and political change. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. [Google Scholar]) we consider the broader meaning of GamerGate's attention to academia.