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Communal learning is a common paradigm for professional learning among teachers and teacher educators (TE). In this article, TE refers to faculty in institutions of higher education who train teachers. While the professional learning of teachers has been extensively studied, little is known about TEs' professional learning. This study contributes to the growing discourse on TEs' professional learning, exploring facilitation in the professional learning community (PLC) for TEs. Social learning is the most critical component of learning in community, and the role of the facilitator is a catalyst of this social learning. Group facilitators can make a critical difference in the effectiveness of professional learning; however, facilitation is a difficult phenomenon to research. Facilitators play a significant role in whether and how professional learning occurs for individuals and groups. Understanding the facilitator's role in this context is important for promoting TEs' professional learning. This study adds to the limited literature on facilitation among TEs by identifying the characteristics of the facilitator's verbal-interaction with participants in a PLC for TEs.

This international study compared motivational tendencies among pre-school children from Israel, Finland and the Netherlands. Teachers were asked to rate students' behaviours during semi-structured tasks using the Child Behaviour Motivational Scale (CBeMo) which measures task orientation, task avoidance, and social dependence. Motivational tendencies for 472 children, ages 4-6 were compared by country, age, and gender. Results showed that Israeli children displayed lower levels of task avoidance and social dependence than European children at both ages 4 and 5. Israeli 4-year-olds showed high levels of task orientation similar to the 5-year-olds in the three countries. In all three groups, girls exhibited higher levels of task orientation than boys. Differences in motivational tendencies may result from cultural characteristics, while consistent differences between boys and girls may indicate universal gender influences. Understanding young children's motivational tendencies may contribute to the development of teaching practices that support children's positive dispositions towards learning tasks.

The young child's exposure to disaster and trauma through the media or in the social milieu poses a challenge for the early childhood educator who is faced with responding and educating in a developmentally appropriate manner. In the case of public commemoration of a national disaster, the classroom implications are seemingly unavoidable. This investigation is a case study of an Israeli kindergarten teacher's dealing with Holocaust Remembrance Day. In this situation, society at large has assigned the role of cultural mediator to the preschool teacher who must explain to the children the significance of the day and prepare them for the day's central event--standing silently during a 2-minute siren. In order to tap the teacher's pedagogic reasoning, a narrative methodology was employed, including the video filming of the group discussion on Holocaust Remembrance Day and the recording of a narrative interview 2 weeks later. The data revealed a carefully strategized plan to provide information to the children without frightening them and to prepare them for their participation in the national mourning event. Of central concern to the teacher was the children's understanding of why this commemorative day was established, which led her to provide information about the enormity of the disaster. On the other hand, she managed to avoid question asking by the fast pacing of her lesson. Her reflective assessment of her successful resolution of the pedagogic dilemmas includes positive feedback from parents and her observation of the calmness of the children during the day. (Contains 3 notes.)

This study examines the complex process of change among teacher educators who have chosen to improve their practice in a professional development community. Storyline methodology was used to reveal the dynamic process which teacher educators undergo when they consider adopting innovative pedagogy. Findings reveal critical moments in professional development which are characterised by evaluation of feedback from colleagues and students. Professional growth results not only from interaction and negotiation of meaning within the community but also from the effects of messages received from outside the communal context. A two factor model taking into account implementation and feedback is used to show the dynamic process of evaluation and negotiation in teacher educators' professional development trajectory. This study deepens understanding of transition towards change within learning communities, while providing insight into the development of teacher educators as a distinct professional group.

Bible teachers in contemporary society confront serious problems related to the nature of the biblical text and the socio-cultural context of their teaching. This study, based on semi-structured interviews, examines the problems that five expert religious Israeli elementary school teachers encounter in their teaching and the solutions they employ. Our findings show two major domains of pedagogic issues: unfamiliar biblical linguistics and problematic content. Teachers reported student difficulties in understanding biblical Hebrew. Problematic content includes irrelevant topics, emotionally laden material, and age inappropriate issues. Linguistic solutions relied on reading comprehension techniques and use of features specific to Bible reading such as diacritical marks. Regarding content issues, teachers were motivated by faith in the sanctity of the text to find effective solutions. These include selectivity, reinterpretation using homiletic tools, a holistic understanding and contextualising the narrative. Though teachers felt ill-prepared by their pre-service training in dealing with these challenges, they demonstrated resilience in their solution-oriented pedagogy. These findings suggest attention to mentoring and professional development, and to the creation of a community of practice to support teachers' dealing with the ongoing challenges in their teaching.

Experience in the workforce influences teacher educators' responses to professional development efforts for adapting new practices. This study examines trajectories of novices and experienced teacher educators in a three-year longitudinal professional development community focused on infusing thinking into college teaching. A four-stage trajectory model for development was used to track changes in practice among the teacher educators. The authors' analysis identified three distinct patterns of professional development among teacher educators: one characterizing novice teacher educators and two distinct patterns for the experienced group. While novices exhibited openness toward learning, the experienced teacher educators were divided into one group that revealed an inquiry stance examining their practice and a second group that claimed expertise and was less willing to consider changing instructional practice. This initial differentiation at the first trajectory stage led to distinctions in development at later stages, resulting in a reclassification of the educators into three groups: novices, experienced experts, and experienced non-experts. These findings emphasize the importance of teacher educators' years of experience, attitude towards inquiry, and self-perception of expertise as critical determinants of successful educational reform.

Because professionalism in early childhood education and care (ECEC) is measured by standards relating to caring, men in the field are often held to expectations associated with female behaviors. This research examines the tensions arising from this encounter and explores alternative solutions which male ECEC workers around the world have generated when facing of their challenged masculinity. This study employed observations and narrative interviews of men in six countries, relying on grounded theory to thematically analyse the data. Findings show multiple components of teachers' masculine identities: charisma, initiative, daring, and playfulness combined with attention to the children's needs. Their commitment to teaching, combined with an intense interest in children's well-being, enabled them to incorporate a strong masculine identity with appropriate professional goals. This study suggests that early childhood leaders re-examine gender roles by reconsidering the traditional gender dichotomy paradigm.

Early childhood educators are increasingly being called upon to deal with emotionally charged topics, which include natural and manmade disasters, war, terror, death, and other traumatic events. At our teachers college, we prepare students to deal with a challenging issue, memory of the Holocaust, through a series of activities and workshops spread over 3 years. In this study, we examined the students' emerging pedagogical paradigms for dealing with the Holocaust in the early childhood classroom in Israel. The results of this research shed light on development of pedagogic content knowledge (PCK) related to emotionally laden topics among preservice teachers. (Contains 2 tables.)

This paper describes the effect of a preschool hygiene intervention program on psychosocial measures of educators regarding handwashing and communicable pediatric disease. A cluster-randomized trial, with randomization at the level of the preschool, was run in 40 Jerusalem preschool classrooms. Eighty preschool educators participated. The program used a multipronged approach which included elements aimed at staff, children, parents, school nurses and the classroom environment. Frontal lectures by medical, epidemiological and educational experts, along with printed materials and experiential learning, were provided to staff. Responses from a validated survey instrument were used to build four scales for each respondent regarding beliefs, attitudes, self-efficacy and knowledge. The scales were built on a Likert-type 1-7 scale (1 = minimum, 7 = maximum). The effect of the intervention was tested using mixed model analysis of variance. Response was received from 92.5% of educators. Educators believed that handwashing could affect health (mean = 5.5, SD = 1.1), had high levels of self-efficacy (mean = 6.1, SD = 0.9) and had positive attitudes toward handwashing (mean = 5.7, SD = 1.2). Knowledge was affected by the intervention (intervention: mean = 6.2, SD = 0.7; control: mean = 5.8, SD = 0.8). The combination of positive attitudes toward handwashing among educators and the program's effectiveness in imparting knowledge helped to create a sustained social norm of handwashing among many children in disparate locations.

The resilience of teachers in the face of terror was examined in a narrative study of two Israeli kindergarten teachers over the course of one school year. During this time, there occurred frequent terror attacks as well as the threat of impending war with Iraq and the concomitant threat of chemical warfare. Each teacher's unique pattern of coping based on her own personal theory of resilience was examined. One teacher actively processed with her students stressful news items that the children had encountered. This was based on her belief that children would become more resilient if they had experience dealing with stress in a mediated fashion. The second teacher chose to create what she perceived to be a comfort zone for her students by actively avoiding open discussion about stressful events. She chose to focus on enhancing self-esteem, self-efficacy, and optimism, which she believed would produce greater resilience in her students. In developing these personal resilience theories, both teachers were able to move out of a paralyzed position that is typical of crisis and the immediate posttraumatic period, and move into active coping, thereby incorporating their unique theories of resilience into their personal professional knowledge. These practices were examined in light of current resilience theory.

The state of Israel is a small country, in terms of area, with one the higher population growth rate among all the OECD countries. Hence, each year more than 50,000 housing units built and more than 1,500 km roads constructed in average, each year along the last decade.The Survey of Israel)SOI(is a National Mapping and Cadastral agency (NMCA) that holds the responsibility to update, maintain and disseminate the National Topographic Data Base (NTDB) to all of the governmental offices and municipalities, to utilize, plan and promote the construction of the public needs.Today, the reality is dynamic and the changes occurs every day, therefore, the users expect that the existing database will portray the current reality as possible. In order to address the user's requirements for rapid updating rate, the Survey of Israel promote a new and modern initiatives, including:

1. Promote the cooperation and working relationship with the municipalities to rapidly update the streets, address and POI's.
2. Data Fusion from different governmental and municipalities data sources.
3. Developing change detection techniques to update the buildings and roads layers.
4. Developing new frameworks for the manual inspection and QA/QC procedures.
5. Developing automatic tools to update the height component via high resolution DSM and DTM (50cm GSD).
6. Disseminate quarterly the NTDB products to the users.
7. Develop a modern processes management system for the update and QA workflow