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This article explores changes in children's openness towards kindergarten teachers and children of an outgroup following participation in an intervention program. The program was implemented by kindergarten teachers and aimed at encountering the other via intergroup contact. The findings are based on qualitative data from interviews with the kindergarten teachers. According to the findings, children's participation in the program fostered openness towards the kindergarten teacher from the outgroup and encouraged children's openness to contact with outgroup children as well. Moreover, even during a time of conflict escalation, children's acceptance and openness towards the kindergarten teachers and children from the other group did not diminish. It appeared that direct contact between people of unequal status, combined with indirect contact between the two equal status groups of kindergarten children, had a positive effect. This could be partly due to the intensity and the positive contact with the kindergarten teacher from the outgroup, as well as to the institutional support for the intervention program.

The reader is taken on a journey spanning some 30 years devoted to the author's involvement in practicing, teaching and studying peace education. The core concept in this journey is active "bystandership," which implies the capacity to disengage from our ethnocentric narratives and perceptions and to face the emotional challenges of acknowledging narratives that contradict our collective assumptions about the conflict and accept the moral obligation to address our contribution to violence. The author describes her non-professional as well as her professional activity in academia of participating, initiating, teaching and facilitating peace education projects. She describes inter and intra-group encounters and attempts to identify the limitations and opportunities of each type. Finally, some research methods and results of recent studies in peace education, especially regarding perceptions of collective narratives, are presented and discussed.

Our article explores the challenges that faced Jewish and Arab kindergarten teachers, and their different ways of coping with those challenges, during the implementation of the programme 'My Diverse Kindergarten' in three mixed cities in Israel. The programme aimed at reducing prejudices and improving the relationship between Jews and Arabs in these cities. Based on data from a qualitative study, including interviews with Arab and Jewish kindergarten teachers, we examined the challenges related to the encounter with the other, and identified a variety of coping patterns, mostly related to the ethnic and professional identities of the kindergarten teachers. Our discussion relates to some of the factors that enabled the success of the programme in achieving its purpose. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study examines parental attitudes toward bilingual and peace-promoting education at a school in Israel, and how these affect the behaviors and perceptions of their children studying there. The questions of interest were: (a) what are the parents' perceptions of and attitudes toward the bilingual and peace-promoting education? (b) Are these attitudes in line with the school's ideological framework? (c) How might parental perceptions and attitudes affect the success of the educational endeavor and the children's experiences at this school? Twenty-one Jewish and Palestinian Israeli parents of children attending a bilingual school in Israel partook in this study. A semi-structured interview was used to investigate the perceptions and attitudes of the parents, and the data were analyzed using thematic analysis. The findings indicate that the majority of the parents sent their children to the school for reasons other than the peace-promoting and ideological framework it offers. Essentially, parents were looking to provide their children with a better education than the one available in their immediate residential area. Concurrently, it was found that the parental attitudes appeared to influence children's behavior negatively. The implications of these attitudes and the impact of the school towards peace promotion are discussed. (Contains 14 notes.)

The relationship between acculturation attitudes and attitudes toward collective narratives is explored in the context of Palestinian adolescents, citizens of the State of Israel. Employing Berry's acculturation framework, we expected that approaching the hegemonic Israeli Jewish culture would be related to higher acceptance of its collective narrative concerning main historical events. We further expected that retaining the Palestinian culture would be related to higher acceptance of the Palestinian narrative of the same events. Data were collected from a sample of 365 teenagers in six Israeli Arab high schools. Generally, the results tend to support our hypotheses regarding relationships between acculturation and attitudes toward collective narratives. Majority of the adolescents endorsed a separation strategy and expressed rejection of the Israeli Jewish collective narrative while endorsing the Palestinian one. The findings suggest that acculturation attitudes may be composed of different behavioral, cognitive, and emotional components, and those components may not be well correlated. (Contains 3 figures, 8 tables, and 2 notes.)

One of the major challenges for the process of peace building is to overcome the rigid structure of the socio-psychological repertoire that accompanies it. Our longitudinal study examined one element of this repertoire among Jewish and Arab adolescents in Israel: the cognitive legitimacy and the emotional reactions toward the historical narrative of the opponent. We focused our question on the impact of the socio-political context and the role of the violent reality in the development of these perceptions among youth. Data were collected in four stages (1999-2000, 2002, 2004, and 2007) among various samples of Arab and Jewish high school students (10th and 12th graders). The results showed that among the Jewish adolescents, the readiness to legitimate Palestinian narratives significantly decreased during violent periods. Among the Arab students, the impact of their difficult status as a Palestinian minority in the State of Israel is reflected in their relatively high level of readiness to accept both narratives. The results are discussed from social, cultural, and developmental perspectives with a focus on the role of the conflictual reality itself in the development of the socio-psychological repertoire among youth. (Contains 3 notes and 3 tables.)

This study aimed to explore measures of spirituality--sense of coherence (SOC), hope and values--among adolescents living in a violent political area and experiencing missile attacks. The three variables represent attributes of spirituality, such as searching for meaning and purpose in life, hope and feelings about the future, as well as values and beliefs. Adolescence seems to be an important developmental stage where many structures, such as SOC, hope and values, are formed and stabilised. We asked about the impact of living in an area of violence on this development. Data were gathered during two periods of time. The first sample was drawn in August 2006 in Sderot and other communities in the area which had suffered missile attacks since 2001. The second sample was drawn from the same area that had continued to suffer from missile attacks, during January 2009. Adolescents aged 12-18 filled out self-reported questionnaires. Results suggest that all variables were weakened during the prolonged violent events. It seems that the continuous chaos and stress of missile attacks had significant consequences in terms of spirituality for youngsters who had been growing up under these conditions. The difficulties were manifested by reports of weaker hopes and SOC, and by a decrease in attributing importance to collective values. These results are discussed in terms of experiencing the world as less comprehensible, less manageable and especially less meaningful. (Contains 3 tables.)

This study examined factors contributing to the achievements of Israeli Bedouin and Jewish students in an Israeli college for teacher education. The study employed Tinto's model and its core concepts of academic and social integration as main explanatory factors for student achievement in an academic institute. Background characteristics were also suggested as potential predictors. Data were collected in an Israeli college for teacher education from 82 Israeli Bedouin and 160 Jewish students at three points in time. Effects of each variable, as well as interaction effects between independent variables (such as socioeconomic background, entrance data) and intermediary variable (social and academic integration) in relation to the dependent variable (achievements) were analysed. Patterns of factors related to achievements of the two groups were compared. The main explanatory variables were matriculation mean grades (14%) and gender (18.3%). A significant interaction effect was found between group and social integration, meaning that only in the Israeli Bedouin group did social integration have a significant effect. Considering the Israeli Bedouin group alone, the matriculation score explained 20% of the variance, gender explained 6.2%, and the rationale for occupational choice explained 5.1%. The results are discussed in the framework of the institutional context and the cultural background of the two groups, also suggesting the need to examine possible institutional actions relating to these findings. (Contains 6 tables and 1 figure.)

Research in the field of intergroup relations has developed considerably over the last two decades, influenced by events and by the historical zeitgeist. We suggest applying an interactional way of dealing with intergroup encounters, which emphasizes the situational macro-context (political, historical and social) in which the contact takes place. Employing this approach, the impact of the social-political context on the characteristics of two encounters in which Jewish and Arab Israeli students met to deal with the Israeli-Arab political conflict was examined. The workshops took place within two completely different political contexts. The first workshop was at the time of peace talks, following the Oslo Accords (1996-1997), the second during the "al-Aksa Intifada" (2001-2002). The discussions were recorded and fully transcribed. The two workshops were compared using a typology for classification of the developmental process of discourse between groups. The analysis revealed that during the peace talks "ethnocentric discourse" was the dominant speech category, characterized by two monologues that do not meet. In the second workshop dialogic categories characterized by sharing of feelings, listening to the "other" and making an effort to understand how reality looks from his/her perspective were salient. The research findings are discussed with regard to the paradoxical impact of the political-social context on discourse in small groups. The findings give a new understanding of the role of small intergroup meetings against the background of violent reality in an intractable conflict. (Contains 2 figures and 3 notes.)

The purpose of the study was to examine beliefs about teaching and teachers of Israeli-Bedouin students before and during their training period. The study is based on Kagan's (1992) theoretical model, which views teachers' professional development as taking place through reciprocity between students' personal school memories and the training process. The Israeli-Bedouin community has been going through a transition from a tribal and traditional society to a modern one. The data is part of a longitudinal study which followed a group of 67 Israeli-Bedouin pre-service teachers. Each student was asked three questions about his/her beliefs regarding teaching, school and teachers, at three times during the training period. Data indicated that Israeli-Bedouin pre-service teachers began their training with general and non-specific beliefs about teachers and teaching, such as: a teacher must be a leader; his/her main duty is to help children integrate into modern society; teaching means handing over information and school has been designed to improve students by means of information received in class. During the training period several changes were detected in the respondents' beliefs: (1) they gave up the belief that school gives pupils information and knowledge that can promote them socially; (2) they linked new professional concepts to former concepts; (3) they changed their beliefs about the teacher's character, from a leading and socially contributing figure to a self-focused one.

Examined a theoretical framework concerning cultural patterns labeled individualism and collectivism in regard to Israeli-Jewish and Palestinian-Arab high school students. Student surveys based on values, historical interests, and attitudes toward conflict resolution indicated that both groups were more collectivist than individualistic, though Palestinians emphasized an in-group collectivist orientation more than Israelis. (SM)