{"title":"The complexity of teaching Hebrew in Israel's Arab school system","authors":"Rama Manor, Ali Watad","doi":"10.1017/s0261444824000193","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p>This paper discusses the complexities of teaching Hebrew to Israel's largest minority group, the Arabs, who must be fluent in the language if they are to succeed. While policy-making institutions in Israel today are aware of the importance of Hebrew for Arab students, the teaching of Hebrew faces serious challenges involving the status of Hebrew in Arab society, the inner-Arab state of diglossia, and the training and placement of Arab teachers of Hebrew. The distribution of the Arab population (in mixed Jewish–Arab towns, and in Arab towns and villages), as well as differing levels of exposure to Hebrew, also pose considerable challenges. The paper combines a historical-theoretical with a philosophical-theoretical approach. It analyzes findings of previous studies that examined Hebrew writings of Arabs studying to be teachers of Hebrew, and policy documents dealing with teacher training and placement in the schools. Our study found a profound gap between Arab Hebrew teachers' academic-pedagogical training and its implementation. Our main recommendations for reducing the gap are: (1) the curriculum should take Israeli Arabs' sociolinguistic situation into account; (2) the teacher placement system needs an overhaul; and (3) the teaching of Hebrew should begin in third grade.</p>","PeriodicalId":47770,"journal":{"name":"Language Teaching","volume":"27 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.0000,"publicationDate":"2024-10-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Language Teaching","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0261444824000193","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"EDUCATION & EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
This paper discusses the complexities of teaching Hebrew to Israel's largest minority group, the Arabs, who must be fluent in the language if they are to succeed. While policy-making institutions in Israel today are aware of the importance of Hebrew for Arab students, the teaching of Hebrew faces serious challenges involving the status of Hebrew in Arab society, the inner-Arab state of diglossia, and the training and placement of Arab teachers of Hebrew. The distribution of the Arab population (in mixed Jewish–Arab towns, and in Arab towns and villages), as well as differing levels of exposure to Hebrew, also pose considerable challenges. The paper combines a historical-theoretical with a philosophical-theoretical approach. It analyzes findings of previous studies that examined Hebrew writings of Arabs studying to be teachers of Hebrew, and policy documents dealing with teacher training and placement in the schools. Our study found a profound gap between Arab Hebrew teachers' academic-pedagogical training and its implementation. Our main recommendations for reducing the gap are: (1) the curriculum should take Israeli Arabs' sociolinguistic situation into account; (2) the teacher placement system needs an overhaul; and (3) the teaching of Hebrew should begin in third grade.
期刊介绍:
Language Teaching is the essential research resource for language professionals providing a rich and expert overview of research in the field of second-language teaching and learning. It offers critical survey articles of recent research on specific topics, second and foreign languages and countries, and invites original research articles reporting on replication studies and meta-analyses. The journal also includes regional surveys of outstanding doctoral dissertations, topic-based research timelines, theme-based research agendas, recent plenary conference speeches, and research-in-progress reports. A thorough peer-reviewing procedure applies to both the commissioned and the unsolicited articles.