Reflective journaling is frequently employed to help preservice educators make sense of fieldwork experiences. Analyzing the weekly journals of eight preservice educators, I offer conceptual language to describe how journal writing provides a window into students' capacity for reflection. This capacity is described in terms of three continua:…

This study analyzes the ways in which practitioner inquiry engages graduate student educators in understanding how to navigate the complexities and contingencies of teaching. By examining the challenges graduate student teachers faced while conducting practitioner inquiry, as well as the categories of teacher knowledge they developed in the…

This article discusses an action research study of a week-long Summer Teachers Institute which immersed teachers in the study of Jewish historical and cultural texts. We investigate how this kind of cultural immersion created opportunities for transformative learning--the kind of learning that would not merely be the application of "new…

This case study examines the contours of culturally relevant pedagogy in an undergraduate preservice teacher education program for Jewish women. The case describes how the assigned reading of Albarelli's (2000) narrative of teaching in a Hasidic Jewish school, "Teacha! Stories from a Yeshiva", disrupts the classroom community,…

By examining writing about Israel education since the founding of the State, this paper highlights three questions that have surfaced repeatedly in Jewish educational discourse: What is the purpose of teaching American Jews about Israel? Who is best equipped to teach American Jews about Israel? How can Israel education foster positive…

In this study we investigated the perceptions and interpretations of 14 various stakeholders in the field of teacher preparation and early childhood education regarding what and how Jewish education should be learned and taught, in general, and to preschool children in contemporary Israel, in particular. The present study, carried out in the…

What is the place of teaching about other world religions in a Jewish educational curriculum for adolescents? This article explores a course in world religions that has been taught at the Genesis Program at Brandeis University since 2001. Based on a participant observational study during 2002 and 2012, the author traces how the teachers construct…

We are sometimes told that practitioners have a hard time with theory. But those who are committed to nurturing a certain kind of intellectual capacity among Jewish educational practitioners--the capacity to identify and critically engage with vision in Jewish education, a capacity that we can call a "philosophical disposition"--must accept the…

Mentoring is a powerful and often effective tool in supporting the work of new and experienced teachers. It can also be a means of attracting and retaining talented teachers in schools which face challenges in staffing and turnover. In this article we describe and analyze the first 2 years of a mentoring program designed to support teacher…

Research typically has focused on the benefits of mentoring for those who are mentored by more experienced educators (Odell & Huling, 2000; Feiman-Nemser, 2001). Few studies examine the inherent benefits for the mentors. This study investigates the benefit of the mentoring experience for the veteran educator. It analyzes how the experience has…

This article analyzes the career commitments and retention patterns among graduates of the DeLeT program (Day School Leadership Through Teaching) who were prepared for day-school teaching at Brandeis University and Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. Employing t-tests to analyze survey responses, we identify factors that shape and…

Levenson presents Nehama Leibowitz (1903-1997) as a principal figure in making the Bible a centerpiece of modern Jewish intellectual life. Complementing the already impressive literature on Leibowitz's pedagogical techniques, Levenson emphasizes the interdependence of Leibowitz's historical context, biography, and exegetical stance. Leibowitz's…

Modern educational scholarship has not substantially investigated the learning practice of havruta, paired study and focused conversation around classical Jewish texts. In this article, the author analyzes videotapes and transcripts of real-life havruta interactions and proposes a theory of havruta learning as composed of three pairs of core…

This article extends the conversation begun by Levisohn in "A Menu of Orientations to the Teaching of Rabbinic Literature" (volume 76, issue 1 of this Journal), and continued by a number of respondents (volume 76, issue 2). After discussing several insights offered by respondents, the article takes up the question of whether the menu is accurate.…

This article presents the author's response to Jon A. Levisohn's article entitled "A Menu of Orientations in the Teaching of Rabbinic Literature." As someone who is experimenting not only with how to teach rabbinic texts but with which texts to select in virtually every course the author teaches for American undergraduate as well as graduate…