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…

Practitioner research was conducted on Grade 10 students' arts-based projects of Numbers 12 in order to assess the value of using the arts in Jewish secondary schools. Based on interview transcripts, projects, and written statements, three themes emerged that demonstrated why teachers should use the arts in their classes. The arts provided…

This article sketches the trajectory of Hebrew education in the United States from the early 1900s to the present. Attending to the historiography of Hebrew education, it shows how current curricula and pedagogical approaches have been stamped by historical considerations and language ideologies, how goals and strategies have changed (or remained…

This article discusses the research we have and the research we need in both general and Jewish teacher education. First, I discuss three recent efforts to synthesize and assess existing research in teacher education and to identify needed research. Next I review a handful of recent studies in Jewish teacher education which illustrate various…

This article documents the "Journal of Jewish Education's" acquisition by the Network for Research in Jewish Education, in 2004, and evaluates the contribution of the re-launched Journal to the field of Jewish education. I explore how the Journal contributed over the past decade in three discrete yet often overlapping areas, thereby…

Experiential Jewish education has been experiencing a time of growth, during which theory development, research, and practice have established a strong voice for the construct. Much of the focus to this point has been on definitions (particularly the distinction between "experiential" and "informal" Jewish education) and on…

Reinventing Jewish education is not about tinkering at the surface level but at creating deep change, a new paradigm. Superficial change is built on existing models, but deep change dramatically breaks with the past and challenges current models, norms, values, and beliefs. A paradigm shift is a radical move and, as many have discovered, it is…

This essay reviews the Applications section of the "International Handbook of Jewish Education" published in 2011. Because of the variety of contexts in which Jewish education research can be applied, this section comprises a large number of diverse chapters that are not all explicitly theoretically or thematically linked. The scope of this…

This essay reviews the Vision and Practice section of the "International Handbook of Jewish Education" published in 2011. Gathered in this section, 24 Jewish educators (spread across 18 chapters) offer theoretical reflections on the state of Jewish education in the contemporary moment. These chapters seem, on first reading, a rather eclectic…

Jewish educators are understandably interested in research on how bar/bat mitzvah affect Jewish education or research on what Jewish schools have done to avoid the distortions of a focus on bar/bat mitzvah. Research might also focus on the somewhat different and more ambitious topic of the role that bar/bat mitzvah play in contemporary Jewish…

In this article, the author talks about Jon A. Levisohn's article that develops a menu of orientations for the teaching of rabbinic literature. The author suggests that Jon A. Levisohn's article should be required reading for all Jewish educators who are interested in curriculum and teaching. The essay is a vehicle for introducing a way of looking…

The Torah teacher faces a dilemma of how to teach complex, ancient, sacred texts to modern children. How can she convey the relationship between rabbinic commentary and Scripture? This article recounts the story--and the challenges--of one midrash mini-course that I taught an American class as part of a wider research project. The aim of the…

Barry Holtz' (2003) presentation of a map of orientations for the teaching of Bible provides a certain kind of focus for research, enabling us to ask deeper and richer question about those orientations. This article investigates the teaching of one teacher, in two different settings--more specifically, how that teacher introduces Bible in those…

This article provides a qualitative analysis of the chapters of the forthcoming "What We NOW Know About Jewish Education" (to be published by Torah Aura, Spring 2008). The findings of this analysis outline an agenda for further research by highlighting a number of emergent themes pertaining to the practical and conceptual challenges that lie…

This article explores the possible contribution to Jewish education found in the resources of Judaica scholarship. It begins by exploring the complex and often uneasy connection between the world of the university and the world of education and then offers an alternative to this tension by suggesting ways that Jewish subject matter scholarship…