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…

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…

This article provides an overview and analysis of a relatively new phenomenon: congregational schools that have altered the conventional grammar of schooling, either through their structural arrangements or through their curricular approaches. Five pre-bar/bat mitzvah models are discussed: family schools, schools as communities,…

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…

Writing this article presents me with an opportunity to look closely at the last speech that my father and mentor, Professor Michael (Mike) Rosenak z"l gave before his passing in 2013. I will write about this speech from a perspective that is based on my intimate familiarity with the questions that concerned him throughout his life. I will…

Based on the author's great privilege to have known Mike Rosenak over many years as a conversation partner on issues of Jewish though, Jewish education, and the contemporary Jewish situation, he presents an issue of current concern in the philosophy of Jewish education and considers the response that Rosenak might offer. Directly and…

Rosenak's "Teaching Jewish Values" (1986) is perhaps his most accessible book about Jewish education. After diagnosing the "diseases" of Jewish education, he endorses "teaching Jewish values" as the curricular strategy most likely to succeed given the chasm which divides traditional Jewish subject matter and the…

The thoughts of Mordecai Kaplan and Michael Rosenak present surprising commonalities as well as illuminating differences. Similarities include the perception that Judaism and Jewish education are in crisis, the belief that Jewish peoplehood must include commitment to meaningful content, the need for teachers to teach from a position of…

Michael Rosenak uses the twin metaphors of "language" and "literature," borrowed from Oakeshott and Peters, to argue that the goal of education is initiation into a language. This goal transcends the study of literature in that language. It includes, as well, the development of the capacity both to critique literature and to…

This study deals with the way in which kindergarten teachers in state religious kindergartens in Israel tell the Torah stories to children. It examines the influence of the teachers' identity, being part of the religious Zionist society, on the way in which she tells the stories. These kindergarten teachers function at a crossroads of…

A family survey, ethnographic study, and quasi-experimental study investigated "Shalom Sesame's" potential to enhance understanding of Jewish culture and identity among preschool families. Preschoolers demonstrated significant learning, recognizing that people who looked different could be Jewish, and in knowledge about Hebrew…