Inquiry-oriented pedagogy is a difficult pedagogy to enact in the classroom. By placing students' questions and textual ideas at the center, the teacher opens the door to unanticipated and sometimes off-the-wall comments in text discussion. And yet, research has shown that it is exactly this type of pedagogy that leads to increased engagement and…

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 paper explores the interactions surrounding Bible teaching as a means of understanding how Jewish youth are discursively implicated within ideologies of community. Drawing on theoretical frameworks from linguistic anthropology and interactional sociolinguistics, I present a micro-analysis of a classroom lesson on the book of Leviticus to…

This article presents a pedagogical framework for interpreting and discussing texts with others, ""havruta" inspired pedagogy." The framework is comprised of three overlapping domains: structures, stance and practices. We illustrate each domain through teachers' words and classroom practices, depicting how teachers in one context work within these…

This essay reviews the Geographical section of the "International Handbook of Jewish Education" published in 2011. The differences between countries, their unique histories and cultures, are important, but their similarities are arguably more revealing. Indeed, on occasions when similar phenomena are examined in different places by different…

Many Bible scholars have become aware of the fact that the results we produce are dependent on the particular approaches that we choose to employ, and have become more self-conscious about the methods we use and the reasons we use them. Each approach to the analysis and interpretation of a text will yield its own type of meaning or understanding.…

This article builds on Greenstein's advocacy of a "pragmatic pedagogy of Bible" by pursuing four issues. First, do we select among methodological approaches to Bible according to our desired interpretive outcome but not according to any internal criteria? Is it merely a matter of "choice"? Second, in what sense are interpretive approaches usefully…

In the field of second/foreign language teaching, needs analysis is widely recognized as an essential step in curriculum design and program evaluation. A needs-based approach to Hebrew language education has been advocated by a number of researchers and educators. In a study that employed interviews and surveys, the Hebrew language learning needs…

This article responds to three articles in the most recent issue of "The Journal of Jewish Education" (74:1) in which a variety of researchers examined Bible teaching that employed an approach to Bible pedagogy that had been characterized by the present author as "the Contextual orientation" in his previously published book, "Textual Knowledge:…

This article investigates the use of the contextual orientation to the Bible--which seeks to understand the Bible as a product of its time, and in the context of historical-critical biblical scholarship--as a deliberate, significant aspect of a teacher's overall approach to reaching Jewish adults in their 20s and 30s. Through classroom observation…

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 employs the qualitative research method of portraiture to describe, analyze, and interpret the challenges involved in teaching rabbinical students at a liberal seminary. The portrait of Dr. Neil Gillman, a professor of Jewish thought at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City, explores some of the ideological and educational…

This article describes the emergence of the field of adult Jewish learning and the need for research in this burgeoning aspect of contemporary Jewish life. The authors describe the context in which the upsurge of adult Jewish learning has occurred, drawing attention to the absence of systematic data collection about programs, funding structures,…