The Impact of Socio-environmental Projects of Jewish and Bedouin Youth in Israel on Students’ Local Knowledge and Views of Each Other (original) (raw)
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Cultural Studies of Science Education, 2010
A multicultural socio-environmental project that is framed in the ideas of education for sustainability brought together Jew and Arab students was investigated to identify the participants’ views of the program’s objectives and their accomplishments. We investigated the project’s strengths and weaknesses according to the participants’ views and the way culturally diverse students addressed the main local socio-environmental conflict related to conservation versus development of a local creek. The participants agreed that the environmental objectives were properly attained, while the social objectives were accomplished to a limited extent. All the participants emphasized the importance of multicultural knowledge and expected to learn and work together. We found different views of the Jewish and the Arab participants regarding expectations, collaboration and overall satisfaction, with higher expectations of the Arab students and leaders. The students’ views of the local conflict varied but were not associated with their ethnic background. We suggest that the differences between the groups result from the different positions and needs of each community, and mainly as a consequence of the difficulties that the Arab minority faces in Israel. Overall, we found that the project allowed the expression of multiple voices of both groups, and suggested an applicable program for education for sustainability in a multicultural society.
This interpretive study identifies challenges of working with Bedouin and Jewish Israeli youth in two multicultural projects: education for sustainability and place-conscious education. It also describes the ways the adult project leaders addressed these challenges and their views on the effectiveness of their decisions. Participants comprised 16 Bedouin and Jewish educators. Data collection included interviews and observations of project meetings and staff meetings. Project leaders reported challenges related to (1) intergroup differences in environmental viewpoints, knowledge, and learning styles, (2) embedding issues of environmental justice in the multicultural discourse, and (3) BedouinJewish interactions. To address these challenges, the leaders separated groups for some learning activities, directed discourses, adopted bilingual teaching strategies, and emphasized unique socio-cultural characteristics. Their level of satisfaction with most of their decisions is high. They avoided discussing the broader socio-political ArabJewish conflict. The findings highlight dilemmas that multicultural environmental projects pose and suggest the need to adopt critical pedagogy of place to address such dilemmas and challenges. The findings also emphasize the need to better prepare educators for environmental education in multicultural settings.
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Students’ Environmental Paradigms: A Cultural Perspective
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Environmental projects of Jewish and Arab youth in Israel: the adult leaders' views
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Socio-environmental projects involving Arab and Jewish youth in Israel are uncommon. In this study, we interviewed 16 adult leaders of two projects that were carried out in the Galilee in northern Israel, to better understand the views of the leaders and their motives. The two projects focused on mutual environmental issues and dealt with social, cultural, and political aspects with respect to the environmental context. The participants were teachers and principals of the students who participated in the projects and facilitators of two environmental organizations. We found diverse views with respect to environmental education, local environmental issues, and possible solutions. The Arab adults expressed stronger attachment to the local environment than the Jewish ones. The major projects’ goals according to the leaders included: (improving) knowledge, awareness, and environmental behavior of the students and their communities; an opportunity for taking part in community collaboration and action; an opportunity for multicultural interaction; and meaningful long-term learning in the outdoors. Our findings highlight the importance of identifying the views of educators of diverse cultures in order to carry out future successful multicultural environmental projects. Our findings also suggest adopting critical pedagogy of place while designing and implementing such projects in sensitive regions such as Israel. Keywords: education for sustainability; multicultural environmental projects; socio-environmental projects; environmental views; sense of place
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The authors conducted a national survey of 6th-and 12th-grade students in Israel to evaluate their environmental literacy, including the dimensions of environmental knowledge, attitudes, and behavior. In this article, the authors present the results of the survey, the correlations between these different dimensions, and their associations with demographic and experiential data. The authors did not find a significant correlation between knowledge and behavior. Ethnic and socioeconomic characteristics were moderately associated with environmental literacy, whereas the presence of an adult who mediated children's relation to nature was strongly related to environmental attitudes and behavior and weakly related to knowledge. The results suggest that the intended objectives of environmental education in Israel have not been achieved. The authors call for additional research to identify ways to improve environmental education in the Israeli public schools.
Environmental education between cultures and societies
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Advances in elementary school curriculums supply theoretical lessons about environmental education; such an approach does not hold much information according to the topic, indicating that younger pupils’ level of knowledge is really depressed. In order to ensure effective environmental education, learning must be taught utilising a short piece of theoretical lesson that only offers the fundamentals and provides experiential experiments that illustrate scientific principles. Such activity gives even the weakest pupils’ the motivation to study the subject in a fun way and allows the pupils’ to learn at different levels thereby providing them with a practical and theoretical understanding of the material. Holon Institute of Technology (HIT) prides itself on its advanced academic achievements, application of innovative techniques that lead to creative teaching and new technologies. The students (Jews and Arabs) from HIT took part in action learning course that teaches environmental educ...