Section archive - Formal Education

Shalem College’s second president, Prof. Isaiah M. Gafni, welcomed 53 new students to campus the first week of November, 2016, urging them to “retain the extraordinary passion for learning” that brought them to the college throughout their next four years. Hailing from all parts of the country, and representing a diverse religious and ideological spectrum, Shalem’s over-subscribed Class of 2020 are united by their impressive record of service, commitment to learning, and academic accomplishment—traits that define the college’s first three pioneering classes as well, and “continue Shalem’s tradition of excellence,” in the words of Provost Dr. Daniel Polisar.

Singing is part of a nation's culture and reflects its values and ideology. Singing also constitutes a tool for instilling educational, social, and cultural messages. The purpose of this study is to compare the repertoire of songs sung nowadays in kindergartens in two geographical areas in Israel: the center of the country and the northern periphery. This is a comparative research. The population included kindergarten teachers, from both geographical areas. The research tools used were a questionnaire and a semi-structured interview. Research findings show that there is a significant difference between the repertoire of songs selected by teachers working in kindergartens in the two different geographical areas.

Jewish Educational Leadership invites articles for Spring 2017 Issue focusing on Tefillah. Tefillah is a challenge for adults – witness how many people struggle to make it to their synagogue, struggle to find meaningful moments when they get there, and struggle to pray when not in an organized prayer environment or in deep crisis. No wonder that the Rabbis called tefillah an avodah, a labor. Teaching students to engage in tefillah raises the challenge even further. The next issue of Jewish Educational Leadership is dedicated to addressing the question of how to address tefillah.

Prepositional phrases (PPs) are considered an important feature of mature written expression. However, little is known about the development of PPs during the school years. The study examined the use of PPs in 160 narrative and expository texts, written by Hebrew-users in grades 4, 7, and 11, and adults. PPs were identified, counted, and classified according to their syntactic roles. Statistical analyses were carried out to probe the effects of age and genre on the overall prevalence of PPs, and the prevalence of each role. Results show that PPs become more prevalent and functionally more diversified with age: PP prevalence increased significantly after grade 7 in both genres, and continued to rise after grade 11 in expositories. Grade 4 PPs had a limited set of roles, the majority serving as arguments. In the older age groups the proportion of arguments decreased, concomitantly with an increase in the prevalence of other roles – most markedly verb-adjuncts and noun-modifiers – and the emergence of new PP roles.