Search results for: History

This study aims to investigate history teachers' perceptions of the desired history curriculum content in Israeli schools in term of national versus international composition. We surveyed Israeli secondary school history teachers in the Jewish secular stream, employing an on-line quantitative and qualitative questionnaire that asked the teachers to select the subjects that they consider important for inclusion in the curriculum.

The Bildner Center for the Study of Jewish Life of Rutgers University has been providing free online Jewish studies courses taught by Rutgers professors since 2006. The courses have been taken by students across the globe, in 47 countries on six continents and in 41 states across America. The non-credit online courses allow participants to learn at their own pace.

This article examines 10 textbooks used in Jewish religion classes in Russian high schools in the final decades of the 19th century. The textbooks reveal an expectation of a low level of Hebrew background, an interest in promoting the practice of prayer, and two distinct approaches to teaching Judaism. While some of the books introduce students to their religion through Biblical or later Jewish history, others present the religion as a systematic set of beliefs and practices. Although it is difficult to ascertain exactly how the books were utilized in classrooms, they certainly provide a sense of the priorities of a group of educators, as well as of the relative freedom they had in defining Judaism for the next generation.

This article reviews the results of numerous studies that demonstrate how students belonging to ethnic majorities and minorities differ in their historical knowledge, trust of teachers and texts, motivation to study history, and perception of the material. The experience of teaching Jewish history in the former Soviet Union is reviewed, and directions for further research are suggested.