Agents of the nation-state or transformative intellectuals? Exploring the conflicting roles of civics teachers in Israel

Abstract

This article focuses on the role of the civics teacher against the backdrop of the recent political developments in Israel, where the political elite increasingly seeks to underpin citizenship education with a national-religious ideology. As in previous work on this topic by other academics, we draw on Gramsci’s work on cultural hegemony to locate the hegemonic discourse of citizenship education in Israel and focus on the teacher’s role along the spectrum of being an agent of the nation-state to acting as a transformative intellectual. We have interviewed Jewish-Israeli civics teachers to gain a better understanding of how they mediate their role between the different demands that the politics of civic education in Israel imposes on them. Our findings outline how teachers sometimes tend to reproduce the hegemonic discourse and how they also find ways to rebel against it, drawing on counter-hegemonic strategies in their classroom practice.

Legitimising populist education in Israel: The role of religion

“…Evidence shows that the escalating efforts to advance a particularistic hyper‐ethno‐nationalist ideology in the Israeli education system, and a complete segregation between Jews and Palestinians in the school system, have eroded liberal and democratic sensibilities among Jewish youth (Gordon, 2012). Recent works on citizenship education (Agbaria, 2016; Cohen, 2019; Muff & Bekerman, 2019) reflect a broad consensus regarding the failure of citizenship education in Israel to promote an inclusive and shared civic culture for all citizens. Muff and Bekerman (2019) attribute this failure to the current efforts of the Jewish political elite to underpin citizenship education with a national‐religious ideology.…”

“…Recent works on citizenship education (Agbaria, 2016; Cohen, 2019; Muff & Bekerman, 2019) reflect a broad consensus regarding the failure of citizenship education in Israel to promote an inclusive and shared civic culture for all citizens. Muff and Bekerman (2019) attribute this failure to the current efforts of the Jewish political elite to underpin citizenship education with a national‐religious ideology.…”

Do religious beliefs influence concerns for animal welfare? the role of religious orientation and ethical ideologies in attitudes toward animal protection amongst Muslim teachers and school staff in East Java, Indonesia

“…One of the reasons for the participant selection is in viewing that as an institution, both public and private schools are subjects to nation-wide education curriculum whereby collected data may generally capture a nation-wide curriculum's learning goals [70] relevant to animal protection and welfare. However, there were also a lengthy discussions about educators roles as transformative intellectuals rather than as nation-state agent teaching nation-state learning goals [71][72][73]. Also, taking some roles and responsibilities of a parent (loco parentis), teacher may be as well provide assistance and insight on moral, political, religious and ethical issues for their students [74] as one study hinted that teachers act as role-models for the students and influence their students' political attitudes [75].…”

“…In another study related to transformative agency, teachers' inclusive practices, moral purposes, competence, autonomy and reflexivity [76] are important factors to act as an agent of change. The duality of being transformational agents while also fulfilling their obligatory role to implement the nation-state education curriculum agenda, Muff & Bekerman [71] argued that teachers mediated their roles between the different demands that of the civic education politics imposes on them by navigating elegantly both in producing hegemonic discourse and in fostering ways to rebel against and draw counter-hegemonic strategies in their classroom practice. Thus, this study viewed that having teachers as the participants for the research would capture some dynamics of interlocking roles at play.…”

Three-faced: The conflicting roles of citizenship education in conflict-affected societies – A comparison of Northern Ireland and Israel

“…Yet, competing policy agendas can skew and distort its role in contributing to peacebuilding (Davies, 2004). This is apparent in Israel and Northern Ireland, where despite a political commitment to CE that aims to inter alia explore issues related to the region's conflict, evidence suggests that this is only partially addressed in the classroom (Donnelly, McAuley, Blaylock et al 2020;Muff and Bekerman, 2019).…”