Halleli Pinson

Ben-Gurion University of the Negev | bgu · Department of Education

Although physics is one of the most male-dominated educational fields in Europe and North America, this is not the case in all parts of the world. The present study investigates contextual variability in the physics gender gap by leveraging unique characteristics of the Israeli state educational system, including its highly standardized national cu...

Until quite recently, cannabis was the most widely used illicit drug globally. Using collective memory work, this study focuses on experiences of cannabis use as part of young persons' deviant leisure repertoire and explores its role in identity formation processes. The study included a group process of analyzing our own memories of early experienc...

Over the past few years, the civics curriculum for Israeli high-schools has become the centre of a heated political debate. Following this debate, in May 2016 a revised official textbook was introduced. This paper draws on an in-depth analysis of the revised official textbook, comparing it to the previous official textbook published in 2000. The an...

Over the past decades, neo-Zionist discourse has gain prominence in Israel. This approach, which gives preference to the definition of Israel as a Jewish state over its definition as a democracy, is a specific version authoritarian populism. This paper explores how educational discourses, policies and curricular changes are being shaped by right-wi...

This paper explores how teachers conceive and facilitate children’s participation in student councils, by comparing their conceptions and practices to those of municipal officials operating a municipal children’s parliament. Findings from an exploratory case-study suggest that the latter, guided by citizen consultation discourse, view children as m...

In 2007, we argued that, when it comes to sociology of education, the lives and education of refugee children were invisible. Sociology of education was ‘a wasteland’ as far as studies of the social effects of migration were concerned. Here, we revisit this argument exploring whether education and migration has been developed into a viable speciali...

In the past three decades in high‐income countries, female students have outperformed male students in most indicators of educational attainment. However, the underrepresentation of girls and women in science courses and careers, especially in physics, computer sciences, and engineering, remains persistent. What is often neglected by the vast exist...

The Israeli education system is divided and segregated along the lines of nationality and religiosity. While Israeli society and its education system, in particular, have generally been subjected to the influence of globalisation, including universal discourses of citizenship, in many ways it remains highly particularistic and nationalistic. To a l...

Israeli teachers who teach Eritrean and Sudanese asylum-seeking children find themselves struggling to accommodate these children against the background of a polarized environment. The strategies teachers employ to cope with this tension are shaped by the broader socio-political context and the hostilities directed toward African asylum seekers in...

This study examines citizenship education in Israel from the point of view of Arab teachers, as they rework and negotiate the content and boundaries of their Israeli citizenship. Specifically, the paper studies how teachers of citizenship education in Arab high schools in Israel perceive their sociopolitical reality, how they respond to it in their...

Similar to other national contexts, in Israel since the 1980s we have witnessed the emergence of neo-liberal policies in education. However, very little attention has been given to the ways in which they affect the school level and even less attention has been given to the impact of these policy changes on Arab schools in Israel. This article offer...

In societies under protracted conflicts the challenge of teaching about citizenship is inevitably overshadowed by the conflict itself. Stemming from a larger research project, aiming at understanding the dilemmas and challenges of citizenship education at all levels of the Israeli educational system, and across its various branches (general, religi...

This article explores the nexus between pre-service teacher education polices and the supply and demand of minority teachers. It problematizes the recent reports on teacher shortages in Israel, which tend to focus on the shortage of Jewish teachers while dealing with the surplus of Arab teachers only tangentially. Specifically, this article examine...

The notion of the child as an active participant in society was enshrined in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) (UN, 1989). This concept shaped the ‘general principles’ of what should constitute the treatment of children and their participation in society, where nation-states as signatories to the CRC are the prime guara...

The main question that is discussed in this paper is the way in which the Ministry of Education in Israel dealt with the changes in the political reality, and the shift from violent relations towards the possibility of peace agreements between Israel and its neighbours and the Palestinians. Drawing on the analysis of official documents – Director G...

Sociological research on the presence and yet invisibility of asylum‐seeking and refugee pupils in the educational system in the UK is noticeably absent. This article offers insights into the ways in which the presence and the needs of such pupils are conceptualised by local authorities and schools. It draws on the results of a survey of 58 English...

Refugees are physically and symbolically 'out of place' - their presence forces governments to address issues of rights and moral obligations. This book contrasts the hostility of immigration policy to 'non-citizen'' children with teachers' exceptional compassion and 'citizen students' ambivalence in defining who can belong. © Halleli Pinson, Madel...

In previous chapters we explored the many-faceted concept of compassion which the notion of asylum generates at governmental, LEA and school level, and amongst ‘citizen’ students. Different forms of compassion emerged from our empirical data. For example, we have seen government attempts to restrict compassion only to the ‘deserving’ rather than to...

One of the challenges, both methodologically and theoretically, when studying forced migration (in educational contexts or others) is how to define the subjects of the research. There is a lack of clarity regarding the definitions of the different types of forced migrant that are often used interchangeably (Phillimore and Goodson, 2008). The most c...

The education of asylum-seeking children in the UK has been substantially influenced by the country’s immigration and asylum policy developed by the Home Office. The extensive state activity in the past two decades in the area of asylum and immigration has, in effect, co-opted other arms of the state (the educational system being one) into immigrat...

Bauman (2004) argues that refugees, being the ‘human waste’ of globalisation, are stripped of all other identities but one — that of being stateless and status-less. While this position, as outcasts, makes them highly visible as the ‘Other in our midst’, all other aspects of their being and individuality are erased. Refugees are physically and symb...

The hostile response of the Home Office and immigration authorities to asylum-seeking communities, families and children leaves educational policy-makers in central or local government in a particularly difficult position. Central government ministries are not necessarily working with the same agenda and, as we shall see, by the turn of the 21st ce...

While the first gate of entry into the UK is nothing if not hostile, the second gate of entry could be made more conducive to humane values. However, as Chapter 4 demonstrated, the rights of ASR children as children were practically overridden by central government immigration policy; until the removal of the reservation to the UNCRC in 2008, they...

In his review of citizenship in the UK for the Labour government, Lord Goldsmith (Ministry of Justice, 2008: 115) asserted that: ‘We have been open in this country to allowing people to acquire citizenship, even if they were not born in the UK or have no ancestral connection to the UK.’ For this to happen, the report argued, the ‘non-citizen’ shoul...

One of the main concerns of social and educational research in the field has been the effects of different government policies and services on the integration of ASR children in the UK. Concerns, for example, have been expressed about the negative consequences of immigration policy on ASR children’s experiences within education.1 As a result of dis...

Within schools, there are as many educational frameworks and discourses which define the ASR student as there are in LEAs. Here our exploratory study of the world of schooling moves deeper into the framing of ASR students, focusing now on the perspectives of teachers and later students themselves. By moving deeper into the politics of compassion at...

Refugees commonly have just one remaining identity - that of being stateless and statusless. They represent the ultimate “other in our midst”. The humanism of our teachers in helping the children of asylum-seekers and refugees is tested by the state, especially its immigration policy. This paper offers preliminary research findings on teachers' con...

This paper explores the ways in which Arab/Palestinian high school students in Israel negotiate their civic and national identities. The paper draws upon qualitative data that included semi‐structured interviews and focus groups with 20 students in an Arab Muslim high school. It focuses on the ways in which they make sense of the notion of citizens...

Against the backdrop of growing conflicts in Israeli society and concerns about its democratic character, the current curriculum guidelines and official textbook for civic education in Israel were set to offer a more inclusive civic education that would stress ideas such as pluralistic and democratic citizenship. However, this curriculum does not o...

Education in Israel is often described as caught between two ends: state‐formation and nation‐building. In the last decade civic education in Israel has been undergoing some changes. The civic compulsory curriculum for state high schools was unified across all educational sectors in Israel with the aim of creating a more inclusive, universal civic...