Audrey Addi-Raccah

Gender inequality in leadership positions of teachers

By integrating individual and contextual approaches, the present study examines gender differences in appointment to leadership positions in schools in three different educational sectors in Israel. Based on a sample of 10,733 Israeli high school teachers in two Jewish educational sectors and one Arab educational sector, we performed a set of multinomial logistic regressions. The main findings indicate that gender has an independent influence on the probability of entering various leadership positions in schools, even after controlling for personal characteristics and teaching fields. However, the patterns and the extent of gender inequality differ between the three sectors. The findings are interpreted in accordance with the glass ceiling and the queuing model approaches. We conclude that gender inequality is context bound and should be analyzed from this point of view.

The LEA’s Role in a Decentralized School System: The School Principals’ View

Since the wave of school reform decentralization, schools now maintain a more dynamic and diverse relationship with their environment than they did in the past. School principals’ relationships with the local educational authority (LEA) are a prominent example of this change in Israel. LEAs try to gain more pedagogic influence over schools while school principals become dependent on the LEA for financial and educational resources. This study examines school principals’ attitudes toward the proactive role of the LEAs in localities that have adopted the school based management (SBM) reform, in comparison with localities that have not. The sample includes 165 school principals, of which 47.6 per cent adopted the SBM reform. Based on a discriminant analysis, school principals in localities that adopted the SBM reform, reported that LEAs increased their pedagogic influence on schools in return for providing financial resources. In contrast, in localities that have not adopted the SBM reform, schools principals’ reported being empowered at the local level, with the LEA perceived as advising schools. The implications of this study for school—LEA power relations are discussed based on the social exchange theory.

Teachers’ Trust in Role Partners, Intention to Continue in Teaching, and Schools Social Composition in Israel:

The study examines teachers’ trust in their role partners and its relation to their intention to continue teaching at schools with high and low socioeconomic composition. Based on a questionnaire completed by 149 Israeli teachers in in-service training programs, and interviews with 10 teachers, it was found that teachers attribute different social roles to trust depending on the school’s social composition. In schools with low socioeconomic composition, teachers highly trusted colleagues. In schools with high socioeconomic composition, teachers trusted clients. Trust was linked to teachers’ plans to continue teaching. The implications of these findings regarding teachers’ work are discussed.

School Principals' Role in the Interplay between the Superintendents and Local Education Authorities: The Case of Israel.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to probe the extent to which principals, as boundary spanners, manage with the influence of the local educational authority (LEA) and the superintendent over school matters. Design/methodology/approach – The study is based on sequential quantitative→qualitative explanatory mixed research design. It is based on a sample of 161 Hebrew elementary school principals in two school districts in Israel who completed a questionnaire and on in-depth interviews with four school principals. Findings – The findings indicated that school principals initiate assistance from the superintendent and the LEA depending on the influence they have in schools. However, they utilize their relations with each external agency differently. With the LEA, they established mutual exchange relations whereas school principals engage with the superintendent in order to negotiate more effectively with the LEA. By doing so, principals can control external agencies’ involvement in schools along with st...

From High School to Higher Education: Curricular Policy and Postsecondary Enrollment in Israel

Using multilevel models, the authors tested the hypothesis that high schools, through their curricular policies, operate as mechanisms that help members of privileged groups to take better advantage of postsecondary opportunities. The analysis was based on a 7-year follow-up study of 44,666 Israeli students who graduated from 385 high schools in 1991. The main findings were that (a) the curricular experience of students partly mediated between their sociodemographic characteristics and postsecondary enrollment, (b) the curricular arrangements of schools fully mediated the effects of their social composition on their graduates’ postsecondary education, and (c) graduates of socially privileged schools made a better use of their matriculation certificates. This afforded privileged students an additional advantage.

School principals’ agency as reflected by extracurricular activities in the Israeli education system

This study examines the nature and extent of extracurricular activities in the Palestinian Arab, Jewish Religious and Jewish Secular educational sectors (Israeli education system also includes the Ultra-Orthodox sector with its own management, monitoring and governance apparatus.) in Israel, in order to characterise the contextual variables that may affect school principals’ agency. We explored 2009 Program for International Student Assessment results regarding the nature and intensity of extracurricular activities implemented in schools. We used school’s questionnaires to conceptualise the relations between schools’ contextual variables and extracurricular activities. Descriptive statistics and Poisson regression analyses were applied for data analysis.

Gender, Ethnicity, and School Principalship in Israel: Comparing Two Organizational Cultures.

Based on the social closure perspective, this study examines the intersection of women and minorities in school leadership positions and argues that organizational culture is related to the exclusion of women and minorities from high‐rank positions. This argument is tested by an estimation of the likelihood of minority women, minority men, non‐minority women and non‐minority men holding school principal positions in two different educational systems in Israel: the Jewish state secular and state religious schools. These two systems have distinct forms of organizational culture. The research data are based on a survey of teaching staff conducted by the Central Bureau of Statistics in 2000 (n = 25 769). Several multinomial analyses were conducted in each educational sector. Different patterns of gender/ethnic stratification were found in each educational sector. Gender proved to exert a stronger effect than ethnicity. However, ethnicity differences were greater among women than among men. These patterns were more prominent in state religious education than in state secular education. The findings support the claim that organizational culture serves as a mechanism that mediates ascriptive inequality and shapes the patterns of stratification by gender and ethnic differences.

Forms of Capital and Teachers’ Views of Collaboration and Threat Relations With Parents in Israeli Schools:

Neo-liberal ideologies have given parents influence over education. This requires teachers to find ways to engage with parents and use resources for dealing with them. Following Bourdieu’s notion of field, in which different groups struggle over resources to maintain their social position, we examine the relations between teachers’ attitudes toward parents and possession of feminine, social, and cultural capital. The sample comprised 605 who worked in 32 randomly selected schools located in two districts in Israel. Analyzing teachers answered to a questionnaire reveled that teachers’ relations with parents are diverse and include threat and collaboration. Different capitals underpin these relations.

Dependence on State Funding, Local Educational Opportunities, and Access to High School Credentials in Israel.

A major shortcoming of macro-spatial research undertaken to date in Israel pertains to the neglect of state investment-related measures and the extent to which they mediate unequal opportunities to learn (OTL) and educational opportunities between localities. In the present study, OTL refer to class size and high-school tracking patterns. Educational opportunities refer to two measures: the school systems holding power and access to educational credentials. Two specific questions were raised in this respect: first, we looked into the extent to which the size and ethnic stratification of Israeli localities, and their differential dependence on state financial schemes, affect available OTL and educational opportunities. Second, we examined how a localitys OTL affect educational opportunities. The data on which the present study is based are aggregated at locality level and refer to 89 localities, of which 21 were Arab and 78 were Jewish. Bentlers EQS Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) program was applied to test the research questions. The findings suggest that locality characteristics and dependence on state finance directly affect both OTL and educational opportunities. However, the school systems holding power and access to educational credentials is affected by differential mechanisms. On the one hand, locality-level variables and average class size significantly affect the school systems holding power. On the other hand, access to educational credentials is affected primarily by a localitys ethnic affiliation and its dependence on state funding. The implications of these findings for educational policy and reform are then discussed.

Private tutoring intensity in schools: a comparison between high and low socio-economic schools

Private tutoring (PT) is becoming a worldwide phenomenon. In Israel too, about a third of elementary school students participate in PT. Based on sociological and school quality considerations, we examined school characteristics that are associated with PT intensity at school. The data encompassed a random state wide sample of 389 Israeli elementary schools collected by the Ministry of Education in 2012. The results showed that in high school socioeconomic status (SES) schools the percentage of students who participated in PT was higher compared to low SES schools. In high SES, schools with high PT intensity were characterized by high school achievements whereas in low SES, schools were characterized with low school achievements. PT seems to be a factor that increases the social distinction between high and low SES schools. In Israel, PT seems to create distinct ‘school enclaves’ that reproduce social inequality.