Michael Zeldin

Content and Context

In his famous essay on “The Practical,” Joseph Schwab (1973) identified what have become famously known as the “four commonplaces” of education: teacher, learner, subject matter and milieu. While the dictionary defines commonplace as something that is ordinary, dull or trite, educators find the commonplaces anything but uninteresting (Collins English Dictionary, 2009). In fact, we find them quite powerful. Educators often use the commonplaces in ways similar to what Schwab intended, as “voices” in deliberations about curriculum, what should be taught and how it should be taught. How can the curriculum draw on the teacher’s background and capacities? How can a program of study and the ways it is presented address the needs of learners and be tailored to fit their developmental characteristics and their learning strengths? What would subject matter experts identify as the most important content to be taught and how would they explain its significance? How does the social milieu affect decisions about what is to be taught and how it is to be taught to this group of learners at this time and in this place? Educational researchers use Schwab’s curriculum commonplaces, too, though perhaps in less self-conscious ways. In order to understand education, the questions researchers ask analyze and inquire into one or more of the four commonplaces. Who are the teachers and what characteristics do they bring to teaching and learning? Who are the learners, what are their salient characteristics and how do those characteristics affect what they learn? What is the content being taught and what is its significance for Judaism, Jewishness and Jewry (Michael Rosenak’s felicitous way of understanding what matters for Jewish identification)? In what milieu is education situated and how does that milieu influence teaching and learning? Jewish tradition offers it own commonplaces for planning and analyzing education. The section of the Torah that the rabbis transformed into the

THE PROMISE OF HISTORICAL INQUIRY: NINETEENTH‐CENTURY JEWISH DAY SCHOOLS AND TWENTIETH‐CENTURY POLICY∗

∗ An earlier version of this paper was presented to the Conference of the Jewish Education Research Network in June, 1987

Celebrating the Journal’s Anniversary and Preparing for a Transition

The list of Jewish mathematicians is long, yet somehow Jews often have trouble with numbers. The accounts of the Noah story disagree over how many of each species entered the ark. We can’t keep straight how many blessings make up the Amidah: We call these 19 blessings the Shmoneh Esrei, the 18. And we’re celebrating the 80th anniversary of the Journal of Jewish Education even though the Journal was first published in 1929, 85 years ago. What we are actually commemorating is the publication of the 80th volume of the Journal. Eighty volumes in 85 years? If you are curious how this came about, I suggest you review the Journal’s website. More significant than the quantitative discrepancy is the increasing quality we are celebrating. The Journal has been the main publication in our field since its beginnings. In its early years it was the forum for Jewish educators who were part of the Council for Jewish Education, the first professional association of Jewish educators in leadership positions, to share their views on the issues facing Jewish education. The Network for Research in Jewish Education (NRJE) first became part of the Journal in 1997. The year before, the NRJE had held its first (and only) research conference in Israel. The funding that supported that conference included funding for publication of conference proceedings, and the NRJE leadership turned to the Journal of Jewish Education to be the venue for publication. Stuart Schoenfeld and I edited a double issue of the journal (Volume 63, 1997) that included papers on the role of foundations in Jewish education, informal Jewish education, vision in Jewish education, Jewish education in Israel and in the Former Soviet Union, marketing in Jewish education, and a paper with the eerily contemporary title, “A New Picture of Supplementary Education.” Among the authors were Daniel Pekarsky, Sergio Della Pergola, Burt Cohen, Leora Isaacs, and David Resnick. Over the next seven years the Network continued to publish proceedings in double issues of the Journal. Papers delivered at conferences were revised and submitted for review and, if they were accepted by the reviewers

Nurturing and Celebrating Emerging Scholars in Jewish Education Research

There are many signs of the maturation of an academic field. One sign is that the field has a journal that disseminates research. Another sign is that there is a venue for researchers to gather, to share their research, and to develop shared agendas for research. And yet another sign of the maturation of a field is that those already in the field take responsibility for nurturing up-and-coming scholars who are just entering the field. This journal, especially since its re-launch in 2001 as a research and scholarly journal, provides an outlet for the publication and dissemination of research through its print and online publications. The Network for Research in Jewish Education has grown into the recognized forum for scholars to gather each year to share their research and, well, to network. The maturation of the field is also evident in the Network’s Emerging Scholars Award that has nurtured scholars entering the field, that since 2001. This issue of the journal, published a dozen years after the first award was given, celebrates those emerging scholars and others who are just beginning their careers as Jewish education researchers. In 1999, when Shulamith Elster served as treasurer of the Network and I was privileged to serve as its chair, she suggested an idea for recognizing and supporting graduate students doing research for their dissertations. We called the award the “Young Scholars Award,” but after a few years it became clear that a more appropriate designation would be “Emerging Scholars Award.” Diane Schuster, the long-time chair of the committee established to select the award winners, wrote in 2007, that the award was:

Celebrating the Publication of the International Handbook of Jewish Education

The recent publication of the International Handbook of Jewish Education marks the third milestone in the maturation of the field of research in Jewish education in the past quarter century. This third milestone was built on the foundation laid by the first two, the founding of the Network for Research in Jewish Education 25 years ago and the re-launch of the Journal of Jewish Education 7 years ago. Before the creation of the Network for Research in Jewish Education, the research endeavor was in its infancy, and there was no community of researchers. It was often lamented that the only research that was conducted was one-off doctoral studies. Usually, a Jewish educator seeking a PhD or EdD, often in a school of education at a secular university, would conduct a study as required by the academic protocols of their schools, would be granted the doctorate, would publish an article about the study, and would return to the field of practice. At the time, there were only 18 professors of Jewish education in institutions across North America, and many of them were in the early stages of their careers. The establishment of the Network 25 years ago marked the early formation of a community of scholars in Jewish education. Attendees at the first “Research Conference” shuttled between the University of Judaism (now the American Jewish University) and the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Los Angeles. Even though transiting between the Westside of LA and downtown took time away from the “real work” of sharing papers and works in progress, the move was an important signal that this new network would bring together researchers from a wide variety of locations and institutions to become a community of scholars independent of any institutional affiliation. The second milestone was the re-launch of this journal in 2005. The Journal of Jewish Education (JJE) had a 70-year history as THE journal in the field. While it frequently included reports of research studies, it was primarily known as the central address for the thoughtful discussion of issues facing Jewish education. Jonathan Krasner’s three-part history of the journal

THE MATURATION OF RESEARCH IN JEWISH EDUCATION

The Network for Research in Jewish Education has come to occupy a special place in the professional lives of its members. For professors and scholars, the Network provides a venue for presenting research to colleagues and receiving the feedback from peers that is so vital in advancing and sophisticating ones work. For practitioners and policy makers, the Network provides opportunities to learn about recent research and deliberate thoughtfully about issues facing Jewish education. For graduate students, the Network provides a chance to enter the field of research in a supportive and welcoming ambience. The Research Network also provides an annual barometer of the state of research in Jewish education. The papers in this volume were presented in their original form at the conference held in June, 2000, and were subsequently revised and reviewed for publication in this journal. They represent an indication of the level of maturity of the field of Jewish education research. They reflect the balance between research conducted on topics of concern to Jewish education with research from other settings applied to Jewish education. This volume also represents the breadth of concerns and issues currently being addressed by Jewish educational research, and the wide range of researchers who currently work in Jewish education.