Nura Resh

Classroom Intellectual Composition and Academic Achievement

Assuming that the intellectual level of the classroom affects the quality of learning environments, it is argued that separating students into homogeneous educational frameworks enriches the environment for high-resource students and impoverishes it for low-resource students, whereas the converse occurs under heterogeneous mixing. Academic achievement consequently will be affected. This argument was subjected to an empirical analysis in two Israeli samples, one ethnically and socioeconomically heterogeneous, the other socially homogeneous. First, presuppositions concerning the impact of three dimensions of student-body composition on academic achievement were probed. It was found that (a) the intellectual component of student-body composition outweighs both ethnic and socioeconomic components; (b) classroom composition is more effective than school composition; and (c) classroom intellectual level is more effective than its variance. Subsequently, two hypotheses were supported: classroom intellectual composition positively affects the student’s academic achievement, and compositional quality and personal ability interact (i.e., low-resource students are more sensitive than high-resource students to compositional quality). An educational implication follows: In separation, the low-resource students’ loss is greater than the high-resource students’ profit, and in mixing, the high-resource students’ loss is smaller than the low-resource students’ gain.

The structure of social justice judgments: a facet approach

This study examines the structure of social justice judgments (SJJ) on the basis of a conceptual mapping of two major facets of SJJ: distributive rules and social resources. We distinguish irreducible classes of rules (e.g., arithmetic equality, effort) and resources (e.g., money, prestige) and examine their affinities and contrasts in an effort to unveil the patterns of relations among them. A similarity space analysis (SSA) reveals that the predicted distinctions and relations among SJJ correspond to actual judgments made by adolescents regarding the relative importance of distributive rules in allocating different social resources

The rise and fall of school integration in Israel: research and policy analysis

School integration (desegregation) was introduced in Israeli junior high schools in 1968 with the aim of increasing educational equality and decreasing (Jewish) ethnic divides. While never officially abandoned, a de facto retreat from this policy has been observed since the early 1990s, despite the voluminous research that revealed its positive, though moderate, educational outcomes. This shift in educational emphases reflected profound societal changes, fed by global neo-liberal trends and educational consumerism, which research-based arguments supporting integration were too weak to resist. The ascent and waning of school integration in Israel provide an instructive case for analysing the interconnection of educational policy, educational research, and societal changes, demonstrating the weakness of research in sustaining educational policy in the face of counteracting social and political developments.

Learning Segregation in Junior High‐Schools in Israel: Causes and Consequences

ABSTRACT Implementation of educational integration policy in Israel creates heterogeneous student compositions in the schools. Principals and teachers who, as a result, confront instructional difficulties, and who are ambiguous about this policy and its expected efficacy, press to counter‐balance this heterogeneity by resegregating students within the school in ability‐based classes. In this paper we deal with three inter‐related topics: the degree of learning segregation within integrated junior high schools in Israel; several factors which may explain the degree of learning segregation; (3) the effect of learning segregation on academic outcomes: achievement (in reading and science) and subsequent school career (student placement in high school track). In doing so, we clarify an aspect of the school principals role and his or her indirect effect on students learning. Principals have a decisive power in the organization of learning frameworks (class structure, ability grouping etc.) within the school. T...

Justice and Education

Resting on Walzer’s distinction of Spheres of Justice that defines education as a specific justice sphere, we discuss in this chapter five educational subspheres where resources and rewards (or sanctions) are being constantly distributed and their “fairness” is evaluated by its main beneficiaries—the students. The five spheres that we discuss are: access to education (and resource allocation to realize the access), allocation of learning places, allocation of teaching methods and pedagogy, grading, and teacher–student relations. Although education is a major domain of societal action in the modern world and “equality of educational opportunity,” which is clearly a justice slogan, leads the public interest and academic research, the clear approach to education as a distinct sphere of justice, much of the educational and academic discussions focused on “inequality” or “gaps,” and the investigation of sense of justice among students, teachers, and parents, is a relatively new field of study that is growing considerably in recent decades. Following Jasso’s definition of the central questions that guide investigation in the justice domain, our discussion in each of these subspheres is structured to deal with the “just,” the “actual,” and the “consequences” of injustice in their distribution, summarizing the theoretical discussion and empirical findings to best of our knowledge.

Citizenship orientations in a divided society: A comparison of three groups of Israeli junior-high students—secular Jews, religious Jews, and Israeli Arabs:

This study identifies major preferences for combinations of rights and duties (henceforth, citizenship orientations), as reflected in the political worldview of Israeli junior-high school students. Two distinct orientations were found, termed here as ‘liberal’ and ‘ethno-republican’. In order to contextualize the examination of citizenship orientations in the deeply divided Israeli society, the study compares three educational sectors that represent these rifts. Findings suggest that citizenship orientations are context-bound, in the sense that they depend upon the educational sector. As expected, ethno-republican orientations were more salient among religious Jewish students than among either secular Jewish or Israeli Arab students. Secular Jewish and Israeli Arab students tend more strongly to endorse the liberal orientation, a propensity that is especially manifest among Arab adolescents. This trend supports the perception that Israeli-Jewish population is bifurcated.

World culture and social justice in a divided society: evaluations of Israeli Jewish and Arab teachers and students

ABSTRACT Using the Israeli case, our study delves into teachers’ and students’ notions of social justice, exploring how they are shaped by both world culture trends and local conditions. We first identify social justice notions in the world culture perspective and Israeli society. Then, we empirically examine how these notions are understood by educational agents – teachers and students – across sectors that mirror Israeli society’s major divide: Jewish and Arab-Palestinian. Findings suggest that educational agents and ethnonational affiliation play a major role in recreating national heritages and the different ways in which they understand social justice their lives.

Sense of Justice in School and Social and Institutional Trust

Based on the notion that trust is an essential feature in the development and maintenance of democratic civil society, and that school is central to the daily life of students who view schooling as critical to their long-term life chances, the author investigates in this study the relationship between students’ sense of justice in school and their social and institutional trust. Sense of Justice, defined as the relationship between one’s actual reward and his/her deserved reward, is reflected in three interrelated but distinct categories: instrumental, relational and procedural. The study was carried out in Israel among over 5000 middle school students in a national sample of 48 public schools. Findings basically support our hypothesis that students, who feel that they were treated fairly by their teachers, will be more trustful. However, these relationships are differential in the comparison of students in three school’s sectors: Jewish general, Jewish religious, and Arab.