Arab teacher educators and the moral work of teaching in Israel

Abstract

ABSTRACT This qualitative study explores how 14 Arab teacher educators perceive the moral preparation of teachers for Arab schools in Israel. The first theme highlights the contingent (institutional) factors that influence and may restrain the teacher educators’ mission of moral preparation. It highlights the importance of an organisational culture that supports student teachers’ learning to provide moral education, of empowering and unsilencing of student teachers, and of promoting morally oriented reflective practice in students’ clinical experiences. The second theme illustrates the teacher educators’ psychological assumptions about morality as represented by the possibilities and constraints of role modelling in preparing moral teachers. The third theme addresses the teacher educators’ socio-educational (universal, counter-hegemonic, and liberal) assumptions about the moral purposes of schooling. These assumptions are influenced by the asymmetrical structure of Arab-Jewish power relationships, as well as by the transitional status of Arab society in Israel.